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The Amtrak F40's the hotel power was run from the main engine to a separate generator either 500kw ot 800kw (201 to 229 was 500 the rest was 800kw) at 480volts 60 hz 3 phase for heating air conditioning and lighting. the main traction engine a 645 series ran at 893 rpm all the time that HEP was used and 750 rpm in standby (you couldn't use traction power in standby mode.) The biggest problem I had with the F40's was fuel filters , the second biggest problem was the Train Line Complete loose or missing jumpers. Lots of times Chicago would short loop the train and that is when all hell happened at times.If the fuel got plugged up RPM went down especially when throttling up then the electrical equipment would shut off the hep. So on and off it did. Try this when you leave Chicago headding for Seattle Once I got spin ons (filters) at Milwaukee then Minneapolis even picked up primary filters at Fargo wow I have ridden the cab most all the way baby sitting the F40 when it was in trouble. If one failed you couldn't get another one except at each end of the run. You couldn't use a freight locomotive as they had no hep equipment so if you had 2 F40 you could use the other one. What if you left Chicago with only 1 hep unit working and the other one had parts missing.due to a shortage of power which we were many times a year. A few times we has 20 or more F40's shopped....One trip on the sunset route I had only one hep working and the other one had a relay burned out. So the good hep unit failed (generator bearing) so here I was in the desert with no hep and the temperature at 110 degrees and a train full of passengers. The SP was the worst railroad for Amtrak to give us a helping hand they wouldn't do anything for us, just give us a locomotive for full price and we had to return it to where we got it. I told the engineer to go and I stripped to my underwear and went to work removing (in the engine room) a good relay and put it in the place of the burned out one in the lead unit the temp in the F40 was at 145 degrees (fireman had a thermometer) so I worked for 10 min then went to the rear of the unit outside to cool off at 79 mph then went to work again until I changed out the relay and got the hep on again I spoke to the Conductor and he said the temp in the cars was getting bad but now the temp was dropping and everybody was happy we lost a little time and did not put a freight loco on and arrived in LA just about on time.I could go on and on about some trips I had while at Amtrak. <br />Mike Wikman <br />Sr insrructor of locomotive engineer training at that time for Amtrak now semi retired
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