EMD Question

[spekarik]

Just out of curiosity, are the GP-59,GP-60, and the GP-60M's any good? I never have really heard anything about them.

[Anonymous]

I can't speak for the east coast, but both Southern Pacific and Santa Fe had them...like the GP40-2s, they were the HOT locomotives when new, but after four or five years they just became regular workhorses on whatever assignment they had. Right before the SP pulled out of the last branchlines in Oregon, I saw one GP-60 assigned to a three-day a week local on some of SP's worse track. Nice way to get some detail pictures, but a sad sight to see for such a locomotive. Now that the builders and railroads are all over six-axle power (for now, anyways), those four axle units are basically switchers.

Now that I live up in northwestern Montana, the only time I see a GP- is as a yard switcher in Whitefish or on the locals; rarely if ever on the through mainline trains. Saw a GP-60M on the MRL last week, sandwiched between a Dash 9-44CW and a SD40-2.

[Anonymous]

The GP60M with its wide nose cab was just a little to heavy for the two axle truck which gave it a rough ride. But other wise it was a good unit for lite fast intermodal.

gwl
http://photosbygreg.20m.com

[Anonymous]

Hi Scott,
The big advantage for a GP-60 verses an SD-60 is higher top end speed. The high horsepower units with 4 axles (GP-60, B-40-8), means that you have all that horsepower feeding 4 traction motors for fast, light trains. Now the advantage of the six axle units are more tractive effort for heavy trains.
As far as the dependability of the GP-50s I know that all the railroads that had them hated and that is why very few GP-50s and SD-50s are still in service.
Dave

[favuprailroadfan]

The GP60 is an excellant motor. I have had many experiances with them. The SP decided to with the 60's for they're fast intermodal. One of the other guys is correct. They do have a higher top end speed of 78 mph. These motors have a 710 2 cycle powerplant producing 3800 horsepower. This is the motor as in the SD60, the M series's, and the new 70's but these have new microprocessers that enable it to more things. The reason why you didn't hear much about these units is because if all the new technology that was developed right after these came out. The new AC traction generation pretty much overlooked everything else. SP ordered (I think) 193 of these. SP loved these enigines, they were smooth riding, quick loading, not much of a starter like the 6 axle units, but when they got up to speed, they just sailed. I believe that if you want more info about these you can go to the EMD website and get the info you need. Hope this helps.

Dru

[Anonymous]

I've heard that the GP-60 is a very reliable engine. It seems that the standard cab was more popular, but I see alot of big cabs around here. I live in Seattle, it's mainly Dash9 country w/some SD-40-2, but I do see a few BNSF Super Fleet GP-60M's on intermodal trains in consists with Dash9's. There's a GP-60 slug that has been running here all summer long too.

[eolafan]

Hi, read your question and thought you might be interested in knowing that the BNSF is still running quite a few GP60M units on intermodal trains in and out of Chicago on the old Q triple track as well as on the old ATSF main. I am partial to the older cab units but the GP60M somehow reminds me of a modern looking F unit, small and powerful looking (and acting) and oh that sound they make at speed! We also sometimes still see some GP60B units, all of them in warbonnet red and silver (as with the "A" units as well). I believe they were all part of the ATSF "SuperFleet" at one time and were the queens of the fleet for intermodal for some time. Jim in Aurora, IL

[Anonymous]

Scott
Do you prefer EMD over GE? Each builder has definitely had its tops and bottoms.

[wabash1]

a sick emd is better running than any perfect ge anyday. emd engines are better for most railroading situation. i due prefer a ge dash 8 or 9 for coal loading and unloading but otherwise emd anyday.

[Anonymous]

J
you are with the BNSF or UP I presume. I am going to have to hook you up with a EMD hat next time I am in the area! I am glad you like EMD's.

Don L

[wabash1]

no i am employed by the ns.... sorry .... anyways before they started getting all these ge boat anchors the best engines to run and still are is the emd. and the ns in all there wisdom will put a wide body emd in the rear of one of these ge what evers. so i haft to listen to chug chug chug all night instead of power doing its work. no wonder crews get tired and go to sleep. when it takes 4 hrs longer to get there. it dont bother me much anymore i know when im called all im going to work is 12 hrs then go home...

[Anonymous]

I thank they all are good engines.Or they both would not be selling locomotives.Railroads would be shopping in China or Japan.

[Anonymous]

Hey j. Just a side question here. What part of the NS system do you run on? Your definatly right about the GE's being up front. When I'm waiting for a train to photograph I figure that I got about a 75% chance that it is going to have a C40-9W on the lead or some form of GE power. I see quite a few C40-8's and C39-8's also.

[Anonymous]

I thought it was kind of funny when NS bought a token buy of 10 new SD70M's tacked onto the UP 1000 unit SD70M order. NS should buy more. As of lately of the 700 UP units delivered, the availability is about 96% . Do the NS GE's run that well???? Cost is not the bottom line sometimes.. It should be how often your locomotive works.

Don L

[Anonymous]

They do have about 80 SD70's with a standard cab. Still a small number compared to the -9's. Around 800 of them. They also have some SD80MAC's that they picked up from Conrail. But the bulk of their EMD power seems to be in SD60's and older units.

[Anonymous]

I hope they buy some more new EMD's. NS needs to spread it out more here lately. How do they like their 80mac's?? I wonder?

[Anonymous]

I hope they have the wide nose.They look better dont they.

[Anonymous]

Now don't get me wrong, I like EMD's but EMD should be the last ones to talk about availability. I give you the SD50, SD75 and the SD90MAC and then would like you to tell me about availability. It seems that the BNSF loves the big GE's because they are reliable.

[Anonymous]

hey dru
you moved, no wonder I no longer see you trackside at canton. you're right about those gp-60's, however they were geared for 70mph top speed, with the right gearing they could easily go faster. besides the darn overspeed kick's on 'em around 72 if it's set right.

[Anonymous]

Hi,
to the GP-59 I've only ran a couple of 'em and they were NS units on a light train, they did have a somewhat unusual sound to 'em though. The GP-60's were (and are still when maintained) excellent units. Very good for intermodal and autorack trains, accelerate very good, good dynamic brakes. Despite some comments they are also quite good with general manifest traffic, especially in undulating territory where their quick loading keeps the slack off of you. (as opposed to comparable GE's like the Dash 8 40B's, which take forever and a day to load up). Also the 60's, while somewhat slippery, aren't nearly as slippery as the 4 axle GE's, on a heavy train in the rain I would much prefer a set of EMD 60's over 40B's. The M version is probably identical, although like all wide bodies, probably rides rougher than it's standard cab brother. As a SP engineer (now UP) I loved getting a set of 3 or 4 60's on a stack train. Interestingly, if you had some of those Dash 8's behind the 60's they were ok, but put 'em in the lead, and they fought each other all the way, the EMD would shove the GE before it started loading, confusing the wheel slip program on the GE and causing it to load even less. To an EMD in the lead, the GE was just another train car until it started doing it's share of the work. By the way, the whole 60 series is the basis for the 70M's, 70MAC's, and until upgraded (if ever) the UP SD9043MAC's. I think that should say enough about the 60's right there, what with litteraly 1000's of the 60's offspring running around or on order (rumor has it UP is negotiating for 750 more 70M's).

[Anonymous]

As you may be able to tell, I like EMD's also, and I have to agree with the comment about the 50's, EMD pushed the 645 engine too hard, but the control system (super series in particular) was a tremendous leap in performance that GE still can't match on a DC engine. I have no experience with the 75's but did hear they had a lot of problems initially. The 90's (the true 6000 horse ones) did have some problems initially, mainly software, and they are currently restricted to 60mph due to ride issues, however they are currently doing quite nicely on the UP in manifest, manifest DPU on the west coast, and grain service. As a comparison, I haven't seen an AC6000 from GE, running, without a million faults in the computer for a long time, and they had as many or more problems as the EMD's when they came out and still have a ton of problems. Also, I don't know who slapped that 60mph speed limit on the 90's, but they obviously haven't ridden ANY wide body GE over 50-60mph when the whole darn unit starts hunting side to side, they almost all do this and it's definately not fun! I'd rather bounce than go side to side. I read something about the Santa Fe having this same problem with the GE's, perhaps they made a modification to take care of this, but almost all UP GE's do this at speed. I think it's the truck design, the wide bodies with the older style truck generally don't do this, but you'll notice the newer full adhesion trucks all have 2 shocks on one side and none on the other, and the opposite on the other end. Can you imagine riding an auto with shocks on only one side? I can't believe GE was silly enough to design these trucks this way. Also, on the issue of availability, seen the stats on UP's fleet of 70M's? They are setting records, and most of these units are assigned to very high mileage intermodal trains, and how about BNSF's love affair with 70MAC's for coal trains? UP doesn't care whether they have an EMD 9043MAC or a GE4400 as long as it is an AC on coal trains. Also, how about SP when they ordered all those GE AC's a few years before the merger, jeese, those things were junk for a long time until GE finally got all the bugs out. I think they ran about 40% availability for at least a year before all the kinks were worked out. I had one once that was only a month old, it would only put out 2500 hp and smoked like a steam engine. So, personally I would say it's a wash, they both generally have some problems when they come out with new products, but once they get the bugs out availability issues largely disappear until they get older, that's when EMD has a tremendous advantage, because they are so much easier and cheaper to rebuild, and they are almost like new again. Almost no one rebuilds GE's except GE (like their super 7 series of rebuilds) and they don't stick around very long (haven't seen a super 7 in ages and they aren't that old). Actually, although they did have a lot of problems for a while (most I think have been remidied) the 50 series are really a pretty darn good unit, they pull very hard, respond almost instantly, have good dynamics, and I personally have never had a problem with any of 'em other than once in a while a super series failure (usually a wiring or radar problem). I know UP is slowly getting rid of the 50's as well as a number of other units, but I bet those 50's get snapped up by other companies (leasing, shortline, or other). Anyway, I just thought I oughta defend the EMD's 'cause I'd take them any day over anything GE makes!!!

[Anonymous]

Derek, as always I enjoy your in put. As I said earlier, I am an EMD fan also but do appreciate all locomotives. As an observation to the DASH 9 trucks, they seem to have gone through several design changes and the ones with only two shocks per truck are the current ones. If you notice, the shocks are canted roughly 45 degrees which to me means that they are trying to control movement from side to side. This adds to your observation of the side to side movement. Why they only have two I do not know. The first DASH 9 trucks had 4 shocks but were not canted. And as for the BNSF in love with the 70 MAC, I wonder why the last AC power ordered by them was GE?

[favuprailroadfan]

Dear Derek, how are you doing? Fine I hope.
I was in Kismet the other day, and there was an eastbound sitting there with 2 70M's and a GE C44-9. I don't know if you saw it or not. The lead unit was UP 4522, UP 4507, and UP 9618. It was the IICIM, he was 5996 ft. long. The reason they were stopped is because they were cutting in switches at Missler siding, they have already cut the CTC in there. Man, they have done tons of work here already. About half of the route from Pratt to Dalhart is already CTC. Its CTC from Dalhart to the east switch at Stevens. Then the Optima block (don't ask me why I still call them blocks). Liberal is all CTC now, they have holding signals on either side of town now. Missler, they are currently working on Bloom, and Bucklin is, then the Pratt block is CTC. So its about every other siding is CTC now. Anyways, I went over there and took a look at those beautiful machines. Well my dream finally came true, I finally got to get up inside one of them things. Very nice inside, clean, fairly new, I didn't get to see the builders date. I just have one questions. I thought the 70M's had the old style control panel? These had the desktop controls as all the other new models. I figured that when they said old style, I thought they were talking about like the SD40-2 controls, or the GP60's. I was rather disappointed in that, but I guess I should have known that the desktops would've been in there. I guess I had another railroading brainfart. Anyways, I guess I had better let you go, and don't wait so long to write me back. I wrote you back before Christmas and you never did write back until now. I hope that everything is going well with you. I'll see sometime when I'm up there next. Keep on working, and stay out of trouble.

Laters, Dru

[wabash1]

i work out of louisville,ky right now. and from what i read on here people wonder why they are buying ge over emd. it is cost. you can get 2 ge for the price of one emd. but they have learned that ge are falling apart. my last few trips i have had to be pulled pushed in or given a engine couse my main power dash 9 went down i had 2 main generators burn up and one engine burn up due to injectors. i have yet to have a emd go bad dont know why. maybe luck. but the emd dont work as hard as the ge do. a emd will load up and work a ge will only do what little it wants to so you lose alot of speed with a ge pulling the grade compared to a emd. and a emd is more fun to run its easier to controll the slack with a emd. but in defense of a ge they have very good dynamic brakes.

[Anonymous]

What number are we talking about with BNSF Dash 9's??

[Anonymous]

I think BNSF only ordered 3 units. BNSF is upset because the lost GM's auto business. Maybe they will go with GE, maybe EMD. Why mix AC4400 with 70mac's?

[Anonymous]

Hello spekarik...just a brief reply. I did'nt read all of your reply's to your new 'thread', but one thing I have to say is how 'kick-butt' the 2 stroke EMD unit's are compared to the 4 stroke eng's. They 'load-up' in half the time, and in a drag-race, (and I have done these for fun when on adjacent track's) the EMD's kick-_ss. I recently ran 3 SDMAC 60's (light-power) for a short distance in 50 mph. territory, and the pick-up was unbelievable! Compared to the new Dash-9 4 stroke's, EMD's RULE!

[Anonymous]

Hey Dru,
Sorry bout not repliing around Christmas, it was a very hectic time for me. Supposedly this spring or early summer, a CTC gang is going to come to Herington and start working west to meet that other gang, so it should be all CTC by sometime late next year. Rumors abound that they are gonna change the crew change when that is done. That they are gonna run Herington to Bucklin, and Bucklin to Dalhart, guess we'll just have to see on that one. About your question, what we mean by older style, is they still have gauges instead of those darn computer screens, and the air is just air, no electronic air brake junk in 'em. The only one that I know of that has older style stands in any wide body is the NS. Keep your eyes peeled for the new painted units with the flag on new slogan on the side, now those are sharp looking units!
later
Derek

[Anonymous]

One thing i do like about GE is their screen saver. Wish EMD had one.