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Why so few SD.80 MACS?
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Peter: It'll amuse you that I spend my evenings reading naval design philosophy, treatises on skegs and STS armor and stuff like that. <br /> <br />It's key that railroads with the money to do it (UP and BNSF) have worked so hard to standardize their fleets on just two types. I'll preview the February issue here -- we discuss this at length, and EMD's marketing effort with the SD70ACe to trim two types to one type. (Apparently the U.S. Navy has gone the same way with the Arleigh Burke class.) The key to this is getting the A.C. price down a long way; otherwise, you'll never dig out of the cost hole compared to D.C. EMD won't quote prices, but I am under the impression they have done just this. We'll know the answer in a few years by the sales results. <br /> <br />Multiple types were murder at Kansas City Southern -- we only had 50 AC's with DPU, and keeping them on the coal and grain trains, and in the mountains, created much agony and led to tremendous inefficiency in such things as crew costs. <br /> <br />An ancedote on running diesels at low speeds for long times. When the Alaska Railroad converted to HEP, they had Paducah build them a deluxe power car in a E9B with two big, powerful, Cummins generator sets. Only one was needed; the other was backup. <br /> <br />Well! A real backup engine is an engine idling at operating temperature, hooked to a transfer switch to pick up the load immediately, right? Turns out that the normal vibration of running down the track destroys the main bearings on the idling engine. So they turned it off. Turns out the vibration of running down the track destroys the main bearings on a dead engine, too! So out came the second gen set, and into the back of an F7B, where it could do something. <br /> <br />I'll ask some mechanical people I know if they have any operational profiles they can share. I could be proven wrong, but I think all I will find is the results of a few tests. I think there's too many variables involved here to construct tests that provide meaningful prognosticative value. Having done my time in the operating department at Kansas City Southern, I think everyone is doing this empirically. You do a few tests, project this onto the fleet, and see what happens. Then you adjust your numbers. The problem is you never know exactly why it happens the way it happens. <br /> <br />I've seen no fuel figures on JetTrain. I think I'll ask for some tomorrow. <br />
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