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From: railroad@ucbvax.ARPA
Newsgroups: fa.railroad
Subject: Commuter Locomotives
Message-ID: <9661@ucbvax.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 03:22:43 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.9661
Posted: Mon Aug  5 03:22:43 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Aug-85 08:29:27 EDT
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Organization: University of California at Berkeley
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From: Dan_Bower%RPI-MTS.Mailnet@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA

Funny about rebuilding commuter locomotives. One of the P&LE's
complaints in thier abandonment petition (for thier last Pittsburgh
commuter train) was that the only engine they had with a steam
generator (a hand-me-down GP9 from the New York Central) was in need
of rebuilding. As the train hadn't been losing money for years, and
the P&LE's freight traffic is really down, I'm not surprised that
they won the petition. (Remember just a scant 10 years ago when the
P&LE was such a hot item for acquisition? Between losing traffic to
Conrail and mill closings, life's pretty rough for the P&LE now.
With Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel on strike, I wonder how long the P&LE
can hold out.)

Back to locomotives... Of course, rebuilding engines isn't always a
panacea. Up in this neck of the woods, a number of FL9's were
rebuilt, and the performance got worse. sigh... Amtrak can't wait to
get out of Grand Central so they can ditch the FL9's entirely (and
realize a few other benefits).