ROSEVILLE, Calif. — Union Pacific is working with two Northern California air quality districts to repower 10 diesel-electric locomotives into new Tier 4-compliant switchers, the railroad announced this week. The new single-engine locomotives w…
Says the rebuilt switchers are for the Bay Area and Sacramento-- not Roseville?
Have any UP gensets been active in Northern California lately?
I am assuming these would be EMD24B Repower-T4 units.
https://www.progressrail.com/en/rollingstock/locomotives/repowered/pr24bt4.html
The assumption is correct. UP is supplying ten GP38/-2’s as hulks for the new switchers, to be numbered UPY 1000-1009.
What ever happen to those low emission Genset engiens (3GS21B)? They were a the rage back in the mid 2010’s. Have they not lived up to both fuel savings and service reliability? Just asking. To see one in service, check out YouTube:
Reliability and design issue problems. The chief problem is that they have multiple gensets, which not only triples the number of things that can break but makes them difficult to switch with. Switchers need to load quickly and have a lot of power available immediately, but gensets are designed to bring additional prime movers on line as they are needed, when in switching service all the power is needed at once.
Shouldn’t they use the problematic gensets for cores and keep the GP38’s for rescue work. I think that if the UP was paying for this instead of using other peoples money Mike Iden wouldn’t still be with the railroad.
Very difficult to immediately scrap relatively new power. Who really owns it is one consideration.
What is wrong with retiring 10 unregulated GP38-2, give them to Progress Rail and get back 10 new EMD24B Tier4 locomotives paid to a large extent by someone else?
The UP press release says the EMD24B will “ultimately replace the genset concept”. https://www.up.com/media/releases/180501-emission-reducing-locomotives.htm
I read from this that they wouldn’t buy new genset locomotive, not that they will scrap the existing gensets. Perhaps they will leave California.
Regards, Volker
If they do leave CA and get spread around, they will quickly become shop queens and never see real work, I’d guess. I’ve only ever played with a couple of gensets, but they were the most unreliable pieces of junk ever.
I don’t object. We have a genset locomotive in Germany too, the class 245. It is a Bombardier Traxx P160 DE ME: http://www.bahnbilder.de/1200/br-245-027-mit-einem-1082628.jpg
It is a passenger train locomotive with a speed limit of 160 kph (100 mph). It is equipped with four Cat C18 with 563 kW each. I think the lurking EU stage IIIb emission limits were the reasons for this choice. As in the USA the EU stages for truck engines are stricter much earlier than for locomotives. And the market for high horsepower locomotive diesels is relatively small. It was the easiest and cheapest way to comply with EU stage IIIb.
According to rumors the experience is quite mixed to say the least. But really dependable reports aren’t available. A number of locos was sent back to the manufacturer for rebuilding.
Regards, Volker
The Gensets have been out of hump service in Roseville for some time. I honestly have no idea where they went. For a while they had moved from 2 unit sets to 3 unit sets just for reliability. Now all yard power is GP38/GP15 SD38/SD40. I would assume when they say Sacramento, they really mean Roseville since that would be the servicing base anyway.