Does anyone know or can speculate? Inasmuch as Fargo, ND-Glacier Park, MT (GN) have similar (if not the same) topography as UP's Council Bluffs, IA-Ogden, UT route, UP found GTEL's to work great on that route for them; but GN never used them. Thoughts?
Too far away perhaps from refineries?
Union Pacific's turbines I believe burned residual fuel from likely Rangely Field in Utah, at a time when it otherwise may have just been burned off as waste before advances in refining technology made it more useful.
Did Great Northern have similar access? With their thirsty nature, having to ship in the fuel may have destroyed the economics.
Operating practices may have been a factor, too. Until recently, most of the GN main line was single track, which presumes meets for opposing trains on a regular basis. GTEL's guzzled fuel even while standing still, which would ruin fuel economics due to having to wait on meets.
No reason to think turbines were particularly suited to UP's main line profile, any more than steam was, or diesels, or electrics.
Would be nice to know how important fuel cost was then -- enough to rule out turbines on a single-track RR? And how much more would fuel have cost per gallon on RRs other than UP?
No one seems to know how many gallons per hour a UP turbine burned when standing. Or when running, for that matter.
The 4500HP GTEL's burrned 200 gph idling and around 500 gph at full tilt. The Big blows were probably somewhat less than twice the 4500HP units. Fuel hogs compared to diesels, but considerably better than an oil fired steam locomotive.
The UP GTEL's opearted on the high grade portion of the UP mainline, whereas the GN could make use of the horsepower needed for Marias Pass for higher speed on the plains.
FWIW, the UP had plans to buy 5 oil burning Big Boys for the LA&SL route, which implies that the bunker C for the GTEL's came from Southern Califormia.
Union Pacific's motive power leadership group continued to pursue massive single unit locomotives after the end of steam. Few other railroads did that, and none did it on UP's scale.
Like most dieselized railroads, GN seems to have been content with buying standard production diesels and coupling them together in order to achieve the required horsepower.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
At the time the GTEL's were ordered, the equivalent HP from EMD would have entailed 5 GP-9's. There were occasions when UP put two Big Blows on the head end of a train, which would have required an ungodly number of then available diesel locomotives.
The Milwaukee had a somewhat similar experience with the Little Joe's, where the normal compliment of two Joe's was the equivalent of 12,000 to 14,000 diesel HP between 25 and 35MPH.
Didn't Milwaukee have to upgrade their electrification system before being able to use the Joes to their full potential?
How much fuel did the 8500 HP turbine use compared to five GP9's?
Of course, you could also split the 5 GP9's apart later and use them to run multiple shorter trains or yard jobs. Can't do that with the turbine.
A better question would be to turn it around and ask why UP was so enamored for so long with huge locomotives? Was somebody in a position of authority compensating?
SD70Dude:
The Milwaukee indeed do some upgrading of the overhead. They bought a couple of 3MW M-G sets from CUT, installed one at Janney (near the continental divide) and added extra feeder capacity.
The 8500HP probably used 2X to 3X the fuel of 5 GP9's, however Bunker C was originally quite a bit cheaper than diesel fuel. I would guess the GTEL's would use less than half the bunker C fuel than the equivalent in steam locomotives.
The extra 4 cabs with using GP-9's has a cost of its own, which may be why the UP had a significant number of GP-9 B units in its roster.
Didn't UP also modify a large number of EMD units to burn bunker fuel?
VGN Jess Does anyone know or can speculate? Inasmuch as Fargo, ND-Glacier Park, MT (GN) have similar (if not the same) topography as UP's Council Bluffs, IA-Ogden, UT route, UP found GTEL's to work great on that route for them; but GN never used them. Thoughts?
Perhaps they were not adequately impressed when they used the GN steam turbines in 1943.
Ed
SD70Dude Didn't UP also modify a large number of EMD units to burn bunker fuel?
They did.
I believe Don Strack has an article on this on his fine website, Utahrails.net.
SD70DudeDidn't UP also modify a large number of EMD units to burn bunker fuel?
https://utahrails.net/up/bunker-c.php
SP had some, too, which were apparently referred to as 'mudburners'. I believe the first of these heated the fuel with steam coils as in SP steam locomotives, rather than with electric elements in the tanks, but rcdrye noted the SP had an order of GP9s for heavy fuel with no SGs -- which went over Donner Pass and so would often need heat big-time. Those probably used electric heating elements in the tanks rather than at the fuel filter or elsewhere closer to the injectors; I cannot tell without more information or pictures.
It appears that UP quietly went to better refined Bunker B (#5) in the turbines to remove issues with asphaltic deposits and ashing. It appears this might have been mixed or refined still further for use in the Diesel engines; EMD 567 injectors are comparatively finicky devices that use fuel as essential lubricant. It would be interesting to see detail of the power assemblies on the 'heavy fuel' engines, and the 2-stage fuel filters that were used. I have not read Dr. Priest's account of these, but apparently at least some of the UP diesel operation was done with heavy oil that was less viscous than #5 or had been cut with lighter fractions; Strack mentions this in passing but doesn't comment on the details.
7j43kPerhaps they were not adequately impressed when they used the GN steam turbines in 1943.
Two units of 2500 nominal hp apiece, full condensing at very high pressure. They were interesting but underpowered for their size and weight, and were returned by UP rather briskly -- they were sent to GN as a wartime expediency thing, if I remember the story correctly. According to one account I read, the GN crews worked out or figured how to work around most of the bugs and 'shortcomings', but according to another account the units ran for a few weeks but were then returned to GE when maintenance was required.
Note that there is almost no resemblance of these locomotives to any gas turbine UP ran, other than in using generated DC going to traction motors. (Not much resemblance to the coal turbine, either!) GN personnel would likely remember this if assessing gas-turbine designs later...
But probably that heavier fuel wasn't "bunker" fuel, whatever that is?
timzBut probably that heavier fuel wasn't "bunker" fuel, whatever that is?
Reading between the lines and looking at experience of a couple of the big players in oil-fired steam, one big difference between "Bunker C" and heavier cuts of #5 was the reduction of mineral and other contaminants, not just the asphaltic content. This is inherent in the discussion of 'ashing' in the UP report, but it becomes much more important in the context of EMD injectors. It would be much better in all likelihood to run heavy oil through a separate injection system and not expose the delicate components in the fuel path, but there is no easy way to get one into a typical EMD 2-stroke power assembly as the drive to the latter is mechanical and it occupies the only real position, between the four valves, that a heavy-oil injector could produce a good spray pattern.
I surmise that UP did not use any of that California crude that was heavy in vanadium. I'd suspect that the same general mechanisms at work to damage superheater elements and the like would happily affect '50s-era gas-turbine blading, and perhaps internal-combustion piston engines.
The heavier oils also generally had higher sulfur content, which is corrosive to metals.
Another question might be... Did UP and GE ever trial a Big Blow fired with LPG instead of heavy fuel oil?
I remember reading of successful tests using propane in Union Pacific's turbines in 1950's era issues of Trains.
Not sure exactly when, so it may of been one of their 1st generation turbines rather than the later and more powerful Big Blows.
Overmod 7j43k Perhaps they were not adequately impressed when they used the GN steam turbines in 1943. Ed has a slight typo in that it's "GE" not GN. They could also in a sense have been called UP locomotives because they were painted for that railroad and toured extensively for publicity. Two units of 2500 nominal hp apiece, full condensing at very high pressure. They were interesting but underpowered for their size and weight, and were returned by UP rather briskly -- they were sent to GN as a wartime expediency thing, if I remember the story correctly. According to one account I read, the GN crews worked out or figured how to work around most of the bugs and 'shortcomings', but according to another account the units ran for a few weeks but were then returned to GE when maintenance was required. Note that there is almost no resemblance of these locomotives to any gas turbine UP ran, other than in using generated DC going to traction motors. (Not much resemblance to the coal turbine, either!) GN personnel would likely remember this if assessing gas-turbine designs later...
7j43k Perhaps they were not adequately impressed when they used the GN steam turbines in 1943.
Ed has a slight typo in that it's "GE" not GN. They could also in a sense have been called UP locomotives because they were painted for that railroad and toured extensively for publicity.
Yes, GE.
I believe they were returned to GE by UP, hence not UP locos anymore. On the GN (not surprisingly), they were painted in a simpler scheme.
They ran 14 round trips for GN--not an astounding contribution to the war effort. Also, FT's started showing up on GN shortly afterwards.
GN had undoubtedly ordered and been expecting the FT's, so the GE's were temporary placeholders. They COULD have impressed GN management; they apparently did not.
Pretty sure it was a 'veranda' turbine. [EDIT: It was surely not; it was one of the original single-end types; memory can be lousy.] MTH modeled it, which ought to be a source to find more specific details. Very cheap propane would be a must... as, I suspect, would be turbines already built.
Wikipedia says the propane turbine was the 57 -- maybe Don Strack's site can confirm that.
Maybe he's got the UP turbine diagram -- wonder how much fuel they carried before they got tenders. 6000+ gallons? Did they stay west of Green River until they got tenders?
TrainOrders has a link to the part of Don Strack's coverage of the turbines that covers #57. I learned a couple of things from this -- one of them that you can't access a link from TrainOrders on an iPhone running iOS 14...
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,4214417
Conversion experiment was very early (1953) and short-lived (about 6 months) so no, not an answer UP or anyone else cared about. The fuel tender actually had its own GATX number. The locomotive was converted right back to be able to use Bunker B heavy, so those economics were still good enough. Running gear from these was reused under U50Bs, which (for GEs of that era) were not bad locomotives.
It seems to me there was propane experimentation on diesels, either cofired with diesel fuel or using diesel as an ignition and firing or reaction promoter. Can't find that now.
I suspect the electrically heated heavy tanks were not converted and the locomotive was run entirely from the pressurized tender the whole time of the test.…
GTEL 57 was one of the original production turbines, emphtically not a Veranda. Propane testing was done in southern California, Lee's book having a picture of the refueling station in the LA area - clean burning propane would have been a plus as air pollution was a concern back then. (Our family house in Windsor Hills was built in 1950 and had a bcakyard trash incinerator that we were prohibited from using when we lived there 1955-58.)
Bunker C fuel capacity was 7200 gallons on the first production turbines and only prototype #50 spent much time running without a fuel tender.
Bunker C was $1.45/Bl in the 1950's; not sure what Diesel was.-FYI
Thanks for the responses. though not too much on GN's sprurning of GTELs, the discussions were very illuminating though as to GTEL's in general!!
VGN Jess Bunker C was $1.45/Bl in the 1950's; not sure what Diesel was.-FYI
I've seen prices of $0.10/gal quoted for RR use, or $4.20/bbl, so there would have been a slight cost advantage.
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