jg greenwood wrote:JG,nickleinonen wrote:around my shop, CN is known as chicago national... myself and almost every other mechanic/electrican like saying canadian national, and many supervisors do too, but if they answer their phones with anything other than CN or CN rail, they can get their butts in trouble real quick... and maintenence is going down the craps.. everything is pushed too quick... standard [92day] inspections are now done on our service track, with the supervisors signing off many inspections items... on the cn loco's it isn't so bad as we maintened them very well before the cn/ic/wc deal. now if we get a WC or IC unit to do the inspection on, there will be many things that could make the loco non FRA but they supervisors sign them off...The older IC units we have around E.St.Louis are nothing but worn out junk. Had the IC 6013/6017 yesterday; 26-cars out of Duquoin and the pieces of dung took an eternity to reach 40-mph, on relatively level track. You are 100% correct, total lack of maintenance!
wheels are bad too... as long as you can see light between the wheel gauge and the flange for high flange, they will OK it for service [being like 0.010" from condem limit]
What's your opinion on those WC SD45's (with those 20 cylinder fuel guzzling 645's, they probably have good pickup ) and GTW SD40's? (especially those of MoPac heritage) Do they run the same as those SD40A's? I bet you would take one of those new CN Dash 9's anyday...
Also I think IC is the only railroad to still use jointed rail, I see a lot of that, lol.