Working in industrial northern Portland, Oregon, is GN 3613, a BNSF Railway Sw1000 that, as of December 29, 2014, began wearing the railroad’s obsolete “GN” reporting mark. (The GN mark is still owned by the BNSF, since the Great Northern was one of the BNSF’s predecessor railroads.) This is done to avoid using 5-digit numbers (which the railroad’s computers generally cannot use) and this change is made to quickly renumber older locomotives that are nearing retirement in order to clear groups of numbers to be used on new locomotives. In this particular case, while GN 3613’s reporting mark was only a year and a half old when photographed on August 22, 2015, this locomotive still has the GN marks in late 2019. While GN was one of the railroads merged to become the Burlington Northern (and, eventually, the BNSF), this locomotive was never owned by GN, as it was built in February 1972, after the BN Railroad was formed. It was originally BN 388, then BNSF 3613 and finally GN 3613.
