News & Reviews News Wire CSX’s Seaboard System heritage locomotive makes its debut

CSX’s Seaboard System heritage locomotive makes its debut

By Bill Stephens | June 29, 2023

The locomotive is the third in a series that so far includes Baltimore & Ohio and Chessie System

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CSX Transportation’s third heritage locomotive honors Seaboard System. CSX

WAYCROSS, Ga. – CSX Transportation’s third heritage locomotive is No. 1982 honoring the Seaboard System.

CEO Joe Hinrichs posted photos of the locomotive today on LinkedIn, with the ES44AH posing outside the paint shop in Waycross, Ga.

The Seaboard locomotive joins CSX’s Baltimore & Ohio and Chessie System heritage units. Each locomotive is numbered for the year that the predecessor railroad became part of CSX.

CSX Transportation’s Seaboard System heritage locomotive sits in the sun outside the paint shop in Waycross, Ga. CSX

18 thoughts on “CSX’s Seaboard System heritage locomotive makes its debut

    1. STEVEN — How long ago was Pere Marquette folded into C+O? I don’t recall ever seeing a photo of a Pere Marquette loco so I wouldn’t know what it looks like. As a guess, I’d venture that most people reading these pages never heard of that railroad, let alone remember it.

      But the name lives on — Amtrak uses it for a Michigan train.

    2. I am also waiting for a Western Maryland Heritage unit… as well as a C&O unit.

      The Pere Marquette was mainly a passenger line in Michigan but did some freight traffic during it’s 2-8-4 Berkshire years mostly for the automobile, furniture and local produce industries. It also hauled coal, livestock and some specialty cargoes. It was folded into the C&O in 1947. From then on its diesel passenger locomotives had a classic “C&O” paint scheme with PM colors and script lettering. See the link below for a look at PM diesels:

      https://www.pmhistsoc.org/diesrost.shtml

  1. Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, CSX Corporation (the parent of CSX Transportation) was formed in 1980 from the merger of Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries, two holding companies which controlled a number of railroads operating in the Eastern United States. Initially only a holding company itself, the subsidiaries that made up CSX Corporation were gradually merged, with this process being completed in 1987. CSX Transportation formally came into existence in 1986, as the successor of Seaboard System Railroad. In 1999, CSX Transportation acquired approximately half of Conrail, in a joint purchase with competitor Norfolk Southern Railway. Later, in 2022, it acquired Pan Am Railways, extending its reach into much of Northern New England.

    Dr. Güntürk Üstün

  2. So hopefully they’ll paint one for the L&N. But if all they are doing are the combined lines that formed CSX then maybe not. Keeping my fingers crossed though.

  3. Here comes the angry 9-14 year old foamers who will say that they hate it because it wasn’t completely repainted!

  4. I liked the Seaboard System livery. I even painted an SD 50 in the livery in N scale. Great job CSX and Joe Hinrichs.

  5. The lucky GE “ET44AH” Tier 4 GEVO diesel-electric locomotive of the CSX fleet looks pretty pleased with its awesome heritage suit!

    Dr. Güntürk Üstün

  6. The Seaboard System Railroad, Inc. (reporting mark SBD) was a US Class I railroad that operated from 1982 to 1986.
    Since the lte 1960s, Seaboard Coast Line Industries had operated the Seaboard Coast Line and its sister railroads —notably the Louisville & Nashville and Clinchfield— as the “Family Lines System”. In 1980, SCLI merged with the Chessie System to create the holding company CSX Corporation; two years later, CSX merged the Family Lines railroads to create the Seaboard System Railroad.
    In 1986, Seaboard renamed itself CSX Transportation, which absorbed the Chessie System’s two major railroads the following year.

    Dr. Güntürk Üstün

    1. If you say so, John. For my part, Seaboard System is one they could have kept dead, buried and forgotten. At the time I heartedly disliked that livery. At the time I thought it was a lazy sketch that somehow got past all the reviews. Like the half-baked eagle on American Airlines’ current livery.

      SBD livery which I disliked at the time was an improvement over its predecessor Family Lines. One has to go back to Seaboard Coast Line for anything decent. That was a good one!

      What I do like, though, is combining the actual railroad at the nose with the heritage livery on the flanks. That part is, to use John’s word, NICE!!!!!

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