Interesting, it appears the EE RK and the earlier CSVT was constructed to a higher standard. It will be interesting to know what the Indian Railways did with the 16 cyl 251 who had a full licence to construct the engine themselves as I suspect they might have corrected ALCO’s flaws in the 16cyl 251
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Having found this thread, I clearly have to make some comment.
I have had some involvement in the types of diesel engine mentioned here.
Before I describe my own experiences, I felt I should mention the opinion of the Cooper=Bessemer engine conveyed to me by the Research Laboratory at Queensland Railways Ipswich Workshops. QR obtained one of the earliest GE export units with the C-B FVBL-12 engine and later some units with the FWL-6 engine.
I was told that these were the worst engines that the laboratory had encountered, and that the general feeling was that GE was using QR to test totally untried engines rather than building and testing prototypes at their own expense. This discussion was illustrated with a large number of failed components, including a number of badly distorted failed pistons.
The New South Wales Railways had similar problems around 1937 with the Harland and Wolff “Harlandic” engines, a two stroke engine similar in principle to the EMC 201A but lacking the engineering expertise that General Motors were able to apply to their design. The NSW Railways apparently designed and built new cylinder heads with four exhaust valves to replace the single valve design from H&W, including the design, casting and machining of the heads. I guess it allowed them to make replacements easily. The H&W engines stayed in service until 1957 or so, being replaced by pairs of Detroit 6-110 engines. The NSWR also produced new coupling rods for a group of shunting locomotives. These were a copy of the German V60 using the Voith L37 transmission, and the new rods were required when the locomotives were around two years old. I mention this because I saw these rods being manufactured, but also because I had a very short cab ride on one of the locomotives with bent coupling rods. I recall that it was covered in transmission fluid from the failed torque converter.
More relevant to the subject, I spent my 1970-71 University holidays with English Electric assembling locomotives at their Rocklea Works south of Brisbane. I can’t claim much experience with the 12CSVT engine itself, because there weren’t any around. EE (UK) had failed to provide any engines for the sixteen locomotives then under construction, and the locomotives were being built with stacks of steel sheet intended to form the laminations of electric motor armatures to simulate the weight of the diesel engine and generator to provide suitable deflection on the frame to allow assembly of the engine hoods. Two engines arrived over a weekend and a crowd gathered to watch the uncrating. These two were painted in the colours for Western Australia, but one of them was immediately repainted in Queensland Railways colours so that each customer could get a locomotive. EE was losing customers at this time, the WAGR (who lost one of the two engines I mentioned) didn’t place another order, although two more locomotives paid for by a customer (Lefroy Salt) were built. One thing pointed out to me was that the inspection covers on the side of the crankcase on the 12 CSVT were attached by nuts on studs rather than the single handle on Alco and EMD engines. I see this had changed on the RK 270.
There’s a lot more to say, but I’ll stop here and take questions if anyone wants to ask something.
Peter
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I think you should continue posting, as many of us won’t have the background or knowledge to ask fully-informed questions. I for one would like to know the actual experience with Harlandic engines on the Silver City Comet.
Considering the vast changes Kettering reported having to make on the Winton 201A in order to produce a good railroad prime mover, I am quietly appalled that H&W would be trying to produce an engine based on the principle or detail design of the 201A as late as 1937. Considering H&W as the source: were these modified marine designs, and did the engine have any real success in marine applications?
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Kettering was quoted as saying the only thing that didn’t give them problems on the 201A was the dipstick. Tromel’s write-up mentioned the dipstick (actually the tube holding the dipstick) gave them trouble on almost every re-design.
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I wasn’t expecting a question on the Harland and Wolff engines, and it took me some time to assemble my references. The engines in question were built under licence from the Danish company Burmeister and Wain, whose designs are still in use for marine propulsion. I expect that the design in question was intended for marine use, probably for auxiliary power as well as propulsion. These were inline eight-cylinder engines,135 mm x 220 mm producing 246 kW, 330 HP at 1200 RPM, each of the two engines driving through step-up gears to a Voith torque converter and then a cardan shaft to an axle mounted final drive on each of the inner axles. The first two power cars were geared to a maximum speed of 80 MPH, and the other three were allowed 70 miles per hour. H&W continued to offer generally similar two stroke engines until 1957 at least, according to the “British Diesel Engine Catalogue” in the sizes 150 mm x 220 mm and 250 mm x 350 mm, in inline six- and eight-cylinder versions. These were indicated as having four valve heads
The main problem with the “Comet” engines was that they didn’t produce the rated power, at least not in the hot and dry conditions on the Broken Hill service. Despite PR photos showing three passenger cars and a baggage van, the power cars could only reliably haul two passenger cars. Before they entered service, large scoops were fitted to the roof to increase the airflow to the engines (but not the radiators, which drew their air from louvres on the side.) So it sounds as though airflow to the engines was a concern from the beginning. The change to four valve heads was probably suggested fairly early, but things were complicated by the outbreak of World War II in late 1939. The NSW Railways finally fitted the new heads in 1944, and these were made locally since it was not practical to get them from Ireland at the time. The new heads allowed a third light weight passenger car to be hauled, and cars were altered to provide baggage space. The dedicated baggage cars, 42 feet long and weighing all of 19.5 tonnes were not used until the power cars were fitted with Detroit diesels from 1953 onwards (earlier than I indicated in my last post). The last H&W engines were removed by 1958.
While Winton produced engines in a generally similar power range, US Dollars required authorisation from the Australian Federal Government. Ford cars were sourced from Canada or the UK to avoid this restriction.
Does this provide enough information?
Peter
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I always thought that EE lost customers in Australia because of their inability to transition from DC generators to AC Alternator hence the QR 2350/70’s and the TGR Z/ZA being equipped with Toyo alternators rather than a GEC product. Or were they other factors like timely delivery of major parts from the UK and the fact that EE was just more expensive than Clyde-EMD and Goodwin-ALCO I know GE products didn’t get a look in in Australia until the 1980’s with the QR 2600 class order.
I know the 2350/70’s were in QR circles considered a bit of a “stinker” but well liked in Tasmania I wondered would they have made a good passenger engine until the coming of the 3900’s in QR service.
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I think the main problem was that Australian locomotive production was relatively small, and I was told that the operation didn’t make a profit. As of early 1971, management were looking at getting out of the locomotive business. While I was at Rocklea, the WACR placed the order for the seven DA class with Clyde rather than buy seven more RA class, and this was a serious disappointment in the drawing office at the time. Of course, Rocklea built a lot of other things, but the locomotives took up a lot of room, maybe half the building with three rows of locomotives under construction taking up one whole bay of the wartime-built factory. As I indicated earlier, supply of the engines and generators was more often late than not. The maintenance of the engine would have been more expensive than an equivalent EMD and may have been more expensive than an Alco engine. The EE would have been easier on fuel than a blower EMD but not necessarily cheaper to fuel than an Alco. Looking at the SAR, once the standard Alco export units were available (and at a relatively low price), the SAR only built the small 500 class shunters, partly at least to give their workshops something to do but using English Electric equipment. IN Queensland, local construction as regarded as very important, and of course EE had an advantage with the QR there. But after Com Eng started assembling EMD locomotives on subcontract from Clyde, literally adjacent to the EE plant, when the big fleet expansion for export coal traffic occurred, the EMDs basically took over. Partly this was helped by the coal lines allowing an increase in weight to 96 long tons since the coal traffic required heavier track anyway. EE locomotives were usually lighter for their power when compared to a blower EMD. The Mk III version of the 12 CSVT engine was not as reliable as the MK II and these locomotives were soon rated at a power not much more than the Mk II but the introduction of early electronic control appears to have reduced reliability as well. The last Mk II engined loco 1344 had electronic control, and I recall seeing it being run up and down Rockhampton yard while the electricians tried to work out why it wouldn’t load up correctly. The British Rail Class 50 had an early version of electronic control, and this had to be replaced fairly early in the life of the class. However, the MK III locomotives were well liked in Tasmania, although this might have required some workshop effort.
As to the resurgence of GE in Australia, I had some input to that. I was working for BHP.s subsidiary Mt Newman Mining, and a number of Alco 16-251F engines failed due to faulty welding in the crankcase, centered around the camshaft supports. I was asked to look at alternative engines, partly because there were three complete M636 locomotives missing engines because they had been used to replace the failed engines. This was probably intended as something to keep a junior engineer out of the way, but I looked into the options. The two possibilities that could have worked were, of course EMD and GE. The EMD engine would require a new alternator, but the Alco used the same alternator as the GE engine. So, I wrote up a report recommending the FDL-16 as the best alternative. As expected, Mt Newman did nothing, but the report reached the technical manager at Hamersley Iron, and in due course he ordered three C36-7 locomotives from Goninan. So I can claim to be partly responsible for GE’s return to Australia.
Peter
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So effectively English Electric were trying to go one up on the North American Builders and failing or were they just trying to play catch up and failing. I often wonder about the BR 56 and 58 Was the RK prime mover the weakest part of the package or was the prime mover ok and the rest wasn’t up to scratch
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It isn’t as simple as competing. There wasn’t enough foreign exchange to allow all the states to buy US locomotives, even assembled in Australia. So, someone had to supply the remainder. South Australia planned to buy EMD along with Victoria when the Clyde-EMD arrangement was announced in 1949. This wasn’t a good year, and the Federal Government cancelled the dollar allocation. There was a change to a more conservative government in 1949. At this stage the SAR, who had already built two EE-engined shunters decided to go with EE for their main line loco. After the Korean War started in 1950, because Korea is a very cold place, wool prices went up. Australia was selling wool to the USA, Russia and China and the price went up and more dollars became available. SAR finished their first locomotive within days of the first Clyde locomotive.emerging, and it ran a train to Port Pirie (where they met the Commonwealth Railways) before the CR’s first unit arrived from Sydney. SAR later purchased the 800 class shunters from Rocklea, Australian Iron and Steel had standardised on EE locomotives as early as 1950 (but they were at leat partly British owned through BHP.) and more of these were built at Rocklea along with the SAR 800 class locos. It was only the entry of Goodwin building Alco locomotives at much lower cost than Clyde’s EMDs that ensured that the SAR and the NSWGR would buy these until Goodwin stopped making them.
But by this stage EE were in business at Rocklea and I guess they were making money at that stage. The British owned Midland Railway of WA bought a whole fleet, which ended up with the WAGR when the Midland finally gave up in the 1960s. Tasmania, like the SAR, built their own EEs after buying British built units initially. But by1971 the lower operating costs of EMD units were becoming apparent as the state governments tried to cut the costs of their railway systems. Tasmania and Queensland bought the only significant orders after my time at Rocklea, the AI&S shunting units being already under construction when I was there.
Peter
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I always thought that English Electric fell behind the North American builders in world markets as by the 1970’s EMD had the 645 which was much more efficient than the 567 and then US GE has got on top of the FDL in its smaller forms and of course ALCO via MLW was still ALCO but quickly dropped off when AC main alternator was common and then 3000hp became viable by the late 1970’s.
Correct me if I am wrong Pete. I am rather interested in EE’s later control systems and why they failed against US GE/AEI and EMD’s. It seems like they were trying to do something more advanced than the North American builders in response to keeping all up weight lighter than US GE/EMD which is vital where axle loads are restricted particularly in Australia/Africa/South America/South East Asia. India was an ALCO shop so they weren’t going to be getting a look in there.
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I look at some of the modern-day automotive diesels that are used in pickup trucks and cringe. Like Cummins grid heater bolts that if they fail get sucked into the intake valves and into the engine. Ford and their bright idea to not have a single check valve in the 6.7 diesel and wondering why they wipe camshafts out. Or GM with their duramax 6.6 using a 5 mm button to hold all the gears in check when a keyway takes 20 seconds to machine on the crank.
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You want the long list or the short list of all the problems on the Navistar 6.0L engine? The VT365 was bad enough, but there were suuuuuure ways to make it worse…
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Has the mantra for automotive diesel manufacturers to have the engines fail so they can sell more.
In truth - in Northern climes, diesel engines in civilian road vehicles should seriously out last the climatic damage that the vehicles get on the Northern roadways.
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There’s a reason why the 6.0 literally caused the end of the partnership with Ford. The list is too long to get into. In automotive industry service standards it’s called Fords Oldsmobile 350 diesel engine of the early 80s. A very close friend of mine who recently retired from the Ford dealership as their service manager put it this way. When that freaking engine was out there 60 percent of all our warranty work was on that engine. Now this was around the same time as the 5.4 3 valves were launching sparkplugs out of cylinders.
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I’m afraid that I can’t join the discussion on USA automotive diesel engines. There are very few USA market pickup trucks in Australia, where the Toyota Hilux (like a USA Tacoma) and similar vehicles are most common, and many of these use gasoline engines.
I think the adoption of electronic controls in diesel locomotives was part of a worldwide trend away from low and medium voltage control switching, and was not, in the English Electric case, an attempt to compete with any other manufacturer. It is probably worth discussing the control system used by English Electric in the locomotives built in Australia. These used what was called voltage regulator control. In the electromechanical form, the voltage regulator was a large circular device with contacts around the circumference (like markings on a clock dial) with a single arm contacting points 180 degrees apart, which rotated to match the load and voltage. This detected the electrical load on the generator and advanced the throttle of the diesel engine to a limit indicated by the position of the “power lever” on the control stand. To give an example of how this worked, with a locomotive on a load box for engine testing, the reverser was set in forward or reverse and the power lever was advanced to maximum power. Then, with the engine running in idle, the load was applied in the load box. As the load increased, the locomotive throttled up with nobody in the cab, controlled by the voltage regulator. As most will have realised, this control system was incompatible with the eight-notch control system used in the USA and on most export diesel locomotives.
It might be worth mentioning at this stage the reason for the eight-notch control system. This is set out in Kettering’s paper: [EMD_567_History_and_Development_1951.pdf] (https://utahrails.net/pdf/EMD_567_History_and_Development_1951.pdf), where it is indicated that the “notches” were chosen to avoid points of high torsional vibration on the EMD 567 engine. The reference is worth reading completely if anyone reading this hasn’t already read it. I was given a hard copy of the paper in 1972, and I’ve held on to it since then.
But to return to the English Electric system. The lack of compatibility in multiple unit operation became more significant as train loads increased. Where really large trains were being operated, in the case of Queensland, in the export coal traffic, this problem was addressed by allocating the EE and EMD locomotives to different areas, and this worked well until all the major export routes were electrified. However, this spelled the end of the English Electric locomotives, since their incompatibility couldn’t be “handled” any longer, and with locomotives to spare, those with the higher maintenance costs were withdrawn.
However, the voltage regulator was an obvious candidate to be replaced by a low voltage solid state device which, in theory would be cheaper and require no maintenance, quite independently of your competition adopting electronics for their different and incompatible systems. Unfortunately, EE had problems with their earliest electronic devices, both in reliability and longevity and it was some years before the electronic systems were as reliable as the older (but maintenance intensive) electro-mechanical devices.
This was happening while EMD were developing their “Dash-2” electronic controls. EMD had more funds and more people to work on the problem, and had a reputation for low maintenance costs to maintain, and the modular card-based system adopted has proven to be a great success as progressive improvements can be easily and simply retrofitted to older locomotives. However, it is worth pointing out that it was quite some time before the “Dash-2” system became available on export locomotives compared to the domestic market, which in this case gave EE a longer period before they had to face the impact of competition from the Dash-2 system.
Weight is a separate consideration. The EE six- and twelve-cylinder engines were heavier than the equivalent EMD engines, but were also more powerful. In fact, they competed with the EMD eight and sixteen cylinder blower engines. EE did have a weight advantage in the higher power range, with a 12CSVT engined locomotive weighing around 88 long tons while a blower 16-645E locomotive weighed around 96 long tons. The QR weight limit for main lines was 90 long tonnes, so the big EMDs were limited to the heavier export coal lines. However, the rapid expansion of the coal lines meant that there were a lot of the GL26Cs around, and a twelve-cylinder version with the same basic shell, the GL22C was used on the lighter main lines. Strangely, Queensland never purchased new locomotive with a turbocharged 12-645E, but when the penny dropped, many GL22Cs were turbocharged and by stripping older units with 12-645Es with the later heavy crankcase, a number of GL26Cs became GTL22Cs. But as I said, QR never bought a new unit with a turbocharged 12. These GTL22Cs weighed around 93 tonnes, which became the new standard for main lines. But the “90 ton” EE locomotives were always lighter although for the branch lines, the “60 ton” limit had to be raised to 61.5 long tons for the EE units, although the more powerful eight-cylinder EMDs happily ran at 59 long tons. (They had six D36, three-foot gauge motors rather than the heavier D29 metre gauge motors used on all other QR EMDs but the D36s were quite strong enough for 1000HP from an 8-645.)
Greg, if I have missed your point, please let me know…
Peter
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I find it hard to believe that EE would adopt a control scheme as primitive as this. Even in modified Ward-Leonard, there is a clear distinction between the engine governor controlling crank rpm and the fuel rack following electrical loading – the ‘throttle notch’ only setting the former, and the governor adjusting fuel feed to hold the prime mover at or near the determined rpm.
The eight notches only incidentally are chosen to avoid critical speeds. I believe there is a ‘tuning’ manual for Southern Railway that goes into the specific governed engine speeds for different classes of locomotive, which can be compared to the table in Kettering’s paper.
Certainly the early Alco air switcher throttle, and the Baldwin pneumatic system, allowed the throttle to be controlled ‘steplessly’ (with operation more familiar to engine men accustomed to steam throttles) but you would still expect load following to be conducted relative to governed engine rpm to prevent lugging or smoke.
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My description is based on my personal experience of load testing QR loco 1332 some fifty-four years ago. My concentration was disturbed because just as the locomotive reached full power the engine hood filled up with steam and it was lucky that I had just closed a hood door after taking a temperature from a thermometer placed on the engine. When the radiator header tank was painted, someone forgot to remove the masking tape and fit a plug to a drain hole, so the radiator pressurisation relied on the masking tape. Clearly the engine shut down on losing water pressure,and I headed off to a quiet corner to calm down. I’m not sure what control equipment was used, since I largely worked on installing the engine and generator and the air compressor and cooling fan..
A better description of the control interaction than I could provide is given in an English IEE paper THE ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT OF DIESEL-ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVES AND MOTOR-COACH TRAINS By P. L. MARDIS, M.Sc, Member, and W. G. JOWETT, B.Sc, Associate Member dated January 1950. This shows a system that used notch control of engine speed, but it does show the interaction of the voltage regulator and the engine governor. It also provides a simplified circuit diagram showing the equipment in LMS 10000 and 10001..
Peter
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The Mardis & Jowett paper is in vol.97, issue 1 of Proceedings of the IEE, which contains other interesting contemporary electrification papers. I will see if I can read it through library access (being too skinflint to pay £20 to get it through the IET archives).
My understanding of loadboxing was that the engine governor was set to peak or limiting engine rpm before progressive excitation. I am not certain how a system that automatically accelerated the engine as a throttle priority would work in conjunction with servo-controlled excitation; I can see some of the problems of pre-Ward-Leonard inefficiency developing (perhaps including the engine running at higher rpm than required for a given loading, which is undesirable because a considerable fraction of diesel output hp is involved in maintaining compression suitable for ignition at operating rpm, much as in gas turbines)
An unexpected (by me) consequence involved Baldwin 600A-series engines, which have only a few hundred rpm between idle and peak (625rpm) speeds. At idle notch, a locomotive with light load will happily accelerate to nearly 30mph! It would be interesting to loadbox this, just to see what the governor would do to limit excitation at maximum fuel rate, but that would not reflect how the locomotive would practically be run… in sensible service. I can see some PSR types definitely being interested in high excitation at lower engine speed being more “economical”, but that did not work very happily for gas-electrics and I’d have my doubts for turbocharged diesels…
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I think the operation of the EE control system is best explained by a diagram in Mardis and Jowett, Figure 8 at the top of page 266. The generator has a separately excited field controlled by the control system in addition to a conventional field which allows the control system to adjust the load on the generator to match the power input from the diesel engine, which avoids the electrical load exceeding the capacity of the engine as the power increases.
The EE locomotives in general do not show the characteristic clouds of smoke that result from the mismatch of fuel and engine speed seen on Alco and GE locomotives. They were used in heavy coal traffic in preference to the EMDs, partly due to their higher engine power, but also because they had good electrical systems that coped with the heavy loads. However, they were not as easy to maintain and probably cost more to operate overall, despite having better fuel consumption.
Peter
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I think that might have been because EE were very early to the Diesel electric game. They started building diesel electrics in 1936 so they were in the game before Alco and EMD. I surmise that their control systems were just evolutionary from these early production models. With the British Empire still being around until 1957 and a “closed shop” There was no perceived need to adopt AAR controls. Remember the first diesel-electrics in Africa were EE and they performed quiet well against later EMD G and GE U series engines (Which in the EMD case were gold standard outside fuel consumption).
This is an interesting read on the Rhodesean DE-2’s It seems that once the prime mover issues were sorted, (These seem far less than the issues the FDL had in its early days) the biggest issue was traction motor bushes. (You could argue that the ALCO 251 was actually a 2nd generation locomotive diesel prime mover that maxed out at around 3600 hp)
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