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As you may be able to tell, I like EMD's also, and I have to agree with the comment about the 50's, EMD pushed the 645 engine too hard, but the control system (super series in particular) was a tremendous leap in performance that GE still can't match on a DC engine. I have no experience with the 75's but did hear they had a lot of problems initially. The 90's (the true 6000 horse ones) did have some problems initially, mainly software, and they are currently restricted to 60mph due to ride issues, however they are currently doing quite nicely on the UP in manifest, manifest DPU on the west coast, and grain service. As a comparison, I haven't seen an AC6000 from GE, running, without a million faults in the computer for a long time, and they had as many or more problems as the EMD's when they came out and still have a ton of problems. Also, I don't know who slapped that 60mph speed limit on the 90's, but they obviously haven't ridden ANY wide body GE over 50-60mph when the whole darn unit starts hunting side to side, they almost all do this and it's definately not fun! I'd rather bounce than go side to side. I read something about the Santa Fe having this same problem with the GE's, perhaps they made a modification to take care of this, but almost all UP GE's do this at speed. I think it's the truck design, the wide bodies with the older style truck generally don't do this, but you'll notice the newer full adhesion trucks all have 2 shocks on one side and none on the other, and the opposite on the other end. Can you imagine riding an auto with shocks on only one side? I can't believe GE was silly enough to design these trucks this way. Also, on the issue of availability, seen the stats on UP's fleet of 70M's? They are setting records, and most of these units are assigned to very high mileage intermodal trains, and how about BNSF's love affair with 70MAC's for coal trains? UP doesn't care whether they have an EMD 9043MAC or a GE4400 as long as it is an AC on coal trains. Also, how about SP when they ordered all those GE AC's a few years before the merger, jeese, those things were junk for a long time until GE finally got all the bugs out. I think they ran about 40% availability for at least a year before all the kinks were worked out. I had one once that was only a month old, it would only put out 2500 hp and smoked like a steam engine. So, personally I would say it's a wash, they both generally have some problems when they come out with new products, but once they get the bugs out availability issues largely disappear until they get older, that's when EMD has a tremendous advantage, because they are so much easier and cheaper to rebuild, and they are almost like new again. Almost no one rebuilds GE's except GE (like their super 7 series of rebuilds) and they don't stick around very long (haven't seen a super 7 in ages and they aren't that old). Actually, although they did have a lot of problems for a while (most I think have been remidied) the 50 series are really a pretty darn good unit, they pull very hard, respond almost instantly, have good dynamics, and I personally have never had a problem with any of 'em other than once in a while a super series failure (usually a wiring or radar problem). I know UP is slowly getting rid of the 50's as well as a number of other units, but I bet those 50's get snapped up by other companies (leasing, shortline, or other). Anyway, I just thought I oughta defend the EMD's 'cause I'd take them any day over anything GE makes!!!
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