Yet Another Load of Coal on the Joint Line

That Union Pacific train I wrote about in my previous posting had 6 locomotives each with 4400 horsepower for a total of 26,400. This is the typical configuration for UP coal trains going south on the Joint Line south of Denver.

Today, I got a nice photo of a southbound BNSF coal train in the exact same place as the UP train - the far south end of the dam at Chatfield State Park. BNSF has a different approach to coal train motive power for the Joint Line. They typically place two locomotives up from and 2 at the end of the train pushing.



This train had this configuration:

At the front of the train:
9954 - SD70MAC built in 1998
9514 - SD70MAC built in 1995

At the rear of the train:
9613 - SD70MAC built in 1995
9331 - SD70ACe built in 2006

The last one, the SD70ACe, is quite new. My picture of it did not turn out well so here is a link to a nice clean one.

The SD70MACs have 4000 horsepower and the SD70ACe has 4300. So this train had a total of 16,300 horsepower - quite a bit less than what UP uses for similar trains.

Notice that these two engines do not have the same paint scheme. The 9514 is one of the earlier SD70MACs that Burlington Northern acquired before its merger with the Santa Fe. The paint scheme was called the "Executive Scheme" because BN had an executive passenger train and the special engines that pulled it were painted similarly to these SD70MACs. Here is a picture of one of those at the Illinois Railway Museum.

The 9954 is a newer SD70MAC. It has one of the "heritage" schemes that BNSF came up with. It combines colors from some of the predecessor railroads such as Santa Fe and Great Northern.