I was reading Trains this morning and saw a note about Norfolk Southern's C40-9W rebuilding project.

It sounds like they're planning on rebuilding or retiring the entire fleet by 2020.

And while the C40-9W is arguably one of my least loved diesels (I see them as emblematic of NS's takeover of Conrail), they are a ubiquitous part of the last 20 years of eastern railroading.

I wanted to bring this to our collective consciousness, because they could easily go the way of the E7.

I'm not saying who should preserve one, and I'm not saying that I want to even be involved in it, but I wanted to bring it up in case one might fall within your organization's mission statement.

Isn't the standard cab Dash 8 the more endangered species at this time?

There is a B39-8 preserved already.

It might be, but that doesn't mean these shouldn't be considered.

Ooh, where?

A C40-9W is just a C44-9W derated via software to 4,000 horsepower. In fact the fleet now is entirely uprated to 4,400 horsepower and are now classified as C44-9W's. They are hardly unique or specific to Norfolk Southern.

Even ignoring that Norfolk Southern themselves bought over 1,000 of these, BNSF alone purchased over 1,500 Dash 9's and other Class 1's bought many hundreds more. So it's hardly an endangered species and won't be for quite sometime to come. NS for one has no plans to retire this power and is fact deeply involved in a program that will take years to complete to upgrade this fleet with AC traction. BNSF is also involved in a rebuilding program that is upgrading the oldest members of their Dash 9 fleet into A1A AC traction machines similar to their large number of ES44C4's.

It's the small non-widecab C40-9/C44-9 fleet that's being rebuilt right now into widecab AC44C6M's and will soon see its unique profile disappear. And NS is hardly going to be consider donating one of these still very useful Dash 9 from a fleet being rebuilt for another 15-20 years of service, so unless one has a deep wallet, you can forget about preserving one of these standard cab Dash 9's in its original form.

But perhaps an example of the cab off what appears destined to be GE's last standard cab locomotive in North American could be saved. That's practical, is what makes those 125 locomotives unique, and is a component that otherwise is scrapped and thus could possibly even be donated given its low salvage value and appreciation at certain levels at NS of preservation causes.

Don't forget the Cotton Belt B40-8 preserved at the Illinois Railway Museum.

A C40-8 and a C40-8W are both deserving though.

Since they were much more common than GE's B39-8 or B40-8 models, they're historically more important and are much more representative of what GE was building when the competitive equilibrium swung into their favor in the late 1980's.

Cresson Steel just accepted around 6 Norfolk Southern C40-8s for scrapping. Also I saw photos of NS B40-8s being scrapped in Roanoke about 3 weeks ago.

According to whom? My source was the latest Trains magazine that said that they do indeed plan on retiring the ones that aren't going to be getting rebuilt. If I were a museum who's mission covered Norfolk Southern, one of the unrebuilt ones would make quite a bit of sense.

I just went through the new issue cover to cover and see no such information. In fact, besides a brief bit of information sent in by a reader about the Admiral Cab, I don't see anything about Norfolk Southern's rebuild programs anywhere in the entire issue.

And while I wouldn't be surprised to not see 1100+ Dash 9's go through such a rebuild at Norfolk Southern (In fact, I'm willing to bet that they will change course with their motive power philosophy long before they finish the fleet), I'm quite confident that they're not talking retirement right now.

It's the oldest members of the fleet being rebuilt first which implies that they plan at this time to move forward through the roster by age. And in fact they've even said that they plan to run the entire Dash 9 fleet through this AC conversion rebuilding. It's quite clear that the game plan right now is to cycle hundreds of Dash 9's through this AC rebuild program, upgrading their capabilities now that NS sees the error in their ways by sticking with DC back then.

And if only a portion of the fleet was planned to be rebuilt with retirements planned in the next 5 years for those not going through this program, I very much doubt that the C40-9's, the oldest members of the fleet, would be getting cycled through right now as the first AC44C6M's. Anyways, the point is that Dash 9's number in the thousands, there's nothing unique with Norfolk Southern's widecabs despite their early C40-9W moniker due to being derated from stock.

NS and BNSF are both rebuilding examples which clearly demonstrates their intentions, and they will have a presence on most Class 1 rosters outside of CPR and KCS for a long time to come thanks to their huge numbers.

Nothing wrong with thinking ahead, but they're not in the twilight of their service yet, either.



4 more to go then, since according to NSDash9.com, Cresson was going to be scrapping 10 in total at this time.

In addition to UP #1848 (SSW #8049) at the Illinois RY Museum, another former Cotton Belt B40-8 is being preserved: UP #1861 (SSW #8063) was moved by CSX in mid-March from Larry's Truck & Electric (LTEX) to the Midwest RY Preservation Society; the engine currently has NIWX reporting marks, for Northern Illinois & Wisconsin RY.

That's a future lease unit for NIWX, see their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/niwxcorp/?fref=ts
JD

Thanks, Jeff, for the clarification!