Observations first: Saw BNSF 1411 - which in my book is a GP10. Rather unusual.
Saw BNSF # 4560 - with a regular door (Ugh Orange) and a Blue Old Conrail door! Coming right at us made us both do a double take! Funny!
Randy - since I know he works on locomotives and I don’t know about the rest of you - BNSF 2160 - a GP38 if it makes a difference. 3 engines (2 38’s and one 39) just moving around to get on the right tracks. Had been way out on the tracks and were going back into the yard and the trailing 38 let off a huge plume of white smoke - it was enormous and covered all the surrounding yard and right of way.
Sounds like the 38 was running a litte cold , perhaps the radiator shutters are stuck open or the engine was sitting around a while and got cool . Anything under 150 deg F (water temp) and you have a cold engine. I’m guessing it’s getting cold in Nebraska ?
EMD engines tend to “soup” when they idle for a while. At idle, the diesel engine isn’t working very hard and there there isn’t much combustion pressure to keep the engine piston rings seated against the cylinder wall. As a result, too much lube oil gets past the rings and lays on the piston and gets pushed up into the exhaust manifold. There just isn’t enough “ooph” from each combustion event to burn the junk off, so it tends to accumulate. When the engine is finally put to work and notched out, now there is enough temperature and heat to get that junk to burn and you get a nice cloud of bluish-white smoke. Sometimes that “cloud” includes some black, oily “drizzle” as well.
A bit more detail. A EMD piston has 6 rings. Four compression rings a the top of the piston are “energized” by combustion pressure. That is, the pressure in the cylinder gets behind the ring and pushes it out toward the cylinder wall. The bottom two are oil cutter rings that have a spring behind them to push them out. They are also shaped with hooks on the edge to “cut” the oil from the cylinder wall. As these oil cutters wear, the contact area increases and their ability to “cut” decreases. So, on even on a somewhat worn EMD, you can get souping at idle.
SJ, most normally-aspirated engines (no turbocharger–the 38s are like that, but not a “true” 39) will clean themselves out like that when opened up after a long period of idling. Had an engineer once who saved it all for me–opened up the SW1 wide in front of Tower A, and I couldn’t see for five minutes. Didn’t think one EMD exhaust stack could pour out that much white stuff.
When I was railfanning the GTW in Michigan, they’d idle the engines overnight in Grand Haven. These were usually EMD SW9s or SW1200s. At the start of the run they’d do their usual moves in the yard to put together their train, but it was not until leaving town, on the joint track (with C&O) over the river that they’d open up and kill most of the mosquitoes in the marsh.
(Of course, an Alco RS-1 was much better at insect control! Had that experience a few times, too.)
Carl: I used to run some ex-IC SD20s when I worked for the WSOR. It was usually fun to catch the then-Sunday yard job in Madison, I’d open them up doing yard switching and blot out the sun for some time getting a heavy cut moving. Those 645 power assemblies with a four-stack manifold could really put out smoke. The only downside was if you put them on a heavy train (or ran some stiff grades), after about 15 minutes or so sitting at run 8 the carbon built up in the manifold would loosen up and come out the stacks. Started a few fires that way.
Yeah, I could tell you the fire-starting tale, too. My first year on the CNW I caught a road run that had its usual pair of SD40s or 45s and a GP9. I was in the waycar. The Geep was acting up, and by the time the hind end of the train was going through the towns the fire engines were leaving their respective houses–Lombard, Glen Ellyn, Wheaton, Winfield–saw 'em all! Also saw the smoke and flames along the track; it was early April so there was a bit of dead plant material. We set the Geep out at West Chicago.