CMSP&P GP9 question

nanaimo73 · July 28, 2006, 10:15am

What are the drums on top of these GP9s, mufflers ?

Did other railroads have these ?

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=83224

chad_thomas · July 28, 2006, 10:30am

I don’t know Dale but my guess would be some sort of spark arrestor. Didn’t Milw have problems with locos starting fires and run speeders a couple miles behind freights to spot / extinguish them?

Randy_Stahl · July 28, 2006, 10:46am

We had these spark arrestors on all of the roots blower engines including the F’s.

Randy

nanaimo73 · July 28, 2006, 11:08am

Thanks Randy. (and Chad)

enr2099 · July 29, 2006, 2:31pm

We(CN) have them on a lot of our GP9’s as well.

Murphy_Siding · July 29, 2006, 2:53pm

Was this only a problem with roots blower equipped engines? How common are sparks from a diesel locomotive?

beaulieu · July 29, 2006, 4:03pm

Usually a problem with any non-turbocharged locomotive.

edbenton · July 30, 2006, 4:21pm

On a turbocharged diesel engine the turbo catches the sparks plus the exhaust is hotter and burns the carbon out before it leaves the stack. The spark arrestor was a great device that caught most of the sparks and kept the trees from going up in flames. The best flame display I ever saw was a SD-40 that had a blown turbo and lets say if you wanted to read you had all the light you needed.