I buy every annual Locomotive issue.
The listing of new deliveries is an excellent resource. Many of the other articles are useful, although technical detail is sometimes lacking.
The drawing on page 26, "Global Power Plays" is interesting, with a ten year export tabulation, but the map of the world accompanying it leaves a bit to be desired.
Europe is shown as All-EMD, which is to some extent historically true. However, since the listing shows that The United Kingdom received about 1/3 GEs of the total locomotives, perhaps it could have been green rather than orange. But why was Finland shown as green, with no locomotives listed as delivered?
China is shown as all GE. Certainly, China has used GEs (C36-7s) before and bought a number of passenger locomotives that looked like six axle P42s.
The order for 300 ES58ACi used the 16 cylinder GEVO not seen much elsewhere. However, there was a matching order for 300 EMD JT56C locomotives, double ended box cabs, that was also completed. Inclusion of that order should turn the map of China to green from blue...
The GEs seem to have been more successful than the EMDs, which used the 16-265H engine. Information is hard to come by, but details from UGL, GE's Australian Licensee, who designed the trucks for the ES59ACi, suggest that enough trucks have been built in China for 450 ES59ACi units. The JT56C, as expected was not as well liked, but there are reports of at least 350 units operating. CRRC are offering to build the 265H engine, and a couple of Chinese Coast Guard veseels were built with two 12-265H engines each.
There is a bit of a problem with Indonesia. The big island of Kalimantan is shown as green (although I don't think there are any railroads in Indonesian territory. Whe whole islad is shown as green, although the north west coast is a separate country. The rest of Indonesia, Sumatra, Java, and Irian Jaya are uncoloured, perhaps not recognised as the same country. Most of the locomotives will be used on Java.
The drawing of the ET44AC is interesting. I found the intercooler layout most useful, as I had incorectly assumed that the air to air intercooling had been replaced by air to water, owing to the very different layout of the cooling cores, which look like and are aligned with the radiators.
I was surprised that the inverters weren't even mentioned. We know where they are in the box behind the cab on the left side, but all that appears on the drawing are the shadows of the batteries on the other (right) side. I'm not expecting a detailed circuit diagram, or even a device count telling me how many are used in series and in parallel. But coloured boxes labelled "inverters" would be good.
I assume GE requested the "blackout" of details on the free end of the engine, where hood doors and the roof cover details that would have appeared in earlier years. It isn't hard to find one of the two turbochargers, just under the stack.
I assume that the exhaust gas recycling and cooling is regarded as intellectual property to be withheld from prying eyes. However, I don't imagine that the layout is very different from that on the equivalent marine engine and GE have published a very clear colour photo of that end of the marine engine on their brochure. Maybe if I check back, that might have gone now, but it eas quite informative as to air (and cooling water) flows.
Otherwise, the magazine is as useful as ever.
Peter
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.