Today, I encountered a 3-switcher-pulled NS local. The first was purchased from CSX, with a blue patch over the "CSX" letters, the second was unpainted leased, and the third was NS patch CSX scheme. I know this is all normal, but c'mon Norfolk Southern! You need me to come over there and paint??
Don't know what you saw but it wasn't an NS train. NS only has three switchers left on the roster, all former Reading SW1001s they got from COnrail in the split in 1999. At least two of the three work at Juniata Shops in Altoona, PA as shop switchers. They never leave the shop complex but can be observed on weekdays moving dead locomotives around, especially near the turntable.
NS has not, ever, purchased switchers secondhand from CSX.
Some folks call anything with a 'GP' or 'SD' in front of it's model number a "switcher". I suspect what he saw were ex-Conrail units that still haven't been repainted yet for one reason or another.
We used to see them fairly often around here, not so much these days. About once a year or so, some NS equipment that's been 'tagged' with 'CSX', 'Polar Express', or 'Hogwarts Express' by a graffiti artists will show up.
Len
Even so, NS over the past couple of years has been selling off anything that isn't nailed down including a significant portion of the locomotive fleet. They are NOT buying and patching units from CSX. They haven't since they got the SD80MACs, and those were all quickly repainted before entering service. Whatever the OP saw, and whatever semantic he's using to describe the units, they weren't NS.
My apologies. It was on NS territory with 100% NS rolling stock, so I assumed the locos were NS-owned. It was a "CSX" covered how tomorrow moves paint scheme, a lease, and non-repainted conrail.
prr22 where did you see them?
Near Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
If it was near Bethlehem, then they may have acttually be Lehigh Valley Rail Management (LVRM) switchers interchanging with NS. LVRM owns SW1500 1115, ex-CSX 1115, ex-LN 5015. This might be the CSX loco you saw.
(http://s3.amazonaws.com/rrpa_photos/126483/DSC05509A.jpg)
LVRM owns other SW1200 & SW1500 locos that are ex-LN, ex-Conrail, ex-PBNE, ex-whatever. They don't always get a full repaint in LVRM colors for some time after they're put in service.
Len