BN 5492, LMX 8598, & LMX 8532 - BN Hastings Subdivision

LMX 8598, LMX 8532 and BN 5492 - McCook, NE

Here we see Burlington Northern 5492, a GE built B30-7, as the third unit on a west bound train on Burlington Northern's Hastings Subdivision. The first two locomotives are lease units, LMX 8598 and LMX 8532, and both units are GE built B39-8E models. The train was passing by the McCook Amtrak station/Burlington Northern office building. At the time there was a pedestrian bridge over the tracks, which is where I took this image from. Today, looking on Google Maps, it looks like the bridge is gone.

Today, this railroad line is owned by the BNSF Railway, due to the merger of the Burlington Northern Railroad and the Santa Fe Railway that was started in September 1995, and was officially completed in December 1996. This photograph is an oldie (at least for me) but a goodie in my opinion. The photograph isn't the greatest from a composition or technical standpoint, but the photograph's content is something that will not be seen anymore on  North American mainline tracks, an un-patched Burlington Northern locomotive. There are still BNSF locomotives being used that are in various Burlington Northern and Santa Fe paint schemes, but they have been patched under the BNSF marking. A patched locomotive means that the locomotive is still in its former owners paint scheme, but it has been re-lettered and possibly renumbered under the new owning railroad.

About the image

This image was scanned from a Kodak T-Max 400 ISO negative using a Nikon Coolscan 9000 ED film scanner. The image was scanned as a Nikon NEF (RAW) file. The original negative was very grainy, so I used Nik Software's Dfine 2 to reduce the grain a bit, but other than that I only used a general levels adjustment to enhance the image in Adobe Camera RAW and Photoshop.

Photo taken: August 1991, at McCook, Nebraska.