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Metrolink to buy new EMD passenger locomotives
Nice to see EMD power will soon grace passenger rails once again. Is the F125 an all-new locomotive, or is it just a renumbering of, say, an F59?
I know a lot of railfans don’t like the F59’s, but I think they look pretty nice. Much nice looking than the GE P40/42’s and the MPI MP36’s. I won’t even mention those things NJ Transit is running!
With the auto manufactures coming out with “retro” muscle cars, a modern-day FP45 would be nice!
The C175-20 prime mover mentioned in the article is a Caterpillar engine, so at least the prime mover is different from the F59. The Progress Rail website show a new transit locomotive capable of 125 MPH, so I am guessing that this is the F125.
$6.3 million a copy? Wow.
I no longer live in Southern California, a job transfer took me to Arizona during 1993. I lived in Ontario and worked in Pomona so could not utilize any of the public transit systems. Bus system required a transfer and layover in Montclair which, at the time meant a 90 minute trip to travel 8 miles. But, I thought the intent of the Metrolink system was to be all electric and that the diesels were a temporary and expedient method to get the system up and running. Apparently, that will probably never happen as it is simpler to just order new diesels than invest in the infrastructure to systematically electrify the various parts of Metrolink
Will the MTA in NY look into this rather than buying custom junk for LIRR & MNRR? I hope, but doubt it.
When a government agency buys something, money appears to be no object. A $6.3 million locomotive is something to behold.
Wow! 4,700 HP on a Metrolink train, which – from what I have seen – generally run about 4 to 6 cars. What am I missing here?
has to be new it is 72 feet long but I m just guessing
That’s a 4-cycle engine…does this mean the end of EMD’s 2-stroke engines?
$6M per loco? wow. I guess the cab must be finished in mahogony and gold trim.
Nothing sweeter than the sound and vibration of an SDP45
To Frederick,
I agree with your sentiments re MTA LIRR (aka the Long Island H–l Road). LIRR’s current diesel country fleet was supposed to be 23 dual mode diesel / 3rd rail locos, and 23 nearly identical diesel only (but capable of being upgraded to add 3rd rail capability). As I understand it, they were built of EMD provided components PLUS lots of political influence in what was called Super Steel Schenectady - a substantially politically created company. The 46 loco fleet got smaller when one of the DMs burnt to a crisp, supposedly when a heavily greased 3rd rail shoe beam (no one knows why LIRR would put highly flammable grease on the beam) caught fire from 3rd rail sparks and a fire slowly spread over many miles, as the story goes. The locos have huge reliability problems, supposedly a bad spare parts shortage; sources a few years ago were amazed the locos were still mostly kind of working after 10 years.
LIRR was criticized for not getting the same Genesis locos bought by MNRR and Amtrak. I had heard comments that these locos were a bit slow to take up their load on accelleration, so therefore LIRR chose to built its own highly customized and computerized locos instead (anything supposedly to avoid buying something known to be reliable).
These efforts followed an experiment years before when MTA got a hold of many of the surviving FL9’s held by the old commuter railroads and Amtrak, rebuilt them in 2 forms - under-riding 3rd rail for MN, 3 over-riding 3rd rail units for LIRR. LIRR people told me that besides unreliable computers, they also had under ventilated the inverters (which frequently and expensively burnt out), and that MN was very stingy on spare parts, resulting in LIRR cannibalizing 1 of their 3 locos - meaning no available spare when a breakdown occurred. The locos were not made more reliable by apparently being left in a flood zone and getting well soaked before going into service. Plus LIRR was said (my observations suggested that this was
Due to the 2015 delivery, the location of use(LA) and the cost this must be a Tier 4 compliant unit. Am I right???
Glad to see CAT getting into the passenger business.