Saturday, March 4, 2006 - It has been quite awhile since my last news update. I took some time off from the site for the second half of February when my wife and I finally got the chance to take our honeymoon to Hawaii! Anyway, after a great vacation to the only state of the 50 in the US without any active railroading, it's good to be back home. Yesterday after work, I hung around north of Boulder and waited for a southbound Military Train. The train was carrying support vehicles (trucks and hummers) and was led by two green and white BN SD40-2's. Well, the first was a patched (BNSF) SD40-2 and the second was now a leased unit (owned by HLCX), but it looked great regardless.
Since the end of January, we lost the last DRGW GP40-2 that was still active on the Union Pacific roster. DRGW 3100 was patched to UP 1350 on January 31 at the Burnham Shops in Denver. This leaves one last unpatched Grande unit on UP's active roster. DRGW 5371 is now the sole survivor. This T-2 had a 92-day inspection at Roper in February, but managed to escape without a patch. It was close because the patch kit was on order, but did not make it to Roper before the unit was released. Looks like May 2006 will be the end of Rio Grande power on Class 1 railroads. For the time being, 5371 is still in Helper on the Dirt Train and doing local service.
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