The Only Turbine SWITCHER, U.S. Army #1149

[TrainFreak409]

I am looking for information on the U.S. Army turbine switcher, #1149. I do have some information on it. It was built by Davenport in September of 1954. It used two Boeing 175 horsepower 502E turbines. It was used at Fort Eustis, Virginia unit its reduction gear failed in '57. It was then sold to Railroad Construction Co, in '59, then sold again to Mecklenburg Equipment Co in '64. I do have a picture of it, as it was on 11/11/72, still up for sale. It was of a 1-B-1 siderod configuration, and supplied 10,000 pounds of starting traction effort. I have all this information in an Extra 2200 South, the July August September 1975 issue. Could anyone spare some more info?

On my quest for turbine knowledge, I must know!

~[8]~ TrainFreak409 ~[8]~

[locomutt]

Scott; just did a google search,and it looks like 1149 is in the St.Louis
Transportation Museum.
Picture,but didn't see any other info.

But you probably knew that anyway.[:D][swg]

[Overmod]

If you're up to a little scholarly research, examine

http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsc100/MsC81/MsC81_davenportbesler.html

I suspect some of the information there might be of interest to you.

[M636C]

Scott,

I have a couple more details.

It weighed 30 metric tons (66 000lbs) and had a top speed of 60 km/h (40 mph).
The turbine was a "free turbine" type and the gas generator ran at 35 000 rpm while the ouput power turbine ran at 23700 rpm at maximum power. It operated on normal diesel fuel. The turbine had an electric starter motor run from batteries on the locomotive. The turbine could reach full power from cold in 8 seconds, so the intention was to shut down the turbine in between switching jobs, since gas turbines are inefficient running at idle. For light duty, one of the two turbines could be run to save on fuel. The transmission was an Allison "Torqmatic" with a planetary type gearbox providing three operating speeds in each direction. In Fort Eustis, it was found that it used about three times the specific fuel consumption (fuel used per horsepower per hour) of a diesel locomotive doing the same work.

This was translated from "30 Jahre Gastubinenlokomotive" by Wolfgang Stoffels.

Peter