Shoot 'Em While You Can

BNSF switches the little two-track yard here at Fernley five days a week, usually using a pair of locomotives coupled tail-to-tail. The specific units used vary over time, because they periodically must be rotated out for maintenance. For the past few weeks, they have been using a matched pair of GP60M locomotives still wearing the ex-Santa Fe "Warbonnet" paint scheme. This scheme will of course eventually disappear as BNSF repaints or sells or scraps locomotives. I kept meaning to get a picture of this nicely matched pair, but kept forgetting, and now it's too late, as this afternoon the switch crew cut one of the pair off and left it on the house track, where "big BN" (the BNSF through train that stops at Fernley to interchange cars and locomotives as needed) will collect it, probably tonight. However, I did take the opportunity of a bright, clear, sunny autumn day to take pictures of this unit.

( Train Photos Follow. You Have Been Warned. )

Yes, they're boring "roster shots," but hey, these units are part of a dying breed, as the former Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway of yore slowly disappears underneath the corporate initials of BNSF.