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[spikejones52002]

SD90MACs to go to scrap

Cut and Paste from Trains News letter

August 1, 2008 OMAHA, Neb. - Union Pacific Railroad is retiring 21 6,000 hp EMD SD90MAC locomotives. According to an industry source, common parts will be used to maintain UP's 710-engined SD9043MAC fleet.

The 265H engine in the SD90MACs will be either cut up or exported. The only totally non-reusable part is the frame.

The units, in the 8900 series, are being pulled from a dead line in Denver and sent in small batches to East St. Louis, Ill., for dismantling. The UP, which sometimes puts different model designations on its locomotives from what the manufacturer calls them, referred to these units as SD90ACs.

 

No Information as to Why U.P. would be scrapping such new engines.

[ndbprr]

Generally a newer engine gets scrapped because it is a piece of human excrement.  The SD90s were released as SD80s as I remember and upgraded by EMD after they figured out how to make one.  EMD pushed the envelope too far and had to do some catch up.  The last thing a railroad needs is undependable power at the head end.  They have probably reached their fifteen year depreciation life.

[Cheese]

Shame we can't go back to the day of simple SD7's or 9's, or even the SD-40's. LOL

Cheese

[ndbprr]

UP has a history of building these huge engines and dumping them.  The turbines, DD35, DD40, U50D, and an Alco I don't remember the number of.  Talk about repeating history!  My opinion is that this is just the tip ofthe iceberg on the really big engines.  They are totaly useless to a short line and there will be no secondary market. Once the depreciation is used up I think we will see them all scrapped unless somebody knows of a market that I don't.

[Anonymous]

unless somebody knows of a market that I don't.

China... Both EMD and GE have built 6000 Hp locomotives for China. Apperantly some of these had a similer design (i.e. not a full cowl) to the SD90MAC but weighed a lot less.

[trainboyH16-44]

Shame we can't go back to the day of simple SD7's or 9's, or even the SD-40's. LOL

Cheese

Someone needs to calculate how many SD7s it would take to pull a modern unit coal train without melting the TMs...

(Not it)

[crpulse]

UP has a history of building these huge engines and dumping them.  The turbines, DD35, DD40, U50D, and an Alco I don't remember the number of.  Talk about repeating history!  My opinion is that this is just the tip ofthe iceberg on the really big engines.  They are totaly useless to a short line and there will be no secondary market. Once the depreciation is used up I think we will see them all scrapped unless somebody knows of a market that I don't.

The Alco was the C-855.

[garyla]

That Alco C-855 model got dumped really fast.  The three were delivered in 1964, and were out of service before the end of 1970.  The next year, they were scrap metal.

UP didn't wait for the depreciation schedule to run out on those things!

[route_rock]

  well lets see about the SD-7s. Over flat territory? or better yet Ill just do this. 18,000 ton coal train with 8 sd-7s will get you .7 hpt. wont go fast but at least on a flat terrain it will move.Once you get em going no problem,but hit a slight grade and I smell copper melting.

[Texas Zepher]

I noticed they were being collected along with a bunch of older SW units, SD40-2s, and SP tunnel motors in the yard here in Denver.   I did notice that it looked like several of them at one time had fires in the engine compartment.   

I was in Omaha in 1987 when they set out and cut up all the DD35s.  I can't believe they didn't keep at least one of them.  I didn't realize what they were doing at the time or I would have tried to save one.

I hope they send one of these SD90s to the Cheyenne historical fleet.