That’s an impossibility. There is no third rail between the tunnel just outside NY Penn and Spuyten Duyvil (across the bridge on the Bronx side), so if the diesel prime mover dies there, the train is stuck there; and (to the best of my knowledge) the third-rail contact shoe on the Amtrak P32AC-DMs cannot swivel around to use Metro-North under-running third rail—it’s set for Long Island RR over-running third rail, and the contact shoes are retracted while in Metro-North territory. Besides, limping in E-mode at 60 mph or less would hold up the 90-mph Hudson Line.
(Last year, when the Harlem River drawbridge was stuck open after being struck by barges and Amtrak had to divert Empire Service trains into Grand Central, the prime movers of Amtrak’s P32AC-DMs had to be kept running within GCT—they were turned on the station’s loop—until the mech department could realign the contact shoes for Metro-North third-rail.)
Not quite. The FL9s were highly troublesome, and most of the time during the 80s and earlier 90s, they were not running in dual mode within GCT; I remember seeing them quite often with prime-movers on at the GCT platforms (now whatever waiver was necessary for that, I do not know). Amtrak’s units seemed to be in better shape than the MTA’s ones, and would operate in electric mode in both GCT and NY Penn.
That’s an impossibility. There is no third rail between the tunnel just outside NY Penn and Spuyten Duyvil (across the bridge on the Bronx side), so if the diesel prime mover dies there, the train is stuck there; and (to the best of my knowledge) the third-rail contact shoe on the Amtrak P32AC-DMs cannot swivel around to use Metro-North under-running third rail—it’s set for Long Island RR over-running third rail, and the contact shoes are retracted while in Metro-North territory. Besides, limping in E-mode at 60 mph or less would hold up the 90-mph Hudson Line.
(Last year, when the Harlem River drawbridge was stuck open after being struck by barges and Amtrak had to divert Empire Service trains into Grand Central, the prime movers of Amtrak’s P32AC-DMs had to be kept running within GCT—they were turned on the station’s loop—until the mech department could realign the contact shoes for Metro-North third-rail.)
Not quite. The FL9s were highly troublesome, and most of the time during the 80s and earlier 90s, they were not running in dual mode within GCT; I remember seeing them quite often with prime-movers on at the GCT platforms (now whatever waiver was necessary for that, I do not know). Amtrak’s units seemed to be in better shape than the MTA’s ones, and would operate in electric mode in both GCT and NY Penn.
I agree with the previous posting except for the following:
The EF-3’s were built in the early 40’s, not the 30’s, and they were dual-service, used on Penn-job passenger trains during the day and freights at night. I happen to think they were the very best electrics ever built, and they were the most powerful, both TE and Hp, in New England. There retirement was very premature. The esthetics were a near duplicate of the earllier EP-4’s. The EP-5’s were the rectifiers that introduced the orange-red, black, and white Herbert Matter scheme.
A different dual-power concept is an electric and a diesel paired, the diesel being a slug to the electric under wire (more motors and the weight serving to give tractive effort under this highest horsepower mode) and the electric being a slug to the diesel outside the electric zone. Either useful independently as well.
Well to be accurate about this, the FL9s lasted 50 years through multiple rebuilding programs. I think the official definition of “economic life” when talking about locomotives means “elapsed time before a major rebuilding.” There were various rebuilding programs, e.g., Morrison Knudsen rebuilt some for Amtrak to operate between New York and Albany; GE rebuilt several for MTA in pre-Metro North days; Chrome Locomotive rebuilt others for Connecticut DOT to use in Metro North New Haven Line commute service; then there were the oddball FL9-AC “Starship” rebuilds, and so on.
It is true that I stopped renewing my membership in the Surface Chemistry section of the American Chemical Society in 1984. I was practicing law at that point, and wasnt’t going back into the field. However, during my ten years with the USDA, and my reason for having that particular membership, was because one of my odd duties – didn’t consume a lot of day to day work – at USDA was to be a primary investigator at the Metallurgical Fatigue and Surface Chemistry Laboratory. Tell me all about the engineering and stress on metal of vibration and environment.
My supervisor only had a BA in chem, whereas I was finishing a doctorate in chemistry and had the bachelor Chem E and so she did the administering and I did the chemistry. This involved study of surface erosion dynamics and stress application to various metals and alloys in various environments, determining effects both by periodic examination through hundreds of thousands of stress cycles using a Carl Zeiss Metallurgical microscope as well as measurement to failure through fatigue testing under varying levels of stress.
You are just guessing, whereas I do, in fact, bring a specific background in metallurgical analysis and testing to my conclusion based on specific professional experience in design, testing and evaluation of metal fatigure and surface erosion.
I’m not going to write a dissertation here, nor respond specifically to your condescending remark, but you almost have the key, you are just holding it backwards.
It is indeed a matter of energy.
And you do not, nor will you ever, have the sample necessary to reach the conclusion you feel strongly about, unless somebody dedicates a diesel locomotive to hauling around, starting it up and shutting it down two or three
Well, when you’ve spent some time in the area of metallurgical analysis, you can call it what you want in the context of the conversation and within the parameters of defining a standard for an experimental design. In any case, you do not have the sampling to support your conclusion, and the standard you attempt to employ is wildly different than the proposed conditions of the dual mode project – and it is the cumulative effect of the cycles that are important, not the incidental impact of towing a locomotive once in a while. That is simply insupportable. And a chemist is not a chemical engineer, either. Don’t know why they didn’t put the ME’s on staff on the project … well, actually I do. I was better qualified.
In any case, towing doesn’t represent the operating cycle. The traction motors of the dual purpose machine are operating when in electric mode and the diesel engine is shut down.
Go wrap yourself around a traction motor that’s working hard and tell me there’s no vibration, that Don Oltmann can’t feel a thing, and that that’s “normal”.
We don’t need to get into the electrical field effects on working electrical machinery and the role that this plays in metal fatigue and surface erosion over thousands of operating cycles.
I like this thread. Three pages on a solution looking for a problem.
There were basicly 2 objectives for 20th Century electrification. It was either used to eliminate engine emissions in tunnels or densly populated areas or to provide a form of locomotion that was better than the steam power of the day for use in areas of frequent high grades. The former produced relatively short stretches of electrification and at least in the case of the Milwaukee, the latter left gaps in the system. I don’t mean to suggest that electrification stopped at the exact point where steam could take over. It’s clear the PRR went beyond such a point. However, there were obviously many places where the eletrification stopped short of a the complete route of traffic movement and that produced power management problems. Whether successful of not, the dual mode unit was a reasonable effort to eliminate the costs associated with swapping power.
Clearly, primary object of future electrification projects will be to reduce the use of petroleum based fuels. Obviously, it will be decades between the time of the start of the first electrification project to the point where a very high percentage of mainline is under wire. Getting the biggest bang for the buck will mean that the highest density lines will go first. Along with that, I suspect that the scope of each project will take power management into consideration, and an effort will be made to have the segments extend between the existing major engine terminals.
Of course the whole thing will complicate power management, especially so where there are now engine/train run through arrangements. But, will dual mode power be the economic solution? Frankly, I think not. I can’t see anything that will require that every train operating under wire must be pulled by a straight electric. So, if there is a good reason to run a train with all diesel power, then run th
This is how the Milwaukee did it, and one specific study showed that this was the more economically effective solution than either all-diesel or all-electric.
I like this thread. Three pages on a solution looking for a problem.
There were basicly 2 objectives for 20th Century electrification. It was either used to eliminate engine emissions in tunnels or densly populated areas or to provide a form of locomotion that was better than the steam power of the day for use in areas of frequent high grades. The former produced relatively short stretches of electrification and at least in the case of the Milwaukee, the latter left gaps in the system. I don’t mean to suggest that electrification stopped at the exact point where steam could take over. It’s clear the PRR went beyond such a point. However, there were obviously many places where the eletrification stopped short of a the complete route of traffic movement and that produced power management problems. Whether successful of not, the dual mode unit was a reasonable effort to eliminate the costs associated with swapping power.
Clearly, primary object of future electrification projects will be to reduce the use of petroleum based fuels. Obviously, it will be decades between the time of the start of the first electrification project to the point where a very high percentage of mainline is under wire. Getting the biggest bang for the buck will mean that the highest density lines will go first. Along with that, I suspect that the scope of each project will take power management into consideration, and an effort will be made to have the segments extend between the existing major engine terminals.
Of course the whole thing will complicate power management, especially so where there are now engine/train run through arrangements. But, will dual mode power be the economic solution? Frankly, I think not. I can’t see anything that will require that every train operating under wire must be pulled by a straight electric. So, if there is a good reason to run a train with all die
I wasn’t arguing that point; the point I was arguing is that there was no en-masse conversion to 60 Hertz on the Northeast Corridor that required an immediate retirement of the GG1s, which is what DMU in CT was claiming. The former New Haven RR is the one place that conversion took place (at that time), which meant that GG1s could no longer operate via Shell (and, practically, on the Hell Gate line in revenue service). Possibly, Penn Central moving the EP-5s off passenger service out of GCT and moving the motors to the former PRR (calling them E40s) was a reaction to this.
Incidentally, the Long Island RR used FL9s with their C1 bilevels. There are new dual-modes on the LIRR, built by Super Steel and using EMD prime-movers (the DM30ACs) which see limited use (the LIRR attempted to run these for extended periods in electric mode at 80 mph, but the units went on fire).
If newer locomotives are “very expensive”, then dual-mode locomotives are more expensive still and require far more maintenance and downtime. I believe that the thread already established this, so it’s pointless to rehash points already debun
As I said at the top of my post above, dual mode locomotives are a solution looking for a problem. Rare is the circumstance where swapping convential electric and diesel electric power is going to be so costly that a dual mode locomotive is going to generate big returns. Perhaps it might now work OK on some of the commuter routes north and east of New York City, but that is the rare circumstance where the combined electric/diesel route is fairly short.
I think it is clear that the next mile of wire is going to be justified by the savings over the use of high cost petroleum based fuels. In that case, what would keep Metro North and The Long Island Rail Road from running wire out to the end of the “dual mode” lines.
I personally agree with you on the point of swapping electric motors for diesel hogs; but as a matter of record, NJ Transit dispensed with that practice, which they inherited from the PRR, on the North Jersey Coast Line (former New York & Long Branch RR), once they exchanged their fleet of E60CHs for ALP-44s. (The practice remained in force using E60s even after extending electrification from Matawan to Long Branch and moving the engine change from South Amboy to Long Branch.) This spelled the end of direct service between New York Penn Station and Bay Head NJ; it was not replaced. Unnecessary, IMHO.
SEPTA currently has a fleet of push-pull cars hauled by AEM-7s, but instead of using engine changes to restart service to former destinations like Reading and Bethlehem/Allentown, they invent the “Schuylkill Valley Metro” concept and try to sell it to the federal government (it raised the capital costs for restarting the Philadelphia-Reading service, which had been gone since Reading Terminal closed in the early 80s, to a colossal $2 billion).
Well, the fact that they are electrified with third-rail and not wire, for one [:)] (apart from former
I didn’t know that the Coast Division had been stripped of electric motive power! Wow-talk about cannibalization! That was, what, 200+ miles of railroad? Was this more because of the retirement of locomotives or because of an increase in traffic? Did the electrics ever return or did the Coast Division remain all diesel until the end? If the electrics did not return, was the electrification system kept up or left to deteriorate?
The reason for the replacement of AC wire with DC third rail from Woodlawn to the Mount Vernon Station was that the changeover point had been on a grade and the new changeover point is on level ROW, a better deal for coasting. But the catenary has been restored to Woodlawn, almost as far as it was, to provide for greater flexibility in operation . The towers were never removed.
Still no comments on my idea for pairing a diesel with an electric. It seems to me the best dual-mode concept.
Electrification can come more easily with power company use of rail ROW for new power lines.
I feel like a 5-inch gun amid an exchange of 16-inch main batteries but I’ll try to answer to this suggestion. Using the diesel or the electric as a glorified slug is a rather expensive way to avoid an engine change. Slugs add low-speed tractive effort but do not provide any additional horsepower, at least when the diesel engine is supplying the horsepower. At any speed above 20 MPH or so, a slug is just extra dead weight to be hauled around. I’m not sure about the situation when the electric is drawing power because short-time ratings get involved. Added expenses would be the additional wiring necessary to serve as a slug mother and a possible beefing up of the circuitry on the electric to jack up the continuous HP rating to support the additional traction motors. All things considered, it would be easier and probably cheaper to operate as MILW did and just add an electric ahead of the diesels at the division point where the catenary begins.
I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but power management for BNSF and UP is already going to get a lot tougher. Starting sometime in 2009, both railroads will only be allowed to operate locomotives meeting Tier II or better in Southern California (LA Basin). There are still a lot of road locomotives in both companies fleets that only meet Tier 0 or Tier I standards. They will have to be switched out before they arrive in the LA Basin. Look for the rest of California to follow and the standard to move up as Tier III and eventually Tier IV standards are introduced.
I could see LA to Yuma/Needles/Yermo/Bakersfield as being the first part electrified.
Traction motors are axle hung/nose suspended - no isolation at all. BIG difference between their environment and stuff mounted on the locomotive frame - which is doubly isolated - no?
