Curious how long you have been running trains , bnsf ?
[|(] Now let’s not hold back…please tell us how you REALLY feel.
Give me a few SD40-2’s any day. The only thing I didn’t like about them was that the whistle was mounted right above the cab.
I’ve been a engineer for 4 years and with the railroad for 8 years.
Now as far as telling you what gets overpressure on the crankcase. I am not sure what exactly happens, but I will give you an exert out of the mechanical book the railroad gives us. “The diesel engine crankcase normally operates at a vacuum. If pressure is detected in the crankcase, the device will cause the LOW OIL button to protrude for the governor, and the diesel engine will shut down.” That all it tells us. Like our instructor told us we are paid to run the trains not to be a machinist.
Hmmmmm…
LC
That’s what I wanted to know.
Maybe BNSF won’t buy GE after they see how nice their SD70ACes are.
bnsfengineer I’d like to know what you think of DASH 9-44CWs and AC4400s too.
ah ha…too much blow by. gotcha. hole in the piston, bad rings, bad valve guides…yada yada yada.
a while back we had a tractor w/an N14 come-a-part with a bad injector sleeve causing excessive blow by, enough pressure to blow oil out past many of the seals. luckily there are 3 heads on the motor and the offending head (middle one) ended up being junk. professional out of frame rebuild my ***.
All new introductions of new products esp. anything mechanical will take time to work out the bugs. Anytime there is a new car brought out on the market everyone knows to wait a year so the company can work out the bugs. edbenton’s post (page 1) about the small block engines in the trucking industry was right on but now some of these high horse power engines are so small that one could almost put one in a nice size pickup truck. And speaking of pickups when Ford Introduced the new Diesel 6.0 Powerstroke in 2004 made by Ford and International they also ran into problems for the first year and a half with problems with the injector units on the motor but now they are once again the most reliable diesels on the road - sorry chevy fans but this is a proven fact[bow] . Just look at the statistics from the intro of the powerstorke in 1994 and how many are still on the road (98.5%) vs. chevys diesel, or dodge for that matter. But I think that GM did design a better diesel than GE for a new locomotive even though GM dosen’t own EMD anymore[V] SHAWN
Well bnsfengineer can look forward to better days.
BNSF bought GEs for years because they were darned if they were going to buy anything from General Motors after GM took ALL the auto and parts transport business and gave it to UP!
Now that EMD is no longer owned by GM, BNSF is back at the EMD store, buying up tons of new EMD units.
That explains why they have 1700 DASH 9s.
I think NS needs a little variety, personally. Now I have a question about the already mentioned problem of engine imbalance. Didn’t some railroads downgrade locos by simply depowering half the cylinders, or were the piston assemblies removed? I also seem to remember, and this is a stretch if I’m wrong, that there were locos that could shut down cylinders when moving to save fuel. Maybe I dreamed it… Anybody have info on this?
The term from several years back was DESIGNED OBSELENCE, at least that was what the automotive types called it, when they figured that the cars were lasting too long.
Sam
Check bnsfkline’s post on catastrophic engine failure[:0][B)]!
The GEVO’s have had a lot of growing pains since arriving on the property. I think this coupled with EMD’s seperation from GM, as well as their increase in horsepower to 4300 has spurred BNSF to go back to EMD after 7 years of snubbing. I wouldnt expect BNSF to stop buying GE anytime soon, but if the sd70aces perform, and if EMD can meet production demands (which it really can’t right now), I would expect BNSF to return to EMD for SOME of their locomotive needs.
I predict that BNSF will be buying strictly AC for the foreseeable future. Coal business is booming, and DC locomotives don’t like grinding up a hill at 8 miles per hour. They did the right thing by getting as many Dash 9s as they could before the new EPA regulations went into effect, and they now have their core DC fleet in the Dash 9s, Dash 8s, and remaining SD40s. Once there are enough new ACs to meet coal demand, perhaps the SD60Ms and SD75Ms can be released into normal service, and more SD40s can be retired.
The Dash 9s are reliable and perform well on intermodal and manifest trains with good hpt. They are not meant to be in coal service, and therefore an engineer in coal service would likely see them as junk, because they just aren’t designed for grinding up a hill. I dont know about GE’s AC locos, but junk or not, they are just going to keep coming, because GE can crank out the locomotives to meet BNSF’s demand. And if 1 in 30 of them fails, que sera, the coal still needs power to move it.
Just my humble opinion.
VERY well said.
any of you engineers taken a dash 8 for a spin before? and what are the older GEs like 7s and 8 like compared to todays Ges where the older ones any better/worse?
When the latest GEs are scrapped, there will probably be rebuilt SD38/40 series still out there going strong. 
Dave
http://www.dpdproductions.com
- Featuring the TrainTenna Railroad Scanner Antennas -
It just has to be said, there’s a reason why over half the deisels on the planet are powered if not built by EMD, and you don’t have to ask why.
I Agree with randy and dingoix. This could happen to any engine. Persinaly, I realy like the CW45AC’s, there my favorite Engine. 
Infact, I heard lately that GEVOS And GE-CW45 locomotives have been doing pretty good lately. (Sept for BNSF engineer of coarse 
By the way, In all honesty I think ES44AC’s do better than DC’s.