I heard a story today that struck me oddly. A relative’s friend had recently been to Erie PA and reported the GE had 2 turbine units on the test track there. Given, as I recall, that the turbines were fuel-hogs given that they ran at high RPM all of the time, and in light of high fuel costs, this story surprised me.
Fact or fiction? I’m guessing the latter, but as Chuck Berry said… sometimes you never can tell.
Thx much,
I find this rather unlikely but not completely improbable. Bombardier has built and tested a turbine electric locomotive for high speed passenger service but found no buyers (both for Fuel consumption issue and because of a lack of new HSR projects). Railpower industries also promoted a Compressed Natural gas fueled mainline freight locomotive but never built a prototype. The Railpower concept involved using a turbine so as to allow most of the space on the locomotive frame to be occupied by gas storage cylinders made out of lightweight composite materials.
Still, my money is that it was a misidentification of something else (has GE built prototype(s) of the Evolution series GEVO powered passenger unit they have been trying to promote?)
The fuel efficiency of GE’s turbines has improved considerably since the time of the UP GTEL’s - the same is true of GE’s competitors as well. One advantage of the turbine is that it can burn almost any clean liquid or gaseous fuel, e.g. ethanol would make a great turbine fuel.
The only viable rail application for turbines I can think of is HSR. There have been off and on attempts, such as the Turboliner in the 70s and the recent Bombardier Jettrain. IMHO, full electrification for HSR is preferable to fuel guzzling turbines.
There was a show on television with a segment about the General Electric locomotive test track showing a new engine design being tested by pulling against an older engine that was acting as a load, but they didn’t say what the one was that is being used as the load. Perhaps that’s what the turbine is for, unless it’s a newer experimental model.
The common practice at both GE and EMD is just to use whatever locomotive is available as the test load. There is no need to build special engines for that purpose.
I know GE has built quite a few mobile powerplants which are gas turbine generator sets mounted in a semi -trailer so maybe they could be building some railcar mounted versions? I don’t know what their power systems division manufactures at the Erie location…