Mike Rowe said:
"#4 and #7 are rather interesting n.g. locomotives, designed for use by the steel mill industry to haul "bottle" cars about the mill grounds, transporting molten steel to various parts of the plants to be made into different products; alternately, they would haul slag cars from the furnaces out to the dumps."
Thank you for the information Mike and I agree that these are interesting little locomotives in their own right. If I were touring a steel mill, I would love to see them running around doing thier work.
However, I still can't get past the idea that I would be completely irritated and disappointed to ride the D & S up the Animas river with that thing on the head end. As someone else mentioned, if it were cut in behind the 481, it wouldn't be so bad. But in the lead, on the high line. C'mon. Bad show. AHR does a fantastic job 99% of the time, and it's their right to run their railroad anyway they see fit, but I have to question the logic behind this decision. My 2 cents.
Edit to post: As Box Car Betty pointed out in response at least partially to this post -- The 7 only led the train on the short segment from Hermosa to Rockwood, not the entire distance from Durango to Cascade. My assumptions were wrong, and I apologize for second guessing things that didn't even happen. Keep up the good work AHR!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2012 06:15PM by Bryan Laue.