So your new variable handle will be "maxi" since you love the fem napkin paint that much.

The best schizo years were with the leased green and/or orange units pulling bombs and rotos with all different paint patterns that would make Dali jealous (some not even finished as they came back online).


In October, Metrolink officials signed an $18-million-a-year lease with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Co. for 40 freight engines.

They hoped to put the locomotives into operation within weeks of their delivery.

Since then, most of the powerful freight engines have sat idle in Metrolink yards at a cost of $500 each per day, and many passengers still ride in the Hyundai cab cars.

“Safety concerns shaped the Burlington Northern Santa Fe locomotive lease,” said Art Leahy, the commuter line’s chief executive. “But implementation has been difficult. Safety has been increased but not as much as expected.”

Metrolink records show that the railroad placed an average of 13 freight engines into service per weekday in March.

The daily high was 16 and the low was 10. The number in service in April dropped to an average of 12 per weekday with a daily high of 18 and a low of seven.

Leahy said he wants 30 Burlington Northern locomotives in operation by the end of May, while some remaining engines will be reserves.

The cab cars that are replaced will continue to serve as passenger coaches, but not in the lead position where they are located when trains reverse direction at the end of lines.

Questions about the slow pace of deployment have been raised by several Metrolink board members and rail advocates, including Paul Dyson, president of the Rail Passenger Assn. of California and Nevada, as well as Los Angeles County Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Hilda Solis, who sit on the board.

Solis and Antonovich said they are concerned about the cost of the lease and the safety of passengers who continue to ride in the Hyundai cab cars.

Antonovich also questioned whether a serious enough safety issue ever existed to justify the lease.

“Given the many months of delay in putting these locomotives into service, either our passengers have been exposed to danger without these locomotives on the lines and we should have shut down service,” Antonovich said, “or there was no real safety compromise to begin with, and the CEO saddled the agency with an expensive lease without proper board authority.”

Dyson contends the locomotive plan was not well thought out and that Metrolink board members do not have enough railroad experience to have adequately evaluated the use of freight engines on a passenger line.