Splitting the Pines
With the imminent death of all of Norfolk Southern's dash 9s, their road power fleet leaves an awful lot to be desired nowadays. The local power out here on the ECBU has consisted almost entirely of gevos, ACes, or my least favorite engine of all, C6Ms. Sometimes, though, we get a bit of a diamond in the rough. ACC #1821 here was recently swapped in for the ES44AC that had been New Bern's local power for almost all of 2024 so far. With there only being 52 of these things, they're now the second hardest road engines to see behind ACUs. I enjoy ACCs a bit, so getting one as local power is certainly a nice change of pace. I decided to take advantage of a cloudy day and shoot P29 at the tree tunnel next to Carolina Colours as they returned home from the port with a hefty train of empty grain hoppers and loaded rail flats in tow. My good friend Tyler is in the conductor's seat, and he's also a fan of having this unit on his train.