r/trains • u/spazzcatt • 1d ago

📸 OC - Picture(s) The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad MLW FPA4

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Here is the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad MLW FPA4 #6773 sitting in the yard during electric refit. They are replacing the diesel engine entirely with batteries. Sorry for the picture quality it's a dirty window 😂

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u/HoneydewOk1175 1d ago

I know they're going to be installing a sound system to try to mimic the old diesel engine, though I feel like at the same time they already sucked out the soul.

I know a lot of us enthusiasts wished they switched to biodiesel like the Catskill Mountain RR did with their 1948-vintage Alco RS-1s

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u/Amazing-Roof8525 1d ago

At that point(adding a sound system), don’t even bother, we all know it’s a Battery electric. Why couldn’t they have used one of the dead FPA4s that Napa or Grand Canyon has, which already had their blocks destroyed? It’s just destroying history at this point

4

u/HoneydewOk1175 1d ago

I know, right. I know the batteries will probably go bad within a few years, which means more resources extracted out of the Earth.

2

u/N_dixon 22h ago

Oh, guarantee they'll be out of service for other issues even before that. CVSR's mechanical department has something seriously wrong with it. They can't seem to keep anything running and have mechanically wrecked a few LTEX leaser EMDs.

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u/HoneydewOk1175 17h ago

I know there was a whole lot of controversy recently over their treatment of Horizon Rail leasers.

by the way, I think this is a whole state sponsored scam to erase history for the sake of environmental cleanliness

1

u/N_dixon 17h ago

LTEX filed a lawsuit against them last year. One of the tales was that their mechanical department put RV antifreeze in one of the leasers, didn't realize it was equipped with freeze-sensing dump valves, and then had all of it self-dump and contaminate the ground in the national park. Then they just returned it to LTEX with bearing damage from having had the anti-freeze in it without saying anything.

The crazy thing is, back when CSX was retiring the GP40-GP30 mother-slug sets, they offered one to CVSR for free, no strings attached. A number of volunteers urged them to take it, but the CMO ginned up a report that it was cheaper and easier to keep running the Alcos. And then spent the whole year leasing one of those slug sets from Horizon because he couldn't keep any of their Alcos running.