okay. They’ll just get you to your trial faster.
Do you get summarily shot for stretch braking?
Oh yeah… it’s like a game of BINGO. All sorts of stuff they tell you they don’t like.
It’s a whole new railroad.
For us, they only consider it stretch/power braking if you release the air above a certain notch. I think they raised it back to notch 5, it was notch 3 before. It’s one of those items they like to change every so often, as the mood strikes them.
The managers always want to see “stair steps” on the tapes as one opens or closes the throttle. One coworker was telling me his manager was riding with him. He went to engage one of the energy management systems, which once you push the button you move the throttle to notch 8. It doesn’t engage until the thottle is in 8 and moving the throttle doesn’t register anything. The computer holds it in whatever position it was in until fully engaged. So you can just move the throttle to 8. So my coworker just swiped the throttle to 8. His manager asked him, “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO!” The MOP started reading him the riot act when my coworker informed him about initiating EMS.
Now, the last time this manager worked as an engineer was before EMS and PTC. You would still think he would be up on how things work.
Jeff
Hey Caldreamer. I have a few locomotives I would like to obtain the throttle consumption figures for. Would it be possible to get some from you? If so could you message me as I am unable to message you. Thanks
Hi Caldreamer, can I please have the fuel usage for each notch setting for GEVO-12 and 7FDL-16? Cheers.
At least they used to be an engineer. In my job, most management folks were hired ‘off the street’ with no relevent experince, and spend their first couple of years as essentially highly-paid interns trying to get up to speed. Of course, not knowing how to do the job doesn’t stop them from telling us how to do it!
Howdy! New to the message board here. Caldreamer, do you happen to have engine speed by notch for the 7Fdl16 too?
This has just about everything except the critical speeds and governed notch speeds!
I believe there have been previous threads with the railroad-specific information…
Although the eight-notch system is strongly associated with the Woodward governors, the use of eight notches based upon eight separate engine speeds was prevalent before Woodward introduced its internal electro-hydraulic speed mechanism in 1945, initially on the new version of the SI governor. This mechanism allowed up to 15 engine speeds, but it was configured so as to easily replicate the established four-solenoid, eight-engine speed sequence that was previously obtained through the use of external speed control units in conjunction with governor variants of the rod shutdown type, in which reverse movement of the speed control rod effected shutdown. Woodward did that by having the D solenoid move the sleeve (collar) of the speed control valve, with subtractive effect. One could say that Woodward followed established practice, or, its internal speed control mechanism was a consequence, not a cause.
The idea of an eight-position actuator based upon three binary units was not that new. I understand that UK builder Wickham was using it on railcars before 1930. It would appear to have been a tradeoff between fineness of control and mechanism complexity. Thus 16 positions from four units was probably seen as too complex for many applications (although found in German diesel-hydraulic practice from the late 1950s), and four positions from two units not fine enough in most cases (although used for example on the Budd RDC).
Specific to the primary case of interest here though is when did the four-unit governor operator, in which the fourth unit was primarily for engine shutdown, come into use? That I think was a significant development, because whereas the basic eight-position control was more-or-less generic, it was the specific addition of the fourth shutdown unit, and its use in the speed control sequence as well as for shutdown, that determined the form of American practice down to the present day.
GE had its own version of the four-cylinder electropneumatic type governor operator, the 17MK3. Possibly that was the first of its kind? (It was also used with just three active cylinders on the MU versions of the Alco S-1, S-2 and RS-1.) EMD had its own four-cylinder unit, evidently not shown as more than a box on its schematics. Possibly it was a clone of the original GE design?
As noted, the Woodward internal electro-hydraulic speed control mechanism was first applied to the new version of the SI governor in 1945. I suspect that the EMD F3 might have been the first locomotive application. The same mechanism was also applied to the PG governor when that became available in the late 1940s. Woodward also offered an alternative internal pneumatic-hydraulic continuously variable speed control, with solenoid shutdown of either the energize-to-run or energize-to-shutdown type. The SI and PG were also available without internal speed control (and used that way by Alco on its S-1, S-2 and RS-1). Also introduced with the new SI was an internal load control pilot valve and its associated floating lever. Previously, these were external to the governor.
Woodward did extensively customize its governors to individual applications, but perhaps not so much when it came to the engine speed control mechanisms. The Alco DH-643 comes to mind as a case where it did modify the electrohydraulic version to use the overriding solenoid (its primary function not required in that case) as an additional speed control unit. This provided 15 engine speeds, eight of which were almost certainly obtained using the standard AAR pattern. Although the standard governor could have been configured to provide 15 speeds, none of the sequence would have aligned with the AAR pattern.
Clearly eight speeds using all four solenoids according to the AAR pattern was no doubt the modal pattern for Woodward PG electrohydraulic version applications. Nine speeds, i.e. eight plus low idle, might have been the next most common. One could say that it was fortuitous that Woodward designed its speed control as it did, in that it made it easy to add low idle without requiring major surgery.
There are probably quite a range of other speed step implementations that have been used mostly outside of North America. Those of which I am aware are: eight speeds using all four solenoids in the Lima-Hamilton pattern; six evenly spaced speeds using just the A, B and C solenoids (D for shutdown only); eight evenly spaced speeds using just the A, B and C solenoids (D for shutdown only), 10 unevenly spaced speeds using all four solenoids; and 14 evenly spaced speeds using all four solenoids.
As already noted, engine speed count and notch count do not always align, and sometimes the latter is greater than the former. GE used seven notches (and seven speeds) for many of its industrial swicthers, including the 70-Ton model. Some diesel-electric examples from outside of North America include: seven notches from three and five engine speeds, eight notches with three engine speeds, nine notches from three, four and nine engine speeds, ten notches from three, four, six and 10 engine speeds, 12 notches from eight engine speeds, and 16 notches from 14 engine speeds. Diesel-hydraulic locomotives with all-converter transmissions typically have engine speed control, with one notch per engine speed except that at the lowest engine speed, there might be an additional converter partial-fill notch. Diesel-hydraulic locomotives with converter-coupling transmissions usually have min-max governors and direct fuel rack control, so that the engine speed for each notch is variable. An example was the EMD-BN DH12 (12-567D engine), SNCB Belgium Type 213, which had eight-position fuel rack control with a Voith L216 converter-coupling transmission. (It was the diesel-hydraulic counterpart to the EMD-BN AA12, SNCB Type 212).
Cheers,
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