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There are a couple of reasons why most of the new locomotives you see are GE's versus EMD. The first one is speed of manufacture. While EMD has reduced and outsourced capacity, GE has maintained theirs. When railroads buy locomotives, they are actually booking space on the company's production floor. GE, with its larger capacity, can crank out locomotives much faster than EMD, particularly if EMD has a large order such as the SD70M's that are being built for Union Pacific ( according to my brother, a UP railroad engineer in Fort Worth, they have ordered 1700 of them, making this the largest order ever placed by a railroad. ) The second one is fuel economy. Four cycle engines, such as the one in your automobile, are more fuel efficient than two cycle types such as used in chain saws and weed eaters. When you look at the large picture that the railroads do ( they own thousands of them ) this can be a significant savings to them. Reliability is another issue. While earlier GE models did have their problems, GE continued to improve their product. Lastly, the throttle response lag characteristic of earlier models was significantly reduced or eliminated in the Dash-8 line of products. According to my brother, Dash-8 and later locomotives will pull and run with the EMD's. Hope this helps.
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