Wide Body Cabs vs Short Nose

[Anonymous]

On the major railroads all you ever see now are the wide body cabs leading the engine consist. What are the advantages of the wide body cabs versus the short nose cabs? Are GE and EMD still making the short noses anymore? Thanks.
Larry

[zardoz]

Safety is the main advantage. The new wide-bodies have vastly improved front-end crash standards, including a huge steel pillar at each front end corner, as part of the under-frame. Older short-nose, as well as cab units, were mostly sheet-metal welded to a frame. In the event of a collision with something that had a significant mass that was above frame-level, the impact could cru***he front end of the locomotive cab.
As far as I know, short-nose (aka "Standard Cab") style can still be special ordered; I believe NS recently ordered some SD75's with the standard configuration. Which is interesting due to the fact that NS ran locomotives 'long-hood' end first, supposedly for crew safety, but really sucked when trying to operate long-end forward around a blind [from the engineer side] curve at restricting speed.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. I was always under the impression that they were bigger inside and more comfortable than the Standard Cab. I can see now why the wide-bodies are so common. Safety being the main reason and that's reason enough!
Larry

[Anonymous]

SD75? I think NS had some SD70's but their last order was for SD70M's from EMD. I don't think EMD ever made a standard nosed SD75 series locomotive.

[eolafan]

Also, many of the wide nose or safety cab units have their cabs isolated from the rest of the body with rubber dampening gaskets, which result in a much quieter environment for the crew.