Any other railroads double head with Union Pacific?

[Allan_Love_Jr]

You will see alot of foreign power on the east/west line in Iowa going east towards Chicago more than you will see westbounds. If your lucky you might see NS or CSXT power on a westbound. That's if your lucky.

[diburning]

How about Pan Am?

[macjet]

Originally Posted by Panther Al

Yes they do - its largely, as I understand it - a case of each of the railroads scratching each others backs.

They might compete like nothing else, but there are times they might have to use another railroads tracks, or they have a locomotive shortage, and have to get help from the other company - and in return, the other company knows that they can call in those favours. Some of it is formalised: Railroad X will use Y miles on Z line, and in return they will pay Railroad A B amount, and/or allow them to use C amount of trackage or D amount of power in return.

This is pretty close. The miles are banked and after a certain threshold is reached X amount of power is delivered to run off time.

In most service units (most, NOT ALL) it doesn't matter whose power is in the lead. Here in the Fort Worth SU we routinely ran CSX, BNSF, and NS power on the nose. BTW, even though it may be a UP train we still radioed as BNSF (or whatever power it was) XXXX (road number) to dispatch. Now, in some SU's, you had to have home power on the lead due to in-cab signaling or some other requirement. But you also need to make sure that you have a functioning Harris Box if DP'd and make sure you had telemetry to the FRED. FYI, UP uses air driven FRED's and BNSF uses battery powered. FYI again, FRED's are required because you have to be able to "plug" the train from both ends now. That is one of the tests that carmen (or conductor is no carmen) have to check prior to signing the air slip (except for transfer trains).

But, don't give the RR too much credit. As a whole, UP can barley get up in the morning and get their pants on. There really is little thought as to what power goes where. No one cares whose road, which way it's facing, or even if the thing has been serviced or not. UP is absolutely horrible (in the FTW SU) about servicing power. No ice, no water, no toilet service, no wash, no windshield, no sand, etc. If you don't want to go it'll only take about two minutes to find an FRA no-go item. Call the service track and refuse the train. As soon as the RR started denying claims I started refusing trains. You can beat them over the head with the rule book all day long if you know it and never turn a wheel.

BTW, I preferred BNSF power every day of the week and twice on Sundays. Their equipment is so much better maintained. The worst was former MOPAC. Their units had half back seats that were impossible to recline in and get comfortable. The only thing worse than an old MOPAC was a GENSET.

Sorry for the general rambles, just some FYI stuff.

Macjet

[cv_acr]

There was a whole thread about this sort of thing a couple months ago, but I can't find it now.

Basically there are a couple of ways engines get onto other railways.

The first is run-through or pooling arrangements. These are by specific agreement between railroads regarding specific trains. It can be more efficient to run an entire train right into a major yard instead of exchanging cars at the actual connecting point between the railroads. Sometimes a train from one railroad will be picked up by another railroad and everything including the engines keeps going on the second railroad, the only thing that changes is the operating crew.

Now of course UP isn't simply going to just provide CSX with a couple of $10M engines for free, so CSX now owes UP for the use of the engines. A periodic accounting is made of how many engines and how much time they've spent on the different railways and any imbalance is made up by CSX loaning engines to UP for a certain amount of time to balance the horsepower-hours accounting. These "HPH repayment" engines are basically free to be used in any service UP wants until they're scheduled to go back to CSX. These are the engines you'll occasionally find far away from home.

The final option is cases of one power-short railroad outright renting or leasing engines from a leasing company or another railroad that has a temporary surplus.

If you combine all of the above, sometimes you can get some pretty colourful results. (e.g. among the run-through engines UP provides to CSX, are a couple of BNSF units that UP has on HPH repayment.)

(One final type of arrangement is trackage rights, but that doesn't involve mixing of 2 railroads engines. Trackage rights is where one railroad pays another to actually operate their own train over the second railroad's trackage. This doesn't involve any sort of HPH balancing. (Of course this train could have engines from a third railroad on HPH repayment, but that really has nothing to do with the trackage rights agreement. For an idea of how colourful this can be, an example I've actually seen and photographed is CNW & UP engines on an NS train running on CN tracks by trackage rights agreement.))

[dave1905]

Its called "horsepower hours". The railroads may supply power for trains that run through interchanges to other railroads. You will see more UP engines on the point of run through trains with the UP through the Chicago area interchanges than you will see other railroads because the UP has the ex-CNW ATC and UP CCS cab signal systems and a UP engine has to be on the point.

A railroad will reach and agreement with another railroad on whose engines will be used, how many and where they will be fueled. The railroads track the horsepower hours. Most of the time the original agreements are fairly balanced. But as one railroad needs power it might keep engines and use the foreign power for an extra trip or two. That gets railroads out of balance. The railroads try to balance the accounts monthly but when one railroad gets several million hphrs out of whack the railroad will give the other road some engines to payback the hphrs owed.

[monty123]

Thanks for the post. The picture is quite amazing and looks beautiful. The railroads are using power from other railroads and also provides rail maintenance also.

__________________
rail maintenance

[railfan]

Originally Posted by BMR777

Very interesting, thanks for all of your posts. I find it interesting that they do this and that it seems like this is more common than I thought. So, this gives me an excuse to run UP and BNSF equipment together as well.

UP and BNSF are my favorite modern railroads. Those are the only modern locomotives I buy.......although I may snag some canadian pacific in the future.



Mike

[montanan]

When traveling across Nevada a few months ago, the interstate runs right beside the UP mainline and I have seen a multitude of other road names in the locomotive consist. BNSF was the most common, but I also saw eastern railroad locomotives in the train also.

[wjacob]

In pa which is NS lines, I saw a consist of 2 NS locos, a southern pacific and and Union Pacific . First time I have seen that one in my area.

[SPSFer]

I see UP's and a few old SP's at/working the Oakland yard and port terminal.....


edit...seem to remember BNSF locos in lash-ups with UP's at engine house/fuel areas too.