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Re: (erielack) EL U-boats

The lessor is the company which financed them, IE that which the railroad
leases the unit from - often a bank or someone with a financial interest in
the RR, they actually owned the locomotives and the EL (and most railroads)
made payments on them - probably not much different than when you lease a
new car, though that could be an oversimplification.   At the end of the
lease the RR has the option to purchase the units, for a lot less than they
would have been brand new.   N&W, through Dereco, financed a lot of EL
units - including one order of SDP45's and one or both orders of big GE's.
They actually owned the locomotives, so when Conrail retired them it was by
then NS who ended up with them to dispose of.  NS ran the last miles out of
them before trading them in on new power.  This is why the one unit wrecked
in the Water Gap ended up as an N&W slug and also why NS is who donated the
one that's in Roanoke today.   As for the U-boats, they were all traded into
GE.  I forget which (of U33 or U36) but three were then rebuilt by GE as
cabless remote control units of some sort that were shipped to China.  Was
it the ELHS who got GE to let them restore the EL lettering on one for
photos before it was cut up/rebuilt?  In any case, current status of those
three is unknown.  But I want to say they were from the N&W financed group.

As Conrail rationalized it's system and purchased newer units they had a lot
of power which became surplus, and for various reasons was not needed at the
end of the leases.  This included a lot of GP40's, GP38's (and dash-2's),
SD/SDP45's, and most of the U-boats.    So they were left to the leaseholder
to dispose of.   I think that some of the units were let go as high
maintenance (SD/SDP45's), as junk (GE U28/30/33B in particular) but others
may have had more to do with the terms of the lease (GP38/40) since some of
those units were picked up when the predecessor roads were in bad shape and
had to take whatever terms they could get. Penn Central units in particular
seem to have been picked on for this reason.  As a result, dual-control
units built for the PR-SL ended up in both Maine (BAR) and California
(Eureka Southern), and GP40's built for the NYC ended up as far away as
Alaska.  The other group of SDP45's sat in Sayre PA for a while, and it was
these that ended up at VMV, MK, etc. and from which the three that became SP
SD40-2M's came.  There are a lot of other examples like these, some NYS&W
units for instance; and you could write a book on the games Guilford has
played with various power.

EL stopped paying on the lease on the C425's, which is why they didn't go to
Conrail.  The leaseholder (seems like it was a bank on these) reposessed
them and cut a deal with BCR instead - not sure if BCR bought them outright
or leased to buy, though (DMV might have an answer for this?).  But they
worked their way west to Canada just before Conrail.


Bill K.

- ----- Original Message -----
From: <ELRRco_@_aol.com>
To: <erielack_@_lists.railfan.net>
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2001 1:25 AM
Subject: (erielack) EL U-boats


> Dear Listers,
>
> Who was the "Lessor" for EL's U36C engines? A website that I browsed
recently
> stated that in 1986 they were returned to the lessor by Conrail. That
leads
> me to my second question: What became of them following their operation by
> Conrail? Do any survive?
>
> Thanks in adavnce,
>
> Phil
> ELRRco_@_AOL.com
>

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