Switcher questions

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

For some reason I’ve always been fascinated by diesel switchers, maybe because they are relatively rare. Anyway, a few questions came up while reading through the Trains contemporary diesel spotters guide and I’m hoping that someone with more knowledge on the topic can enlighten me.

The Spotters guide mentioned that switchers tend to wear out quickly due to the nature of the service they perform. I thought I remember reading or hearing somewhere that switchers have long service lives due to their toughness and low speed service. Which is correct?

Did any railroads use the EMD MP15 in road service? Was it practical to mix MP15s in with road power? Did the MP15 work out as originally imagined/sold by EMD or in practice did it end up being used like the switchers that came before it?

Have EMD and GE abandoned the new switcher market, letting small manufacturers fill that niche market?

Thanks in advance for your help!

2

Well we still have SW1500’s, SW7’s, MP15’s etc still around in force on the BNSF, so yes they have long service lives.

3

The Long Island railroad used MP-15’s on passenger trains, at least they were on the Cab control-HEP end with a GP38 pushing the train into NYC and pulling it back out to Oyster Bay. Usually MP-15’s don’t have toilets which I understand is a requirement for use on the mainline for long periods of time. The typical commuter run is about 1 hour. I think they might hit 60 mph on portions of this run and hence the reason for Blomberg trucks.

4

Keep in mind that switch crews don’t like getting slammed around any more than road crews, so they tend to take just as much care with their machines as road crews do.

Switchers are designed for the service they perform, and because they are in yards most of the time, when something breaks, it tends to get taken care of quickly because the service shop is close by, and having a yard engine down for any real length of time is costly in terms of car dwell time and yard congestion.

Think about the job they do, dragging cuts out, kicking cars, coupling up tracks…most of their work is slow speed hard drag work, and if you look at their design, you can see the form does follow the function.

Most of the EMD switchers you find are on their 3rd, 4th or 5th incarnation…you can find them in almost any yard, and any industry as the plant switcher.

Which is one of the reasons GE and EMD dont make or market a “new” switch engine, the “old” ones are still around doing their job.

About the only builder who ventured into the switch engine market was the old MK Rail group, who became Bosie Locomotive, and is now MP (Motive Power) Locomotive…they rebuilt GP9 and GP38 frames into the MK1500D, sold as a road switcher, it is a 1500 HP locomotive.

EMD had them build a simular group under license with EMD prime movers and marketed them as the New GP15 and GP 20, they were 1500 and 2000 HP respectivly…the only buyer of these was City Corp, who purchased then leased the entire group out to UP.

The MK1500Ds were sold as a group to both the PTRA and the HB&T in Houston, the HB&T was dissolved the same year and absorbed into the BNSF and UP…the BN ended up with the HB&T MK1500s.

The 25 units on the PTRA are still going strong after 13 years, powered by Cat diesels…they are capable of 70 mph, but most

5

I know Southern Pacific used its SW1500s for local work. Its MP15s and MP15ACs were similarly equipment, so I would think that they were also used for local work.

6

End cab switchers seem to last forever. Although, our switch power these days is mostly displaced SD40s, we still have a stable of ancient end cabs for local work, where other units can’t fit. And believe it or not, on level ground, the switchers out pull the beat up SDs we get.

Nick

7

Was at B&O Clark Ave yard at Cleveland a number of years ago and watched one of the 1940 vintage 600hp B&O SW switchers pull 84 loads of cement out of the yard to take out to an industry about 5 miles South of the yard…staining and struggling all the way and not very fast but all the cars made it to the industry as one train for spotting in the industry.

8

And then there are power plants, grain elevators, refineries, and the like - not steel mills, though - where the end-cab switchers can go to retire. Some of them are used only a few hours a week, mechanically ‘babied’ with regularly scheduled and preventative maintenance, kept under roof and sometimes indoors in a heated location - they’ll last forever, or at least as long as spare parts are available.

I’m thinking of the former Phila. Electric (now Exelon) power plants at Eddystone and Phoenixville/ Cromby Station, Atlantic City Electric’s B.L. England Station at Marmora/ Ocean City, NJ (though I believe that one is now non-coal), etc. - they all had a captive ‘pet’ end-cab EMD switcher.

  • Paul North.
9

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, a fellow by the name of Bill Kennerly used to write a monthly column in the NMRA’s Bulletin magazine/ newsletter that was called ‘‘Notes from an Old Time Book’’ or similar. One of them revolved around an elderly ALCo S-type switcher, which as he said (as near as I can recall) ‘When at rest, they may rattle, wheeze, and seem insignificant - but I’m here to tell you that they’re powerful little beggars, and that when the throttle on one of them is opened, things will start to happen !’'.

In the subject instance, the switch crew was shoving a cut of cars into a siding where a string of tank cars was already spotted, on a dark night in an unlighted corner of a yard. Although the train stalled, the conductor gave a vigorous ‘Come ahead !’ lantern signal, so the engineer just opened 'er up. The story essentially ended when an adjoining homeowner awoke to the sound of his backyard fence being splintered, and in the dim light a black cylinder with the letters ‘UTLX’ on the end of it could be seen slowly moving towards him . . . [:-^]

  • Paul North.
10

Both! They were a mixed bag. The diesel engine would run forever. The amount of time it spent a anything close to full load is minuscule (1-2% typically). And the overall design is pretty simple. Battery field excitation. Manual transition. Many things not so wonderful, though. The trucks (rigid switcher type sometimes known as AAR type A) had no lateral suspension at all and were very prone to cracking in several places (usually around the blower ducts and spring pockets). You usually rebuild trucks when the brake rigging gets sloppy and given the amount of braking switchers do, you’d be doing trucks quite often. Almost every time, there’d be lots of crack repair welding and grinding to do as well. The other pain in the neck feature of switchers is their mechanical, belt driven fan. Not exactly maintenance free and often made it difficult to keep the engine warm while idling in the winter.

11

If I were looking for an old switcher for a shortline or similar use, I’d look for an SW1200 with Flexicoil trucks with an engine/main gen out of an E8 and the radiator fan converted to a couple of 36" electric fans (also out of the E8)

12

Except for the Flexicoil trucks, that sounds an awful lot like an SW10 to me.

13

Yup. Conrail just added “mod” after the original model. An SW7 with and E8 heart transplant would be known as an SW7mod. The Flexicoil trucked versions were fairly rare.

14

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16

RWIW I remember in the trains article many years ago entitled the diesel d-l that the author a mech supt for BRC iirc saying that the emd switchers would outlast geeps because their frames weren t as long. Also as far as keeping rhe radiatior warm in cold wheather most of the rrs in the midwest used canvas covers over the front grills as a means of keeping the radiator warmer in the winter months.

17

You might be thinking about the article that mentions the fact that most EMD SW frames were one piece cast frames, as opposed to fabricated or welded up frames…cast frames are stronger and have more flex to them, hence they “live” longer under extreme work load.

18

I too vaguely remember that. However, my recollection is that it had more to do with how the coupler pocket and draft gear was attached to the frame - cast into it and in-line with its main axis for the switchers, as opposed to bolted-on and hung below, which causes eccentric loading for the Geeps - but I could be way wrong on that. Anyway, it was probably one of these 4 articles - I believe Vern Smith was the former Belt Railway of Chicago Mechanical Superintendent who is referenced:

Delivering designed performance
Trains, April 1979 page 22
The Diesel from D to L
( DIESEL, “SMITH, VERNON L.”, ENGINE, LOCOMOTIVE, TRN )
Cycles and cylinders
Trains, May 1979 page 44
The Diesel from D to L
( DIESEL, “SMITH, VERNON L.”, ENGINE, LOCOMOTIVE, TRN )

Stopping and starting
19

Vernon Smith’s book “One Man’s Locomotives” is a good one. He started out in the 1920’s as a teenage engineer on iron ore mining company 0-6-0s and electric engines on the Mesabi Iron Range here in his native Minnesota, then worked for Lima designing and building steam engines. Later he worked for the Santa Fe IIRC, ending up as noted at the Belt Railway of Chicago.

Back to the original post, I guess I never thought of switchers as being rare. I grew up on a line of the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern that was primarily operated by switchers, first Baldwin VOs and FMs, then EMD SW-1200 and SW-1500s. 40 years later some of the EMD engines are still working on the line, now for Progressive Rail.

MP-15s are basically switcher bodies with road-switcher trucks, so can work in yards or on regular trains. After they took over the Milwaukee Road the Soo Line often paired a Milwaukee “bandit” MP-15 with a high-nose Soo GP on wayfreights.

20

You are most certainly correct about those mechanical driven belt fans. I think they are a royal pain in the butt! In my yard Osborn (CSX) in Louisville we have SW1500s, MP15T, and MP15ACs. The locomotives that are in desperate need of some care are the MP15ACs if you can believe that. We had one CSX 1235 last year, that I had the privilege of running RCO that wouldn’t load up at all when it was cold and I also could hear the belt slipping on the fan, it was loud!!! When I left it at idle it would cut off at times. There were also times in which I was getting Traction motor stalls when it would attempt to load up. Well I think I was the last one to use it and then it got sent to Nashville for some work. It’s been fine ever since.

Many of the switchers in Osborn Yard, here in Louisville have basically bit the dust several times over. I think it’s because a lot of guys that run them abuse the heck out of them. I’ve seen some people run the switchers until they get a short time rating warning come up on the Amp meter or they will use and abuse the heck out of the brakes. I remember working with one engineer that wanted to hurry up and get done and you could see that in his train handling, I would get jerked around all over the place if I was riding a shove. We also use out switchers in short run transfer jobs on the main tracks.