Have just seen photos of the GE export diesels for the UK (class 70). These have got to be the most ugly locomotives ever I am embarresed to say they came from the USA. Can someone please make GE hire an industrial designer!!! The last half-way attractive GE locomotive was the Amtrak P-42’s, and they were designed by Amtrak’s industrial designer. A sad state of affairs to consider that US, which created so many beautiful diesels now turns out this drek.
Industrial design is about more than just appearances. In the case of the Freightliner 70 class, keep in mind of what needs to be shoehorned into a clearance diagram only slightly larger than that of the New York subway. The 59 and 66 classes (from EMD) also suffer from the same constraints. There isn’t a lot of space to work with so appearances are a low priority when you’re trying to shrink an SD40-2 into the space alloted in the 59 class or an SD70ACe into the 66 class.
I’m not an industrial designer but I will go out on a limb and say that EMD’s bulldog nose is NOT a very good design. It includes a lot of compound curves which made it expensive to produce. Alco did a lot better in that regard with Ray Patten’s flatnose design (all three versions) which was much more considerate of production costs.
Maybe GE misunderstood and thought it was “Friteliner”. In any case because of the physical restriction most European diesel are pretty unsightly. As far a load gage restrictions, GE had to buy a whole engine company to get enough power in a small enough package to fit this locomotive as well as leave room for a muffler. Even on the slightly larger Vossloh engines with EMD engines the muffler is a wide flat thing laying on the exhaust manifold with a tight 90 degree bend coming out of the turbo.
Frankly, after the F units era what North American freight locomotive has been “beautiful” in the styling sense? They are designed for function not form…Maybe the GP30, in the sense that there was an attempt to introduce a styling element into it…
But, the EMD class 66’s are nicely designed locomotives