An Alco fan and researcher here. The New Haven DL-109s were delivered as three classes: DER-1a, DER-1b, and DER-1c. What is the difference(s) between the classes?
I see from an old RR magazine roster that the DER-1a units were lighter by about 5,000 pounds than the later two classes. Was there an electrical difference between the classes?
This question was also posted to several other Alco and New Haven forums.
Ed in Kentucky
Swanberg’s “New Haven Power” is a good book and I recommend it to anybody interested in New Haven.
There were a number of changes to cooling systems progressively made to the DL 109s from December 1941 until the last was built in 1945. Most visible of these was the addition of shutters above the radiator fans, presumably to stop the loss of heat from the body during very cold winters.
Swanberg indicates that 0752, one of the last batch built for the New Haven, weighed 11 500 lbs more than 0700.
One change that would account for some of this extra weight was a change from aluminium clad plywood side panels, which corroded and deteriorated rather quickly, to steel panels, and to a lesser extent the replacement of side windows with ventilation grilles (these presumably aimed at summer operation).
It was common for wartime built steam locomotives to be heavier than those built pre war since many light alloy parts were no longer available and were replaced with steel or cast iron. Some items in the DL 109 might have been heavier in the fifty units built during WWII.
The DL109’s were the only production road diesels built during 1942-1945 that weren’t FT’s. I would assume that NH had to do some strong-arm lobbying at the War Production Board to allow these locomotives to be built.
Not a true statement, EMD began producing E7s in February 1945. And the EMD E6 was built up through September of 1942.
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I’ve learned it differently as I only found 62 DL-109s and a single DL-110. The other units were built to earlier specifications, though some may have been upgraded to the DL-109/DL-110 specification.
Rock Island #624 was built to specifcation DL-103, often seen written as specifcation DL-103b. It not only was longer, but used 6-538T deck mounted engines, instead of the 6-539Ts used in the other DL-10?s
Just recently I’ve seen GE-726F, and GE-726H traction motors shown on documents scanned and posted to the internet. The GE-726F traction motors were used to replace GE-730 traction motors on the Santa Fe #50, a DL107 when built. The GE-726H motors shared the cover of a traction motor manual with GE-752A. That would cause one to think that the H iteration was the last type of the GE-726 traction motor. That GE manual was dated August 1947. Now whether there are eight iterations of the 726 traction motor or another number is unknown at this time. If we keep digging around some other GE-726? letters may show up.
The New Haven DL-109s are a logical place to look for clues on GE traction motors and control circuitry. Because the New Haven units were built in three seperate groups between December 1941 and April 1945 there is a very strong likelyhood that different GE components were used in each group.
Certainly larger and heavier traction motors can add substantial weight to a locomotive. The early DL-500B units were quoted as 104 tons with narrow gauge GE-761 motors. The New South Wales Railways purchased 45 of these geared to 65 MPH for maximum tractive effort on grades. However, in 1962 they introduced the Southern Aurora passenger train from Sydney to Melbourne and it was found that this train needed to run at 70MPH to keep time.
So 11 DL-500Bs were fitted with (small) standard gauge GE-731 motors (partly because GE-752s wouldn’t fit that truck design) but even they increased the weight by eight tons for the six motors.
We are talking about around seven tons on the heaviest of the last DL-109s.
Steinbrenner in his Alco history talks about frame reinforcement as a result of problems on the Milwaukee Road units at very high speed but a combination of heavier motors and other changes could account for this.
M636C
The New haven had its way with the War Production Board because they demonstrated that they were already using DL-109s in frieght service regularly each night Ceder Hill - Boston. They could point out that new FT’s would require parallel ahd additional maintenance regimies and parts, new steam could not be used as intensively (passenger by day, freight by night) and thus the new DL-109 were an optimum contribution for transportatioin for the war effort for their particular operating requirements.
I’ve always liked the look of the DL-109’s, especially in the New Haven paint schemes, and I’ve also heard of their “passenger by day, freight by night” application.
However, just how good were they? Any reason they weren’t produced after 1945, or was it with the various RS, PA, and FA models their time had come and gone?
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Well thanks for the respose! I suspected as much, things had moved on. Too bad ALCO didn’t put the updated guts in that classy exterior, but c’est la vie as they say.
Going forward with what he said about evolution, I believe that one major reason is that it was a dual engine design, with a resulting increase in cost and complexity.
They correctly viewed the single engine concept as desirable, with dual engines a necessary evil that they didn’t want to maintain any longer than they had to until a suitable powerplant came around that allowed a single engine output of 1,500 for freight and 2,000 HP for passenger work.
The Alco 539 engine was seen as a dead end developmentally by Alco. It was heavy, had large, slow running cylinders. Alco got caught without an adequate diesel engine to compete with EMD’s FT. The GM&O ordered 80 freight diesels from Alco at a time when Alco did not have a marketable freight diesel engine. World War 2 and the War Production Board further stymied both Alco and the GM&O on this order.
Alco’s DL100 series was an attempt to compete with the EMD E units. Both the Alco 241 and Alco 244 diesel engines were Alco’s Research and Development answers to the lack of a competitive diesel engine.
Does anyone have detailed information on what GE traction motors and generators were used on the three classes of New Haven DL-109s? Ed in Kentucky
The flatnose design (FA, PA, World Locomotive) was less expensive to fabricate than the DL109 design.
That certainly makes sense, so much so it makes me wonder why GE doesn’t use the classic FA or PA flat-nose design for their current passenger locomotives. It wouldn’t be THAT hard to do. The “Genesis” and others are just so damn weird looking and ugly.
But never mind, we’ve gone through this discussion before.
Does anyone have gross weights and tractive efforts for the GM&O and Southern DL-109 units. The New Haven units appear to be somewhat heavier than other railroad’s DL100 units.
Extra 2200 South #37 p.19 shows the six New Haven orders were all delivered with 64:19 gears and GE-726F1 traction motors. That same issue showed the gross weights for the GM&O and Southern units. All the war baby DL100s were heavier than their prewar counterparts.