Since 1995, the Coaster, also formerly referred to as the Coast Express Rail, has served commuters and leisure travelers in coastal San Diego County. From the very beginning, the service has utilized a fleet of 5 F40PHM-2C diesel-electric locomotives, numbers 2101 through 2105. These units were built in 1994 by Morrison-Knudsen, which is now part of WABTEC Corporation. As the years passed and the locomotives continued to soldier on, they approached the end of their useful service lives, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 years for a diesel-electric passenger locomotive. In 2018, the North County Transit District board of directors voted to replace the F40s with 5 SC-44 “Charger” locomotives built by Siemens Mobility in Sacramento, California. The purchase of the new charger locomotives was accomplished with funding from the Carl Moyer Grant, which requires the old locomotives to be permanently withdrawn from service and disposed of. Fortunately, the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in Campo, California was able to work out an agreement with North County Transit District and the San Diego County air quality board that would allow the locomotives to be donated intact to the museum with the provision that the on board Diesel engines and head end power generators must still be made inoperable before leaving NCTD property. The planned first day of revenue service for the new Charger locomotives was set for February 8th, 2021. The last Coaster F40PHM-2C made its final run on February 5th. Locomotive 2101 had the honors, bringing train 665 into Oceanside for the last time. To celebrate nearly 26 years of serving the residents of San Diego County, California, and as a nod to the inspiration for the channel name, I’d like to take one more look at the Coaster F40 locomotives in their last few years of operations. We will see several scenes of each locomotive in service running back and forth between San Diego and Oceanside.
If you wish to assist the Pacific Southwest Railway Museum in their efforts to preserve these five locomotives, visit their website:
www.psrm.org/
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25 фев 2021
