Eastern Railroad Discussion > One Last One for Today: What Kind of Locomotive Is This?

Another bit of springtime weirdness from upstate NY:  NS is setting out ties for an obvious track maintenance campaign later on this year.

But they're doing it with a contractor, a contractor's equipment, and they're doing it with a conventional  backhoe balanced on top of the gondolas.  I've seen that before, but only when the backhoe was on wheels, riding on a rail assembly along the top of the gons.  Can't say I would feel good running that backhoe, especially since they were setting off piles of 4-5 ties at a time while the train was moving (slowly, but still moving).

Anybody know the heritage of this locomotive?  It rides on Blomberg trucks, sounds like a normally aspirated EMD but that carbody is distinctive to say the least.

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That used to be a T & E job.  Sigh...

Eng.Shadetree

The contractor is Georgetown Rail Equipment Company.  No one out there on the web seems to know the model designation.  Nice group of photos on the D&H.

Seams that the private contractors with rebuilt contraptions usually started with amtrak F40's    They were cheap.     If you could get a frame number, that probably what it would turn out to be

Most lilkely a former GP-38, or GP-38 parts.    Loram and others have used GP-38's or GP-38 parts for their M/W locos.

On NS, u'd a thunk the union contract would have outlawed contracting out M/W trains using other than a wholly integrated "machine" like the GREX slot machine.

If its operating with NS home road or interchange cars, my feeling is that it should have been outlawed in the contract.  OTOH, the union may have traded that away for something else, or put a max tonnage restriction on these contracted out mw trains..  Thinking may have been that below a certain tonnage the RR could have used brandt trucks anyway. 

Unbelievable.  A Georgetown Self-Powered Slot power unit...where's the Slot??!

Can somebody explain “slot” for me?

march_hare Wrote:
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> Can somebody explain “slot” for me?

Material-handling MOW machine:

https://georgetownrail.com/Material-Handling/SlotMachine-and-SPS

I’d be comfortable in an excavator like that one I sure wouldn’t be comfy in a backhoe, thankfully, that’s not a backhoe.

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