New BNSF Power

Southern California is some of the best railfan territory going, but for the past 10 years or so, BNSF south of Barstow, including Cajon Pass, has been pretty boring. Main line power is all recent GEs -- except for GP40xs, 50s, 60s and 60ms in local service, any model EMDs are extremely rare.

A change after 2009 was the arrival of ES44C4 locos, which differ visibly from the ES44ACs in having weight transfer cylinders on the truck sideframes:

For comparison here is a straight ES44AC from series 5718-6438:

However, straight ES44ACs are very unusual on Cajon Pass; this is one of very few I've caught. ES44DCs, visually similar at least with later units, are much more common. However, by about 2009, GE decided it would be simpler to build all locos as ACs. Thus BNSF stopped getting ES44DCs and moved to ES44C4s, which have only four traction motors and an idler center axle on the trucks. The weight transfer cylinders shown at the top of this post are used to take weight off the idler axle when starting. Here's an ES44C4 from series 6500-7199 and 7921-8399:

These have added a little to railfan interest, but except for the weight transfer cylinders, they're visually similar to the earlier units. But now the Tier 4 GEs are starting to arrive. These have weight transfer cylinders like the ES44C4s, but they're beefier-looking overall. Here is a unit from series 3834-3961:

BNSF calls these ET44C4s.