Faded GE ES44DCs dominate many of the trains in southern California, as many of the 7700-class units are assigned to trains out of Barstow, including the manifests out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and the train the runs to San Diego. The paint looks horrible because, as I understand it, harsh chemicals are used to remove grafitti and those chemicals also damage the factory applied paint jobs. Ironically, not long before this San Diego to Barstow freight appeared, my San Diego-based brother had been commenting on the lack of variety appearing on the BARSDG / SDGBAR trains. The the M-SDGBAR1-05A (San Diego to Barstow) shows up with an old Santa Fe GP60M, still in sharp-looking Warbonnet colors, much to his surprise! |