Nostalgia & History > few switchers for saturday . .

. . many generations of switchers as well as dates represented here. With the mention of the demise of Manufactures Railway sometime last week I found this crooked and dark slide in one of the boxes of one of their ALCO switchers working the yard in St Louis in better times (top). On one of my trips to the Chicago area I visited the EJ&E yard in East Joliet, IL and found this pair of EMD swithers returning from switching some industries west of town (middle). One day while working at BNSF's exSanta Fe Watson yard in the LA harbor area I saw this newest generation "Green Goat" switcher down in the yard so with the help of the rest of the crew grabbed a normal engine and pulled it up on the wye for a photo (bottom). Don't think this unit was very successful as it seems to have vanished off the map?
JB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/12 08:32 by 3rdswitch.

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Thanks for posting these. The Green Goat may be the rarest of the shots, but the Manufacturers Railway Alco is the best looking by far. You even managed to have it pulling a MRS insulated boxcar. Great shots.
Bob

Joe,
Great to see the MRS 210. In 1977 work took me the the St. Louis Refrigerator Car shop that was just down river from the MRS shop. The MRS units were always clean and shiny. I got myself invited up into the cab of one of the Alcos. It was just as clean as the outside.
Charlie

3rdswitch Wrote:

> With the mention of the demise
> of Manufactures Railway sometime last week I found
> this crooked and dark slide in one of the boxes of
> one of their ALCO switchers working the yard in St
> Louis in better times (top).

What was left of the Manufacturers Railway in St. Louis was turned over to Foster Townsend Rail Logistics last year. The road mentioned last week was a different outfit - the Manufacturers Junction Ry. in Cicero, IL.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2923362
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?2,1708776
http://www.omnitrax.com/railroads/manufacturers-junction-railway-llc.aspx

> One day while working at BNSF's
> exSanta Fe Watson yard in the LA harbor area I saw
> this newest generation "Green Goat" switcher down
> in the yard so with the help of the rest of the
> crew grabbed a normal engine and pulled it up on
> the wye for a photo (bottom). Don't think this
> unit was very successful as it seems to have
> vanished off the map?

Railpower's prototype Green Goat hybrid RPRX 2001 "Emerald" was last reported in storage in Southern Ry. of British Columbia's yard at New Westminster, BC back in 2009.

http://www.greenrailnews.com/owners/rprx.html

Some production Green Goats followed, but my impression is that the theory - that a switcher spends most of its time idling so it doesn't need a big engine, just a little one charging a bunch of batteries - didn't work out so well in practice. That and a recall prompted by battery fires soured the big roads on the concept.

There's still 4 Green Goats working the Auto Yard at Mira Loma, California on the UP.
They don't have to work hard all of the time and the Mira Loma area is super hyper about diesel exhaust.
So they're a good fit here.