I have watched some old Pentrex videos on some of the regional railroads and they talked about them removing their dynamic brakes on engines purchased from some of the class one roads. Why would they remove the dynamic brakes? Is this a cost issue or is their some other reason?
Larry
You guessed it. MONEY, MONEY, MONEY.
Forget about the extra safety issue. The Money Boys Rule.
Tom
Dynamic brakes have cooling fans. I have heard that if any moving part does not work on a locomotive it must be bad ordered. They may remove the dynamic brakes to minimize moving parts.
Thanks. I kind of thought money is the rule!
If your territory is flat and you run short slow trains with older DC units, the dynamic brakes are almost useless anyways.
Money, and one less system on a locomotive fleet to maintain, and stock parts for…for a shortline on a level grade profile, dynamics would not be as critical a need…
All of the above are correct.
But it should be noted that since alot of regionals operate mainline style freights (remember that alot of regionals are as big as a division on a Class 1and back in the day the RR’s of their size were considered Class 1’s).
That being said Class 1’s teach their engineers to use the dynamic brakes as the primary braking system regardless of whether the track profile is level or on a grade and the air brakes for slow speed and terminal work where the dynamics are not effectual. This saves wear and tear on the the brake shoes and minimizes the chance of losing the air brakes altogether such as an unwanted emergency brake application.
But since most regionals and shortlines do not have big car fleets or not at all wearing the brake shoes on somebody else’s freight car (usually a Class 1’s) is not a big concern.
In short the FRA demands that if its there it must be maintained.
a lot of regionals and shortlines do not operate at high speeds. most of them only maintain their tracks at class 2 standards (25 mph) Dynamic brakes on earlier freight units only operates if speed is above 20 mph, after which it fades out.
So to maintain a dynamic brake system just to slow the train by 5 to 7 miles is not cost concious so shortlines usually remove them.
Duchrailnut, That is not exactly correct. The effectiveness peeks at 25. Take a look at this graph.
There’s various railroads that don’t like turbo for the same reasons… More maintenance, more stuff to break, more down time, more money.
Dave
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