Lima Hamilton?
The combined company only turned out a few steam locomotives after the 1947 merger (last one being a NKP 2-8-4 in 1949). Granted they did make a valiant effort to promote the proposed 4-8-6 design…Does B-L-H even exist as a successor company anymore?
The only part left is BLH electronics which currently makes weigh cells.
What would have been the advantage of a 4-8-6 locomotive ? A larger firebox ?
You are correct in that the 4-8-6 would have a larger firebox, the intent was to have a large grate area to allow for a slower and more complete combustion of the coal.
When you consider the poor reputation that the Hamilton engine enjoyed, it isn’t too surprising that the L-H diesel line was discontinued when the firm was absorbed by Baldwin.
The engine didn’t have a poor reputation at the time. It simply hadn’t been around long enough or had a chance to age enough to develop much of a negative reputation. And it was also a modern design, with a lot of room left for evolution unlike Alco’s 539 and Baldwin’s 606 that were about 20 years old at that time and had been taken about as far as they could. Its only major fault seemed to be the crankshaft, which some experts suspect wasn’t properly balanced resulting in premature failures. A solvable problem had they stayed around.
Lima-Hamilton was doing quite well with new orders before the news was announced, with one well respected diesel historian even stating that they were on pace to surpass Baldwin in sales that year (Jerry Pinkepank in a great article in TRAINS during the 1960’s about Lima’s short lived foray into the diesel market, stated this). And Lima introduced several innovations, appearing for a time to be set to continue their long-standing steam reputation of excellance.
If Lima’s attention to detail (which was prevalent in these designs) and their locomotive’s excelling in grueling low-speed, heavy haul applications isn’t enough, maybe the statistics can bear out the fact that it wasn’t all bad. The bulk of production still was intact in 1963, well over a decade after production had concluded (164 of the 174 built). Many of these were in active service, and most that weren’t were still stored serviceable at this late date. And the 10 New Haven casualties had their engines salvaged for re-use by the scrapper.
Not bad for a builder that outshopped only 174 diesel locomotives, had been gone well over a decade, had seen the inheritor of its legacy having itself left the market, and at a point where we were solidly in the 2nd generatio
What Pinkepank ignores is that the year following the cessation of Lima Diesels the orders for everything, and switchers especially, fell to near nothing. And since Lima only built switchers (or two switchers on one frame) even if they did outsell Baldwin that wouldn’t have amounted to very many sales. Other than the free piston gassifier Lima did not have any engine in development which could be used for mainline power.
It will be very hard for EMD to recover any percentage of loco sales in the domestic market. I read in the GE web site that they have 1000 orders for the Tier V locos. I wonder if EMD has any orders since they have no product for the market.
I know they are in the rebuilding business now of older units using the 710 ECO product, but that will probably not continue forever. I had read an article on EMD working with LNG also.
What is the history of the Evolution Series Tier 4?
GE has invested $600 million in the Evolution Series since its introduction in 2005. GE Transportation leveraged resources from other GE businesses and GE’s Global Research Center to develop the new Tier 4 engine technology. In August 2012, GE unveiled the prototype for our next Evolution Series Tier 4 Locomotive.
Tier 4 locomotives began field testing across the United States in 2013 and have logged over 10,000 miles to date. In September 2014, GE revealed it has received over 1,000 Evolution Series Tier 4 Locomotive orders.
CZ
My point and I suspect Pinkepank’s point as well, wasn’t that they were on the verge of being a major force in the later phases of dieselization with a shot at a long-term future and perhaps eventually going head to head against GM.
Rather, that the product and Lima’s diesel program wasn’t in nearly the dire straights that such a short production run before being swallowed up would’ve suggested in hindsight.
I’m pretty confident that Lima-Hamilton made the right choice since unless the free-piston research underway had truely been the wave of the future, it’s difficult to see how they could’ve made it alone into the coming decades and perhaps even still be active today. Too little, too late, and GM and eventual competitor GE were just too big.
What I do believe though is that BLH would’ve been wise to have taken more advantage of their engin
In hindsight I shouldn’t have responded to this as I appear to have sparked an O.T (although interesting) discussion that probably should have it’s own thread on the “Locomotives” forum…
I would be curious as to what the point of bringing Lima Hamilton up is? Is there any relevance to discussing Tier IV or was that just idle trolling?
well, it would be interesting if lima had the secret to an easy tier four solution.
think about it, there’s probably some lima Hamilton left in some other field of engine development.
if they actually did have an easy tier four solution, i was wondering how much EMD would buy it for, or even if they would be interested.
I’m One of those guys who think things like “what if Alco was still around?” And " what if the fabled b18-7 was built?"
and for the record there are two types of trolling:
SC trolling (Slow Clap) is the sort of trolling that generates that sort of response, with some chuckles. Examples are changing the screensaver on a computer to the troll fac without doing anything else.
“On behalf of Baldwin - Baldwin’s diesels”, by Pinkepank, Jerry A.,
from Trains, December 1967, pg. 22 &etc.
“Horsepower alone does not a locomotive make - 21st annual motive power survey” by Pinkepank, Jerry A., from Trains, July 1969, pg. 20 &etc.
“Lima a la Armco - will Lima�s first diesel customer be the last operator of Limas?”, by Marre, Louis A., from Trains, January 1973, pg. 40 &etc.
It also would have been wise if BLH would have kept its Baldwin expertise. According to Kirkland in “Dawn of the Diesel Age” the BLH merger was engineered by Westinghouse and Westinghouse brought in thier own engineers who had no diesel locomotive background. Apparently, according to Kirkland, many very basic mistakes were made by this new staff.
Would Generator Set locomotives have cut the diesel fumes and carbon dioxide emissons more effectively than what the EPA is having GE and EMD do with the new road locomotives?
No. Even idling a genset wouldn’t do better than a normal large diesel engine, gensets only make gains in fuel economy thru using less fuel at idle due to using small engines and shutting down all but one.
Possibly this topic?
Proposed L-H Free Piston Gasifier Locomotive
I realize that there is some work going on with free piston engines in hydraulic pumps and generator sets (using linear motor/generators) but I haven’t read that anyone is offering it as a solution to the locomotive industry for emissions compliance, though I would imagine it is scalable…
http://www.gizmag.com/dlr-free-piston-linear-generator-range-extender/27736/
A Very different system that what L-H and EMD proposed in the 1950’s…
The Tier IV emissions regulations do not say anything about Co2 emissions but do regulate carbon monoxide levels…
Yep - since they spend so much time parked on the repair tracks.
Hopefully EMD relocates the turbo/exhaust stack to the rear of the unit like GE, and reconfigures their radiator similar to GE’s to cut down problems in unventilated tunnels. Perhaps their tier 4 unit will be called a SD4x(insert hp here)xACe. As I see the 70 series designation no longer being used.