Why are GE locomotives better than EMD?

[BRAKIE]

You really and truely don't want to know.I will not rain on your trucks is great parade.Yes,I work around trucks and trains.

[Anonymous]

How can 5 120 ton railcars loaded with lava rocks get lost between Charleston SC and Hamlet NC a local run by rail.Next time our trucks will go to the port and get them ourselves .A truck can break down and still get their faster than the hottest intermodal hotshot.Railroads stick with the best loco and deliever.

[Anonymous]

There are a couple of reasons why most of the new locomotives you see are GE's versus EMD. The first one is speed of manufacture. While EMD has reduced and outsourced capacity, GE has maintained theirs. When railroads buy locomotives, they are actually booking space on the company's production floor. GE, with its larger capacity, can crank out locomotives much faster than EMD, particularly if EMD has a large order such as the SD70M's that are being built for Union Pacific ( according to my brother, a UP railroad engineer in Fort Worth, they have ordered 1700 of them, making this the largest order ever placed by a railroad. ) The second one is fuel economy. Four cycle engines, such as the one in your automobile, are more fuel efficient than two cycle types such as used in chain saws and weed eaters. When you look at the large picture that the railroads do ( they own thousands of them ) this can be a significant savings to them. Reliability is another issue. While earlier GE models did have their problems, GE continued to improve their product. Lastly, the throttle response lag characteristic of earlier models was significantly reduced or eliminated in the Dash-8 line of products. According to my brother, Dash-8 and later locomotives will pull and run with the EMD's. Hope this helps.

[sooblue]

I wonder if GE does a better job of wineing and dinning and general sucking up than EMD.
although EMD must have done a good job with the UP
price and "amenities" are the bottom line don't you think?
After all both GE and EMD have built their fair share of DOGS over the years.
Probably the best engine that could ever be produced would be part EMD and part GE.
wouldn't it be something if GE bought EMD from GM?

[BRAKIE]

Just be dang sure to use your trucks,if not those rocks may sit a week before they are picked up,then dragged to a drop lot and then haul to your plant.You see you rocks would be very low on their list of freight..I work around trucks and trains both give the same poor service unless you load alot of their trailers/cars and then hope,hope mind you they have a driver free to come and get it.Now,if the needs arises your rocks may end up on a train anyway by the trucking company.This is called overflow,they do this on a need to bases so their drivers won't be tied up for their better customers..Of course they will not tell you that your trailer came by train..n
Now,if you have only a half of load they will charge you the same,but,they will not tell you they added another half load from another company charged them the same price as you and the other companies freight will be unloaded before yours as it was put on last and your rocks is in the front of the trailer.
You talk about lost freight? 3 weeks ago we was to get a trailer in for a certain store for a big sale,this trailer is yet to show up and the trucking company as no idea where it is a,the last driver dropped the trailer in a drop lot,as per his orders from his boss.Where the Hey is that trailer? I am not joking.They are still trying to find that trailer...Now in all fairness I will tell you of a boxcar that was loaded in Mississippi for Ohio and it got sent to Huston,then St.Paul,then Columbus back to the yard it came from then to the warehouse...How long? 10 weeks.Never did find out why that happen or what cause this car to wonder about..

[wabash1]

what is your brother taking. the older ge engines had better response than anything in the dash 8 or newer has, of course if your into making overtime i guess you welcome the ge engines as slow as they are. they will never measure up to a emd with quality or performance. thats it. they are not as powerful and never will be. they are junk.

[Anonymous]

Yes I know. I have experienced seeing that.

[Anonymous]

You are correct Alexander,

But the ironic thing is, from a lot of engineers at BNSF, I have found out that the SD40-2s are bailing out their newer predecessor, the DASH-9 quite a bit. It seems the DASH-9 has a lot of sensor problems that shut it down. The DASH-8s have a problem with draining batteries all of the time. According to one engineer, this is happening so frequently, they do not even bother to use the DASH-9s or 8s to do the majority of the work. Instead they use the SD40-2s. Now whether or not GE has fixed these problems as of yet, is another story.

-Wolv33
CEO Midwestern Double-line Railroad

[Anonymous]

Locomotives are like women, some are just better than others but they still are women.

[Anonymous]

Ha ha... this coming from another american who certianly seems to be wanting a much bigger slice of the North American pie. Have a problem with engines being made up here? Too bad, we don't. I see all the news of CN and CP buying out little American lines, and I think, HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! REVENGE FOR EVERYTHING YOU'VE EVER TAKEN FROM US!!! My, your worldview is narrow.

[Anonymous]

The GE Pooch could sit up, bag, roll over and play dead.

[Anonymous]

Todd,
I'm afraid things aren't that simple. Even though EMD locomotives are assembled in London, Ontario, alot of the components that go into these locomotives, including the prime movers, are still made in the United States. It's also a fair assumption that GE locomotives assembled in Erie, PA have some components made outside of the US.

As for your political statement, wasn't it Democrat Bill 'Slick Willie' Clinton that signed the North American Free Agreement (NAFTA)?

[Anonymous]

you are wrong on that I saw 3 Ac44 hauling 15000 tons clim a 3% grade without helpers in wy in 2000 on sherman hill without stalling up tried 2 weeks 22laterwith 3 sd90h the full 6000 hp models and they stalled halfway up the hill and had to be rescuced due to an inverter failure the reason why the ge's made it is due to better design the six inverters instead of 2 the second unit 90 mac lost the back truck and had to shut down

[wabash1]

well im not calling you a liar. but lets figure this out. you had 3 44ac ge model engines pulling 15000 tons. ok now we add a 3% grade to this with out pushers. ok now i run on a line that has 2.5% grade and those engines are rated for 6900 tons. that leaves 8100 tons over.. something dont add up... oh thats right anything is possible for ge engines...in fantasy land.

[oltmannd]

3 AC4400s and 15000 tons are only good for 1.35% grade. That's just plain physics.....

Grade resistance is 20#/ton/%grade. An AC4400 will only pull ~147,000# TE (35% adhesion on 420,000# on drivers - BTW - even if you had more available adhesion, you'd run out of juice!)

The only way you could get 15000 tons over a 3% grade would be with distributed power.

I'd like to know where that 3% mainline grade is....

-Don

[Anonymous]

Wabash, Me thinks your right.I've worked on Sherman Hill and its no where near 3%.It averages at best 1 1/2 %. The only track thats well over 2% is three track running down from Hermosa to Laramie.Or up from Laramie going eastbound.The UP only uses 3 track for westbound downhill Z traffic.I've also worked 2% grade and the train he was taking about would rip in two in no time flat from the drawbar forces alone.Pure fantasy.

[wabash1]

never mind where the grade i want to know about them numbers.. i understand the 420,000 and running out of juice but. wow all that other stuff made me tingle...like tim taylor .. MORE POWER.... to tell the truth i never cared about the numbers, in the time table it says what we are good for thats all done for us. and dynamic values also.. but man is that impresive or what. lol

[Anonymous]

GE is better than EMD because GM doesn't have Jack Welch.

GM is frought with "second string" mentality

[Anonymous]

Sorry to bust your bubble but J.Welsh retired a yr ago.

[Anonymous]

I have seen numerous GE units through the years belching smoke like a steam engine. And that includes the recent units UP took on. I have to admit, rarely have I seen an EMD belching smoke as bad as a GE. The worst GE smokeout I ever saw was in the early 1980's, a MoPac autorack train doing at least 60 mph near Hope, Kansas. I thought I was seeing a steam engine clad in dark blue sheet metal. Since then I have seen numerous GE's polluting the landscape. If an EPA inspector would have seen that Mopac unit darkening the sky, he would have had heart failure. I have yet to see an EMD unit, even come close to polluting the sky like some of the GE's do.

[Anonymous]

Before I spill my EMD bias, let me just say that GE's are more prevalent than they used to be. But out here in Nebraska, you will see UP have different roles for each brand. Come out here to Nebraska and you'll see mainly GE widecabs on UP coal and manifest freights. Yes, they do a good job, but God they are UGLY!! UP usually uses the EMD 70's and 90's on the stack and pig trains. Nothing like seeing and hearing a UP pig train with three or four EMD's tear through the small towns along the main line at 70 per. For all the folks from back east, the UP main through Nebraska is something to behold, two and three tracks wide, sometimes four, and 130 to 150 trains daily. It is not uncommon to stop at a grade crossing out in the country west of Kearney and have THREE trains cross in front of you AT THE SAME TIME. If you ever get a chance to come out here to railfan the UP through Nebraska, you wll be awestruck at how much freight moves on UP rails, and how fast the pig and stack trains operate. I've seen trains in numerous locations around the United States, and nothing is quite like the UP through Nebraska.

[csxns]

Wow sounds like an Interstate highway everywhere you go.

[Anonymous]

I feel that my brother is taking his 24 years of experience as an engineer to draw his conclusions. While he does a lot of "hog and tow" on his runs, this is due more to an overloaded corridor along with inefficient dispatching than the locomotives he is using for the train that he is called for. Pre dash 8 locomotives, especially when used as lead units, had very slow throttle response, and along with the wheelslip systems they used, were bad about surging and have been the cause of broken knuckles for a lot of their engineers. This was a point of improvement for GE and was achieved through microprocessor controls for the wheelslip and throttle control systems. In reference to quality of EMD's, ask any railroad that owned the 50 series of locomotives and they will tell you with a quickness that they were ( and are ) a piece of junk. Many railroads have either retired or placed into long term storage locomotives in this group for this reason. Due to the design differences, a two cycle engine such as used in EMD's will rev faster than the GE's four cycle; however, over the long term, you will see four cycle EMD's ( if they do survive ) because of the EPA's timetable for the manufacturers to make emission compliant locomotives. This is the reason that some of the SD-70M's ( all built after January of this year ) have the flared radiators to achieve this. EMD has also had problems with the SD-9043AC's reliability. I concede that they do have higher tractive effort that the AC4400CW's, but that is useless if it is spending its time in the shop. My last point is a question: if the EMD's are superior locomotives, why do the models keep changing while at the same time GE continues to make the same ones? I can tell you from owning a BMW that they are tough, and as you drive the highways of this country, you see many different models of automobiles broken down on the side of the road, but Bimmers are seldom among them, if at all. Maybe the railroads have figured out the same type of logic in the EMD-GE battle, and why my brother who works in the trenches daily and operates both types, can speak to this in the manner I referred to earlier.

[wabash1]

well there you have it. from the railfans point of view. read a magazine and then try and tell someone how to do their job. you couldnt switch a red boxcar out from between 2 green ones, and then there is the ones who think they know train handling, using independant brake for train handling at track speed. a joke. but this is what you want to say is the truth, there are very few of us that work for the railroads that try and give you info on what you want. but then you tell us we are wrong. and dont know what we are talking about.then you wonder why we hate foamers. i made a statement about having foamers arrested . well i have and will continue to do so. have a great day.

[Anonymous]

Oh brother your brother!!! I work in the trenches and I say GE's are a inferior product compaired to EMD. Lately the BNSF has been giving us "OLD" SD 40's to back up the new dash-9's account the GE's are unreliable. Why is that beemer guy?

[Anonymous]

I think ever since EMD had all of those electrical problems with their SD50's in the early to mid 1980's railroads seem to be buying more GE's. All of those problems almost put EMD out of business. Another reason why some might like EMD's is because of the SD40-2's made in the late 1970's. Many of those SD40-2's are still pulling trains today! Another reason why more people might like GE's are because of the less maintence and they don't suck up a lot of fuel like EMD's SD45's did. I hope that helps you a little bit!

[Anonymous]

IVE RUNN SD70 C44 C40 SD90 ALL OF THEEM SD70S HAVE BETTER ICE AIR BUT BY FARR SD70s ARE JUNK 6 MO OLD AND THEY ARE BREAKING DOWN BUT THE FIRST 6 MO THEY WILL PULL PULL PULL THEY DONT GIVE UP LIKE THE SD40S WE HERE GET ALL THE NEW UNITS I HAD ONE LAST NIGHT THAT WAS ONLY 1 WEEK OLD ON ITS FIRST RUNN AND THE CRAPER WAS FRESH BUT NOT WHEN I GOT 2 YUMA

[traisessive1]

Why if the SD70's suck so much how come CN has a whole lot of SD 70/75? They seem to be doing pretty well on the CN line. Even though Cn has many more SD75 than SD70, they seem to be doin well as I see them ALL the time.

PS-harlanhu---LEARN HOW TO TYPE CLEARLY

[Anonymous]

Without knowing which "trench" you refer to, I offer the following: I work as an instrument and control technician for a petrochemical manufacturing plant. As such, I have seen many instances where the problem was not the equipment, but the equipment operator who either did not understand the controls or was abusive to them. The UP uses Dash 9 AC's for almost all of their coal hauling, and in the corridor where my brother works, as I mentioned earlier, he has very regular hands on experience with both brands of locos. The Santa Fe, who owned the GP-50's, had many problems with them, and would not purchase the SD-50 at all. The same held true for the Burlington Northern. I do agree that SD-40-2's are pretty good engines. However, please note that most railroads are continuing to run their older GE units, which is one reason why you are running EMD's instead of them. Also note that the leasing companies are not getting units such as the SD-50 and GP-50 models. Even they realize that everything from EMD was not gold.

[Anonymous]

As with most things in life, there can be more than one point of view; you say the glass is half empty, and I say the glass is half full. I do not make any claim that I am an expert on all elements of railroading ( even though I do know the difference in the INDEPENDENT brake and the automatic one ). However, like many railfans, I have access to several sources within the UP, with my brother being one of the most accessible and perhaps one of the most knowledgeable. He was a member of the UP redesign team for both GE and EMD North American cabs, an honor that also reflects his knowledge with respect to his career choice, and was based on his knowledge of what these units do in the real world. I do not say that his word is the final answer, but offer his experiences in the hope of broadening the forum topic, as we all should be trying to do here, that we may all become more knowledgeable in the hobby that we pursue. The human element is one of the areas that makes our hobby great, and allows me as a person to respect your opinion with regard to your reply.