I should know this but I don’t. When did air-conditioning began to appear on a majority of locomotive cabs (spartan cab or wide cab)? I thought it began in the 80’s but I wasn’t sure of it. Any ideas? And who was the first to employ it on their locomotives?
i remember back in the penn centra/early conrail days when we would occasionally get a SP engine as a trailing unit out of indianapolis on a runthrough train and some of them had air conditioning. i think that was in the 70’s. of course during the summer the whole crew would be arguing over who rode in it. arguments got so heated (pun intended) that the head brakeman often wound up running the engine.
grizlump
If you mean crew cab cooling -then the answer is the Bombay Barruda and Calcutta Railway in 1910. Blocks of ice were loaded into the roof vents to provide some relief from the heat. Sacking and more ice provided the draught and temperature control. It was adapted by the railway staff from a system used to keep the ammunition cool while it was transported across India.
regards
ralph
It did not become common until the early 1990s. SP and Santa Fe were some of the first to employ it broadly, prior to the advent of safety cabs, in the late 1980s.
RWM
Plasser started airconditioning the cabs in the MOW equipment in the early 70’s. They used household type window units (Westinghouse) run off a power inverter.
The 1980 Car and Locomotive Cyclopedia shows Vapor offering a cab roof mounted A/C unit for locomotives running off of 64-72VDC.