Hi all I have been reading a book called "46 Portrait of a Classic" which is about the NSWGR 46 class electric Locomotives which were built by Metropolitan Vickers in England but were purchased through a holding company called Australian General Electric was 50/50 owned by US General Electric and Associated Electrical Industres of the UK. As to the loco's themselves, electrially they were based upon the BR EM-2 design used on the woodhead line but used the articulated bogie arrangement used by the Little Joes minus the leading/trailing truck. And now this is where things get even trickier is that Metropolitan Vickers was a licencee of US Westinghouse so it begs the question what traction motor designs were developed in house by M-V and what were built under licence from US Westinghouse.Did the Little Joes used by MILW and CSSB have 4 modes i.e Series, Parallel, Series-Parallel, Weak Field and Regen or were they much more simple machines than that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_nwwFauHT0http://www.sets.org.au/docs/pdf/46oper57.pdf
The Joe's used GE-750 traction motors, which are larger than the 752 motors used on most GE diesels and newer electrics. IIRC, the Joe's used 48 to 50 inch driving wheels. The motors were rated for a continuos current draw of 375 amps at 1500V. In late 1969, GE offered to build C-C electrics with updated 750 motors that were good for 480 amps continuous.
Controller sequence was all 8 motors in series, 2 parallel sets of 4 motors in series and 4 parallel sets of 2 motors in series. Field shunting was available in all three motor combinations. Regenerative braking was available in all three motor combinations as well.
Don't recall seeing who made the cast truck frames, a semi-educated guess (perhaps semi-ignorant???) would be General Steel Castings.
- Erik
MMM quite similar to the 46 class bar "4 parallel sets of 2 motors in series" where in the 46 it was Series-Parallel of 2x3 and 6 in full parallel So if I am correct here the Joes like the 46 might have had the unintended feature where they could effectively "motor and regen" which effectively acts as a cruise control where the excitation reacts to the prevailing conditions. I would say that the bogies on the Little Joe like the NSWGR 46 class and the Baldwin-Westinghouse units for the Netherlands were made by GSC in the US. As to the performance of the MV-272 they look to be quite similar to the GE-750
The 46 class were based on the earlier EM-1 locomotives which also had inter bogie coupling, as did many Metropolitan Vickers designs including some built for Japan where the inter-bogie coupling was reproduced for many years on Japanese built locomotives.
Technically, the company name changed from "Australian General Electric" to "Australian Electrical Industries" in 1955 (there is a two page announcement in the New South Wales Government Railways Centenary book released in September 1955).
The EM-2 had a quite different bogie design based on that of the two English Electric diesel electric locomotives 10 000 and 10 001. This was based on concern about the poor ride and tracking of the EM-1 with its inter-bogie coupling at passenger train speeds. EM-1 were still used on passenger trains, but only slower services, since there were 57 EM-1s and only six EM-2s.
The design of the 46 class was to some extent based on the 45 class prototype built largely by Commonwealth Engineering to Government Railway designs. This locomotive still exists although it is harder to examine since it was moved from Thirlmere to Broadmeadow. This used three sets of electric suburban car power equipment driving somewhat more powerful motors that were made at AGE in Auburn. At one stage, the reverser on one set of equipment was manually reversed and the two centre axles tried to go the opposite way to the other four. The locomotive was described as "sluggish" in this condition. Fortunately, one wet morning somebody noticed the sparks from the slipping wheels going in opposite directions and the problem was fixed.
The UK built locomotives were built by a joint company Metropolitan Vickers - Beyer Peacock jointly owned by the two companies in the name.
The bogie frames were GSC steel castings, but these were cast in England by the GSC licencee, English Steel Company. The engine bed castings for the 60 class Beyer-Garratts built around the same time were, however, cast by GSC in Granite City since they were larger and more complex.
Australian Electrical Industries built many traction motors for licence built Alco locomotives in Australia, the AEI 253 being equivalent to the GE 761 and the AEI 165 being equivalent to the GE 752.
Peter
I had always assumed the bogies were cast in the USA going by the GSC logo on the side.
gregrudd I had always assumed the bogies were cast in the USA going by the GSC logo on the side.
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