elephant ears?

cahrn · October 22, 2009, 10:22pm

What was the point of the “elephant ears” that Southern Pacific’s GP40X had?

Cahrn

ericsp · October 22, 2009, 10:24pm

They were an attempt to keep locomotives from overheating inside of tunnels.

tbdanny · October 22, 2009, 10:25pm

According to http://espee.railfan.net/spgp40x.html, these were test units in order to test the ‘tunnel motor’ theory of air intake.

cahrn · October 23, 2009, 10:05am

I guess they didnt work too well.

Cahrn

dehusman · October 23, 2009, 10:21am

Yes and no, the concept worked well enough that EMD made the tunnel motors, which is the same basic concept, to draw cooling air from lower in the tunnel where it wouldn’t be so hot.

cahrn · October 23, 2009, 11:11am

Yeah, thats kinda what I meant. Conceptually I suppose it worked, but clearly the tunnel motors were more effective, thus few locomotives had elephant ears. Interesting to learn some about the development of tunnel motors.

-Cahrn

Railway_Man · October 23, 2009, 4:12pm

Technically it worked too, not just conceptually.

RWM