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KLW 4400-ACT4

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Friday, March 18, 2022 1:57 PM

D.Carleton
Yes, from the engine mounts to the top of the engine, including the four turbos and two wastegates, is about the same height as an EMD. However, the V16 QSK95 will fit in the same space as a V12 567.

 

What about the Radiator though? The striking thing about the NS 4800 is the smaller Radiator. Your previous suggestion that you'd need to start with a T3 710 is ipsofacto in error, because so much of the difference is in the cooling. The T4 version needs less surface area on the radiator if nothing else.

 

I've been curious on the radiators on both the charger and for that matter the F125 with the C175. Both engines have those large full side openings for radiator intake. (with internal lighting) I assumed that was because of the surface area requirements of the radiators.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Friday, March 18, 2022 2:05 PM

One additional comment on why a railroad might prefer the EMD 710-T4 to the QSK is to refer back to the comment on the QSK Maintenance requirements.

Amtrak and regional passenger agencies have the ability to focus on their narrow stable of engines. The Large Freight railroads are going to struggle a lot more to maintain snowflakes in the motive power pool. It's one thing to have QSKs in yard service where the same crew takes care of them the same way every time. Having a small set of them lines up with dozens of 710s, FDLs and EVOs where the those 3 all have effectively the same requirements is a receipe for disaster. 

One of the reasons that Alco's became less popular.

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Posted by D.Carleton on Saturday, March 19, 2022 6:00 AM

YoHo1975
 
D.Carleton
Yes, from the engine mounts to the top of the engine, including the four turbos and two wastegates, is about the same height as an EMD. However, the V16 QSK95 will fit in the same space as a V12 567.

What about the Radiator though? The striking thing about the NS 4800 is the smaller Radiator. Your previous suggestion that you'd need to start with a T3 710 is ipsofacto in error, because so much of the difference is in the cooling. The T4 version needs less surface area on the radiator if nothing else.

I've been curious on the radiators on both the charger and for that matter the F125 with the C175. Both engines have those large full side openings for radiator intake. (with internal lighting) I assumed that was because of the surface area requirements of the radiators.

When I first ducked into a Charger's cooling tower (that's what we call them) it struck me how similar in size it is to an ALCo RS-1 or S-2...albeit MUCH cleaner.

As for the assertion that Tier 4 locomotives need less cooling, look at the delta in size of the rads of an ES44 and an ET44. The ET44 cooler is larger for a reason.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Saturday, March 19, 2022 5:20 PM

Those aren't using DEF 

For heaven's sake, this entire discussion is about DEF T4 solution.

Those radiators are explicit to the design of those engines. keeping temperatures in range to have the exhaust treatment work.

DEF allows the engine to run at higher temperatures. As mentioned earlier in this thread. 

 

NS4800 has a smaller Radiator than the T3 4700. 

WE don't have to wonder about it, it's so much smaller that it's undeniable. 

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Posted by D.Carleton on Sunday, March 20, 2022 7:09 AM

YoHo1975
For heaven's sake, this entire discussion is about DEF T4 solution.

I'm relatively ascertain heaven does not have skin in the game. I am certain the discussion is about a new rebuild option from KLW and its viability. I am not involved with the NS 4700 & 4800 but deal all but daily with the QSK95. It's engine temperature profile does not vary that much from any of the ALCo, GE, EMD or F-M plants I have worked on over the past 30+ years. Then again comparing a new QSK95 with a legacy engine is tantamount to comparisons of my old 1984 F150 with a brand new Lamborghini. Come to think about it, I miss that truck.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Sunday, March 20, 2022 1:14 PM

A properly maintained old ford with the 302 or 460 is going to be way more reliable than any Lamborghini. So I'm not sure that's the comparison you want to make here.

The point I'm trying to make, and that the pictures of the NS4800 bare out is that the advantages of the QSK95 DEF solution may not be AS great compared to the 710 DEF solution and that comparisons to the 1010j/EVO-T4 or even the 710 T4 experiement in UP 9500 are of little relevence, because their different exhaust systems force those engines to operate far less efficiently.

 

And so, pointing to an SD70ACe's(T3 or T4) radiator to make a claim about how a 710-DEF engine is configured is not useful

And the picture of the NS engine proves this. The radiator is much smaller. 

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Posted by SD70Dude on Sunday, March 20, 2022 3:10 PM

I can't find fuel consumption data for the Siemens Charger locomotives or the Tier-IV 710, but here's some numbers for the QSK95 as a stationary generator.  207.8 g/kwh for 4309 brake HP in prime power service (varying electrical load). 

https://www.cummins.com/sites/default/files/2019-06/QSK95G9.pdf

That's worse fuel economy than the Tier-III 16-710, and while it normally isn't fair to compare Tier-III and Tier-IV engines the railroads seem to be getting away with rebuilding older units to Tier-III or older standards.

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Posted by BaltACD on Sunday, March 20, 2022 3:38 PM

YoHo1975
A properly maintained old ford with the 302 or 460 is going to be way more reliable than any Lamborghini. So I'm not sure that's the comparison you want to make here.

...

Not all Lamborghini's are tempermental super cars.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Sunday, March 20, 2022 3:52 PM

Of course Jeremy Clarkson would find a way to get a Lambo on his farm.

Also, not all Fords are work trucks:

2020 Ford GT First Look - Kelley Blue Book

Greetings from Alberta

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Sunday, March 20, 2022 3:52 PM

BaltACD

 

 
YoHo1975
A properly maintained old ford with the 302 or 460 is going to be way more reliable than any Lamborghini. So I'm not sure that's the comparison you want to make here.

...

 

Not all Lamborghini's are tempermental super cars.

 

 

But the comparison being made CLEARLY implies the supercars. Otherwise the comparison would be to John Deere.

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Posted by D.Carleton on Monday, March 21, 2022 7:06 AM

YoHo1975
A properly maintained old ford with the 302 or 460 is going to be way more reliable than any Lamborghini. 

Ah, to the contrary, you can use and abuse that ole 302 (as I did) and they still come back for more. They came out of the war/post war mentality of 'failure is not an option' despite any inefficieny. Today we demand max efficiency and make machines with exceptionally tight parameters. The 567s, 539s and 251s I've worked on were bulletproof. The downside, especially on shortlines, was it led to skimping on maintenance. (You wait until the oil level is below the dipstick then break out the pneumatic pump and add a drum to the crankcase.) The QSK95 is so tight you won't get away that.

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, March 21, 2022 7:55 AM

YoHo1975
 
BaltACD 
YoHo1975
A properly maintained old ford with the 302 or 460 is going to be way more reliable than any Lamborghini. So I'm not sure that's the comparison you want to make here.

... 

Not all Lamborghini's are tempermental super cars.

But the comparison being made CLEARLY implies the supercars. Otherwise the comparison would be to John Deere.

The comparison was clearly flawed when it named Lambroghini.  To limit the comparison to supercars you need to name manufacturers that ONLY deal supercars in their commercial products.  Ferrari, McLaren come to mind.

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Posted by SD70Dude on Monday, March 21, 2022 8:04 PM

D.Carleton

The 567s, 539s and 251s I've worked on were bulletproof. The downside, especially on shortlines, was it led to skimping on maintenance. (You wait until the oil level is below the dipstick then break out the pneumatic pump and add a drum to the crankcase.) The QSK95 is so tight you won't get away that.

How many miles/hours will a QSK95 go between oil changes?

I suspect you also already know the answer for EMD, GE and ALCO locomotive engines.......

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Posted by D.Carleton on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 5:56 AM

SD70Dude
 
D.Carleton

The 567s, 539s and 251s I've worked on were bulletproof. The downside, especially on shortlines, was it led to skimping on maintenance. (You wait until the oil level is below the dipstick then break out the pneumatic pump and add a drum to the crankcase.) The QSK95 is so tight you won't get away that.

How many miles/hours will a QSK95 go between oil changes?

I suspect you also already know the answer for EMD, GE and ALCO locomotive engines.......

Very good question. The first gen was 1500 hrs. Over the intervening years with LOTS of real time data being gathered on behalf of the manufacturer that number has gone up. I've heard the latest gen is up to 3000 hrs.

Obviously this flys in the face of standard railroad practice of 'just add oil and sample.' This is a different animal. 

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Posted by D.Carleton on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 6:06 AM

BaltACD
The comparison was clearly flawed when it named Lambroghini.  To limit the comparison to supercars you need to name manufacturers that ONLY deal supercars in their commercial products.  Ferrari, McLaren come to mind.

Point taken. How's this: Comparing a legacy engine to a QSK95 is tantamount to comparing my old 1984 F150 (which boasted a Holley four barrel) with a brand new Tesla. In my old truck the on board diagnostics sat behind the steering wheel. Troubleshooting meant getting your face under the hood. Today's machines are computer driven with onboard diagnostic display and advanced troubleshooting means plugging into it with a laptop.

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Posted by BaltACD on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 8:06 AM

D.Carleton
 
BaltACD
The comparison was clearly flawed when it named Lambroghini.  To limit the comparison to supercars you need to name manufacturers that ONLY deal supercars in their commercial products.  Ferrari, McLaren come to mind. 

Point taken. How's this: Comparing a legacy engine to a QSK95 is tantamount to comparing my old 1984 F150 (which boasted a Holley four barrel) with a brand new Tesla. In my old truck the on board diagnostics sat behind the steering wheel. Troubleshooting meant getting your face under the hood. Today's machines are computer driven with onboard diagnostic display and advanced troubleshooting means plugging into it with a laptop.

You only had to go from your 1984 F150 to Ford's current F150 to make that comparison.  And considering my 84 Dodge Daytona Trubo had a computer, although not as all encompassing as today's in what it was monitoring.

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Posted by D.Carleton on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 8:24 AM

BaltACD
You only had to go from your 1984 F150 to Ford's current F150 to make that comparison.  And considering my 84 Dodge Daytona Trubo had a computer, although not as all encompassing as today's in what it was monitoring

Agreed. My vocation is interfering with my analytics. How about this: Comparing an F40 with a SC-44 is tantamount to a comparison of my old 1984 F150 (which did NOT have all weather carpet in the bed) with a Tesla.

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 10:03 AM

Lynn and I just bought a 2022 Honda CR-V.  It's really nice, but when I was listening to the finance person making her pitch (centered around the onboard computer) for the extended warranty, I started to wonder if I was buying a car that would spend more time being repaired than being driven.

The daily commute is part of everyday life but I get two rides a day out of it. Paul
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Posted by YoHo1975 on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 10:34 AM

My Dad's 86 Country Squire Wagon had the 5.0 and computer controlled injection. Only 2 years newer.

F40PH fine, but F59s and P42s also use extensive computer controls as do modern 710 and EVO/FDL based Freight units. And those computers have changed the specs of the Prime movers considerably.

 

 

I'm actually not sure what the point of this sidetrack is? That the QSK requires different Maintence is a given. Is the point that somehow that maintence regime is a requirement to have effective T4 locomotives? Because again, EMD achieves T4 on the 710 using the same DEF and the engine is still the good ole 710. 

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Posted by D.Carleton on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 11:10 AM

YoHo1975
 I'm actually not sure what the point of this sidetrack is? That the QSK requires different Maintence is a given. Is the point that somehow that maintence regime is a requirement to have effective T4 locomotives? Because again, EMD achieves T4 on the 710 using the same DEF and the engine is still the good ole 710. 

Except it isn't the good ole 710. The 710 was designed with a layshaft and a mechanical governor. It has been refined to EFI, then Tier 2 and then Tier 3. The attempt to Tier 4 didn't quite make it.

To achieve Tier 4 you have to start with a prime mover with low NOx and high particulates with a regen circuit on the exhaust or a prime mover with low particulates and high NOx with selective catalytic reduction (DEF) on the exhaust. I'm not going to pretend to know what hoops the 710 had to go through to get to the point where DEF aftertreatment became an option. This isn't something you buy from Manny, Moe & Jack and bolt onto your locomotive.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 1:04 PM

The first 710 with EFI rolled out of the factory in 1993. That's almost 30 years ago. Certainly Good Ole is a valid descriptor for it. T1 was 20 years ago. Also Good Ole. The ACe is 18 years old.

 

 

I would love to know what changes had to be made to get DEF working on the 710, but it happened. And it happened in 2019. We talked about it

 

https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/741/t/275466.aspx

 

Overmod's post in that thread in particular reiterates some things I've said:

Tier 4 with DEF is easy to implement on the 710. (Even easier to for Marine versions)

And

You remove all the stuff you had to do to get nox low in T2 and T3.

So, in fact there's a good likelyhood that the T4 710 is more like the "good ole" 710. 

The question is what they had to do to achieve the corner cases. 

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Posted by Overmod on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 1:44 PM

My own reiteration: the 710 could very nearly achieve Tier 4 final emissions without DEF -- the exceptions being the 'corner cases' YoHo mentioned, and even there falling short by an extremely small percentage.  It is my opinion that had the stated premise of the EPA people concerned with the offroad rulemaking not been 'to achieve DEF on locomotives' the standard might have been adjusted the fractional percent to preclude EMD from losing all that money and time.  That of course does not make it necessarily so.

The implementation of pollution control on a 2-stroke like the 710 is somewhat more difficult on a 4-stroke because both the HC slip and ammonia slip have to be carefully managed in aftertreatment if the engine is to maintain any reasonable flexibility in changing speed or load.  That they have done so is worthy of a SAE paper, possibly several, in my opinion.

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Posted by D.Carleton on Friday, March 31, 2023 1:17 AM

When we last left the KLW 9530 she had been joined by the former NS 8520, an AC44C6CF with a DC-to-AC transmission from CAF. Since then they have been seen regularly on the Rochelle Railcam running on the former CNW. Anyone know what's going on? 

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Posted by rdamon on Friday, March 31, 2023 6:53 AM

D.Carleton

When we last left the KLW 9530 she had been joined by the former NS 8520, an AC44C6CF with a DC-to-AC transmission from CAF. Since then they have been seen regularly on the Rochelle Railcam running on the former CNW. Anyone know what's going on? 

 

I have been seeing them split up with 9530 showing up on the Kearney, NE camera and 8520 staying near Rochelle.

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Posted by bogie_engineer on Friday, March 31, 2023 10:42 AM

Overmod

My own reiteration: the 710 could very nearly achieve Tier 4 final emissions without DEF -- the exceptions being the 'corner cases' YoHo mentioned, and even there falling short by an extremely small percentage.  It is my opinion that had the stated premise of the EPA people concerned with the offroad rulemaking not been 'to achieve DEF on locomotives' the standard might have been adjusted the fractional percent to preclude EMD from losing all that money and time.  That of course does not make it necessarily so.

The implementation of pollution control on a 2-stroke like the 710 is somewhat more difficult on a 4-stroke because both the HC slip and ammonia slip have to be carefully managed in aftertreatment if the engine is to maintain any reasonable flexibility in changing speed or load.  That they have done so is worthy of a SAE paper, possibly several, in my opinion.

 

What caused EMD to cease their work on the 710 to meet Tier 4 without DEF was the big fuel economy hit re the 4 stroke engine. As I recall the discussions in the 2011-12 timeframe, it was about 10% worse than the 4 stroke which made it impossible to sell leading to the crash program to develop the 1010J.

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Posted by YoHo1975 on Friday, March 31, 2023 1:18 PM

How was the fuel economy on UP9900 that almost but not quite hit T4? To my knowledge, 9900 has been reverted to a standard ECO engine. 

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Posted by M636C on Saturday, April 1, 2023 5:29 AM

rdamon

 

 
D.Carleton

When we last left the KLW 9530 she had been joined by the former NS 8520, an AC44C6CF with a DC-to-AC transmission from CAF. Since then they have been seen regularly on the Rochelle Railcam running on the former CNW. Anyone know what's going on? 

 

 

 

I have been seeing them split up with 9530 showing up on the Kearney, NE camera and 8520 staying near Rochelle.

 

I note that 8520 has had all of its NS lettering removed, so I assume it is at least leased to KLW, possibly with the intention of providing a direct comparison to the railroads concerned between an AC FDL and the KLW unit.

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Posted by D.Carleton on Saturday, April 1, 2023 5:49 PM

M636C
I note that 8520 has had all of its NS lettering removed, so I assume it is at least leased to KLW, possibly with the intention of providing a direct comparison to the railroads concerned between an AC FDL and the KLW unit.

Peter

8520 was sold outright to KLW during the PSR fire sale. KLW in turn swapped out the modified FDL with what is presumably an off-the-shelf FDL. But she still retains the CAF inverter package. My guess is Uncle Pete is having a look at AC alternatives.

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Posted by jeffhergert on Saturday, April 1, 2023 6:47 PM

M636C

 

 
rdamon

 

 
D.Carleton

When we last left the KLW 9530 she had been joined by the former NS 8520, an AC44C6CF with a DC-to-AC transmission from CAF. Since then they have been seen regularly on the Rochelle Railcam running on the former CNW. Anyone know what's going on? 

 

 

 

I have been seeing them split up with 9530 showing up on the Kearney, NE camera and 8520 staying near Rochelle.

 

 

 

I note that 8520 has had all of its NS lettering removed, so I assume it is at least leased to KLW, possibly with the intention of providing a direct comparison to the railroads concerned between an AC FDL and the KLW unit.

Peter

 

They have been running back and forth between Proviso (Chicago) and North Platte, usually on manifest trains MPRNP/MNPPR.  They were kept together until March 9th.  That day the 9530 was set out at Marshalltown for an extra manifest when a scheduled engine to that train failed.  

Since then they've been apart, but usuall on the aforementioned trains.  KLW people weren't happy about splitting them up, but not enough to press for them to be reunited.

I was on the second crew on the extra manifest.  I've had the 9530 a couple of times.  That first time it was causing some electrical problems.  Enough we had to get another engine before we could do a scheduled pick up of cars.  UP rates it about half of a comparable EMD or GE.  It was (and still does the other times I've had it ) give a wheel slip warning, but it seems to be a false warning.

The other times I"ve had it (other than the wheel slip warning) there's been no problems.

Jeff       

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Posted by D.Carleton on Saturday, April 1, 2023 7:38 PM

jeffhergert
They have been running back and forth between Proviso (Chicago) and North Platte, usually on manifest trains MPRNP/MNPPR.  They were kept together until March 9th.  That day the 9530 was set out at Marshalltown for an extra manifest when a scheduled engine to that train failed.  

Since then they've been apart, but usuall on the aforementioned trains.  KLW people weren't happy about splitting them up, but not enough to press for them to be reunited.

I was on the second crew on the extra manifest.  I've had the 9530 a couple of times.  That first time it was causing some electrical problems.  Enough we had to get another engine before we could do a scheduled pick up of cars.  UP rates it about half of a comparable EMD or GE.  It was (and still does the other times I've had it ) give a wheel slip warning, but it seems to be a false warning.

The other times I"ve had it (other than the wheel slip warning) there's been no problems.

Jeff       

Thank you for that. The 9530 has been repowreed with a Cummins QSK95. But does she still have a Siemens traction system or something else?

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