GE already has sold hundreds of their Tier IV products to several major customers. I believe several of these have returned for repeat orders as well, besides Norfolk Southern (But it has only been 5 months or so, so wait for their 2017 capital plans to be announced).
With them seemingly further ahead of the game than ever before, I wouldn't count on them wanting to see this happen or not taking advantage of their power to lobby against any attempt to backtrack on standards that could improve EMD's competitive position after GE made the investment to get it right.
And there's every chance that EMD has succeeded, albeit later than their competitor, and doesn't even need this to again attempt to compete. EMD's demos haven't rolled that many miles and could be impressing potential customers rather than turning them away like I assume we're thinking is happening.
Plus they weren't exactly lighting the world on fire before Tier IV came around so it's in their best interest to advance the state of the art if they're going to recapture lost ground. A reversion to a product that was selling well below what the competition was, combined with a lengthy absence from new locomotive orders, doesn't strike me as exactly the road to success.
The 710 despite all its qualities, is perhaps best left to the ECO repowering line, upgrade programs like the SD70ACu program, export orders, etc. The core of it is still ultimately a 30 year old design, so surely La Grange can design something even better today.
I wonder what Tier the FEC obtains with their natural gas units? I would suspect it has to make a significant difference but at what cost of capital, fuel and maintenance compared to operating a Tier IV diesel and that cost of capital, fuel and maintenance? I guess FEC is getting the real world data on the natural gas side of the equation.
I'd wonder if a Tier 3.5 standard would result in more reductions on emissions than the Tier IV standard. Setting tighter limits for new locomotives doesn't do much good if no one buys new locomotives.
This may only be a temporary reprieve, though, and I think that the builders will be careful to hedge their Tier IV solutions lest the regulations return...
Or maybe Tier III is clean enough. I run the operations for an entity that has to do a lot of snow plowing in very cold weather. The units with Tier III motors run just fine in all conditions, but the units with Tier IV motors get very temperamental in very cold weather because the fuel filter for Tier IV is so fine that if there is even a hint of viscosity in the diesel fuel they are wont to clog up.
I don't think either major locomotive builder would object to a standard more easily reached by the locomotives they built for Tier III.
GE are still building ES44ACi units for Australia (or at least did so very recently) and EMD built some SD70 ACe/lc for the same place units a couple of months earlier.
Quite apart from the Tier IV credit units built recently.
If money can be saved by a small adjustment to the standard, you would hope that the Trump administration and their friends in Congress would do the right thing.
M636C
"Double-nickle?" Don't remind me! No disrepect intended, but have you ever done 55 mph over the long, flat, endless plains of Nebraska? I did, in 1975.
And in a Volkswagen "Beetle" no less! I didn't think I'd ever get across!
If I have anything to say about it, the Tier 4 final NOx regulation will be edited slightly, just enough to make it practical for sanely-modified EMD 2-stroke engines to make regulation emissions without difficulty over the range of expected operation. If I remember correctly this is something like 0.3 of a percent off the nominal standard (which was essentially pulled out of some twenty-something bureaucrat's hat as a nice large reduction in 'pollution' over what Tier 3 provided).
This is similar to my opinion about the imposition of the 'double nickel' political speed limit after the first OPEC 'oil shock'. It would have made far better sense in most respects to have gone straight to 100kph, a nice round, high-sounding metric number that corresponds to an economic operating gear speed for many contemporary Class VIII trucks. (And then I wouldn't have used the expedient of tempting the state enforcement agencies into enforcing the limit as strictly as they could get away with, for their own gain...)
I don't think too many people in Muncie are going to complain that 'all their hard work in 'ginning up a Tier 4 final solution' is wasted just because they could go back to building locomotives with reasonable pollution control cost. They'll appreciate a corrected mistake, won't they?
This is obviously speculation and I don't mean to start a political debate (or I would have posted this on the General Discussion forum).
It seems plausible (or inevitable) that a number of EPA regulations may change significantly with the change in administration....
Could the "Tiered" off road diesel emissions standards be effected?
And if so, what would occur in the U.S Class 1 locomotive market?
Both GE and Cat/Progress/EMD have invested a lot in developing Tier IV complaint locomotives. Could this turn out to be money and time wasted?
It seems to me that if there is a drop or end to orders for Tier IV locomotives in the near future it may signify that the railroads don't want to further gamble with the higher maintenance and other costs associated with the newer emissions control technology when regulatory changes may be just around the corner..
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.