No doubt about it. The bean-counters hold control on the purse strings now. The days of the chief of locomotives ordering locos, based on what he saw was needed, are gone. Money is the only criterion now, for buying locos. Notice the hundreds of new GE's the BNSF has purchased, in the past few years. EMD's are still being purchased, but not in any significant amount. Their purchase almost seems to be mandated, perhaps as an anti-monopoly order, like the railroads experienced in the mid to late 80's, when GE's were mandated purchases, to keep EMD from monopolizing the market. I have opined many times, about the inferior quality of the GE products, but the answer is always the same: GE's are cheaper, and the railroads are thinking about moving todays train, not wondering about service life, availability ratios, and run to failure times, etc. EMD builds a better loco, hands down. GE builds a cheaper loco. I wish I could have back, every minute I have lost, waiting for a GE to load, either stopped, or at speed. All those minutes...........I would imagine all of those minutes, from all of those trains, from all of those crews adds up to a higher overall price, than the small difference between EMD and GE in the first place..............