History repeats itself..and the ghost of the underwhelming success of " competitive" Fairbanks Morse locomotives with adapting marine service diesel engines lurks in the scrap yard.
Seems the Virginain felt differently. Their diesel fleet was 99.99% FM (they had one GE 44 Tonner...)
The Illinois Central was also prepared to buy 75 Train Masters, but didn't because of a proxy fight going on at FM.
Rusty
Unfortunately I never got to see or hear FM's with OP engines in action. I believe the last significant fleet of FM locos was used for the SP commuter trains on the San Francisco peninsula up to 1974. Apparently they had good acceleration in that service. Someone told me that one reason why they lasted there was because the SP roundhouse crew had ex-Navy men who were experienced with maintenance of the FM opposed piston engines.
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Comments:
1. Yes, the acceleration of the SP H24-66's was impressive. I can personally attest to this. This was largely due to the electrical control system, but the OP engines did rev up very quickly.
2. Navy, railroad, whatever the background of the shop crafts at San Jose, they saw the same H24-66 engines every night, which certainly factored in their being quite good at maintaining them.
3. I will say this about the EMD 20-cylinder engines: I ran a lot of them on the Santa Fe in the 1970's, and cannot recall even one mechanical road failure.
quote:
3. I will say this about the EMD 20-cylinder engines: I ran a lot of them on the Santa Fe in the 1970's, and cannot recall even one mechanical road failure.
Not the SF but the N&W and I agree.
To say that you never saw a road failure on an SD45/SD45-2 is to say that you were probably running relatively new units ! Did you always check the status of all your trailing units at the end of a run?
When I worked in the Mechanical Dept of Union Pacific Railroad 1978-1981 we read the locomotive failure reports every morning and I can tell you that our SD45's had more than their share of failures. UP only had 50 of them, and by that time they were getting to be older units with high mileage. They were mostly assigned to drag service on coal trains so they saw hard use. The UP SD45's also had more than their share of overheat-overspeed turbocharger failures, and we were never able to conclusively figure why, but I believe it was due to less than top quality with UP's in-house rebuilt engine components (not the turbos themselves; they were sent out to rebuild specialists). The turbos were pretty similar on the 16 cylinder and 20 cylinder engines but they had to work harder for more cylinders. We had extensive data and statistics on turbocharger failures over many years. As the UP SD45's became older and more problematic, one unit received a Sulzer engine as a trial replacement for the 20 cylinder engine.
Hot Water will probably straighten me out on details, but as I recall the 20 cylinder engines had the same air filters as a 16 cylinder engine, yet they were feeding four more cylinders and changed out on the same 90-day maintenance schedule. I can't remember for sure but it might have been the same thing with the engine oil filters and fuel filters. I think the 20 cylinder engines were taking more of a beating as they aged.
A lot of SD45's survived because some railroads, notably SP and ATSF, bought them in great quantity so naturally they wanted to keep them going. Lots of them got passed along to the secondhand market. Some of them even had turbochargers removed in their final years as "heavy-duty switchers". But overall, the SD45's were more likely to be retired earlier than an SD40.
Railroads bought the SD45's for more horsepower in one package, yet they had the same traction motors as an SD40/SD40-2. At lower speeds the power to the traction motors derated so that the SD45's were no better than a SD40 at drag speed, otherwise they would burn up the traction motors.
The SD40/SD40-2 ultimately proved to be a more popular and more reliable locomotive than the SD45's.
This whole business raises a question. What exactly was/ is the issue with
Alco prime movers? Both the 244 and 251 engines, but primarily the 244.
going to move this to a fresh thread, but there's elements that still belong
here.
That would be an interesting new topic ...
jaygee has started a new post for this: Alco prime movers...the real issues
ALCO THREAD HERE
The Yanmar 2GM20 is an inboard marine diesel engine manufactured by the Japanese company Yanmar Co. Ltd.
This must be where "GM" got their "20" cylinder diesel engine idea for the SD45? ... LOL
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