What are the models of the SD-4x lineup specifically the variants. I am trying get to find a picture of a SD-45M that supposedly was built 34 strong for the Erie Lackawanna, I googled it and can’t find anything. Thanks!
HERE’S MY NEW QUESTION:
I was reading about EMD’s F45 and that supposedly (according to Wikipedia) BN/GN ordered the units to protect their crews from the elements, and ATSF bought them for aesthetics.
Now the BN/GN reasoning somwhat makes sense due to another supposed (I forget the source but it wasn’t Wiki, maybe a rail DVD) anyways supposedly Espee crews on Donner preferred the Cowl units like Fs, Es, and PAs over hood units like Geeps and Seeds, because they had more “protection from the elements” now whether all this is true is questionable. Thanks!
New new question…
I am looking at this locomotive on ebay, does it have a SD45 20 Cyl. PM? According to the listing it’s a SD40M but by all outward appearances its a SDP45 rebuild without its steam generator.
“The Erie Lackawanna Railroad ordered 34 SD45Ms in 1969 and 1970. Intended for freight service, these units had a long metal head end; the extra space aft of the radiators had concrete ballast. Their longer frames permitted a larger fuel tank which gave the locomotives a greater range between fuel stops”
Diesel data from A. J. Kristopans. You will find that the majority of information about these Erie Lackawanna units will call them SDP45s. The 1990 EMD Product Data shows that 33 of these SDP45 units were still on the Conrail roster.
Occasionally I would see them M-Ued with some of the displaced passenger E-8s. Now that made for a sharp-looking train! Someday I have to get around to lowering those horns. The Erie had them mounted lower and more forward to clear the low tunnel leading to the Cleveland Ore docks.
One of these survives, reasonably intact, in the back lot of the Museum of Transportation (VMT) in Roanoke. If I recall correctly, its principal issue is a bad turbo. I get a little comfort every time I see it there and know it’s safe.
It would be interesting to know how many of these still survive with later owners and in lease fleets. The information on the fallenflags site indicates some of the history, but not the present status.
The SDP45’s (SD45M’s on the EL) were purchased primarily for the ability to have a 5,000 gal fuel tank, similar to the last group of SD45’s that the EL purchased where the air tanks were moved to the end of the long hood so they could also have the larger fuel tank.
And contrary to popular belief they did not have the large fuel tank to go from NY to Chicago on one tank of fuel, but they were to go from Marion, OH (where the EL had a large diesel facility), to either Chicago or NY and back in order to take advantage of the lower taxes on fuel in Marion versus refueling in either Chicago or NY.
On a standard SDP45 the area aft of the radiator fans held a steam generator and water tanks for passenger service, since these were in freight service they did not have the flat end like the SP or GN units, but a pointed real end that was filled with concrete to give extra weight for traction, especially as the fuel tank emptied.
I wonder if EMD ever proposed a successor to the DDa40x units, maybe a DD45 or a HT-B-B 45 unit (borrowing from the experimental HT-B-B truck they tested with BN on a SD45)
Another idea for the files of the NWP-SWP shops is a SDP45-2T that’s a Special Duty Passenger 45-2 Tunnel, that’s to run passenger trains over the several mountain passes on the NWP-SWP system.
Back to the subject at hand, so the EL units were basically SDP45s with increased fuel capacity, sans steam generator, and ballasted for higher traction?
The DD units were to my knowledge never seriously considered by any road other than UP. At that time most Eastern roads would not have considered double-diesel designs to be particularly ‘economical’, particularly in the sandwich configurations for long, heavy trains that EMD had been marketing up to the era of the Centennials. We will not go into issues of track mechanics and lateral motion in general long-term use, but there are reasons no railroad would want a limited number of specialized D-truck locomotives in an era when much high-speed early intermodal was still optimized around non-Flexicoil B trucks.
The same is my takeaway from the HT-B-B testing: if there had been the least shred of demand for the idea, some railroad or other would actually have ordered a locomotive with the arrangement on both ends. I think we can say categorically that BN saw no meaningful reason to place actual orders, or even conduct extended testing. (This aside from the general success, partly driven by expediency and partly by necessity, of the span-bolster B-B truck arrangements as used in Brazil).
What you saw at the time was an emphasis in different directions, culminating on the one hand in much higher achieved HP per axle (with slip and creep control) and various combinations of ZWT and radial-steering arrangements in conventional B and C truck geometry and secondary ‘pivot’ arrangements. I do not think that any aspect of the ‘market failure’ of 6000hp C-C locomotives can be attributed to the truck configuration (and while the GE version of steerable axles still strikes me as extremely strange, CSX operates locomotives with those trucks to this day, albeit with derated or replaced prime movers).
I’m looking at a few on eBay, I think I have the money to spend on a project like this, the question is do I use the chassis and cab of a SD45 and just use a FP45 shell for the body or use a FP45 chassis and body and a SD45 shell for the cab, decisions, decisions. [(-D]
the last of which was built in 1972. I am of the belief that Amtrak wanted to use the Bulldog nose for the first cowl units it bought in 1973 and those locos could have looked like the Commonwealth Railways/Australian National CL classes.
Before there were models of these locos available, I toyed with the idea of making a similar loco using an FP45 body on an F45 chassis with an F unit front. I liked the D&H scheme applied to the PA’s and thought a hypothetical replacement for PA’s could have been…
The fun of modelling, quelled at the time by career needs and raising children…
