Western Railroad Discussion > NS battery loco to the West Coast.

A friend of mine sent me this photo yesterday.(no photo credit as of yet) It’s of the one-off Norfolk Southern #999 experimental battery locomotive recently sold at auction with new BUGX reporting marks. BUGX belongs to Dieselmotive Company of Turlock, California. For those not familiar with the company, they perform diesel locomotive maintenance and repair and also lease a few locomotives out here and there to short lines or industrials. They store most of their units in Turlock and Stockton but also have some scattered around other spots in California. As for the locomotive, there is a good amount of detailed information about it online. A brief synopsis is that it was built in 2007 at Altoona, PA by NS and involving a consortium of public and private entities. It’s designated a BP4, has 1500 hp and it’s current iteration contains well over 800 individual batteries. As I understand it, the locomotive largely sat around at Altoona. It will be interesting to see how it’s new service life transpires out here in California, land of the low emission and soon to be no emission locomotives. I wish the new owner good luck. 

Ryan Barber
Stockton, CA

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