Encounters with the "New" fleet

Hi everyone! Aaron and I have been wanting to do this post for a long time now. We've been waiting till we actually got to see each locomotive in person and today, as we were on our way back to the Bean on the Lowell line, we saw the last one on our list!

As you might have heard, the MBTA is currently trying to increase the reliability of their commuter rail locomotive fleet. To do this the T recently put into service two brand new MPXpress locomotives manufactured my Motive Power. These locos were purchased from the Utah Transit Authority because they had an excess amount of them. These were the first new locomotives for the MBTA in 23 years! Twenty more of these same MPXpress locomotives are on order from Motive Power and are expected to start arriving on MBTA property by early 2013.  


 Here are the pics of my encouter with MP-11 at North Station!

Another step that the MBTA took toward finding relief for their trouble-prone and "antique" fleet of locomotives was to lease, on a day to day basis, 3 "preowned" locos from Motive Power. The T is paying $500 daily for these locomotives! These locos formally served the MARC system in Maryland. The T was originally supposed to recieve 5 of these locomotives, but GM Davey deemed two of them not fit for service and sent one back to Motive Power and kept one, free of charge, for spare parts. Although these locomotives were built in 1995 they are still much younger than most of the locos in the T's fleet. Aaron and I have been waiting to see one of these for some time now and today we finally got our chance!! Here are some photos of what we saw.

The loco is kind of beat up

The remnants of the MARC logo

Still has the MARC colors!