Hi timz!
I run intermodals and mixed freight out of Atlanta. The Piedmont Division on the NS between Atlanta and Washington, DC has some of the best track on the railroad. It used to be a mecca for passenger trains before Hartsfield-Jackson airport. It is double track for the most part and there are many sections that allow for 60 MPH running.
A mile long piggyback train with about 4000 tons powered by three GP60s or SD60s will stay ahead of the Crescent all the way to Greenville, SC if you can get it through Peachtree Station immediately ahead of the passenger train's arrival. We used to run 214 with four GP60s and stay ahead of Amtrak every night! As a matter of fact, I have a picture of 204 with GP60s up front as my Avatar passing the Doraville, GA signal doing 60 MPH.
As long as the yard doesn't have more than a mile and a half of pigs for the train and you have at least three big engines up front we can run the wheels off of em! My preference for intermodals today are SD70ACes, SD70M-2s, ES44ACs and ES40DCs. The Dash 9-44CWs are okay but I hate all of the Dash 8 engines. I can't wait until they are history on the NS.
On a side note, NS is currently rebuilding SD60s to SD60Es to be used in intermodal service. I look forward to seeing them in action.
To get pack to the original point of the post, It seems that BNSF has become the railroad willing to test nw ideas and technologies. At one time UP used to be the railroad that the builders went too. They testes the gas turbines, turbo charging on the GP20's , etc. Now it seens that BNSF is willing to do that for GE and EMD.
You are correct about the rehostat-controlled vane-moter controlling the generator field circuit. There were alternatives to minimum and maximum for the at-rest position, and as far as I know, the GP-9 was produced with an intermeidate rest position that divided the idle-speed diesel torque evenly between accelerating the diesel and accelerating the train. This seemed to solve the problem and made unnecessary both the hot start switch and the commuter engineer's power-with-brake start. Also, I think most of the burned commutator ring segments actually occurred when the throttle was advanced beyong notch one to notch two or three before releasing the brakes.
Using test GP-7's 1568 and 1567, the B&M engineer did not have to use that technique to meet the schedule and even make up for delays on the 4PM local to Portsmouth, NH. That is why they liked these two test locomotives.
I wonder if the 4 SD70ACes that BNSF's converting are part of the #9130-9329 series with the isolated cab, or from the earlier #9330-9399 series that only have the original non-isolated cab?
beaulieu The first SD70ACe-P4 has hit the road, EMD test locomotive 4223 has been photographed after being released from Muncie.
The first SD70ACe-P4 has hit the road, EMD test locomotive 4223 has been photographed after being released from Muncie.
The 4223 is going to have ITCS installed, I believe the P4 demonstrator is 1207.
Blue Alert! We're at Blue Alert! Aw crap, it's a nondescript GEVO... Cancel Blue Alert!
Various stuff:
The ACe-P4 variant probably brought CatEMD to the present/future. The GE's inverter for each axle rather than an inverter for each 3 axle truck makes so much sense; On a work-worn SD40 truck, compare the wheel sizes. Likely the outboard wheels will be thinnest, the middle the thickest, and the inner somewhere in between. comparing rotational speed is what excites anti-wheel spin/slip technology..If all 3 axles of a truck share an inverter's output, the rotation of the varying diameter wheels would indicate compromised adhesion. An inverter per axle......
The starting capabilities of various locomotives discussed cheating the inherent short comings of some of the best and worst
Make a drop with a solid bearing axle Alco "S" (1 thru 6) required rarely any more than closing the throttle like slamming a door and wildly pulling the throttle to the max. within a second or two. But the S-6 was different: go to the "generater field" toggle switch, when the command, "pin" comes leave the throttle in Run 8 and momentarily open the GF, then close it when you think the pin has opened the knuckle.
We dropped some, maybe 8 (sugar beet) cars from the Lompoc branch into the (geo.north) west leg of the Surf wye.
"make the drop, highball," a lantern signal. DL701 gets to and makes transition, a (very slightly later) signal for a "pin,"while dragging a light independent brake application, throw the throttle to idle, slam it back to Run 8, kick off the independent and go, get away from the trailing cars.
The brakeman who pulled the pin got it when the engine made transition and we nearly recoupled during the duration of the "pin" lantern signal. The get-a-way engine and caboose went to a faster track than the west leg, but I was already way-over authorized speed.
Lots more content on this subject but my girlfriend will be expecting me real soon.
.
oltmannd timz oltmannd: This is controlled by CHEC which is desperately trying to avoid smoke by keeping the engines speed ahead of the load, allowing the turbo to spool up. Which raises the question: did the U34CHs do any better, with their constant-speed prime movers. (Guess P42's are constant-speed too?) As always, it's too bad US railfans have never been train-timers like they have in Europe. Would be nice to know how well FM's etc actually did. A couple of differences between a U34 and P42. The U34 was allowed to make smoke, so it probably loaded faster. CHEC with the three slope loading curve was designed to minimize smoke. The P42 probably has a lower volume exhaust manifold, though, which gets the juice to the turbo faster, allowing faster loading.
timz oltmannd: This is controlled by CHEC which is desperately trying to avoid smoke by keeping the engines speed ahead of the load, allowing the turbo to spool up. Which raises the question: did the U34CHs do any better, with their constant-speed prime movers. (Guess P42's are constant-speed too?) As always, it's too bad US railfans have never been train-timers like they have in Europe. Would be nice to know how well FM's etc actually did.
oltmannd: This is controlled by CHEC which is desperately trying to avoid smoke by keeping the engines speed ahead of the load, allowing the turbo to spool up.
Which raises the question: did the U34CHs do any better, with their constant-speed prime movers. (Guess P42's are constant-speed too?)
As always, it's too bad US railfans have never been train-timers like they have in Europe. Would be nice to know how well FM's etc actually did.
A couple of differences between a U34 and P42. The U34 was allowed to make smoke, so it probably loaded faster. CHEC with the three slope loading curve was designed to minimize smoke. The P42 probably has a lower volume exhaust manifold, though, which gets the juice to the turbo faster, allowing faster loading.
His point is a bit different: On the U34s, the engine was ALREADY spooled up due to the HEP load, so the smoke would come with the acceleration fueling, not the loading rate per se. I don't remember turbo loading being related to the character of the smoke, or that wonderful flame, that the U34s could generate as they accelerated.
It was my understanding that the grave delays in loading (up to 30 seconds) that plagued subsequent generations of GE locomotives was indeed pollution-related (anyone remember the VW that was built for the early California pollution regs, with the 30-second dashpot on its throttle? 0-to-60 times measured with a calendar...) but most of this (IIRC) involved acceleration from low engine rpm. U34 in commuter service was high-horsepower for high acceleration rather than heavy train load, too.
And it was CERTAINLY good at accelerating those trains! Wish they'd kept at least one in a 'collection' like NYCTA's, so future generations could have the experience too...
The important to remember is this:
EMD represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 percent of CAT's sales. GE Rails' sales
are approx. 4 to 5 times greater than EMD's. So, it should be easy to recognize which builder is more significant to their respective corporate profit profile.
oltmannd a#1beau EMD will never -- repeat N-E-V-E-R -- regain its dominance as number 1 diesel locomotive builder again. GE has already sworn to this. In thirteen more years, GE will have been the market leader for as long as EMD ever was in all its history. Thank you, Roger Smith and all your early 80's GM cronies for the death of EMD as we once knew it. Oh, I don't know.... I remember when Brand X was Brand X for a reason. What goes around, comes around, they say. Nothing would surprise me.
a#1beau EMD will never -- repeat N-E-V-E-R -- regain its dominance as number 1 diesel locomotive builder again. GE has already sworn to this. In thirteen more years, GE will have been the market leader for as long as EMD ever was in all its history. Thank you, Roger Smith and all your early 80's GM cronies for the death of EMD as we once knew it.
EMD will never -- repeat N-E-V-E-R -- regain its dominance as number 1 diesel locomotive builder again. GE has already sworn to this. In thirteen more years, GE will have been the market leader for as long as EMD ever was in all its history. Thank you, Roger Smith and all your early 80's GM cronies for the death of EMD as we once knew it.
Oh, I don't know.... I remember when Brand X was Brand X for a reason. What goes around, comes around, they say. Nothing would surprise me.
CPM500 The important to remember is this: EMD represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 percent of CAT's sales. GE Rails' sales are approx. 4 to 5 times greater than EMD's. So, it should be easy to recognize which builder is more significant to their respective corporate profit profile. oltmannd a#1beau EMD will never -- repeat N-E-V-E-R -- regain its dominance as number 1 diesel locomotive builder again. GE has already sworn to this. In thirteen more years, GE will have been the market leader for as long as EMD ever was in all its history. Thank you, Roger Smith and all your early 80's GM cronies for the death of EMD as we once knew it. Oh, I don't know.... I remember when Brand X was Brand X for a reason. What goes around, comes around, they say. Nothing would surprise me.
True, but CAT spent a fair amount of $ to acquire EMD, something they hardly did on a whim....
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
I was talking to a Siemens engineer a few weeks ago who told me he personally thought the one inverter per axle was a waste of money and weight.
Of course, Siemens did EMD's the 60/70/90MAC AC drive, so he was defending their solution.
CPM500 The important to remember is this: EMD represents somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 percent of CAT's sales. GE Rails' sales are approx. 4 to 5 times greater than EMD's. So, it should be easy to recognize which builder is more significant to their respective corporate profit profile.
And Caterpillar's annual revenue for 2012 was well under half of GE's. And GE Transportation is a good bit more diversified than EMD is so a good bit of that division's contribution isn't even in the area of locomotives. .
I think you'd find that the EMD locomotive business is just as important to Caterpillar as GE's locomotive business is to the much larger General Electric.
Leo_Ames And Caterpillar's annual revenue for 2012 was well under half of GE's. And GE Transportation is a good bit more diversified than EMD is so a good bit of that dvision's contribution isn't even in the area of locomotives. . I think you'd find that the EMD locomotive business is just as important to Caterpillar as GE's locomotive business is to the much larger General Electric.
And Caterpillar's annual revenue for 2012 was well under half of GE's. And GE Transportation is a good bit more diversified than EMD is so a good bit of that dvision's contribution isn't even in the area of locomotives. .
Good point, Leo. What many railfans do not look at is EMD's stationary and marine power plant sales - There are a lot of V16 & V20 710's in ocean going tugs and smaller ships. Cat purchased EMD for more than existing locomotive sales...
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
don't forget stationary power plant applications. Many was the time I walked past an Air Force power plant in some overseas location, remarking on how it sounded JUST like an idling GP-7
Indian Railway or IR had B1-1B configuration for 4,000 HP passenger locos based on SD70MAC. They were a flop. IR then switched over to C0-C0 version, more like SD70MAC with different gear ratio and it was a success.
prakash Indian Railway or IR had B1-1B configuration for 4,000 HP passenger locos based on SD70MAC. They were a flop. IR then switched over to C0-C0 version, more like SD70MAC with different gear ratio and it was a success.
The B1-1B truck EMD is offering to BNSF was a modified version of the ones designed for the Indian units..
I am aware of that change since I know IR units very well, although I live in California.
Naturally, I am interested to know how this new B1-1B configuration works.
Greg McDonnell could not shed more lights since EMD is tight lipped.
No, I won't find that EMD is all that important to CAT. I work in the industry and many of us believe that EMD will eventually get dumped. CAT hasn 't invested in the business the way GE has invested in their locomotive business.
Care to argue the point-with specifics ?
Karl
Incorrect, The DLW truck is fabricated.
The advantage would be that when a truck goes into a curve, the rear of the frame slues and will kick out causing friction and less tractive effort. I know that the radial trucks has helped alleviate much of this, but having an "idler" in the middle of the truck allows for a wider stress point on the truck with a 215 ton locomotive. Placing the idler on the rear allows the weight and the pulling axles to maintain a better tractive effort while maintaining a lower stress level on the truck once the idler is lifted off of the top of the rail. NOW, whether or not this has anything to do with WHY EMD is doing this, I don't have a clue. But, after running four and six axles over many years, the two axle B trucks handle and pull through the curves better than the three axle C trucks do.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.