Has any history book been written about any specific locomotive model (diesel)?
With lots and lots of pictures. Prototype and production.
Yes.
There have been books on Geeps (GP series) F Units and E units and probably others. There have been books on steam such as the Mikado (2-8-2) and others. Also GG-1 electrics
Yes, but it’s probably more common – with diesels – to see books written about a particular era of production or ‘family’ of locomotives from a particular builder. So, for example, a book like “Mister D’s Machine” would concentrate on the history of early EMD power, taking up switchers, passenger power, Fs and BLs and GPs together, and a history of FM would include more than, say, just Train-Masters or Erie-builts. It’s probably common sense even in the railfan press to increase the number of prospective ‘buyers’ with this kind of inclusion, particularly with both new and used book prices at the levels they are today – both for successful books and unsuccessful ‘remainders’ …
More specific information on particular classes might be found in the ‘pamphlet-size’ (usually softcover) reference series, like the Train Shed Cyclopedias. (If I remember correctly, even ‘The Remarkable GG1’ was printed in softcover, like the Quadrant Press series including what I remember as the first collection of American streamlined steam in one place.)
I do not think the enthusiast community for diesels has gotten to the same ‘place’ as, say, the British modeling community that supports demand for a great many detail shots of a particular locomotive class. That’s much more likely to show up for diesels as part of a superdetail article or thread on the Web than in some printed and distributed source that has to be marketed and sold.
O.K. Now that I have some replys. I am wondering about putting a book together, mostly a picture book, of the Baldwin Centipede. I haven’t a clue as to how big of a market for such a book on a single model, as there were so few of the model made and even a fewer number of railroads that purchased it. I think I have a good source for them in action on the Seaboard Air Line, I’m sure quite a few can be had from Pennsylvania museums, I think finding some in service on the National De Mexico may be a bit more of a problem. I have seen the head on collision on the N de M on a google search. Would like a different angle of it though. Now what are your thoughts.
I’d go for it, but to make it work I think you’d need to go far beyond just a bunch of pictures. There is a great deal of fun behind the Centipede story, both good and bad, all of which would have to be in “the” book about this fairly unique approach to diesel power design. For instance, the original locomotive was designed to be 6000hp in a single unit - before WWII. With modular gensets (each driving an individual axle) no less. This considerably shorter, and with “higher-speed” (by contemporary standards) running gear, than alternatives… The original low-hp locomotive (with two 8-cyl engines making ‘only’ 3000 hp) had a special pony-truck design with long equalizer for high-speed stability … likely a far higher speed than it would achieve with any substantial train weight; even with the N&W TE-1 Baldwin (or BLH for that matter) never did quite grasp the reality of constant horsepower and ‘realizable’ rather than theoretical speed.
Ye gods, what a job doing the wheels and the brakeshoes on one of those things! And what fun maintaining all the little hose connections and joints, and the electrical cabling lying in its trough in a fairly persistent oil bath - among other things, Ground Fault City and I dare you to find where it is with the tools the builder provided…
If you don’t tap Will Davis for guidance and assistance you’re missing something very important. That goes for documentation and ‘ephemera’ as well as the usual things.
I was looking at Will’s site and it looks like he just stopped in 2014.
Where is he from? What does he do?
Jim F
His ‘other’ hobby is old typewriters. His career was in aspects of nuclear engineering. His approach, and his achievements, in ‘locomotive scholarship’ are really pretty impressive, and if you have the chance to look some of them up I think you’ll be intrigued.
Trains has done a pretty thorough job of major Rticles over the years regarding different engines They contained what improvements set them apart and had brief listings of all railroads that had them. How they were used and how many. In addition support articles in the issue had first person accounts about introducing them to the railroads. I think there was an issue that covered the centipedes probably in the 1970s. I remember the NdeM was responsible for the name calling them the “thousand feets”.
Technically your oil cables laying in an oil bath wouldn’t be that much of an issue, depending on the type of oil used. I know this from a computer that was designed a few years ago that would have been an enclosed case with everything surrounded by oil to keep it cool…no ground fault problems at all…don’t recall what ever happened to it, but at least one was manufactured.
You do realize I’m talking about cables that were designed and intended to be kept scrupulously dry, but wound up lying in troughs full of a mixture of leaked lube oil and coolant…
This is a bit like the ‘overbuilt design’ of a commercial-grade Trotter treadmill power supply in the '90s. The entire power board was enclosed in a milled-out recess inside a ‘billet’ aluminum block acting as a heat sink, up underneath the plastic ‘hood’ at the front of the machine. Since this was well out of the weather, and had the waterproof shell over it, this only had a sheet-metal cover over it to keep out dust. We started to get complaints after these machines were in service for several months; what we encountered was significant, sometimes tremendous corrosion and shorting of the board components and traces.
What was happening was that people would run on these things very, very hard … and sweat. The sweat would drip down onto the treadmill belt, which was running backward past the person and reversing over the rear roller. As the belt came back up the treadmill on the ‘bottom’ side, the sweat would try to form droplets, and as the belt returned over the power roller in the front the droplets would be thrown UP against the bottom of the ‘drip ledge’ in that sheet-metal cover, and wick into the recess. Evaporation couldn’t get it out again, so it would accumulate, and accumulate, and accumulate … until something broke.
This was the problem with the Baldwins – the oil would affect the insulation on the cables in various ways, until there was sufficient ‘shorting’ to drop the ground relay on “something”. Then you had to figure out where the ground fault was … in the muck, without good circuit isolatio
TRAINS had an excellent article about the Centipedes some time in the 1980’s. I will have to look to find the specific issue.
Jerry Pinkepank’s article about Baldwin diesels in one of the all-diesel issues (1968 or 1969) implied that a lack of real quality control was a major problem for Baldwin diesels. He mentioned that the layout of the lube and electrical systems appeared to be designed separately from each other and that there seemed to be no standardized layout for the wiring. Oil leaks also were an ongoing problem.
It’s not surprising that a fair number of Baldwin diesels were re-powered.
The way I had the situation described to me was that Baldwin tried to build diesel locomotives with the same mentality they built steam. Individual customization by the customer or by the piece (with a separate manual for individual series or even locomotives; liquid systems connected by hoses to make fit between components less critical; electrical wiring run where convenient. Engines and chassis and traction motors intentionally overbuilt, castings used to minimize in-service distortion, etc. Service something left to the railroad shops to do, with only the bare minimum of specialized or patented components needing to be sourced ‘overnight’. Contrast that with Dilworth, Kettering, et al. who understood, even if only at times on a sort of native-cunning level, what was needed to build locomotives that kept running and were supported well when they stopped running.
If you care enough to do the maintenance (and set up the procedures) you can get remarkable service out of Baldwins – ask SMS. But, as with British motorcars in general, do not expect a Baldwin to show the attention to maintenance detail design. A similar argument might be made for Fairbanks-Morse OP engines, which had excellent design and good construction, but were not friendly to work on when a wide range of conditions raised their heads in ‘middle age.’
Note that Baldwin quality control was not always particularly good - the general philosophy on, say, the ATSF Lanning Hudsons was to deliver 'em with defects and ma
I am not familiar with Cockerill, can you elaborate?
They’re a Belgian company that license-built the Baldwin engine (for overseas use) for quite a few years after Baldwin stopped making locomotives. You can google for some of the videos (just as much fun to hear Baldwin noise out of exotic-to-us European styled carbodies as it is to hear loud 567 music from those NOHABs) and to start getting some of ‘the rest of the story’ - see in particular Hank Rentschler’s and Will Davis’ posts in this thread on railroad.net
As an aside, can one of the marine-engine mavens tell me if the Cockerill V-16 of the early Seventies was derived from the BLH engine design ‘in progress’ when the decision to abandon further locomotive production was taken:
To someone who is still a bit upset that the 408 (and earlier 412) ‘genset’ engine development at Baldwin didn’t pan out, it would be interesting to see if Baldwin had something workable as a second-generation powerplant ‘going’ in the middle '50s and after… and if this interesting engine derives, at least in part, from that work. (Be interesting to speculate on a 4000hp answer to the SD45 with a decent-length crank and no ‘extra’ fuel-hogging cylinders…)
This may sound like a dumb question.
I know there is a diesel manufacturer that builds new Alco engines, and other manufacturers models under license. I just can’t think of the named company. Just wondering if they would even entertain the posibility of building Baldwin designs, spare parts business. Who know maybe they could improve without much trial and error.
That company is (interestingly) Fairbanks-Morse. I doubt that they would be interested in the 608, as niether it nor the 251 meet current emissions standards.
Know of a website where one can learn rather quickly about Slow, Medium and High speed diesel engines and what the differences are?
There are a number. A good place, off the top of my head, to start would be the Paxman history pages. (Paxman was one of the original builders of high-speed railroad diesel engines, and there is some explanation of what separates a high-speed from a medium-speed engine in railroad use.)
The distinction varies a bit depending on what field you’re looking at. In marine practice, for example, a medium-speed engine starts around 250rpm and goes all the way up to roughly 1000rpm. However, in locomotive practice this would imply that a GE FDL at 900rpm is medium-speed but 1050 is high speed, with the engine kept the same, and that is not so. Cummins puts the ‘defining line’ between medium and high speed at 1200rpm now.
Better to look at some of the details of construction to assess what ‘family’ a given engine should be put in. I have little doubt that in the ‘old days’ of engine design (pre-Ricardo Comet chamber, for example) the distinction between these terms was made at lower rpm points than nowadays.
Most diesel engines in locomotives are medium-speed, including anything derived from a Cooper-Bessemer FVL. The engines now specified for the Spirit and Charger locomotives (unquestionably ‘high-speed’ designs) are supposed to operate in railroad service at 1800 sustained peak rpm, and regularly ramp up and down through critical frequencies to reach that level. It will be interesting to see how well they do that… or how much ‘derating’ will be necessary to give reasonable service life or reliability.
Back to the book. I am thinking of making the book about the size of the Locomotive Cyclopedia Volume 2, but I don’t think it will be any where as thick as that, or should it be more of the size as the Morning Sun series of books 8.5x11 in size.