Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
Eww gross. I know that sounds immature, but look at that... really? How many years are we going to be blessed with those beauties?
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Or you could view it as a glass half-full sorta thing. Those locos are beefy and masculine, they seem like a great fit for Chicago's brand image as the City of Big Shoulders, stacker of wheat, player with railroads, nation's freight handler. Not everything needs to be sleek. As long as they can provide improvements over the old locos for emissions, fuel economy, and power/weight ratio, I don't see this as terrible. Clearly the money isn't there for new locos, and the offerings available in the US for new locos are pretty sad anyway.
IMO the bigger issues are design standards that make Metra feel like a 19th century claptrap railroad, like the red safety striping and the awful clanging bell. The bell is an FRA thing (v sad to hear them on Denver's sleek new electrified A Line) but the safety striping is a Metra requirement after the 1972 Metra Electric crash. Very unnecessary with PTC being a better safeguard against accidents than an engineer's eyes could ever be. At least they're being dragged kicking and screaming away from the old gallery car design toward something more modern.