csxengineer98, now I know what those things are sitting in the back of your csx junkers. lol I asked our roundhouse machinists and they didn’t even know it was there, let alone what it was and what it did. I tried to start one of your finest pieces of locomotive up here in St Paul one day and wasn’t having much luck. I finally figured out how to start this APU thing which seemed to sit all the way in the back of the engine. But the start control was in the cab over on the fireman’s side if I recall correctly. Anyway, it started and I even went back to see what it was doing and still couldn’t figure it out. I just assumed it was some kind of “smart start” fuel conservation gizmo. The only thing I can figure out is that it was given to us dead or it died enroute and none of our people knew how to re-start it.
So, what does APU stand for and do you like them?
And to add a bit to my comrade luckyboy’s response, there’s actually a whole bunch of parameters that must be met for the engine to shut itself down. Some of these are air pressure of the train line, main resevoir and brake cylinder, air temperature, battery charge status and prolly a few others that I’ve forgotten. Some of these depend on if the unit is set up to lead or trail, of course. Also, smart start is not train-lined, that is to say one unit’s smart start has no effect on other units mu’ed to it. Simiarily, the high idle feature of some locomotives is not train-lined either. This automatically increases the idle speed of the locomotive in cold weather to prevent freeze up. So, you could have a locomotive consist of all nice new GE dash 9’s and Mac 90’s mu’ed to this older SD-40, Geep 38 or whatnot and be forced to leave the lead unit in notch 4 if its below zero and unless you isolated the other units they’d all sit and burn fuel to keep that lone unit from freezing up, cept for the leader which would be isolated by default.
APU = Auxiliary Power Unit. Also those little yellow trailers you see around airplanes, with the hoses and cables sprouting all over the place.
Re: Jump starting a loco - I think I came up on the end of the process one time on the ICG. The RR employee was just putting the cables away in a pickup that had a bed full of batteries. I’ve always assumed that the engine quit for some reason (or was shut down) and wouldn’t start on it’s own batteries. Most of the time if ICG left an engine at that spot (fairly frequently), it was left running.
I remember finding on the web once the starting procedure for a GP7 or 9. It certainly wasn’t a turn-key operation.
For the mechanics among us - I seem to recall that at one time the main generator was used to turn over the prime mover. Is that still the case?
For Paul M.
I once had a Fiat 850 Spider. We said that FIAT stood for “Fix it again Tony”, not the official name of “Federation Italian Automobile Tourin” Please excuse my spelling as I am not fluent in Italian. The correct name is the Italian version of my Engli***ranslation. I drove the Spider from Orange county to down town Los Angeles for three years with no trouble. The car hated my wife and would strike out at her every time she drove it. She has such assorted problems as the seat rail coming unwelded (rust) and flying forward, the gas petal falling on the floor, and an electrical fire in a gas station. Good place to have a car fire. When we moved to Texas we sold the Spider in a garage sale. I pitty the sucker who bought it.
Our transit system, which I am a “retired” board member has 13 Budd RDCs. These RDCs being 1950 vintage technology had three diesel engines-two for power and one for hotel services. These engines had to be started from the outside by rolling the engine with an air starter. The cab of the RDC, being the vestibule, did not have room for a lot of buttons and switches.
A sideline to starting engines comes from my experience in the oil and gas industry. Our industry has many natural gas fired compressors that are started manually. The starting procedure would be to 1: Turn on Manzel or Traborn lubricators. 2: Roll engine on compressed air. 3: Turn on spark. 4: Turn on fuel gas. 5: Turn off compressed air. If you turned on the fuel gas before turning on the spark the engine would backfire when the spark was turned on. This would be cause for the installation of a new muffler which cost considerably more than an automobile muffler and would make management unhappy.
About 10 yrs ago, UP had an incident at Wichita,KS where two thugs tresspassed into the yard during the middle of the night when no one was around, boarded a pair of switch engs, got them moving taking them out of the yard on a three mile joyride through town. Witnesses reported the engs speeding by w/no lights or horn blowing. The engs then changed directions coming back to the yard, the theives dismounted and the engs went around a 10 mph curve at what was reported to be 30-40 mph, came off the trk and skitted down a street for one block. No one was hurt but what a mess. Both engs were rebuilt. I believe #s were 2279 &1661. The case went unsolved untl four yrs ago when through the help of Crimestoppers, the two thugs were caught and did serve some hard time at the crossbar hotel. Just be careful in who you talk with on subjects like this. Not every non rr emp needs to know details on eng operation.
starting it is only half the battle…you have to know how to set it up to be able to get it moving once its running…what switches you have to have on and off…and what not…and that information i am not going to give out…
csx engineer
[quote]
QUOTE: Paul Milenkovic
Posted: 08 Feb 2005, 21:09:32
About starting Diesels . . .
In the mid 1990’s, my poppa and I went on a motoring trip from Munich through Austria to Slovenia. We get to the rental garage, and I find we have a Fiat hatchback. OooooooohNoooooooo! Actually, for all the bad tales of Fiats in the American market, this one is pretty nice and quiet with firm seats. And it is a turbo Diesel! Oh, fun! (Oh, save some Deutsche Marks on fuel on account of the German trucking lobby and the higher tax on gasoline).
I get in and turn the key. R-rer-rer-rer-rer! Nothing. Try it again. R-rer-rer-rer-rer-rer. I am starting to sweat. The rental car guy didn’t tell us anything about a trick to this car. And then, a distant memory of having worked 20 years earlier at an auto company on a direct-cylinder fuel injection project as an electrical engineer, and all of the things my automotive-engineer boss told me about Diesels. Ah, glow plugs! Turn the key part way to get the red glow plug indicator, wait for red indicator light to go out (mind you I had no instructions on this, if it weren’t for my stint at a car company, I would be another dumb American tourist draining the battery trying to start that car), turn the key, and vroom!
Now I was not a complete Diesel neophyte. My poppa has an IH Diesel tractor (50 HP) for his orchard which I have run many an hour doing chores for him, and there are no glow plugs. You move a level to change the injector advance, crank, it catches, a little black puff of smoke, a little rough running, move the injector advance to the run position, put it in gear and pull out of the shed. I got training on this procedure and have done it for years.
What’s the difference? The IH is a DI (direct-injection) Diesel as are just about most truck engines, locomotives, and bigger stuff. The Fiat was an IDI (indirect-injection) Diesel. It has a combustion prechamber which requires a glow plug for starting. It has more compl
I have operated many a contrivance – car, single-engine airplane, farm tractor. There was a time when I was checked out on a Zamboni ice resurfacer. Not much in the way of controls, but there were things you had to watch, procedures to follow and startup and shutdown checklists.
The main thing was you were to never stop once you were out on the ice and had the ice making bar down – I was told you could freeze yourself stuck. If that happened, they would have to melt the entire ice and start over again to get you free, and lets just say the hockey club would be very displeased.
I imagine starting and operating a locomotive is similar. I mean what can you do already – go forward, go reverse – it is not like you can steer it. But I imagine there are oh so many things that can go wrong.
As for the test cocks…
When the motor is shut down for over 4 hours, the cocks get opened and you give the engine 2-3 rotations to blow any water out. Then close them all up and start it. We only have a couple of engines with purge control, and it might not work anyway. Opening the cocks is fail-safe.
Our motors usually have good batteries, so we don’t worry about trying to start them, unless the engineer that shut it down didn’t turn all the breakers off like he should have. The UP power that comes up on ballast trains is usually kept running, as they usually send up the oldest junk that might pull it.
Some of our SD40-2s had Kim Hotstarts installed. I believe they are all OOS. The coolant is plain water with some waterpump lube added, so they need to be kept running below 40 deg. Idle from 20-40 deg., Run 2 0-20 deg., Run 3 below 0. When the cab is empty, our motors are locked up.
Although imagine trying to steal a steam locomotive. The hours and hours it would take to get water to boil. Then figureing out how to move it without blowing the cylender heads off…BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH[:D]
Lots of discussion on this topic, but why? You should only need to know if required to by your RR employer which likely will not occur. And as far as “engineers etc”, out there responding with helpful info dont you think this topic might be better left alone???
Well this thread has been dead for about three weeks until you brought it back to life. Besides, no big deal, you can get engine starting manuals off e-bay!!