MONON BOARD
Non - Monon But Of Interest => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: Stew Winstandley on March 28, 2014, 11:58:38 am
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Trains News Wire EXCLUSIVE: Paducah & Louisville locomotives honor state universities
By Charlie Buccola
Published: March 28, 2014
Paducah & Louisville’s newest university locomotives, SD70MACs Nos. 2012 and 2013, pose in Louisville ahead of Friday’s big game. See attached photo by Charlie Buccola.
PADUCAH, Ky. — March Madness comes to the rails for basketball-crazed railfans in Kentucky. Two new Paducah & Louisville Railway locomotives are in service displaying the colors and logos of the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville as the two rival teams are set to face off Friday night on national television.
SD70MAC No. 2012 wears the blue-and-white livery of the University of Kentucky Wildcats. Red-and-white sister unit No. 2013 carries the logo of the University of Louisville Cardinals. The number on each unit is the year in which each of the schools most recently won the NCAA Division I Basketball Championship. Given the strong in-state rivalry between the two teams, each unit is likely to draw either a smile or a frown from onlookers.
The units are among the newest power owned by P&L, acquired in 2013. VMV Paducahbilt, a unit of National Railway Equipment located in Paducah in the former Illinois Central shops, applied the special paint schemes to the locomotives. The units previously wore the blue-and-yellow of former owner CSX.
Locomotive No. 2013 was released in mid-February 2014 and No. 2012 was put into service a few weeks later in early March. Regardless of how the schools’ basketball teams fare in the 2014 tournament, the big locomotives will keep employees, railroad enthusiasts, and the general public looking for their favorite.
CEO Tony Reck says that the painting of the locomotives for the colleges started as an Operation Lifesaver program circa 1994, “the idea being to get the public looking for the locomotives.â€