Western Railroad Discussion > How often does UP use ES44AC and SD70ACe units on coal?

Hi Everybody. How often does UP Use their ES44AC and SD70ACe locomotives on coal trains? This counts for ET44AC and SD70ACe-T4 locomotives as well. I think UP bought the most amount of ES44AC locomotives out of any railroad. I'm surprised to not see them on coal trains more often.

They use them a lot on the coal trains in Utah. SD70ACe's are more common out of the two. We have also been seeing several SD70M in the power mix on coal trains in the last year.

Spencer Peterson
Payson, UT

Usually they only two I see on UP coal trains.

I've found it interesting over many years that BNSF put the biggest newest AC power into the coal pool while UP basically stuck with AC4400CW's and de-rated AC6000CW's. In the past year however, there are more UP ES44AC's and SD70ACe's showing up in the PRB. Not a lot mind you, but not long ago it was very, very rare.

Bill Miller
Galt, ON

CCMF Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've found it interesting over many years that
> BNSF put the biggest newest AC power into the coal
> pool while UP basically stuck with AC4400CW's and
> de-rated AC6000CW's. In the past year however,
> there are more UP ES44AC's and SD70ACe's showing
> up in the PRB. Not a lot mind you, but not long
> ago it was very, very rare.

Agree with this. AC4400CW's were the common coal pool power
in the PRB for yeas. When I was out there in 2015, I saw
one SD70ACe as a DPU and one train completely EMD powered.
The rest were all AC4400CWs.

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

I find it interesting that UP puts the C45AC-H and SD70AC-H on stack train and not ,on coal so why add extra weight for this service !

Flip a coin anymore. Used to be the ge 4400s now it's what ever is available.
I seen a lone sd70ace on the point of a loaded 145 car coal train and a lone ac44cwcte pushing at the rear and they were struggling big time.