Toasters, Red Barns and Other Nicknames

Railfans spend a lot of time waiting for trains. I'm convinced this is when we come up with nicknames for particular types of locomotives. Here are a few common ones.

The Toaster

Probably the most well-known railfan nickname is the "toaster", a name now applied to most if not all GE locomotives. I believe it was first applied to the Amtrak AEM-7 and P42DC locomotives due to their toaster-like shape, and the fact that GE also makes household appliances like toasters.

Amtrak 58, Philadelphia, 2005

More recently GE locomotives have acquired this nickname for the burn marks on the sides of some locos.

I think it's browned enough

There's a great photo by Stephen Tripptree of a CSX unit belching flame on Railpictures.

I've also heard "techno-toaster" for the P42DC or for a Dash-9. Speaking of Dash-9, I believe that's another railfan term.

Red Barn

The GMD SD40-2F is commonly known as a "red barn" because it is a cowl unit and wears the Action Red of CP Rail.

CP 9021 in Winnipeg, MB

Ten of these "red barns" have found their way to the Central Maine and Quebec Railway, including CP 9021 above. Frank Jolin has some great shots of them on his Flickr profile, including this one.

Big Mac

EMD's SD70MAC, SD80MAC and SD90MAC locomotives are called "Big Macs" for obvious reasons. The "M" is for a safety cab and the "AC" means they use AC traction motors rather than DC.

CP 9109 at La Salle, MB

CP 9109 is/was an SD9043MAC.

Covered Wagon

Pretty much every EMD "E" or "F" locomotive (think E8, F7, etc.) is called a covered wagon. These are called that because they are cowl units, where the shell sits on the frame.

Covered wagon E9A CN 102

Thundercow

I've heard the SD40-2W units called "thundercows" but I don't know why.

"Thundercow" CN 5279 on the CN Family Day train in September 2014

Spongebob Squarecab

This was a new one to me. I can't remember if I saw it on Instagram or Facebook, but it refers to CSX cab rebuilds like this one from Flickr:

It does look a bit like Spongebob SquarePants.

Blue Devils

There are a set of blue locomotives, IC 2455-2466, that were leased to Conrail and Illinois Central. This explains the blue! They are sublettered for IC under the locomotive number but have the big CN noodle. Railfans call them "blue devils" (why devils? I don't know), not to be confused with "blueberries" (the dark blue BC Rail units) and "blue bells" (blue GTW units).

"Blue Devil" IC 2460

Individual locomotives have nicknames too. I won't list them in this post but the most famous VIA Rail locomotive nickname was...

The Turd

You can read some more nicknames here. Weigh in with your own nicknames in the comments!

Canadian Pacific's SD90s for Sale

Canadian Pacific Railway has put their fleet of 58 SD90MAC/4300 engines up for sale. These engines were purchased back in 1998? but have given CP (and other railways) considerable grief since then. As the tender notes, 8 of the 58 are not operational and the others have all been refurbished between 2004 and 2006.

These engines were originally delivered with 4300 horsepower 16-cylinder 710G engines, making them essentially SD70MACs. They were made to use the new 6000 horsepower 710H when it was available.

CP did take delivery of four 6000 HP engines, CP 9300-9303, (SD90MAC-H, built in late 1999) but they were quite unreliable and CP ended up retiring them and then sending them to be scrapped. I did see three of the four SD90MAC-H engines, but only in storage in the Winnipeg yard.

Because of these engine troubles, CP never did re-engine the SD90s and they still have the 4300 HP prime movers. I've seen a fair number of them around, either on a train or more likely in storage in Winnipeg. They are now being sold "as is, where is" so I expect a fair number will simply be scrapped.

Much Better

After complaining about "blah" shots, I am going to follow up with a few much nicer shots. Monday noon, I went looking for the Canadian up on Wilkes Avenue. I decided to shoot from near the top of the overpass to get a little height and a change in angle. What do you think?

The Canadian was a few minutes late, but had a bonus of two cars dead heading behind VIA 6411 and VIA 6408... diner Imperial and Assiniboine Park.

I spun around for the "going away" shot and framed the Canadian under the overpass.


I turned around and there were headlights approaching on the south track. It turned out to be CN 101, led by single engine CN 2254.


One more engine was about 1/3 of the way back in the train, CN 2256.


That was all very exciting, but where are the good shots?

I headed toward home, and as I crossed the CP La Riviere subdivision on the Perimeter Highway, I saw a string of grain cars headed south. I took the exit and chased the train. It was easy to catch up to it, as I believe the speed limit is a mere 15 MPH here and the limit on the highway parallel to the tracks is 100 km/hr. I saw SD90 CP 9109 and SD40-2 CP 5764 were hauling just over a hundred grain cars.

I set up just south of the grain elevator in La Salle and waited for the train. The benefit of such a slow train is that you get to take a lot of shots as the train passes the elevator! This was my favourite.


Once the head end passed, I jumped into the car and got ahead of them for one more series of shots outside the town. The sun was dancing in and out of view but I was lucky to get a few with some sun on the engine.


I was very pleased with my CP shots. It was well worth the 15 minutes it took to chase and shoot the train!