Where is this?
RME- Have not forgotten you. I put the questions to my colleague and followed it up point form questions in an email. Simply awaiting a response. Hopefully he has something to say.
Very pleased to see such a robust exchange of ideas and thoughts about rebuilding a GG1 If the GG1 had continued in service the very things discussed would have undoubtedly been done or very close. As with UP's 844, Challenger and now Bog Boy, modern technology is being applied to ensure a safe and Federally compliant engine is attained Remember Big Boy sat idle for over 50+ years and it's still being rebuilt. Maybe some one should contact the UP steam engine shops in WY to get their take on ageing cast metals. After all Boy Boy weighs over a Million Pounds and that's a lot of energy rolling down the rails at 60+MPH. Challenger weights in right at a million pounds.
I'm writing this stuff down. Looks like Im going to have to take him out for lunch this week!
While you have him: ask if he thinks a modern cerium steel would be better than classical 'high dynamic' for lightweight Timken rods.
RME- Will do. His PhD is in Physics and he has specialized in Metallurgy for many years now, mostly with aluminum and tungsten studies with aircraft materials and also works on the Synchrotron in Saskatoon. He is also somewhat of a Railfan as his dad was an engineer (driver) in India. You never know what we may find out.
Share with me what you find, in detail. Particularly any improvements in alloy metallurgy (or casting technique) that would produce better castings in this particular service.
You might also see what he thinks about eliminating the pedestals and stress associated with them through the use of the canted chevron springs to the axleboxes...
Well heck. Thanks for the in depth informative answer. A fellow colleague I work with daily is a PhD Metallurgist. I will bring up this crystallization factor with him and get his take on the new process required.
There is nothing whatsoever either primitive or defective about the GG1 underframes; they were at least as complex a casting as what GSC was doing with cast engine beds at the time, and the fact that they represented the only locomotives that could achieve practical Metroliner speeds at one time should tell you all you need to know. It is worth considering how the design was made, and then the patterns and cores made, and how GSC cast them -- the difficulty today being that doing the job that way involves more metal than required, the suspension is still steam-era (excellent, mind you, but the only damping provided other than friction and gravity was 'snubbers' - which were nothing but coil springs wound to a different period from the main suspension springs, similar to what's done on modern three-piece freight trucks. Those were taken off the GG1 comparatively early in their lives, which I didn't understand when I thought they were still energy-absorbing devices...
The big problem with the cast frames for high speed was that they were very heavy for the job they actually had to do. In part this was rationalizable because all the buff and draft force went through the underframe, but there got to ba a major problem (as with steam locomotives) when Metroliner service provided only relatively short Amfleet consists (with those inside-frame disc-braked trucks) which were (obviously) not intended to help stop hundreds of tons of locomotive too. The fun came in when you look at how you apply braking effort to a GG1 traveling at high sustained speed -- the engine trucks don't do much good, and the quill axles ... have shrunk tires on them, like 57"-drivered steam locomotives. These had to provide a more-than-expected share of the brake force, which led to what we really should have seen coming...
For any practical rebuilding of GG1s for 120mph service, you'd need reliable braking from that speed using consists capable of running at that speed. All the Gibson rings or fancy clips in the world won't accomplish that for long enough. Hence reduction of mass in the design, and one place to do that was a redesign of the underframe that would not suffer crystallization as those castings did as they aged, with a bit more application of good design rather than generous factor of safety in the detail design at potential stress-raising areas.
I seldom stray from the Classic Trains and General Discussion Forum's or else I would be behind a 'puter all the day long and never take the garbage to the curb or anything else done, but in this case I will make an exception.
Very informative discussion here. You could conclude the Pennsy was quite primitive in this frame design without the aid of CAD/CAM, watercuts, hydrofoam or laser anything and yet they built an outstanding locomotive, let alone the frame itself.
!st Semester students in my class are taught real Drafting with T squares, triangles and pencils and inking pens, on drafting and light tables. I have always received a lot of flak and resistance for this as the powers that be continually cannot see this as part of the curriculum, instead wanting the students to go directly to AutoCAD and Vulcan or GemCom. However, its still my course dammit!
I find the students have a far better understanding of what they are doing at the computerized levels with a semester of getting it done by hand on paper and actually thinking. They appreciate the beauty of their work, as did the designers of the GG1 and its components.
daveklepperif you are going to recast the frame, using an existing frame as the mold for the mold, keep the mold around, so after 20, 30, 40 years, cast a new frame.
To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, 'you can't do that, Dave.'
Matching shrinkages to get a proper one-shot casting from molds made directly from an existing frame is an extremely difficult exercise, on top of the already-difficult matter of assuring proper gating, etc. for a quality pour of a casting that complex.
Perhaps the best approach today would be to make pointcloud measurements of the existing frame, translate these into CAD, and make the patterns, including the lost-foam patterns for the cores, directly with the correct shrinkage allowance. And then make sure someone keeps up with changes in the computer industry, CAD/CAM practice, etc. so that in 40 to 50 years the data will still be in usable shape to make more (or drive whatever cheaper and better processes are available by then).
The point of decrystallizing is that the existing frame represents a near-net-shape pattern already containing all the metal needed for a good casting, so a self-mold not taken fully to liquidus (but only to where the crystallization structures redissolve) and then properly and very slowly cooled will give you a proper underframe (needing little more than metalspraying to reach proper service dimensions) with good strength. Attempting to re-cast the underframes 'from scratch' is likely to be far more expensive, even if you have enthusiast-level donation of professional goods and services and you get good castings on the first pour.
Might be interesting, just for historical purposes, to make a set of fabricated underframes as proposed for the high-speed project. Nothing in those that a good shipbuilder couldn't watercut, hydroform, and laser-weld, and if you wanted a true high-speed GG1 that could operate at modern Corridor speeds you'd want it (even with just the chevron-spring approach)...
if you are going to recast the frame, using an existing frame as the mold for the mold, keep the mold around, so after 20, 30, 40 years, cast a new frame.
A new welded frame might be less expensive and more practical?
GG1 did not have a liquid reostat. No reostat for traction power. A multi-tap transformer instead. Remember an ac COMMUTATOR motor was used, the motor design being to make ac at low enough frequency behave like DC in the motor, well, close enough to dc to get torque and traction. So you just reduce power by reducing voltage to the motor, as is done with resistors for dc motors but more efficiently with multi-tap transformers with ac. And, yes, the New Haven power that ran into Grand Central Terminal did have essentially two separae control systems, grid resistors contolled by relays (and series connection of two motors to parallel, and possibly field shunting [weakening]for dc, and multitap transformers for ac. The rebuiled would use AEM-7-dc technology, using electronics to control dc voltage to the motors.
D.CarletonIt may even be cheaper to make new molds and pour new castings.
Much more likely that individual complex sections would be cast using lost-foam, then jigged and assembled using laser keyhole welding. That method eliminates both the difficulties involved in keeping all the molds and cores aligned and in making such a large pour and then controlling the various sections' cooldown correctly.
D.Carleton aegrotatio From what I have researched, all preserved examples have had both the transformers and the mercury rectifiers removed... What mercury rectifiers?
aegrotatio From what I have researched, all preserved examples have had both the transformers and the mercury rectifiers removed...
From what I have researched, all preserved examples have had both the transformers and the mercury rectifiers removed...
What mercury rectifiers?
My thoughts exactly. GG1's used AC series motors, which is why the PRR electrification ran n 25Hz. On the other hand, PCBs in the transformer...
D.CarletonI cannot speak for every steam locomotive but none of the ones I have ever worked with showed manifistations of the cracking seen on the Gs.
There's a bit of a difference: cast beds were generally designed with larger sections, less requirement for weight reduction, and of course were sited "between the drivers" (where the most longitudinal or oscillating stress loading occurred) in almost all cases. Where these kind of design principles could not be or were not applied (for example as in some Australian Garratts) alarming or expensive cast-bed cracking could be and was observed. There is no inherent unbreakable magic in a cast-steel underframe, whether or not GSC propaganda was effective...
The G cracking was in part a result of either the alloy or the treatment used in the detail casting, the "crystallization" leading to preferential stress raising. Had the art of finite-element analysis (or the use of computers in design) been available to GE or Baldwin at the time the GG1 underframes were designed, some of the stresses could have been better adjusted for, but the fundamental alloy change leading to the cracking was (at the time, anyway) the stated reason why rework of the existing underframes, or any extensive rebuilding of the GG1s into more modern power, was not undertaken even as a demonstration project.
Somewhere I have the drawings of the 'welded-frame' alternative, including chevron springs for the driving axles (in part to get rid of some of the pedestal loading issues) that was at one point in the mid-Seventies being considered for rebuilt high-speed GG1s. The tire problem killed that reason, it was thought that truck-borne power made better sense if true high speed weren't going to be required, and (in the event) toasters made much better sense for Amtrak service than a large quill-drive 4-6-6-4.
I'm pretty sure that a recast GG1 frame, put back into heavy service on uncertain PC trackwork, would start slowly recrystallizing. I have never thought this was a necessarily 'aging' process, so I don't think there is a likelihood that recast frames would have a time limit before needing another rework, and any excursion schedule that would continue to pay its expenses would not work the frame, or the restored G on it, anywhere near as often as what would have been seen in regular service.
MidlandMike Would frame crystallization be any worse than on a similar aged steam engine?
Would frame crystallization be any worse than on a similar aged steam engine?
Editor Emeritus, This Week at Amtrak
RME D.Carleton They can be removed, stripped to the casting, flipped over, heated back into form, gaps filed, cracks welded and, finally, heated for stress relief. One procedure that was being discussed in the mid-'70s involved stripping, cleaning and etching the underframes, then constructing an appropriate jig and enclosure to heat them for an extended period to redissolve the "crystallization" cracking, then slowly taking them down through normalization as appropriate for original casting. Then you'd do NDT and some residual metalstitching (keyhole welding, more likely, today) on cracks that did not correctly close. The point is the same, however: it's a money problem, and a significant one. And yes, you'd likely never break even. And yes, it should happen if there's any way to accomplish it*. *Including perhaps the sort of money-throwing efforts done with 1361, if the chance ever comes again -- but with better planning, scheduling, and knowledge about project management...
D.Carleton They can be removed, stripped to the casting, flipped over, heated back into form, gaps filed, cracks welded and, finally, heated for stress relief.
One procedure that was being discussed in the mid-'70s involved stripping, cleaning and etching the underframes, then constructing an appropriate jig and enclosure to heat them for an extended period to redissolve the "crystallization" cracking, then slowly taking them down through normalization as appropriate for original casting. Then you'd do NDT and some residual metalstitching (keyhole welding, more likely, today) on cracks that did not correctly close.
The point is the same, however: it's a money problem, and a significant one. And yes, you'd likely never break even. And yes, it should happen if there's any way to accomplish it*.
*Including perhaps the sort of money-throwing efforts done with 1361, if the chance ever comes again -- but with better planning, scheduling, and knowledge about project management...
D.CarletonThey can be removed, stripped to the casting, flipped over, heated back into form, gaps filed, cracks welded and, finally, heated for stress relief.
That said, after all this time the transformers would have to be replaced regardless of the cooling medium used. It is usually transformer breakdown or failure that sidelines an ageing electric.
The big obsticle to returning a G to life is the truck frames. They can be removed, stripped to the casting, flipped over, heated back into form, gaps filed, cracks welded and, finally, heated for stress relief. It is not a technological problem; it is a money problem. How many fantrips will you need to run to recoup the cost? One could never break even on a venture like this. It would take a fan or group of fans with deep pockets to make it happen. Should it happen? Well, duh.
aegrotatioFrom what I have researched, all preserved examples have had both the transformers and the mercury rectifiers removed and replaced with concrete ballast of the same weight. These engines will never run again under their own power.
I have to wonder whether the technical knowledge of some of these posters concerning what has been done to preserved GG1s, or what supposedly makes it likely a GG1 will 'never run again,' is trustworthy. If you provide me with the blueprints of the mercury rectifiers used on the GG1, I will personally make the replacement components for you in a very short time, at small cost to whoever will be doing the restoration.
One point being made is a good one, but counter to what the poster seems to want to establish: to my knowledge, all the PCB-containing transformers have indeed been removed from preserved GG1s (with associated structural damage and crude re-ballasting attempts). However, it should be noted that this involves less, rather than more, actual restoration work (if we assume, as most do, that there would be no way to remediate the PCB problem during the restoration, or 'grandfather' the use of PCBs through a proper safeguarding program if the transformers remained intact (but drained or passivated).
As Dave Klepper has repeatedly noted, there is no particular reason why an 'external restoration' of an operable GG1 needs to replicate the precise multitap main transformer architecture that PRR used, let alone the 1930s construction of the main transformers themselves. However, when I looked into this a few years ago, I found a number of academic and commercial sources that could design (and if necessary provide) an electrical replacement with the appropriate windings and taps to make the locomotive operable, either at full or reduced power. Since that time, both the cost and expertise needed to produce technology for transversion of high-voltage power-frequency AC to feed GE twin motors at high speed have gone down. If there were suitable interest in financing a 'return to operation' of a GG1, it wouldn't be a particularly difficult exercise.
The brake arrangement on a GG1, as on many other locomotives with large cast underframes (the Centipede being a notorious example) is complicated, and even a moment's reflection will tell you that a one-time move for a special event is better conducted (and done much, much less expensively or riskily) by isolating the locomotive brake and using external cars with modern brakes for the move. The GG1 was notable for being underbraked relative to its mass for high-speed service, notably with Amfleet consists (ask me why the 120mph Metroliner program was terminated "early"!) and it isn't surprising that additional service-brake capacity would have to be provided, even with the locomotive brake adapted for automatic operation and cut in and working. Also not surprising is that in the NEC you would want to do the move with a minimum number of cars and consist length (instead of, say, the rake of empty intermodal cars used for ATSF 3751) and that those cars would be ballasted enough to provide braking integrity for the heavy locomotive between them without substantial risk of wheelslide.
The real issue with restoring a GG1 to operation is -- here -- what you would do with the thing that justifies hot-rodding it. As noted elsewhere on these Forums, you can adapt one to run on preserved trackage at IRM with a relatively simple DC kludge, but most of the usual 'venues' that would run electrified equipment are woefully ill-suited to something this size, power, and speed. So you're looking at excursions on suitable ex-PRR or New Haven (or perhaps Reading) trackage, with permission from the Government agencies and appropriate insurance protection for the potential business-interruption risk they face, even before you start doing budgets for the fix. If you thought Lion Gardiner turned into a rust bucket with astonishing speed, you have not watched how GG1s started to dissolve even while still nominally in service (this gave me much more respect for the Wilmington shop people than I should have had in the last years of the freight electrification!) and so any restoration would also involve considerable structural upkeep. Granted, this is one of the most famous locomotives in the world, but it has a limited space to run and I suspect a relatively quick 'burnout' for the number of seats you could sell on cost-effective excursions per year. Even if you built the thing into a 'slug' powered from some APU in a disguised adjacent car, or set it up with a modified push-pull control desk, you still have a very heavy locomotive out at the end of a lightweight consist, with plenty of body work, frame crystallization amelioration, and ongoing care required just to keep it rollable on public display. That is the real reason I think we're unlikely to see a GG1 return to operation. And I thoroughly hope I am wrong... whether it's a full restoration, a hot-rodding job, or just a theatrical prop set-up.
Buslist Because of PCBs in the transformers on a G motor, it is doubtful one will ever run again without a total gutting and transformer replacement.
Because of PCBs in the transformers on a G motor, it is doubtful one will ever run again without a total gutting and transformer replacement.
From what I have researched, all preserved examples have had both the transformers and the mercury rectifiers removed and replaced with concrete ballast of the same weight. These engines will never run again under their own power.
At least one GG1 sent to the National Train Day event in Washington DC in recent years had gondolas loaded with stone fore and aft of the GG1 acting as brake cars because the brakes were not functional on it. I don't know if they ran auxiliary brake lines to connect the two gondolas or if they used the ancient lines in the GG1 but this thing hadn't gone anywhere by itself in decades.
*EDIT:* PRR 4935 would be a notable exception since it was given special attention by Amtrak and rail fans. Does anyone know if 4935 was visiting National Train Day with those other GG1s a few years ago?
A facts and corections, and a repeat of an idea that I presented some time ago. First, do any of the GG-1's that have been preserved have frames without any sign of cracking. If so, a restored and practical GG-1 is possible. Much of the catenary, nearly all south of Harold Tower and Sunnyside in New York City, is still 25 Hz, and the raised voltage from 11,000 to 12,500 volts should not be a problem if old cotton insulation is replaced with modern plastic, which should be done in anycase. But eventually, the entire NEC will be 60Hz, and a completely restored GG-1 just won't work. So, what to do? The transformers have to be replaced anyway, because the old ones used a toxic cooling flued that won't pass modern environmental rules. The saving point, though, is that AC-commutator motors work fine on dc, without any modification. (Not induction or any type of synchronous motor, just commutator motors.) My solution was to save all the elecdtricals of three DC AEM-7s, transformers, rectifiers, electronics, etc, and adapting all this to the twelve motors that power a GG-1(two-per-axle). Whether the multi-notch GG-1 controller could be retained might be a problem, and possibly a new power control stand would have to be designed and built. But the result should be a powerful and useful locomotive that can run on any existing or futre NEC power for occasional excursion service and not give any exterior visual evidence of internal changes. Sort of what could have been done if Amtrak or NJT really wanted to keep GG-1s in service.
Cost? milllions of course.
I presume that you are talking about the L-6 shells that sat at Altoona for years before being cut up. I agree, the story behind that situation is most interesting.
CSSHEGEWISCH The wiki actually has it right, the squareheads were Alco-Westinghouse, although that was not the norm.
The wiki actually has it right, the squareheads were Alco-Westinghouse, although that was not the norm.
Learn something new every day... (h/t to NDG as well)
Won't get started on the Lima built electric locomotive shells that never got the electrical gear installed.
Here are all the relevant factors:To make a vintage GG1 run again (as opposed to building a replica), you would need:1) a boatload of money and an available GG1;2) a railroad upon which to operate (your own or someone else's); and3) a way to fix the frame cracks (and any other issues, such as Positive Train Control or the like) to the satisfaction of the host railroad.Gutting a GG1 and replacing the "guts" with more modern guts is an option, but not a cheap one. In dollars, six figures easily, more likely seven figures. People who know more than I do about this say that the capacity to cast and anneal a frame of this size simply doesn't exist anymore in the United States, so a fabricated frame of this size is going to be another high-six/low-seven figures. And if we go this far, heck, just build the rest from scratch as well.And what would you have at the end? The moral equivalent of one of those fiberglass-body "kit cars" built on a modern car frame with a modern engine, not an actual antique car.Now, where are you going to run this creation? Virtually all the former trackage that GG1s operated on is controlled by Amtrak, with maybe a few miles of SEPTA and NJ Transit also qualifying. Amtrak IS NOT going to permit an old-frame GG1 to operate over its lines. Period. They have rejected the proposed haulage of a dead GG1 over their tracks. The ONLY reason GG1 4935 was allowed to move from Lancaster County to Washington Union Terminal and back for display for WUT's centennial celebration was because the officials that approve and reject such special movements were directly overruled by Amtrak's president and VPs with a "we won't ask you for another hundred years!" excuse.The only rail museum that currently has the infrastructure to operate a GG1 and has one is the Illinois Railway Museum, and their overhead is 600V DC, not 11KV AC. One could rejigger the inside of a GG1 to operate on 600V DC, but for what? All that money and work just to see what would sound like a battery hybrid putter up and down the track, with probably half the lights in the Union, Ill. area dimming as it accelerates from a stop?So: Not impossible, but HIGHLY improbable.
I checked H. Reid's classic book on the Virginian. It doesn't say why Alco built the running gear on the EL-1A and EL-3A electrics (instead of Baldwin) but Reid's prose suggests that Virginian did its own design work with Westinghouse's help on the entire electrification project. All of the steam VGN got in the 1920s came from Alco-Richmond (except a 2-8-8-0 rebuilt from the front and a 2-8-2 rebuilt from the, um, "Aft" end of VGN's Triplex...). The Squareheads' carbodies and running gear came from Alco-Schenectady.
I think there's a typo in the wikimedia label, IIRC the Virginian locomotives were Baldwin Westinghouse - Alco would normally partner with GE, not Westinghouse.
The following may apply. From eBay.http://i157.photobucket.com/albums/t62/NDGee/Alco%20Westinghouse%20Dec%201925%20VGN%20EL1%2065818_zpsk9peztqz.jpgThank You.
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