Hi all-I have two questions concerning diesels.
1.Why did some railroads opt for high hoods?I would think that this would cut down on visibility.
2.I have read articles on diesels that stated that they were setup to run long hood foward.Again wouldn't this affect visibility having the engineer so far back?
Thanks for any help-Bob
To answer your second question, Bob, take a look at steam engines -- the cab was all the way "behind the hood". When railroads went to hood locomotives, the thinking went the same way. (If it ain't broke...) Of course, the operational requirements of steam engines -- primarily coal-fired ones, but oil as well -- necessitated that the cab be in the back, so that the fireman could shovel coal into the firebox.
As for the high short hood, it made sense for those railroads that still ran LHF -- you wouldn't want to encourage crews to run your engines "the wrong way" by putting a low short hood on the "back". At least Norfolk & Western acknowledged the true dual-directional nature of diesels in the 1970s by installing bi-directional control stands. Southern, meanwhile, stuck to the high short hood until the NS merger, and NS stuck to LHF running until the 1990s!
One additional reason for a high short hood was that it was EMD's preferred location for steam generator (i.e. passenger) equipment on otherwise-freight locomotives...!
High hoods were viewed as having more significant collision protection that short hood locomotives. The high hoods tended to make visiblity an issue, but a very few lines stuck with high short hoods long after everyone else accepted the lowm short hood as stadard.
Second, most railroads rapidly changed their preferences to short hood front as the standard configuration, especially after low short hoods became the norm. A diesel locomotive operates just as well in forward as in reverse, so the preference in ordering was in many cases, a reflection of the railroad's preference for high short hoods also. While many early roadswitcher orders specified that the long hood should be the front, builders tended guide buyers over to their way of thinking, and in the end, the short hood became the front on most orders.
At first GP's and SD's were only offered with a high short hood, so it wasn't as big a deal if the railroad chose to set it up 'long hood forward' like the GN and NYC did. Plus the early switchers and road switchers (NW-2's, RS-1's) were long hood forward in design, although a few railroads like NP did buy RS-3's that ran short-hood forward.
Once second generation diesels (like the GP-30) came along with low short hoods as 'standard', many railroads bought them and in some cases began chopping the hoods of their high nose diesels. The DMIR had many high nose SD-9 and SD-18's, I believe the last one to have a high short hood finally got 'chopped' in the 1990's.
fuzzybroken wrote: One additional reason for a high short hood was that it was EMD's preferred location for steam generator (i.e. passenger) equipment on otherwise-freight locomotives...!
Not only that, where else could the toilet be located?
The long hood forward, as well as the high short hood, did greatly reduce visibility. However, back then, there were always two engine service employees in the cab, and the person running the train could usually rely on the skilled eyes of the other engineman to see and report conditions on the blind side.
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