Today's Train of Thought- What's Blue and White and Running All Over the Place? Oct 19

Today's train of thought comes to us from the Pacific Northwest's Columbia River Basin courtesey of railpictures.net contributor Richard Sugg.

The lead unit shown here- Oakway Leasing SD60#9077- is painted in a scheme reminiscent of EMD Demonstrator locomotives in the 1980s. As the Oakway Photo site explains:

In an industry first, Burlington Northern began purchasing "power by the hour" from a group of 100 SD60s owned by EMD and leased to Oakway, Inc., a subsidiary of Cornnell Rice & Sugar, a New Jersey coporation. Instead of leasing locomotives from a bank or equipment leasing company, BN purchases only the electrical energy exerted by the locomotive.

The Oakway SD60s were built in late 1986 and immediately put into service on the Burlington Northern Railroad. They initially displaced older General Electric locomotives in Powder Basin Coal service but soon found their way onto intermodal and general merchandise freights. However, with the arrival of newer SD70MACs or GE ES44AC GEVOs as well as the general downturn in traffic due to the state of the economy, the Oakways themselves have mostly been sidelined.

But getting back to Oakway 9077, Richard Sugg has caught it here running along the Columbia River Basin at Lyle, WA on a sunny June 2007 day with a general merchandise freight. The trailing SD40-2s are painted for BNSF and Burlington Northern.