Chicago Rock Island & Pacific Railroad LLC is the operator of the Mississippi Delta Railroad in northwest Mississippi under a long-term contract with options to renew. The company has repainted its first locomotive in the original Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad’s “bankruptcy blue” colors – the last paint scheme used by Rock Island prior to its shutdown in 1980. RIILX GP38DC No. 4310 was the first locomotive released, to be followed by GP38DC No. 4373. Both will be initially based in Sumner, Miss., and will haul interchange traffic from Sumner to the Canadian National in Swan Lake. Since this photo was made, the numberboards have been updated to the correct Rock Island font.
AC power for Canadian National
Canadian National has received a number of AC traction locomotives from Union Pacific and BNSF Railway this spring. The locomotives are being used to pay back horsepower hours owed to CN by both railroads. Locomotives have been arriving at various interchange points from the Midwest to Vancouver, British Columbia. Since none of the units are lead qualified in Canada, a large group of them have been assigned to various jobs in the Iron Range of Minnesota. The locomotives are not equipped with the necessary air brake systems required on most ore trains, so they’ve been handling other duties such as the Minntac stone trains and the “T-Bird” raw ore trains that do not operate with the special air brake system.
Horsepower hours are a unit of measure to keep track of locomotives while offline on other railroads, and are typically corrected by sending locomotives offline to repay the debt, though extremely large imbalances can be handled as a cash transaction. As locomotives fail offline, they are returned home and another unit will typically be dispatched to take its place.
Northshore Mining has received its first two SD70ACes earlier this month. The two locomotives NSMX Nos. 671 and 672 were repainted at Metro East Industries prior to delivery and are part of a group of five SD70ACe’s scheduled to arrive. The locomotives are former CSX SD70ACes acquired by Northshore Mining from Progress Rail to replace four leased SD9043MACs from CIT Leasing. The first revenue run for Nos. 671 and 672 occurred on April 10 hauling a loaded ore train from Babbitt to Silver Bay.
