Metra Bilevel Assignment And Maintenance Changes

AmtrakFan wrote:Prorably to use up the old Red and Silver Paint.

I think they've probably used up all the red Burlington-era paint by now.

I say they just paint the things black like the BN cars had before being rebuilt a few years ago. I always thought the black underframes and trucks (cab car pilots included) looked sharp that way. Now that I'm thinking about it, black underframes and snowplows on the new cars may look really hideous. Anybody have photoshop?

I'll buy the visibility thing to some degree, perhaps the red is a base coat, to later put white stripes to match the cab cars, who knows. But if the red is there soley as a means of visibility, the more and more they get dirtier the red becomes less and less visible.

metraRI wrote:BNSF must have figured since the plow painting was done on the 790-800's, why not continue that on the 84/8500's. The paint looks good when its new, but it starts to make the car look bad when it get used and dirty.

How long have the pilots been painted red on the BNSF-assigned cab cars? It may have been a fluke, but I was going through my slide collection last night and found a handful of shots, taken in 2004, of 790-series cabs with silver pilots. And 814 had a silver plow as late as April of this year.

BNSF started painting the pilots red when they started painting the underbody of the CBQ cars silver instead of black. I'll have to look back at old videos to get an exact date when that started to happen.

Apperntly they painted them at Aurora I was there today and the tracks are silver at Hill Yard now.

The most recent underbody paiting of BNSF's cars was most likely done at Hill Yard, as there is silver overspray in the whole yard. The original silver painting took place at 14th Street. At the time, it was interesting to see part of the train with a black underbody, while the other half was silver.

8606 and another 8500 with 2 complete BNSF sets were sitting at 179th Steet yard today. I wonder where the 2 norm. SWS sets went...?

There is at pic here. More pictures will be up later.

What locomotives were on those trains?

Normal SWS F40PH's. Because the double header is no longer 9 cars, the locomotives are hiden behind another train. The middle set has 106....which has stayed on that train for 2 weeks.

metraRI wrote:8606 and another 8500 with 2 complete BNSF sets were sitting at 179th Steet yard today. I wonder where the 2 norm. SWS sets went...?

8606 was on the 8-car BNSF set that does afternoon train #1259. It was on there most recently the weekend of the RI derailment. What was the other 85/8600?

Where is 8607/08? 6184 is now on a BNSF set.

I have a feeling that the reason why new trailer cars are now going to BNSF is so there's more accessible cars for wheelchairs and bicycles. All lines can generally accomodate 6 bikes/train, UP lines can accomodate 8 bikes/train. BNSF can only accomodate 4 bikes/train.

The other 8500 looked like 8580 something, I couldn't get a clear shot. The set with 8606 also looks to have an 6100 in it, right behind the loco...which is where 6184 was....not sure if that was it tho.

A little off topic, but interesting. Today's RI trains both ran with 6 cars, instead of the old norm 5. I wonder if thats a sign of a ridership boost on RI weekends.

SWS train #9 (double header) was back to its normal SWS set. 8472 was replaced by 8475 while it was away.