Nostalgia & History > Best SP Wild Lash-up I Ever Captured, And After a Nevada Snowfall

This was 11-4-1994, just East of Wells,Nevada, An Eastbound SP train powering up Moor hill, after a good Northern Nevada snowstorm blanketed the whole area, creating a nice winter scene. Consist includes an SP Speed Lettered unit on point, with a CSX, a UP, an MPI, 2 GP or SD 7 or 9's (Running) and an Amtrack unit I think was dead in tow?. I followed it up to Moor Summit. Thought this one would be very appropriate for the holiday season! This might be my last video post for a while, as I may have to move soon, but this is one I had make sure and share! Hope you like, and Thanks for viewing.

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

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Yep! That was a wild consist. Trying to find anything similar on a big railroad's mainline today is next to impossible when most locomotives look the same.

Awesome!

The snow was a nice touch.

Great video. Those were SD9s.

THIS is why railfanning used to be so fun. You never knew what you might see.

TonyJ Wrote:

> Yep! That was a wild consist. Trying to find
> anything similar on a big railroad's mainline
> today is next to impossible when most locomotives
> look the same.

Let's see:

- three freight railroads, a lease unit, and an Amtrak unit DIT - that's certainly possible today. It would be rare, but probably no more unlikely than it was in 1994.
- 100% EMD - on UP, it's not that unusual to get a 100% EMD consist what with all their SD70M's and ACe's.
- Three kinds of "standard cab" styles plus one widenoser. Today, the ratios would be reversed, but the numbers could still work. There are at least three common widenose cab styles running around on the UP mainline - the SD70M cab, the SD70ACe cab, and the GE cab, none of which "look the same" (and they don't look the same behind the cab, either). The odd man out today would be a standard cab GP40-2, GP60, or SD40-2 moving between assignments mixed in with half a dozen widenosers. Speaking of which...
- Lower horsepower locomotives being ferried between assignments under power on a road freight, and passenger units being being ferried DIT - that still happens today, too.
- Six locomotive models - an entirely plausible "wild consist" today could include an UP SD70ACe, a CSX SD70MAC, a CitiRail ES44AC, a couple of UP GP40-2's, and an Amtrak P42DC.

The video shows a great consist that's neat to see, don't get me wrong, but there is still variety today. It's just "different" variety, variety which we will no doubt fawn over in another 23 years when we watch videos from 2017 while inevitably cursing the perceived "lack of variety" on the railroads in 2040.