Thursday, October 4, 2012

A heritage-livery engine comes to LA

Lately, Pacific Surfliners trains have frequently had non-Pacific Surfliners locomotive up front, usually the "Genesis" engines that pull the long distance trains.  I can tell when we do, as I walk up the ramp at Union Station, because the "Gennies" have a much louder rumble as they idle at the platform, with an occasional "whoosh!"  so they just sound different from the tall F59s.  We've talked more about the different locomotives here.

Today we had a famous one, #184, which is painted in an historical or "heritage" color scheme to commemorate Amtrak's 40th birthday in 2011.  It's much nicer looking than the boring grey that the Gennies usually sport.  #184 looks like it's new in the area because it has a very new looking "shoe" for the ATS system.

I like the look of the paint, and I bet it looks very smooth when it's pulling the superliner cars (which are painted similarly, with red stripes).  The engine's paint is in great shape, and it looked positively sparkly in the late afternoon sunlight.






2 comments:

Stephen said...

Thanks for doing this blog, I really enjoy reading it. I cannot commute by train (no trains here in Tampa) so I enjoy reading your posts.

IT said...

Glad you enjoy it!
I have a ton of pictures in my files and just have to find the time to put the blogposts together.