I have to admit that when I first laid eyes on the Utah Railway’s six MK5000s I was unimpressed. I mean, that cab just spells ugly with a capitol “U,” and that Caterpillar engine? It sounded…weird. Over the years, however, they’ve grown on me. For one thing, I like the paint scheme. I’m too young to have photographed the Utah’s gray and red Alcos in service; my earliest memories of the Utah Railway are of F45s in BN green and ex-SP SD45s. I liked when the Utah brought back the classic scheme, but I didn’t care for it much on the SD40 fleet – the F45 sure looked sharp, though. I think the MK5000s – now rebuilt with EMD components as MK-50-3s – look even better in gray and red than the F45 did. Doesn’t it complement the Book Cliffs nicely? These are still strange locomotives, though (they’re BIG, but the trucks look much too short for a locomotive of this size). They do say “Utah” to me like no other locomotives ever have. This is the last of the bunch, No. 5006, doing some fast running between Price and Helper with a coal train.
