RailRoadFan.com

Saw a posting online where the NS is planning to sell off the SD60's. DO they get scrapped? Do other short line services buy them? What is a typical selling price for something like that? Seems like a lot of the small short lines in this area have even older power. The NYSW has a few SD60's but also older SD40-2's, Finger lakes Railway even has Alco's. How tough are the business cases to upgrade to these evens where a major rail road divests of an entire class of power? Is this driven by emission requirements? Wonder if the New York State EPA strikes again. I remember when we had to be 2010 compliant at Highway and had to dump all the older N-14's in favor of these morphadite Cummin's IPM's and International MaxForce 13's. Had ENDLESS problems until they came out with the versions with DEF vs. the "burners". Is this happening to the Rail Road industries as well?

SD60s are reaching the end of their practical service lives without being overhauled. Remember, the oldest units are going on 35 years old. NS rebuilt most of their standard cab SD60 fleet into SD60Es. CP also had a portion of their former SOO SD60s rebuilt by Progress Rail. Doesn't really have as much to do with emissions as it does that they're just getting old and rebuilding locomotives isn't cheap.

A few shortlines are reported to have bought up some SD60s from CSX during their latest fire sale. The balance have gone to equipment brokers like Larry's Truck & Electric. It wouldn't surprise me to see leasing companies and other shortlines/regionals scoop them up. Depending on the condition, SD60s can be had for around the same price as an SD40-2.

As far as emissions go, that is precisely why you're seeing so many railroads rebuilding older power. The Class 1s aren't too enthused about the Tier 4 offerings from EMD and GE, as both have had their share of problems. It's cheaper to rebuild the older stuff, as they don't have to comply with the strict emissions standards that new build units do. For example...

NS is rebuilding:
SD70s into SD70ACCs
SD90MACs into SD70ACUs
C40-9s (and I believe they've started on C44-9Ws as well) into AC44CWMs

BNSF is rebuilding:
SD70MACs into SD70MACes (not sure how many of these have been done)
C44-9Ws into AC44C4Ms

CP is rebuilding:
SD40-2s into SD40-3s
AC4400CWs into AC4400CWMs
SD90MACs into SD70ACUs

CSX is currently having a pair each of SD70MACs and AC4400CWs rebuilt to determine the viability of such a project. UP is reported to be looking into starting to rebuild their oldest SD70Ms as well.

Thanks for the insight! Does that mean the old Two strokes have a little more time in service? Can rail roads run those 710's on the rebuild older EMD's? Have to say if the salt didn't kill the chassis on those highway trucks, re-powering with reman N-14's would have been way cheaper than the 200K plus per truck they spent....to see them spend 1/4 of their life in the shop being debugged. The new ones are much better. Detroit's / Western Stars seems to have less issues with their emission controls systems. Later Max forces were pretty well sorted out too, but by then the die was cast, no more internationals! ( Because of the problems with the early ones )

Some of the older stuff that's been rebuilt has been re-engined with 710s. CP's GP20-ECO and SD30-ECO fleets are good examples of this. CSX's 10 SD40E3s are equipped with 710s as well.

I'm surprised that UP hasn't copied NS with the 9043MAC rebuilds as NS seems to like them. Doesn't UP still have quite a few sitting in storage?

The only other railroad currently doing the SD90MAC to SD70ACU rebuild program is CP.

SD80MAC wrote:The only other railroad currently doing the SD90MAC to SD70ACU rebuild program is CP.

Its my understanding that CP scrapped a lot of their 90MAC's before these rebuilds began. They seem to be liking them so far.

They only scrapped the 4 SD90MAC-Hs.

SD80MAC wrote:They only scrapped the 4 SD90MAC-Hs.

Ahh ok. I thought they originally had a much larger fleet like the UP did.