Another question about the E's and F's

[Anonymous]

[8D]I saw a movie a while back about the evolution of locomotives, and they said that the early E's or F's or FT's (I forget which) had a series of hand levers to control the radiator shutters; so it was the fireman's job to control engine temperature. I'm thinking surely by the late 30's the technology must have existed to do this automatically... surely. Was this done to give the fireman something constructive to do? Were they anticipating troubles with the unions that might get in the way of railroads buying their new baby? The movie also said that soon this operation was automated. Once the ball got rolling, did they feel comfortable enough to say "to hell with that"? Does antbody know the reason for this odd bit of missing technology?

[Overmod]

Keep this in perspective: the radiator shutters on diesel TRUCKS in this period could be manually operated.

The technology to operate the shutters 'automagically' would have cost a bit extra, and the cost of the locomotives at the time was already perceived as very high. My guess would be that modulation of the shutters was considered less important in the early design process than turned out to be necessary in service... this isn't intended as a 'dig' at the EMC/EMD design people, just a reflection that some of the early design details turned out to require revision (cf. the 567 B to C sealing mods)

[daveklepper]

The early E's and F's also had manual transition, since dc-motored diesel electrics start with all motors in series and the switch to a parallel combination. In between there is field shunting, and this again applied in parallel. All this was done manually on the earliest diesels, and this was one of the serveral changes between the FT and the F2, then all later models. I imagine, but am not sure, that with GE's electrical aptitude, the Alco DL109 had automatic transition.

The transistions are effected automatically be measuring speed, and was done, if I remember correctly, by comparing voltage and current at the motors.

[Randy Stahl]

Automatic transition was an option in most cases. Most older locomotives that I am familier with had manual shutters including the small switch engines. The ALCO S series had manual shutters with a lever on the engineers side along with a temp gauge. The old EMDs like the E-3 had all belt driven radiator fans too. The transition on these old engines were primarily controlled by the load regulator with a little roller switch , backward transition was controlled with a BTR relay that dropped out when the voltage dropped below 300 volts or so.
Randy

[Randy Stahl]

QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill

Automatic transition did not appear on the F unit until the F7. I don't know if the DL109 had automatic transition, but the FA/FB did not.

I assume it became an option at that time, I remember some of our MILW F-7s and FP-7s as having manual transition. Of course the F-3 that I have here is strictly manual transition and I think it even has dynamic brakes, or at least DB cooling fans.
Randy

[jeaton]

What was (is) the sequence of steps taken by an engineman for manual transition operation? How did he know when to advance the throttle and to change the circuit set-up? Ampmeter reading? Speed?

Just curious.

Jay