I just returned from a mill trip in Washington, Idaho and British Columbia. While there I saw something that I’d never seen before- cables B-unit locomotives. In my mind, I pictured a B-unit to be something added onto a heavy coal train or such. Are the B-units used there because of the rugged terrain? The grades and curves on the lines there looked pretty challenging.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
It's pretty common for just about any train out there to have 2 or more engines, not only in the mountains.
In a multi-unit consist, the entire set is controlled from the lead locomotive's cab. The cabs of the trailing units therefore are unused.
A "B" unit is simply a locomotive without a cab, since a cab isn't really needed on trailing units. However the lack of a cab making it possible to only be used as a trailing unit obviously reduces the flexibility of that locomotive, where as a normal locomotive with full cab can be used in any position.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
In the world of today's GP type engines - B-Units are just units that the buying carrier thought they could save money by not having the locomotives equipped with a full operating cab. Only equipping the units with 'hostler' controls to permit the unit to be moved around shop areas; otherwise the units would be used with locomotives that had operating cabs under MU control.
I have no idea how much was saved in buying B-units vs. the full cab A-units. From the appearance of recent locomotive orders - it would appear that the carriers that bough B-units have decided that their lack of utility works against the overall locomotive utilization of the carrier.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
When the Santa Fe ordered their B-40-8W units in the 90's according to several people I have talked to they had ordered 8 B-40-8B units also. However the cost of them was higher than the next 23 wide cab B-40-8's they ended up getting instead. So the idea was stopped. The GP60B units were built for less than the M series or wide cabs and about what the standard cabs cost. However they determined that having a cab on all the units was worth the money when a couple of the engines hooked up in a ABBA arrangement with the cabs facing the oppisite way had a failure in the lead unit. It helps we live close to a retired engineer of the old Santa Fe and he remembers those units when new.
There have been enough examples posted by various persons where engineer had to go to another unit to run train and conductor needed to stay in failed front unit to blow horn !~ Now with the use of PTC ? ? ?
Was that near Spokane? The Chewelah Turn often runs with GP60Bs.
They were built for Santa Fe high speed intermodals, but serve as middle units on locals now.
NorthWest Was that near Spokane? The Chewelah Turn often runs with GP60Bs. They were built for Santa Fe high speed intermodals, but serve as middle units on locals now.
https://railpictures.net/showphotos.php?train_id=BNSF%20Chewelah%20Turn
I suspect, but cannot confirm that 6-axle units are not permitted on this line, and it has steep grades, very heavy trains or a combination of both. Otherwise BNSF would just use bigger power to save on fuel.
Up in the wilds of northern Alberta, CN's Manning Subdivision regularly sees 4 to 6 unit consists of GP40-2W's for the same reasons.
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-an Articulate Malcontent
Oh, hey, you didn't say blocks of four straight GP-60Bs in your post. That's what's there. In 2019!
I'm still nostalgic about having seen what I think was the last set of matched-up EL A-B-B-A F units operating, in the Port Jervis area in the early 1970s. This beats that!
Yeah, that's the Chewelah Turn. I need to go chase that again.
On the West side, we get GP60Bs too, but never more than one or two on a train.
They're regulars on the Annie and Sumas turns.
BNSF from Napa Street (Spokane) to Chewelah is a rollercoaster of grades reaching 1 percent combined with dozens upon dozens of reverse curves as tight as 10 degrees.
Overmod Oh, hey, you didn't say blocks of four straight GP-60Bs in your post. That's what's there. In 2019! I'm still nostalgic about having seen what I think was the last set of matched-up EL A-B-B-A F units operating, in the Port Jervis area in the early 1970s. This beats that!
Bruce Kelly BNSF from Napa Street (Spokane) to Chewelah is a rollercoaster of grades reaching 1 percent combined with dozens upon dozens of reverse curves as tight as 10 degrees.
I'll second Overmod in that an A-B-B-A lash-up is the way cab units are supposed to look!
That being said, it's obvious that the "B" unit was an idea that was good in theory, but didn't work out in practice, especially after the road-switcher concept caught on.
Flintlock76That being said, it's obvious that the "B" unit was an idea that was good in theory, but didn't work out in practice, especially after the road-switcher concept caught on.
But a GP60B is a road-switcher in configuration. So is a GP9B, if you want to get picky about when a road-switcher gets above 2300hp...
The B unit was excellent in theory in the years when a 'locomotive' ... for union contract and pay purposes ... was made up of individual diesel-electric 'units' driven from one cab. If there are quibbles about the 'bidirectional' cab on an A-B-B-A 'locomotive', remove all doubt (as ATSF famously did) by using nothing but trailing B-units.
And with nothing but hostling controls in those B-units, there's space for other things and, in the days a set of E7s cost north of $625K in gold dollars, a considerable saving of relays, valves, and so forth. Of course, almost as soon as the unions came to accept MUed power as one locomotive for pay purposes, having bidirectional cabs and, later, the flexibility to run any locomotive as lead outweighed the nominal savings of avoiding cabs, even in some cases of 'transfer power' where multiple-unit consists worked consistently as a set.
At the time of the GP60s, the cost of instrumentation and controls was rising again, and horsepower was limited to what a four-axle "high-speed" chassis could support, so it made transient sense to build some of the 'building blocks' of something that could pull a set of loaded Fuel Foilers or whatever relatively cheaply. Of course when actual building time came, the 'big savings' from leaving the cabs off turned out to be effectively in Clara Peller's domain for the most part.
I am tempted to note that a relatively effective proof of the GP60B's success is that four-unit sets of them sandwiched between 'normal' GP60s are happily running today, in service that could easily be accommodated (as I think it is in Canada) with nothing but cabbed units...
No doubt the GP60B is a road-switcher, but without a cab the end user is losing versatility, which is why B-units are the exception nowadays, and not the rule.
Certainly the GP60B's are getting the job done for those using them, but as the saying goes, "One swallow does not a summer make."
There were 23 GP60Bs built for AT&SF high-speed Intermodal service in "Super Fleet" Red/Silver colors. Now they have been downgraded to local service. Twenty-two survive all in BNSF colors. One was rebuilt with a cab, but BNSF decided that was too expensive, so no more received cabs. Many are in local service in the Pacific Northwest.
Overmod At the time of the GP60s, the cost of instrumentation and controls was rising again, and horsepower was limited to what a four-axle "high-speed" chassis could support, so it made transient sense to build some of the 'building blocks' of something that could pull a set of loaded Fuel Foilers or whatever relatively cheaply.
At the time of the GP60s, the cost of instrumentation and controls was rising again, and horsepower was limited to what a four-axle "high-speed" chassis could support, so it made transient sense to build some of the 'building blocks' of something that could pull a set of loaded Fuel Foilers or whatever relatively cheaply.
Were their some accounts that when the "wide cab" or "safety cab" was introduced on the 4-axle GP60s, they were "nose heavy" and they rode badly at the speeds of the intermodal trains they were supposed to pull?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul MilenkovicWere there some accounts that when the "wide cab" or "safety cab" was introduced on the 4-axle GP60s, they were "nose heavy" and they rode badly at the speeds of the intermodal trains they were supposed to pull?
I thought so, and there have been a couple of threads here where people ostensibly 'in the know' were relating some of the physical effects involved in the bad riding. A couple of handles were DPman and tleary01; I would welcome any contribution from them regarding truck construction or riding (whether or not related to GP60s!)
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