Does anyone know if the Illinois Railway Museum is going to try to restore the 6930 to running condition?
6925 is going to Arkansas Railroad Museum. And if IRM restores 6930, where are they going to run it?
Probably just on their lines, but it’d still be cool to see a DD40 running in addition to the 6936.
I think its prime movers are frozen, not 100% sure though. I don’t really know if that can be repaired to get it operating again.
That’s not good… Sounds like it’s not going to be going anywhere fast. Come to think of it, it’s not going to be going anywhere at all, let alone fast.
IRM has restored the cab to operating condition, allowing it to be used in the lead while another engine pushes. They do this during Diesel Days, on a photo freight.
I know that its not 100% historically accurate, but does it need both engines functioning to be able to run? It wouldn’t get 100% of its electrical load, but could it be run on one engine alone?
I’ve pretty sure that one engine and generator were hooked up to one 4 axel truck, while the other engine/generator was hooked up to the other truck. The walkway separating the two hoods would seem to support this.
I would be interested to know if the engineer could run one engine while putting the other one in idle?
Yes you can run with one engine isolated. I remember having to go start and check the 6936 one day after it had been shopped for some reason. This included doing a self load test using the grids as load banks like most of our locomotives are equipped to do. I just isolated one engine at a time and got my electrical checks and H.P. readings on the one that was online. The DD40’s also have two amp guages. one for each truck. You can run with one engine completely shut down also. One thing I noticed when I was on this locomotive a couple weeks ago is a message posted in the cab saying the locomotive must be completely stopped before restarting one of the engines because the heavy draw on the batteries when starting will cause the cab signal system to apply the air brakes. This is something I never noticed before. I suppise the problem cropped up when it was converted to the newer style computerized cab signal system.