Hi all .
Australia is soon to get GE based locomotives with the Evo V12 and I'm interested to know more about the intercooling differences with ES44ACs and EST4ACs .
From what I could find the ES44ACs appear have air to air intercooling and the ET versions I assume a split water air intercooling arrangement . It looks like the whole radiator cab is different on the ET and I'm guessing this is to include a separate circuit for charge air cooling .
What we are getting here won't be off the shelf US domestic because it has to fit our smaller loading gauge and weigh in at around 134 metric tonnes . It will be interesting to see what they have intercooler wise .
In the US the units are set up as follows...Tier 2 and 3 ES44 units use a air to liquid and air to air intercoolers. Compressed air from the turbo first enters the air-liquid unit and then goes though a air-air unit before going to the engine. Tier 4 ET44 are strictly air-air intercooled. They are compound turbocharged and there is a air-air intercooler after each turbocharger stage. GE has done various other setups for export units. For example, the ES58ACi in Brazil are air-liquid intercooled.
Interesting .
So did the T2 ES44 versions use engine coolant or a seperate dedicated water cooling circuit for the liquid intercooling part .
Also are the T4 ET44's air to air intercoolers at the back and part of the radiator cab and fan forced .
Cheers , A
So on the orignal T2 ES44 units, the cooling system is largely simular to the last of the FDL powered GEs. Where as during certain modes of operation the intercoolers can be partially seperated from the rest of the cooling system. At some point in 2007-2008 GE switched to a wet radator cooling system with shutters from temperature control (like EMD). I do not know how these units are plumbed up, so I cant say if they can do the same thing. As for the ET44, The air-air intercoolers occupy the forward part of the radator cabinet and have their own fan for cooling. Some years ago I did a drawing of how this was set up, but I don't appear to be able to post it to this forum.
The new Australian locomotives are described as meetig the USA Tier 3 standards.
They are most likely to follow the designs in use in India, Pakistan and South Africa where GEVO powered locomotives are now in service.
Wabtec's own publicity is at:Medium Weight Locomotives | Wabtec Corporation
Note that for some reason they illustrate the No 2 end of WDG4G instead of a WDG6G for some reason.
Details of the Indian locomotives are at:
Indian locomotive class WDG-4G - Wikipedia
Indian locomotive class WDG-6G - Wikipedia
The Australian locomotives are allowed a little more height an the Indian locomotives. The Indian locomotives use the UGL designed Flexicurve truck design.
Peter
The info in those links was a bit light on detail .
It will be interesting to see which way UGL goes with intercooling on these T3 Evolution powered units .
Fuel capacity will be another important issue .
BDA The info in those links was a bit light on detail . It will be interesting to see which way UGL goes with intercooling on these T3 Evolution powered units . Fuel capacity will be another important issue .
I thought twice about including the Wabtec site. Compared to past information from GE they include almost no useful technical information, and haven't even bothered to illustrate the correct locomotive, in one case. Sadly, Progress Rail have also privided incorrect or misleading captions to photos on their site.
But the Wabtec photos show a restricted clearance version of the ES44 cooling system which is likely to resemble that for the Australian locomotives.
There are 60 C44ESACi units on order now and the first shouldn't be too far away.
The greatest interest locally is the classification and numbering of the new units, if the discussion from people photographing the "Great Southern" passenger train yesterday is anything to go by...
Interesting that the 138 Tonne Indian (ES57) ACi went with the Evolution V16 .
I would have thought that the V12 would be adequate though power at speed may have been a requirement .
I would like to see bogie technology get to the stage to allow 23 Tonne axle loads on Australias national standard gauge .
It has been a long time since this thread started, and we are none the wiser about the Pacific National C44ESACi locomotives.
Several orders of C44ACi units using the 7FDL-16 engine have been built since the Evolution units were announced.
Pacific National have lost some traffic to competitors and possibly they have asked to delay the delivery of the new locomotives. Their biggest Competitor Aurizon has just taken delivery of four more FDL engined C44ACi units as they re-enter standard gauge container traffic, which they abandoned a few years ago.
Aurizon recently announced the conversion of one of their oldest AC traction narrow gauge diesel locomotives into a battery locomotive, confusingly illustrating it with a photo of their latest standard gauge C44ACis (I think because the old NG unit No 4010 was still in an obsolete colour scheme, and they wanted the current image in the PR for the battery unit).
So although they are promoting their "green" credentials, they haven't purchased any Tier 3 units from UGL/Wabtec, although they did get three Progress Tier 3 units ordered by One Rail, a company they recently took over.
We still would like to see one of the UGL/Wabtec EVO units....
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