Western Railroad Discussion > An SD35 on borrowed time: Omnitrax 2959

One of the few remaining active SD35's in the country may be on borrowed time. Omnitrax 2959 (built as SP 4830 in 1965) has been a regular engine on the Great Western Rly in Northern Colorado since 2000. It did a brief stint on the Utah Railway in the late 1990's, but was not up to the demands of hauling coal over Soldier Summit. Two Canadian National GP40-2 widecabs are in the Omnitrax Loveland shops being prepared for service. It is believed these two GP40's will replace the 2959 and the other 567 powered unit, OMLX GP9 4285. I was fortunate to catch the 2959 on the Windsor-Milliken train today.
1. South of Windsor on Oklahoma hill with DLCX SD40 3131 pulling a train of mostly turbine blades that were fabricated by Vestas in Windsor.
2. 2959 has the green traffic light (on the left side of the photo) to cross the busy 4 lane highway 34.
3. Approaching Johnstown, CO



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/14 19:33 by WSOR506.

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4. Some fall color still remains as the train comes into Johnstown.
5. Between Johnstown and Milliken, a Union Pacific crew is doing a brake test on 100 frac sand hoppers that the GWR delivered earlier in the day. This train will travel about a mile to the UP Fort Collins subdivision in Milliken and proceed to La Salle to the Greeley subdivision mainline.
6. Omnitrax GP9 4285 was switching covered hoppers in Windsor.

Thanks for looking!!
Rich Kundert
Ft. Collins, CO

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Neat shots!

Southern Pacific had 29 SD35s, which were not a common locomotive. Only 360 were built, not counting SDP35 submodel. When new, they were assigned to Tehachapi. The first retirements started in the early 1980s and I think they were all gone from SP by the early 1990s.

Z

Great scenes, really like #6! UP 7447 was on the UFCMKX-28 (Unit train-Ft. Collins-Mankato, MN-Extra) Strange that UP also uses the "MK" symbol for Milliken, the location where you took that picture!

Really great photos. I especially like #6.

Ronda Thomas

Outstanding Rich, great stuff. Hate to see 2959 go, especially replaced by those beauteous GP40 widenoses, yuk. Glad you were able to get out and enjoy a terrific chase.
Kirk

Great photos! Good to see an SD35 still running.
One of the biggest owners of SD35s was Southern.
They owned 110.
#215-#224 assigned to CofG
#3000-3099 Southern
ALLEN

Nice catch! I haven't seen an SD35 of any sort since there were some on the I&M Rail Link back in the 90's.

- Jeff Carlson

another 567 is OMLX 4327, the SD9 in "black widow" paint. Saw it in Longmont last Friday, so as tradition, it gets stationed there to handle an occasional switch. When Winter eventually gets here, it will be interesting to see if it gets the equipment to keep the cooling system from freezing.

Bill Kepner

Nice pics!!!