Did anyone else see the aricle in WSJ the other day about Caterpillar (Progress Rail Serv.) buying controlling interest in Electro Motive. A Caterpillar spokesperson made a comment about making an inroad (pun intended[:D]) on GE’s dominance of the locomotive market. Kind of sounds like a “match made in heaven”. Gerry S.
We’ll sure see anyway. I didn’t see the Journal article, but some EMD Yahoo yahoos were discussing it.
There’s a thread about this on the Trains Magazine forum.
Funny that Caterpillar has the capital to buy controlling interest in EMD but not to save the 20,000 employees they laid off and rescinding job offers to new hires that had already accepted positions. I think I would rather work for GE since they seem to have their stuff together (and market share to boot!)
I hear ya about the layoffs, but Cat’s stock has doubled in the last year or so after crashing 3years ago, so I suspect thats where the cash came from. EMD’s loco division will be just a small part of Cat. Obviously Caterpillar dominates the earth moving type of stuff. But they also are a dominate player in Marine propulsion and power generation. Cat is also international, EMD isn’t seen too much outside of North America in applications other than rail and tugboats. EMD makes a good engine,(very easy to change out a power pack), but they need another redesign to meet tougher environmental laws. Cat is already producing those engines now. EMD is a 2 cycle engine and those things are a thing of the past. Environmental requirements mean 4 cycle. I used to work with EMD’s 710’s and 645’s. I currently work on Cat 3516’s that produce 2100 hp each. 2 out of 3 of these engines are going to China for power production as a generator. Every small town will have something similar with fuel being trucked to them. EMD doesn’t have anything that will produce the Hp with the amount of fuel consumption as well as meet the EPA stuff. The cats are very fuel efficient. I think Cat will bring something to the table to help bring EMD back up to their well deserved reputation. The biggest problem I have with the Cats, is the electronic sensors. Its a good engine, but the sensors need to be beefed up to take the vibration.