Two new environmentally friendly locomotives are on track for use in the Chicago and Atlanta areas.
Norfolk Southern Corp. this week rolled out a pair of GP33ECO diesel-electric, switching locomotives at its Juniata Locomotive Shop in Altoona, Pa.
The locomotives, designed to generate fewer emissions, are the first of 25 to be built for Norfolk Southern by Electro-Motive Diesel Inc. They will be funded in part by $35 million from the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program.
Must be. The rebuild does not have NS’ designed intercooler forward of the D/B blister. This looks to be a ‘straight up’ EMD concept for an ECO rebuild.
That said, with these units NS now has two classes of locomotives with the 12N-710G3B engine: GP33 and GP59E. If this is deemed to be a success there are 37 GP38-3s on the roster that are derated GP50s. Could these be future candidates for a 710 transplant?
Correct me if I’m wrong but I read that the GP38-3s rebuilt from GP50’s had their as-built 16-645F engines removed and replaced with remanufactured 645E’s. The reason supposedly being an oil line issue with the “F” engine that was difficult to correct in the rebuilding process.
I know that this engine swap was done on the SD40E units the railroad has rebuilt from SD50s…
I would suspect that the process was more capital intensive ($) than just derating the existing engines so I would doubt that NS would turn around and do a capital rebuild a second time…
CSX has converted SD50’s to “SD40-3s” by derating the “F” series engines so not all railroads seem to share NS’s concerns…
