Yes well both brands of 6000 hp diesels were discarded though quite a few of the 9043s are still running around .
Shame that the ACe type rebuild wasn’t available at the time . I suppose you could say that the AC6000 may have had a similar option but no .
Anyway good to see that an AC6000 has been preserved , probably not much chance of a 90MAC H being kept .
My recollection was that the original intention was to rebuild six of the SD90MAC-H units at NS Juniata, and this was to include a complete replacement of the inverters and control system to SD70 ACe standards.
Apparently the first unit was stripped to the frame at Juniata when FMG decided that they needed more power immediately and six more units were obtained intended for delivery “as is”.
The first unit at Juniata was felt to be in the best condition of all the units and it was reassembled as it was and was shipped with the first batch. Six units were rebuilt at Juniata with 16-710G3 engines, but these kept the original GTO inverters, probably to allow an early delivery.
So as I understand it, the ACe option was there but not taken up to ensure quick delivery.
Perhaps they learned a lesson and the AC44C6M units coming now are fully rebuilt, although they have bought some used Dash 9s to meet the urgent need for new power.
Peter
From what I’ve been told, apparently it came frpm Wabtec in mint original condition with the FDL and everything, all really required is rewiring rear traction motors, and refilling water, lube oil fuel replace the batteries etc. It would run
Wouldn’t “mint original condition” involve a HDL? (Which is what I did think this particular unit still had… and is a major part of what makes it such an important piece of GE locomotive history.)
(It occurs to me that the museum would benefit further from whatever parts and documentation GE has about the 6000hp locomotive engine development up to the time the ‘demonstrator’ running stopped…
She still has her 7HDL-16.
Nice to be original but the Evolution engine would probably be better if it was to be kept in running condition .
This is an interesting thread though it does tend to wander around the whole 6000+ HP/1000 horse TM topic . Possibly grounds for a seperate thread .
Anyway my opinion on the general topic is that I agree with the 4500 odd HP 6 axle/TM layout at around 190-200 metreic tonnes - in other words USDM specs .
To get greater real world hauling performance IMO involves higher capacity permanent way (rail infrastructure) combined with higher locomotive axle loads . You would have to know that more horsepower beyond this doesn’t equate to dragging higher tonnage per unit . We know this in Australia because outside the Pilbara and arguably NSWs Hunter Valley locomotive performance is very much limited by our lighter ie 22.3 tonne axle loads . Our units cannot hope to pull anything like what your 30 TAL units can , not a hope . Things like EMDs Super Series allowed us to put 3000 Hp to rail with engines like a lightweight 127 odd tonne SD40-2 ie 81 Class G class . Previously 3000 horse units could not pull the same loads as these SS ones . They probably performed more like the Goodwin Alcos of more like 2000 Hp , but faster when not traction challenged . AC traction was probably as big a jump again as SS and made it possible to use most of the 4000/4500 Hp out best units currently have .
I’m not up to speed on where Adani’s narrow gauge GT46ACe’s are performance wise . I think I read that they didn’t perform that much better than the NG GT42ACe does - possibly because they use same or similar NG traction motors . I think the 46 is something like 17 tonnes heavier and 4500Hp vs 3200Hp in the 42 .
Back later .
If the situation with the Deutz-derived engine was anything like the 265H experience with cavitation, the problem was most pronounced at high notch, when the ultrasonic resultants of vibration in the cast crankcase became strong enough for that ol’ sonoluminescent boogie to get to work. In preservation I can’t imagine the engine being worked to anywhere near even half its shaft horsepower…
I didn’t get much feed back on exactly what went bang with the H engine , I just remember the 90s falling over a bit too often . They also had electrical and control system issues . Elec compressors were expensive to rewind so they were changed to shaft drive ones .
Yes a preserved AC6000 wouldn’t be worked too hard , I was thinking Evo bits would be more readily available .
Anyway , back to the higher horsepower subject . If (big if) manufacturers wanted to get extra real world performance the axle lods need to increase . I don’t think there is any other way to increase tractive effort to get more potential on a per locomotive basis . 1000 horse traction motors are already here and reliable engines in the 5000+ horsepower range are too . As mentioned the 80MAC config worked , and I think an 80ACe is available for export . Not T4 obviously but any rusty 90 hulk could be rebuilt to 80ACe spec .
The big issue is would the operators consider heavier perway , probably not .
We might preface this by noting that the Chinese apparently built many locomotives with 265H engines and seem to have operated them without dreadful showstopping problems. It is possible that this was done by derating them (in my opinion, the engine ought to ‘live’ when producing power in the 4500hp range corresponding to what could be gotten out of a comparable 710, perhaps even a bit higher).
The explanation we came up with is a bit scientific, but it may explain some things you observed or heard in the field. Increasing the governed horsepower output involves increasing the BMEP in each cylinder and hence its peak firing pressure. The generation and then exhaust of this pressure causes vibrations in the cylinder and crankcase structure, with the usual ‘harmonics’ and resonant interactions you might see in other structures ‘excited’ below their yield point – as in bells.
The design of the 265H involved a thin-wall cast block, which was almost certainly designed to ‘put the metal where stress analysis said to’ (not where resultants of vibration would be minimized). In practice, governing the engine at highest setting produced ultrasonic vibrations in the crankcase structure, which happened to be communicated into the coolant spaces where they coupled with the coolant mass… sometimes being focused into a small volume.
At ultrasonic frequency, this ‘ringing’ would produce tiny “vapor” bubbles which would then rapidly collapse. Unfortunately the speed of their collapse is determined by physics, and is much faster than their generation was – and the speed of convergence of the volume in the last stages of contraction is fast enough that you can observe visible light from the heat generated – this is the innocently-named 'sonoluminescence
All food for thought ,
It’s hardly surprising that an 80 MAC would use more fuel . More cylinders/injectors and more power .
I think I remember reading that EMDs thoughts in the 90H development times was that two stroke diesels were not going to meet emissions limits and I assume this would be going into T1/T2 era . Shame if that’s the case given that the 710 made it as far as T3 . Its possible that someone here mentioned EMD looked at another slightly larger ie 810 cu/cyl 2 stroke V16 . That would have been an interesting idea . The T4 V12s (both) must have fairly large capacity cylinders to make similar power to the previous generation V16s .
Anyway I agree that different fuels are probably the way ahead given the stranglehold of emissions laws . Personally I think the battery electric fad will be a passing band aid because of charge time and unit availability .
Thing is that the 80MAC 20-710 ‘mac-xed out’ at around 5800 nominal hp, and I believe that was at rpm where torsional resonances in the crank could develop in governed power regulation in high notch. As you note you’d have to go to larger displacement – which leads to injection concerns and additional reciprocating-balance issues with the equivalent to balance shafts still carried up in the timing gears somewhere, so god-awful peak torsional stress a la 16-244… someplace you would NOT want to go if your competitors didn’t have the concern at all…
The 710 was close enough to Tier 4 final without SCR/DEF. If you look at the EPA stats, the engine produced only somewhere like 1.5% high (yes, that’s .015 over requirement) on about 4% at most of the test duty cycle. Since the Tier 4 NOx standard for locomotives was completely made up by regulators, you’d think a waiver preventing multi-hundred-million-dollar trade losses (involving additional NOx in service measured in pounds) would be feasible. Not at an agency with an employee on record who noted the NOx standard was explicitly written to force the railroads to SCR…
In my opinion, battery-electrics like the GE FLXdrive are the wave of the future… in consists of fueled power, as the electric part of hybrid power. Their use in ‘zero-carbon air-quality management districts’ is an additional synergy. This is the same set of arguments Iden et al. make for their ‘tenders’, but keeping the cab extends utility to two-unit cabs-out power comparable to some of the road-slug combinations.
Hydrogen fuel-cell locomotives without substantial battery/supercap capacity are not going to be the answer to much except the equivalent of that old boating joke about setting thousand-dollar bills on fire one after the other for the service life of the power… you may have noted that the only successful use of hydrogen so far is ‘tripower’-style road charge of battery trai
My guess is that the battery electric will be a short term thing , partly because of existing battery technology and charge times . At best these things can charge in dynamic and possibly take a feed from adjacent diesels in DB mode . It’s hard to imagine the operators affording the time to charge them from ground supply .
My guess is that bulk charging of the ‘battery-electric’ component of a consist would be ground-charged in massive parallel at conventional fueling stops. That is less likely to be fully safe for hydrogen-capable infrastructure as for straight diesel.
But the real charging will be from early stages of punctuate catenary (installed for grade snapping and dynamic regenerative braking) which by definition offers an extended charging time with the locomotives and train in motion. One of the advantages of the dual-mode-lite approach is that the OHLE (or smart third rail) can source enough for both ‘diesel-equvalent’ traction horsepower and incremental fast charge simultaneously.
The majority of the problems with the old H motors are they required antifreeze for their cooling systems not just treated water. The railroads weren’t ready for a locomotive that required antifreeze to stay cool and needed more than treated water when refilling it. Also the H series supposedly had massive cavitation issues with the liners on the engine. Now as for the 710 series and emissions issues blame the EPA for this. They literally moved the goalposts back further to prevent the 710 from being able to meet tier 4 for emissions. But why the EPA are not allowed to care what businesses want to them anymore anything that is harmful to mother earth in any way must be destroyed unless it’s part of the holy green environment kingdom such as wind solar or battery it seems.
Overmod what do you mean by that 315K reference .
The worst part about this mess is that there would likely be LESS pollution from locomotives had the EPA adopted “tier 3.9” limits. This is because the railroads would have been more likely to buy a “tier 3.9” locomotive than a “tier 4” locomotive.
At one time, there was a trend in the United States to increase rail-vehicle size and load, the most ‘canonical’ example perhaps being the ‘Rail Whale’ tankcars with span-bolstered trucks. One part of this involved increasing axle load to 315,000lb (through the use of “improved” track structure and rail metallurgy). There was serious work done around the turn of the 21st Century on three-axle freight trucks to supplant the evolved three-piece design; some of these went straight to radial axle steering (something the South Africans pioneered) as that was a hot theoretical topic on locomotives at that time.
The problem with 315K axle load, particularly if there is any particular shock from flat wheels, low joints, etc., is that no matter how hard you make or coat the surface of the railhead contact patch, you’re still going to induce cold flow in the metal further down (since you can’t harden the bulk of the railhead so much that it becomes brittle in service; you need to maintain field weldability with sometimes-crude methods; etc.). I suspected that the experience with hard coatings would translate over into the railroad context, and it seems to have done so: the work-hardened layer on rails tends to break up into lamellae which then work against each other and can actually tip a bit, causing high (and virtually invisible to practical inspection) cracks propagating vertically into the rail metal. It doesn’t take too many broken or spalled rails to eat up the putative “big savings” from heavier load per axle – and we haven’t gotten into the issue with wheels on the ‘other side’ of the contact patch yet, or concerns with side-bearing binding, center-pin lubrication, and other things.
It was in this context that the Canadians developed the ‘magic wear rate’ theory, which in essence said that you wanted the rail to wear away
Thank you that is most interesting , it leads to another question - but first .
Here in Australia we don’t measure locomotives , axle loads or rail weights in pounds . A locomotive like say a NR class weighs 132 metric tonnes and its axle load is 22 tonnes . On our national standard guage network the max axle loads AFAIK is 25 tonnes . So x 4 is a 100 tonne gross mass wagon (car) . The faster Intermodal trains are allowed 115 km/h (70 mph) at 19 tonne axle loads 76 tonnes gross .
We measure rail weights in kilograms per metre ie 60 = 60Kg/m . It used to be lb/yard ie 135 pound rails .
Our Western Australian Iron Ore Railways are basicaly isolated systems built to North American standards , or if anything heavier duty - possibly . The operator I worked for there uses 68kg/m rail and the locomotives are approximately 190 tonnes or 31.67 tonnes axle load . Currently their loaded ore cars gross 168 tonnes or 42 tonne axle load x 4 . 250 car trains gross 42,000 tonnes . Maximum speed is 80 km/h or approx 50 mph .
So I gather by 315k you mean 315,000 pounds or 157.5 2000lb short tons ? If so then that means individual car axle loads of 39.375 tons .
Any way I still wonder how a USDM style locomotive of say 5000 Hp would go with a gross mass of around 200-210 metric tonnes , and with attention given to minimising unsprung mass .
While on the subject of preserved AC6000s:
Just wait until the first heavily intoxicated patron does a 20’ nose dive off the top of that thing. Hard to believe anyone would insure it. Esp being used in motion.