If there’s a bright spot in the gloom currently cast over the historic GE Transportation factory in Erie, Pa., it’s the brightly painted blue-white-and-green ES44AC Tier 4 engineering prototypes currently undergoing testing in the back yard of the sprawling facility on the east side of town.
Word that negotiations between GE and United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Union Local 506 had failed to secure concessions to avert the transfer of work and resultant elimination of some 950 Erie jobs rocked the plant where workers have been building locomotives for more than a century. And it rocked the community where GE has been the economic life-blood for just as long. But while the newswires, and TV feeds, and blogs, and diners, and bars buzzed with the bad news, GE engineers and workers assigned to perfect the new technology packed into the colorfully painted prototypes carried on.
Erie designed and Erie built, the prototypes are the first new-build locomotives capable of compliance with EPA Tier 4 emissions standards that take effect Jan. 1, 2015. Along with a number of solid-blue sisters that followed them off the Erie assembly lines, the testbeds are forging the way for a new generation of Evolution Series locomotives. Look for a profile on these newest Evolutions in the upcoming Locomotive 2013 special issue.
Simultaneously, Erie engineers are working on liquid natural gas technology for locomotives. LNG, if the predictions of some observers are anywhere near accurate, could achieve fuel-cost savings on a scale previously undreamed of and trigger a technological shift as dramatic as the change from steam to diesel.
Erie has taken a major hit with the transfer of domestic Evolution manufacturing and other work to Fort Worth. Industry observers have openly expressed doubts that GE can sustain two North American locomotive manufacturing facilities. GE representatives say otherwise. “Keep it made in Erie,” reads the slogan boldly emblazoned on the back of Local 506 tee shirts. If there’s a hope, it hinges very much on those bright blue locomotives in the back yard.
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