You are here: Home > Spokane, Portland and Seattle Section > BN 1980
BN 1980
BN 1980 was built as the SP&S 155 in June of 1956. SP&S ordered six EMD GP9's and all were delivered in June of 1956 and numbered 150-155 and assigned to Vancouver, WA for maintenance. All were set up to run long hood forward. The first four 150-153 were delivered with boilers for passenger service while the last two, 154-155 were not.
I asked for photos of the SP&S 155 from the SP&S Facebook group and was supplied with these, credits are included.
PNRA Archive
Great pictures, thanks to William Kajdzik for finding these photos. Nice to see photos of the 155 in different paint schemes.
After the March 1970 BN merger the SP&S 155 was renumbered BN 1980 and remained assigned to Vancouver, WA. I first saw the BN 1980 on 7-29-71 as it led a southbound freight through Kent, WA behind units 1980/9729/9739/2543 (GP9/F7B/F7B/GP35) and my notes say the 1980 was still in SP&S paint.
I got my first photo of the 1980 at Klamath Falls, OR on 3-25-75. Not from the front but a rear end roster and it was of course BN green by this time.
And my last photo of the 1980 was taken 8-9-77 at Interbay, again a rear end roster.
Some good photos of the 1980 can be found on rrpicturearchives here:
Sometime in the mid-1980's the BN 1980 moved east to the Chicago area, far away from the Northwest and I never saw it again.
Among other BN GP9's, the 1980 was selected to go to the GP28 rebuild program emerging as BN GP28M 1506 in September of 1992 and assigned to the Springfield, MO area.
Photos of the BN 1506 can be found here on rrpicturearchives:
In 1994 the 1506 was decorated for Christmas as seen in this photo:
Next for the BN 1506 was the BNSF merger where it was relettered BNSF 1506 on 5-11-01. Again, rrpicturearchives has photos of the BNSF 1506.
The last photo of the BNSF 1506 shows it at Kansas City, MO in 2017, still in BN green paint:
And that is all the information available on the SP&S155/BN1980/BN1506/BNSF1506