Evansville Western Railway GP38-2 EVWR #3834 has a smaller fuel tank than most GP38/40s. It’s original owner must have thought it wasn’t going to travel very far:)
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1080652
looks like a 1200 gallon tank, enough for two days of local work and switching.
Maybe unit was equiped with small tank to keep axle loading to minimum.
Its a 1700 gallon tank and its good for more than two days how much more depends on
type of duty, round the clock or just 8-10 hours, ect
2 days? Wow… you drinking the stuff as well?
We have a couple Gp38s that we use a lot (heavy switching and local work - they don’t spend more than a few hours a day parked) and they get refueled once a week. They have tanks that hold about 2600 gallons.
Lighter weight for branch lines and/or light rail, Milwaukee Road did the same thing on it’s units for the Northern Montana Division (and other divisions as well)
What is its lineage?? Could be was once a passenger loco with a separate tank for water for the steam generator??
The Rock also got a few GP38-2’s with smaller tanks, so did MoPac. My experience with them, is 1800 gallons lasts about a week in the yard, and four days on a local branch job (works two shifts). I don’t win any fuel conservation awards either.
This unit is former Phelps Dodge Copper #4. All Phelps Dodge units were built with relatively small fuel tanks.
Bryan Jones
The small fuel tank was a standard option. Heck it was such a standard option that Athearn offered it on their BB GP38-2.
The standard GP38/40 fuel tank size was 2600 gal with an optional 3600 gal. This looks smaller than 2600. Usually smaller tanks on GPs were a concession to weight.
NdeM also had the smaller (1700 gallon) tanks on their GP38-2s
This one ended up with a real small tank by the time my employer got it.
MILW seemed to have smaller tanks on everything. GP40s, SD40-2s, GP38-2s, MP15ACs, and usually only one tank on SD7-9s. 3 SD7s came with 2 tanks, but one was removed when going through the SD10 rebuild program.
Ex-MILW MP15AC with 1100 gallon tank. Looks like the 1700 gallon tank would fit under there.
Most of the MILW, NdeM, TM & DEVCO [and other] locomotives were equipped with 1,700 gal fuel tanks for lightweight branch lines. Mainly the Texas Mexican was known to operate their GP38-2 fleet with these small tanks.
As for ROCK, they purchased 2,300 gallon fuel tanks up to 4355, when the 4368-4379 series rolled out, they had 3,000 gallon fuel tanks.
And the Railway Company of Guinea Bauxite owns several SD40’s and three SD40-2’s with 1,700 gal tanks