The SD90-43's were good pullers, but were hell on the track. Despite have steering trucks, The could impart serious lateral loadings into the track. We had some "mystery" derailments where the train would come in from Walsenburg and a wheel set on the trailing unit would have serious witness marks on the rim of one wheel where it had fallen in the gauge, only to magically pop back up on top of the rail again. One time the whole railroad from Sierra to La Veta was shut down and every foot of it walked looking for where the incident happened. I had heard stories of the same thing happening to the UP on the Moffat Line with the SD90's they had up there, so they got rid of them. The theory up there was the locomotives were capable of actually bending the web of the rail, deflecting the head outward to the point where a wheel set would fall in the gauge briefly, then pop back up on top of the rail - without pulling the spikes loose.
The SD90's had tremendous dynamic braking. If your were not careful it using the dynamics, you could put too much lateral force into the curves. If the trains were run correctly using the air for about 90% of the braking effort and using the dynamics to hold the engines back and just a bit more things were OK.
They were always wanting to run them to Monte Vista when I had that run. I told them the lead into the Coors elevator was way too sharp to use them there. It was winter, the curve was down in the mud, we were going to have a mess there someday.
Crickets.....
Sure 'nuf, I was pulling a cut of loaded barley hoppers out of there. Right behind the power was 3-4 reefers of spuds off the SLC. I was creeping along at a walk around the curve. The '90's were chugging along in Run 2. When they bog down in a pull they tend to give a bit of "hop" now and then. Well, we were hooping pretty continuously. Something not right here. So, I got off the seat and crossed over to the other side to have a look. 3 reefers on the ground listing hard into the curve. Turns out the back truck of the trailing unit fell in the gauge and tore everything up so that all the trailing cars just kept falling into the hole.
The Walsenburg train was a little shy of loads that night.
After that I put my foot down and simply refused to run those big nasty things to Monte. They were terrible switchers. They loaded too slow to kick cars with. The desk top controls made running backwards impossible. If you had to run one long hood first, the only way you could do it was by sitting forward in the seat and watching the world through the rear view mirror.
Nasty things. An EMD guy told us that in about 5-10 years the computer gear would start to croak, and EMD would not support it's stuff as they made so few SD90s. He said it would cost $60k+ each to rework the engines. He said he hoped we didn't actually buy them.
the SD 90's had nice warm heaters, when they worked. The seats were nice for napping going home from Walsenburg at 3 am. I did not like the way they rode at any speed that had an awful lateral sway that was most unnerving, and kept me awake at 3 am.
After having 2 big derailments a year on the hill, someone wizened up to the fact there just might be something too these big rail crushers tearing up the 90-110 lb jointed rail over the hill, and the sent them elsewhere.
But... The B39's were pretty good mills. I got along well with them. 8527 was a good performer. I wonder what the deal with that is................
