Forums

[Anonymous]

Hello.
Why are railroads buying nothing but six axle locomotives? With railroads wanting more on line busines, and trying to preserve branch lines, four axle lomotives are the way go to! Many branch lines and industrial spurs could never handel the big over growen six axle locomotives.Locomotives can only get so big. The railroads are risking there on line busines by not getting more 4 axel locomotives. Besides, with all the traction control crap on the six axle ones, if one chip burns out the whole locomotive is worthless, unlike the old ones where they where "simple" to repair. We need to go back to those simple times and build locos with out all that computter crap.
Jay

[jsoderq]

Wow! Tell us how you really fel.

[ndbprr]

gee I guess all those engineers, electricians, purchasing agents and managers have no idea how wrong they are or what their needs are. Have you considered writing them?

[csxengineer98]

new 6 axle locomotives come with stearable trucks... insted of the stiff wheel base like say a sd40... alot of the new ones will be able to navigate on tracks that a 4 axle will and still have the tractive effort of a 6 axle...
csx engineer

[dehusman]

4 axle locomotives get a lot less mileage and so are more likely to be rebuilt and kept longer. Nobody is buying new ones because the old ones are still running.

And big railroad sell off their branchlines to short line operators so actually the big railroads have LESS of a need for 4 axle power.

Dave H.

[CSXrules4eva]

Jay1 I think your a little confused on the l six axle locomotives traction motors. Many railroads today purchase the AC traction six axle diesels. EMD and GE AC six axle locomotives are different. On EMD they uesually have one DC/AC inverter per truck. GE has one DC/AC inverter per axle. So, on EMD six axle if you lose one inverter you lose about 45 percent of the locomotive's power, you still have 55 percent from the other inverter w/ means you lost one traction motor since you lost one inverter. On GE six axles If you lose one inverter it's not a big deal. Your will still have two traction motors to work w/ here. I'm not sure how this works on DC traction since there is no inverter, sorry . :(

Another thing I do agree w/ ya that the computer control on the new locomotives is a pain in the butt to work with when it comes to troubleshooting anything on the locomotive. Even if something's wrong w/ the prime mover such as a faulty injector, you still have to go through computer diagnosis. It's very annoying. However, when it comes to operating the locomotive it's less to worry about, than if an engineer was operating an older one.

[Anonymous]

Ok but what about on line cunstomers. SP runs with 4 axle locos and they do the local road switch jobs with 4 axle locos because the trackadge cannt handle the 6 axle units. Its on there busy Chicago to Saint Paul main