Anyone agree that a GP38 loads slower than a GP40/50/60?
Depends on the resistors on the rate card. RC.
Trying to kick with a slow loading engine sucks.
“Give me a kick”
“Yeah… it’s coming. Might as well get soemthing to drink and use the bathroom while you’re waiting.”
I used to work with a engineer who told me “general electric locomotives are so slow that you could read a novel by the time they load up”. I would have to agree. That is probably why you rarely see any GE locomotives doing yard duty for any class 1 railroads.
I’ve done it. Also on locals. They weren’t bad on the local - but you had to have patience. Give it a notch or two and it will eventually start pulling. Guys used to running 4 axles had a hard time using them.
I don’t see any difference in loading with the GP38 or the GP40. The 50’s and 60’s are excellent locomotives and more powerful. I do remember them loading up slightly quicker than the GP38-2’s. We didn’t use them too often, usually when there was power shortages. Most had comfort cabs which is not good for yard duty. We had one of the last active SD45T-2’s come to our UP yard one day. I talked the engineer into using that instead of our usual dual GP38-2’s. That locomotive is a absolute beast! Pull 40 loads like it was nothing. We got done probably 2 hours early. Kicking cars was a bit difficult though. Turbos do have a slight lag when starting. So when it does kick in, cars start to move pretty quickly after it loads up. More work for the engineer when you are only dealing with say less than 20 cars especially if they are empty. Pretty hard to find a balance in the yard. Something that would probably be ideal would be a six axle, blower driven, locomotive. I always felt like the SD-9 was the perfect yard switcher.