The one and only time I saw one of Uncle Pete’s six thousand horsepower SD90MAC units was at the Proviso diesel house being tested (assuming this was before or after maintenance) by notching up the throttle while in neutral…WOW, what a monster!!! Now I see in today’s TRAINS news wire that the remaining twenty one of these beasts are to be either scrapped or exported. I often think of how many relatively new units like these are being scrapped when we still have a respectable number of old GP9’s, etc. around. Comments or thoughts?
IIRC maintenance nightmares and fuel hogs. It’s sad that something so new (comparitively) is going the way of the torch (possibly) but if it means that UP keeps running trains and can do it more profitably by being a touch more efficient, than I say great.
Some old designs have turned out to be the “DC-3’s” of locomotives: SW1’s, GP9’s, and SD9’s have held up so well that they’re worth maintaining and rebuilding for decades.
Others go the way of most GE U-boats, 244-engined Alcos, and some 251-engined Alcos, dead long before their time. (This category includes two favorites of mine, UP’s U50C and C855.) It looks like the SD90MAC is falling into this latter group.
when were they built?
ed
I thought these had common frames to SD70’s? Couldn’t they just do an engine swap? Maybe they could be the foundation for some big, honkin’ gen-sets?[:P]
Not exactly. The SD90MACs are built on the longest single-engine frame that (was) in active use today, excluding UP’s excursion-service DDA40X. They have the same/similer frame as the SD80MAC though…
I also read that the CP Rail are getting rid of their (4) SD90MACs also
Class I’s keep rather accurate records on the use and repairs that occur to any particular locomotive and any series of locomotives. If the UP is in fact scrapping the SD90 AC this early in their life they must have been total service and fuel hogs for the value of the tonnage they have hauled. No all ideas work in reality and this would make it appear that this idea was a failure.
I am surprised that EMD hasn’t put forth some sort of plan for these engines to ‘gloss over’ their failure. But then this is the ‘new’ EMD, not the EMD that actually built the engines, so they can disavow having any hand in the failure.
Could the 3rd coffin nail be that… having that many HP in one basket, means that if one unit dies on line, upto half of your HP for the train is dead, whereas by parcelling it out to more units, you lose a smaller fraction. Wasn’t that part of the reason for not continuing on w/ the DD40 program?
Maybe somebody in the Mech dept at UP didn’t read his history lessons and had to re-live them 40 yrs later.
I’ve heard the too many eggs suggestion before, and tend to agree. It would be nice to be able to haul a train with just one locomotive, but the results of a failure on a busy main wouldn’t be pretty. Even the DDs had two engines, so could presumably bail them selves out.
With the way the power people supply power for trains…there is no surplus working power on most of todays trains…if you have 3 units rated for a total of 10800 tons, you can rest assured the train that they will be hauling will be 10600 tons. There is no wiggle room for overcoming engine failure withou securing addtional power…be that a single unit train or a multiple unit train. Of course with a single unit train…an engine failure leave the train dead in the water. PERIOD. Multiple unit trains even though they don’t have sufficient power to complete their run, can generally limp to a place of clearance to await the additional power.
It looks like GE’s AC6000CW will outlast EMD’s competing 256H 90MACs in revenue service, which is probably a first for GE!
I saw an article in Friday’s Newswire. It says all the SD90MACs will be dismantled, but not the SD9043MACs. The engines (not locomotives) may be exported.
UP is going to do what?
I am surprised that UP didn’t just convert them so they are close to SD70ACe configuration–essentially replace the 265H-16 prime mover with the same prime mover used on the SD70ACe.
Oddballs tend to have short service lives and an oddball that doesn’t perform as advertised is going to get taken out of service even faster. D&RGW unloaded its KM’s to SP after only three years and they didn’t last much longer on SP. SD90MAC’s with 265H engines are oddballs and the above comments also suggest that they didn’t perform very well either.
you are right they are monsters but they ride like a lumber wagon I get bounced around more on them then anything else on the Union Pacific I know I will get some flak for this but i would rather ride in a sd40-2 they ride a lot better just a thought CNW forever Larry
The 265 was really a completely new design for EMD. You can see why most of the SD90MAC’s were given the 710 diesel prime movers. You could say it was a waste for EMD because it must have hurt their reputation. I don’t even remember seeing any 6,000 horsepower models.
Hasn’t China put in a large order for 6000 hp locomotives? Maybe these could be sold overseas instead of going to the chop shop.
I replied in the other thread about these units, but I’ll also reply here. The locomotives that the UP is scrapping are the 20 SD90MAC-H locomotives that they kept. They returned the other 41 SD90MAC-H locomotives that they had. The wiring diagrams and other maintenance manuals look like a child doodled over them because of all the changes made to them since they were built, in fact no two of them are exactly alike. EMD sold them, and the UP bought them because there are some parts on them that are the same as UP’s SD90MACs (which UP calls SD9043MACs). The cost to convert them to 4300hp is much too high, and remember under US EPA regulations because of the amount of work being done they would have to meet the current Tier II regulations, not the Tier 0 regulations that UP’s SD90MACS (SD9043MACs) have to meet. You would have to replace everything from the cab back and the frame up, and they would have to be recertified to meet these standards, and this would include writing new software. Meeting the emissions regulations requires all major components to interact properly, this includes the Radiator, the Intercoolers, the Traction Alternator, the Wheelslip Control System, as well as the Diesel Engine and its control system. Dropping in a diesel engine for the SD70ACe would not make the locomotive meet Tier II emissions. The SD90MAC-H locomotives may seem like new, but they are already more than 10 years old.
Yes EMD is building 300 locomotives for China with the 265H engine, but like the case with the SD60MACs, the cost to make them standardized is much too high. These locomotives were test locomotives for EMD, its too bad that so many were built, but much information was gained from them that will benefit future EMD locomotives.