In the Australian freight stakes, these locomotives' horsepower is celebrated on their gleaming livery with the names of Melbourne Cup winners like Just A Dash, At Talaq, Kiwi and Beldale Ball.
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They may be far removed from Australia's premier racing carnival, yet they carry the hallmarks of a thoroughbred and come to working-class Goulburn to keep in shape.
Just A Dash stands over a deep pit in Goulburn's railway workshop while its inner workings are stripped down. Beldale Ball waits in the sunshine for a full service and for the cement dust to be cleaned from her exterior.
Chicago Freight Car Leasing Australia Goulburn workshop manager Mick Cooper says the thoroughbred connection comes from CFC's Australian managing director, Ian Gibbs, a racing fanatic.
Parallels between horses and these locomotives, mostly grain and container haulers, are so plentiful the link is more apt than a whim. The diesel-throbbing monsters rely on grain, are groomed by apprentices, cost $300,000 to service and earn their living on tracks.
We're all aware of racehorses being skittish. These champion machines, which pull their own electricity generator to haul the equivalent of 140 B-double trucks, are temperamental, too.
Working through the Adelaide Hills and the Blue Mountains, they've been known to lose traction on rails covered in heaps of millipedes.
To overcome this, a jet of air is squirted on the tracks to clear them off. It comes out of the same hose that squirts sand to help traction over a steep pinch.
But why use apprentices on such complex machines, which run on 70-tonne bogie wheels and carry up to 14,000 litres of diesel to power their generators?
"We've made a choice to go to apprentices and bring them up through the business; to self-train, I guess, and to build the business from inside," Mr Cooper, a railway-trained electrical and mechanical technician, said.
He said of the 35 workshop employees, six were apprentices, and another four just came out of their time, to fill the need for specialist skills.
"If you grab an electrician who has been wiring up buildings, it's not the same mentality and attitude he is used to," Mr Cooper said.
"They will do a broad range of AC and DC; there will be installation, connection work, fault-finding work, airconditioning. There is a huge variety.
"We have 16 new . . . [locomotives], some are AC, some are DC. These are complex, expensive machines [at about $4 million each], so you have to do . . . [the commissioning and servicing] right."
Yet, the depth of experienced staff is considerable. Major transporter Aurizon can have up to 12 locomotives in the workshop at one time. The workshop services 150 locomotives and 1000 wagons annually, turning over $7 million a year.
"Instead of getting them serviced in Melbourne, where there are two or three other shops, they put them on a train and drop them off and we service them. You've got to be happy with that," Mr Cooper said.
CF Rail is in talks with Pacific Rail to service trains which will haul millions of tonnes of rock from expanded quarries in Marulan.
Shunter and long-time train driver Geoff Emerton moves rolling stock along six kilometres of track at the depot, throttling back to about one-eighth capacity, with a keen ear for how a locomotive is running.
"When you are going through Junee in fog, and you can't see more than 15 feet in front of you, you just keep going at 115 km/h track speed, you want everything to be right," he said.
