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SP 144 was repainted in Little Rock within the last week or so, and it appears the remaining SP-painted units will start disappearing fast now.

I caught the 144 and two other SP-painted units in 2013 in Wisconsin, a truly awesome sight a full 18 years after the UP and SP united.

Bout time they got around to them.. I like the old paint, but I think it looks like crap. When I see the pink nose of a pink bonnet or SP unit I think old crappy engine. With fresh paint I may now think new not crappy engine (even if the paint is the only thing to change )

Also I personally will be happy to see less random crap tracked on HU dot com.. I rarely look at that site (mostly because I know nothing will come near me within the state of Michigan )but they track over 120 locos and make them "important".. Like the "barcode unit" or the CSX "name" locos.. Some of the stuff is worth tracking but honestly most of the stuff on there is not IMO.

That all being said, I personally think catching that cosist of all SP units has probably been one of the coolest catches you have made so far Alex

You are aware that the 144 had some major rust problems, right? It wasn't repainted just because it was still in SP paint, there were other things that necessitated it receive a total repaint. There's another SP unit in that yard that only received two yellow doors when it was in the shop earlier in the week.

The title is misleading. There are several SP units not in UP which have not been repainted and do not appear to be destined for new paint in the immediate future. Just because one unit needed new paint does not mean every unpatched SP unit is up for complete new paint.

I'm not a UP roster guru, but it has been reported pretty widely that they're going to be getting into Repainting these units...sounds like a management change or something. I have no way of confirming it, but as widely reported as it is, it doesn't seem too improbable.

Did it get renumbered or what?

I saw an SP patch unit a week ago Friday on an NS train. Given the paint condition of some of the other units in UP's fleet of that age (I'm not just talking about the former SPs) I doubt they're in a huge rush to paint them.

The title of this thread makes it sounds like UP is repainting all SP units, not just one that went through the shop for other reasons and happened to get painted.

So you're citing other Internet rumors as your source?

railohio wrote:So you're citing other Internet rumors as your source?

In part, yes.

I did change the title. I do agree that my original title was misleading.

MQT3001 wrote:I'm not a UP roster guru, but it has been reported pretty widely that they're going to be getting into Repainting these units...sounds like a management change or something. I have no way of confirming it, but as widely reported as it is, it doesn't seem too improbable.

What site(s) are you getting your information from? I'm curious because I've been getting quite a bit from Trainorders lately and I was wondering which other sites I should be glancing at more often.

There was a thread there from late last week with photos of UP 6145, SP 144's new number. http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,3669309 I'm including the Google search link because I've not had much luck hyperlinking directly to threads on TO before. The consensus on the thread was not that the SP units are all to be immediately repainted, but will be repainted as necessary, likely as other work being done requires.