YoHo1975 Also, I'd argue that the new regulations aren't harming railroad suppliers at all. I mean come on, that doesn't even make a lick of sense. This is a thread after all about a new engine supplier getting into the market. EMD and GE are perfectly happy to have a good excuse to increase their sales and all the new upstarts prove this. MAYBE the railroads are hurting from this. MAYBE, but of course the railroads are made up of people, both employees and stockholders who have an interest in air quality independent of the railroad.
Also, I'd argue that the new regulations aren't harming railroad suppliers at all. I mean come on, that doesn't even make a lick of sense. This is a thread after all about a new engine supplier getting into the market.
EMD and GE are perfectly happy to have a good excuse to increase their sales and all the new upstarts prove this.
MAYBE the railroads are hurting from this. MAYBE, but of course the railroads are made up of people, both employees and stockholders who have an interest in air quality independent of the railroad.
Are we all to play a part in maintaining clean air? Of course. But we live in a nation that runs somewhere between 200-250 million internal combustion engines. Of that around 20,000 are locomotives. Railroads are one of the few bright spots in the national commercial scene. This is no time to stymie their progress due to an imperious interest of political hubris.
Railroads converted from steam to diesel, not out of political mandate, but rather out of a quest for efficiency. The free market was allowed to dictate terms and as a result a cleaner more efficient form of rail transportation was realized. Political mandates breed inefficiency and unless cooler heads prevail then that is what we will be facing in the years to come.
Editor Emeritus, This Week at Amtrak
Which little guys are you talking about?
Wabtec? They aren't little?
Most EMD after market support is provided by EMD and by GE. In fact GE owns the designs for the 645F block.
There are non-EMD retrofit kits for Marine and Loco 645s out there. you don't need to buy the EMD 1033 kit. The EM2000 computer isn't the only one being installed.
As for short lines, Last I checked, State and local governments have been doing their part to offset the cost of new locos. Look at lines like PHL or MET or Cal northern. They replaced almost all if not all their fleet. And how many of those regionals and bigger shortlines are parts of conglomerates. Do you think Watco, Rail AMerica or Genessee and Wyoming are incapable of the capital outlay?
And even given all that, they don't absolutely need to buy new locomotives. They can rebuild their 645 engines with the 1033 part for relatively low price and get years more service. EMd will gladly install ECOs which are less than the cost of a new loco as are all these gensets and small time builders.
Plus the Cummins motor with the 2/1 reduction gear will cost you less than a new Motor and also the Cummins motor will use Antifreeze so you can stop the Engine in teh winter with NO problems in the winter. Also the Cummins Motor is Smaller than a V16 645 motor and can use their Radiators so that is a huge plus and Fuel savings. Now think about this the V16 they have announced will be a Tier 4 engine 2 Years ahead of the EPA demands it. GE and EMD just NOW are getting Tier 3 into Production and no have to keep those going and come out with Tier 4 in less that 3 years. Cummins has been building the OTR equilivilent of Tie3r 4 now for 2 years and tested it for 3 years BEFORE they released it. They will have 8 Years of R&D that is REAL World usage with over 20-40K units in SERVICE. So they know what works and what is NOT GOING TO WORK.
It took me a while to figure out why the Cummins QSK95 produced about the same HP as, I quote "already gigantic package (engine)".
The answer is that mechanical HP = 2 Pi X Torque X RPM / 33,000. 33,000 was an empircal formula devised by James Watt in that an average horse could pull 330 lbs, a distance of 100 feet in 1 minute. This involved an average horse, a 330 lb weight, rope, pulley and a 100 foot deep well!
So by transposing this formula Torque = HP X 33,000 / 2 Pi X RPM. Using the Cummins 4,000 HP, at 1,800 RPM and (for simplicity) the 4,000 HP at 900 RPM of a EMD 710, the 710 produces twice the torque than the Cummins engine to produce the same HP Or to put it another way, if the 710 could also run at 1,800 RPM, it would develop 8,000 HP,
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