Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="f14aplusfl"][quote user="NS 2557"] [quote user="enr2099"]IIRC the Canadian roads, CN and CP had the headlights mounted on the nose to lessen the glare  of falling snow(or rain on the wet coast). The CN 8000's only have the headlights between the numberboards because they were tacked on to an NS order so CN could get them cheap.[/quote] enr what do you mean by they were tacked onto the NS order did NS pay for these locomotives or do they have similar features in comparison to the NS 70-2's  [/quote]Economy of scale. The most ocommon example, which applies here, is purchasing. The bulk buying of materials through long-term contracts. Locomotive manufacturers can order the materials they need at a lower cost cause the material provider can offer a lower bid and therefore the manufacturer can either keep the cost savings as profit or offer a lower cost to the railroad. Also keep in mind, the manufacturer may have offerred the locomotives at a discount price. The aviation industry, Boeing and Airbus do it all the time and I imagine that EMD and GE Transportation Systems does the same (well GE Avaition definately does, but that's another story [:)]). And often, the larger the order, the bigger the discount.NS probably paid for them and CN either paid there share to CN or to NS (and NS paid EMD). This means like you said, most likely CN and NS SD70M-2s has similar features with the exception of the paint scheme.[/quote]Don't forget tooling/engineering. More locomotives with the same tooling drives down developement costs. The materials are important but I think the tooling and engineering that goes into the parts is what drives the cost up because man hours are expensive. If you change the design, some one has to work out the issues, build the stamping/pressing or similar equipt, and then the changes must me installed differently.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag