Fully aware that SLR is not on most folks watched RR list…But looking at pictures of the SLR road slugs, it looks like they were originally GP35s. Can anyone confirm this? And the second question…are all the SLR GP40’s configured as mother units or just a select few?
Being a MM&A fan I’m probably not the greatest SLR fan. However I live in a town served by these two railroads.
I can’t confirm for your first question, but, for the second, I would say that only a part of the GP-40 are configured as mother. They usualy refer to these as GP-40-3. Their rad are flared as those on SD-45.
You can visit the Trainiax website, created by a SLR fan, there is pics, drawings, sound record, and a lot more stuff. Here is the address:
http://trainiax.0catch.com/mehomepage.htm
Hope it can help you.
Tuxx
Thanks Tuxx…I’ll give it a shot.
I found the answer. 803 was a GP38 and 804-806 were GP40s. And they are in fact paired to GP40s # 3803 - 3806. If anyone else is interested…
I see UP using slugs in the yard and also on a local over the road train. I have read about some railroads using brake sleds also. Now I know a slug and a brake sled are not the same thing. However, a slug would also serve as a brake sled in a way. Brake sleds were used in flat yard switching where the extra braking power was need. I am not sure that brake sledes were very successful. Honestly, I wonder if slugs are really worth the extra effort to chop them down and mate them to another unit. Any ideas either way on this?
Slugs are useful for additional low-speed tractive effort since they move the cutoff point where the tractive effort curve reaches adhesion limits. The horsepower is spread out so that the tractive effort curve of a GP40/slug set is roughly equivalent to that of two GP7’s in multiple.
They are useful in yards where speeds are quite low anyway, especially as hump pushers. Road use would be limited to situations like mine runs, heavy locals, etc. where speeds rarely get much over 25 MPH and are usually lower.