The new Cummins Tier 4B QSX locomotive engine is available in a 16 cylinder, 95 liter o
Erik,
Was this a 24 cylinder vee engine or some other arrangement?
I assume that an engine for the USN would have been a Winton with a 2xx model number, like many submarine engines.
Allison built an “X” type aero engine by basically putting together two V-1710 engines as an X-3420 but it never entered service.
EMD built a Pancake engine, an X with a vertical crankshaft, which had a 24 cylinder version, with a right angle gearbox and reduction gear connecting to a propellor shaft. It was used in light anti-submarine vessels. A larger version was built for submarines with a generator at the base, but oil leaked into the generator…
When I was at Sydney University, we had pieces of Alco 251F engines as part of an investigation (into the cam and valve pushrods) by BHP who weren’t happy with the answers they were getting from Schenectady (or Montreal by my time). The intercooler fan from the C636 was also a feature with bent and broken parts after a number came to pieces at speed causing dismay to locomotive crews only a few feet ahead of it.
Peter
Peter,
It was a Vee with a Winton 2xx model number.
- Erik
I think you have some mis-information. The problem with the early SD45s was lack of sufficient crankcase stiffness that led to crankshaft flexing. The crankshaft failures were the result of the combined bending and torsional stress. Once EMD stiffened the crankcases (and the railroad’s retrofitted the fix to the existing fleet), the crankshaft failures dropped to nothing at all. (In fact, I don’t recall a single crankshaft failure on the ex-EL SD45-2s that Conrail inheritted. They are still in service after 33 years)
The viscous torsional crankshaft damper exists on all E3 engines, not just the 20 cylinder version. It’s a pretty simple devise - not much to go wrong. They rarely failed.
As long as you stay away from the critical engine speeds with the governor speed schedule, torsional crankshaft failures won’t occur.
The SD45 disappeared from the fleet in the late 70s not because the diesel engine was unreliable, but because:
- additional HP with no additional TE over and SD40-2 increased fuel consumption with no increase in train size.
- soldered, 8 row radiators leaked like a seive.
- Extra HP needed field shunting at high speeds. Just more stuff to fail (the need for field shunting was a major reason GP35s faded from the fleet rapidly, too.)
The preponderance of th
“Ridden hard and put away wet is a colloquialism meaning: a person (or thing) looking worn out, unwell, spent, not well taken care of.”
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-rode-hard-and-put-away-wet-mean.htm
"The phrase itself is derived from horseback riding. When a horse is forced to run quickly, it works up a sweat. Before being put back into the stable, it should be allowed to cool down by walking the last part of its journey. Even after arrival, it may need to be allowed to walk a bit more to cool down. The rider should remove saddles and other tack and give the horse a small amount of water. Once the horse is somewhat rested, the rider or groom rubs the horse down before returning it to the stable.
Horses that do not receive this treatment can suffer from a number of complaints. Chills and muscle stiffness can result from being left damp. Horses also frequently become bad-tempered and resentful if left untended."
YoHo.
You knew all that stuff “bout hosses?”
I errored early on, missed education about dirt diggin’, cow herding, horse corralling activities.
YoHo 1975, was there a convenient way this city kid allergic to agricultural and remote areas, could have been acquainted with these terms, this slang, lingo?
I missed. 74 yrs. coulda’.
efftenxrfe
what in this world (I’ve no reference to the meaning) does “put them away wet” mean. Does it mean wash the locomotive and let it drip-dry on a maintenance track. As a hostler, I did that in the late 60’s.
“Ridden hard and put away wet is a colloquialism meaning: a person (or thing) looking worn out, unwell, spent, not well taken care of.”
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-rode-hard-and-put-away-wet-mean.htm
"The phrase itself is derived from horseback riding. When a horse is forced to run quickly, it works up a sweat. Before being put back into the stable, it should be allowed to cool dow
The roundhose formeman at the SP Santa Clara roundhouse told me that SP NEVER derated their SD45’s. Once the crankshaft problem was solved they loved them. He would know, since he supervised the men who worked on them. I saw many of them on the hill between Colfax and Truckee. There could be as many as ten on a train.
There’s documentation with their locomotive data books that confirms that they indeed derated them, not to mention 1st hand accounts.
Yeah, they absolutely were, undeniably derated.
Derating was likely done to get rid of traction motor field shunting while rewiring the locomotive. Note that GP35s were derated during rebuilds - and there was nothing wrong with the 16-567D3 at 2500 HP. The reason was you could skip field shunting at a 2000 HP rating.
IIRC, the field shunting problem was more of an issue with locomotives that did a lot of swiching work,particularly 4 axle EMD units.
Railroads that derated SD45 series locomotives mostly did so to reduce fuel consumption…
SP data books show some SD45s (and all SD45Rs?) at 3200 hp. What was it-- maybe half of them?
Don’t recall if all the SD45T-2s stayed at 3600.
Not following you… Field shunting (and transition) is needed to keep the HP up at high speeds because of voltage limits of the main generator (traction alternator/diodes). At low switching speeds, none of that comes into play. You just stay in full field all the time.
GP35s had something like 20+ stages of field shunting with transition requiring a mess of switch gear, a horrible electro-mechanical control system and miles of wiring. Conrail intstalled some Barco solid state controls and derated to 2250 HP with 8 (?) stages of shunting/transition. They were intended to keep running in r
And to ease the stresses on the crankshaft and bearings. As I understand it, this is the primary reason why SP did so.
Never seen any mentions that they were ever derated.
By the 1970’s, most of the issues with the 20 cylinder 645 that had cropped up after hundreds of thousands of miles of service had been addressed. So I suspect this effort never carried over to the Dash 2’s.
Southern Pacific seems to have discovered that the benefits were neglible compared to the advantages of just stocking a single model governor for the fleet (No rewiring, changes to transition, and so on were associated with if a SP SD45 output at 3,200 HP, 3,400 HP, or 3,600 HP… the HP difference all depended on what governor was installed.).
[quote user=“timz”]
SP data books show some SD45s (and all SD45Rs?) at 3200 hp. What was it-- maybe half of them?
There’s a pretty good thread on crankshafts, particularly 20-cylinder crank fabrication, over on RyPN now.
http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=37404&sid=eda484af2572598f0e0dd89715ca4795
I’ve asked about this earlier in the thread. My first thought was “What could they have been thinking”?
So I looked up a couple of my US Navy submarine references and thought about it. The Navy was anxious to get increased power in their boats and more than sixteen cylinders was one way to get it.
I suspect that the engine would have been a Winton 278A, which I think was a version of the 567A modified for submarine use. So a 24 cylinder 278A would have produced around 2000 HP which would have provided a useful increase for US Navy designers.
But why 24 cylinders? Who would want to use a twelve throw crankshaft? Some thought reveals that GM’s main competitor for Navy contracts, Fairbanks Morse probably offered a twelve cylinder engine which would have had TWO twelve throw crankshafts, and as most of us are aware, even fitted them in locomotives which at least some of us remember seeing.
In the less demanding role of driving generators in submarines, a 24 cylinder might have worked, but GM followed the path of the higher speed vertical X type “Pancake” engine and the US Navy bought more FMs…
</
I have always understood that every other stroke (movement of the piston) in a two-stroke engine is a power stroke, whereas every fourth stroke in a four stroke engine is a power stroke. Therefore, at the same rpm, a two-stroke engine has twice the power strokes that a four-stroke engine has.
M636C
My impression was that the Diesel Engineering School was more for surface ships as opposed to subs, which presumably had their own version of that school. In addition to the 24 cylinder GM diesel, the school had an Alco (which used pipes for the tappet rods), an FM and a double acting HOR. My dad said he liked the unitized injectors for the GM engine as he had an unpleasant experience when the high pressure fuel line on another engine wasn’t fully tightened down on another when it was started up.
The USN had quite a few classes of surface ships running diesels, including the minesweeper my dad shipped out on VJ day (which eventually became the Philipines presidential yacht). LST’s and destroyer escorts were a couple of other diesel powered types.
Winton 278 sounds right, my dad was emphatic it was not an EMD.
- Erik
Erik,
The 24 cylinder Winton may have been intended for surface vessels, but surface ships tended to have multiple engines, and a large single engine would not be as great an advantage as in a submarine which effectively needed to have two main engines simply from space considerations, at least with WWII submarine hull designs.
With current designs based on the USS Albacore, the teardrop shaped hull is shorter and beamier and one submarine class I am very familiar with has three 90 degree V-18 engines arranged abreast.
M636C
I’m no expert, but I remember reading that because of restricted breathing (the cylinder must be purged and re-charged at the bottom part of each stroke) the 2-stroke can’t produce anywhere near double the power of the 4-stroke. I’m sure others on this forum can tell us more.