The F series locomotives were used for both freight and passenger interchangably… why were the Es used almost exclusively for passenger?
Later in their lives some were used successfully for freight service. Perhaps the most notable were the Bangor and Aroostook’s pair of E7’s that were rebuilt for freight service with EMD assistance.
I’ll leave most of the reasons why they weren’t desireable for freight service and why their limitations had to be respected when put to use in those duties, to others to explain better than I can. But reason #1 in my eyes comes down to the limitations of their gearing.
The BAR had to modify the trucks to enable the use of 38" wheels (Edit: Some references say 40"), enabling re-gearing to 62:15. With the factory 36" wheels the minimum gearing possible was 57:20 with a maximum speed of 85 mph, which obviously isn’t too well suited for freight service (and one reason why some of the notable users of them in freight service put them at the head end of short, fast, and relatively light trains that often looked overpowered in order to protect the motors).
The results as publicized by the road were very successful. It gave them a unit that performed as well as a F3 at speeds below 25 mph (albeit more expensively than a F3, such as 24 cylinders to maintain versus 16). And at speeds above, the full 2,000 horsepower could be put to use to outpace a F3.
For a cost of less than the half the trade-in allowance that they would’ve got for them from La Grange, they were able to get half a decade more out of them before going in trade for new GP38’s in I think 1966.
After the “Lake Cities” was discontinued and the Jersey suburban service was re-equipped, EL made regular use of their E’s in general freight service. Admittedly, they used 3 or 4 at a time on the front end.
If a RR is looking for new units to pull its freights, why would they even consider E-units? What advantage would they have over Fs or GPs?
E units ‘short time ratings’ would kick in in the neighborhood of 25-27 MPH, versus freight units getting into their short time rating at approximately 11 MPH.
Short time ratings are the denote speed at which Maximum Amperage can be fed to traction motors continuously without damage. If speeds drop below the Short Time rating speed, then the resulting INCREASING AMPERAGE being sent to the traction motors can only be withstood for increasingly shorter times.
In the late 1950’s the B&O assigned all their F3 passenger geared engines to the Chicago Division to operate between Willard and Chicago, with the passenger gearing intact. The maximum grade on this route was 3 tenths of one percent - ie. 4 inches of elevation change over a 100 foot span.
Rock Island also used some of its E’s in freight service. RI had few major grades so that minimized the issues with short term ratings.
In the cases of Erie Lackawanna and Rock Island, financial considerations may have also been a factor. With the decline of passenger service, E’s became surplus power, using them in freight service may have postponed the need for new power.
Speed for short-tie ratins depends on gear-ratio. E-units were geared for higher speed and less starting tracteve effort than freight units in general.
Now on the Erie and later the Erie Lackawanna the E units were used primarily on fast intermodal traffic that was interchanged with the Santa Fe IIRC from all the books I have read in my hubbies library. They were used primarily because faster speeds and well tofc trains aren’t exactly the heaviest things on the railroad.
Having had some ‘limited’ experiences with ‘E’ Units. As an interested, observer; I noted that if utilized in a switching capacity, they were very difficult to use in that process.
The difficulties were issues of visibility from the cab positions; no operational controls were installed at the area of rear entrance of units; inabilities of engineer or fireman(?) to give clear, operational, hand-signals out of unit…problematic for employees on the ground. And so-on; they were not an easy unit to use to switch cars out of, or into a train.
The same thing could be said of F’s, FA’s, etc. Road switchers were developed in response to most of those issues.
One time, when I was a kid, I observed a Work Train being operated with a F-7 B unit - using the hostler controls that those units had to operate them in and around locomotive service facilities.
Thank goodness for Alco in that regard.
Except EMD got there first - NW3 (1939) and NW4 (1938) vs RS1 (1941). In particular the NW3 used the NW2 switcher’s engine, had a steam generator and rode on road trucks. The RS1 used the S2 switcher’s engine, had a steam generator and rode on road trucks. The NW4 used parts salvaged from the EMD’s B-B passenger demonstrators which meant it had the NC1/NW1 switcher’s 201 engine, AAR-type B road trucks instead of Blombergs and had a steam generator. If you want to call the RS1 a roadswitcher, the EMD units have to take pride of place. BTW, Jerry Pinkepank in the Diesel Spotters Guide of 1967 coined the term “Light Road Switcher” for a unit using the manufaturer’s contemporary switcher powerplant. I’ve got my faded, dog eared copy on my bookshelf
Of course, after the promising start EMD dropped the ball entirely, with nothing in the line comparable to an RS1 and in fact trying to pass off the ridiculous BL2 for the ‘branch line’ service the RS1 did so well.
They redeemed themselves many times over by inventing the Geep, of course… but in terms of design precedence that was a recognition of the RS1 ‘package’, not original thinking.
The RI used E units out of the suburban commuter pool over the weekends when there weren’t as many commuter trains being operated. They would make a turn from Chicago to Silvis and back on freight.
After the RTA F40’s showed up they may have tried running some of the released E units on more Chicago - Silvis trains. If they did, it didn’t last long and most surplus E’s went to the dead line.
Jeff
E’s didn’t have all their weight on powered axles, so had relatively low starting tractive effort relative to their horsepower. Being geared for the higher speeds then desired for passenger service made this even worse.
Tonnage is tonnage, doesn’t matter if it’s freight or passengers on the drawbar. I’m sure E’s did just fine with lighter, shorter freights, especially if re-geared for a lower maximum speed.
Passenger geared four axle units also have relatively low starting tractive effort compared to their freight counterparts, but CN still used them on express and other short freight trains into the 1980s, often at night when fewer passenger trains were operated.
Perenially power short CP continued leasing VIA units as late as the mid 1990s, and had previously had a similar arrangment with GO Transit.
http://tracksidetreasure.blogspot.com/2015/09/cp-leases-via-locomotives-1994-1995.html
Simple economics. EMD had limited capacity (about 5 1/2 units a day) until Plant 3 in Cleveland came on line, which brought capacity to 10 unis a day. Plant 3 built switchers, then switchers and Geeps. EMD caculated that it made more money from building E and F units than it would make from roadswitchers (which turned out to be true comparing the F7 with the GP7). So, as long as cab unit demand held up and available capacity was filled with E and F unit orders, it was willing to concede the roadswitcher market to its competitors, and stay where the money was. The BL was an attempt to have your cake and eat it too, by using a cab unit style truss body in a faux roadswitcher. Of, course, once Plant 3 began operations, EMD had space to build roadswitchers as well as cab units and the GP7 and GP9 were roaring successes.
This was to be repeated. EMD had cut its capacity back significantly after dieselization was finished and cut back further due to the early Eighties recession, and when, in the Late Eighties, several lines approached it with switcher orders, they were politely (or maybe not so politely) refused. They then went to GE and got the same answer. Both major builders had limited production capacity and it just didn’t make sense to replace profitable road units on the erecting floor with less profitable switchers. If you can build 1000 units a year, why build 50 switchers at $1M per and 950 road units at $2M a piece when you can build (and sell) 1000 road locos at $2M each?
Profit rather than the sale price of a locomotive is more important in my opinion.
A switcher is a lot cheaper to purchase than a big road locomotive and at least in the pages of Trains, they’ve taken that tidbit through the years and extrapolated that a road locomotive automatically is more remunerative for EMD than a switcher simply because of the higher sale price. But the data is incomplete and doesn’t actually tell us that with any sort of certainty.
While it quite possibly was more profitible, that logic ignores that it’s cheaper because it doesn’t cost as much for EMD to construct it. That small and relatively simple switcher that can be built quicker and which sells for $1 million, might yield $200k in profit for La Grange. At the same time the complex and expensive to produce $2 million road switcher might also only yield $200k in profit.
I don’t think we’ve ever had access to the data that could actually confirm that a SW1500 for instance was less profitable for EMD to build than a SD40 (An era when EMD’s switcher business was still a big deal worth courting rather than the distraction it later became before being killed off).
Same deal in the early 1950’s. We know the list prices for EMD models of that era. A F7A indeed was more expensive to purchase than a GP7, but that doesn’t mean the former necessarily was more profitible for EMD. All it really does is confirm the obvious. A F7 was more expensive for EMD to build than a GP7 and thus was priced higher.
It doesn’t tell us a lick about which one was actually more lucrative for the builder since we simply don’t know what they cost to build, only what they were sold for. Thus we can’t detirmine how their profit margins compared.
What railroads in the 80s wanted switchers? Gary
A very significant factor in the cost to build a locomotive is the size of the order - orders for switchers could be only a few or even one loco, where orders for road power were nearly always larger. At EMD, we budgeted 10,000 engineering hours for every order, regardless of number of units, to cover all the basic design and processing hours to turn the sales spec into drawings and docs for purchasing and production. This was things like painting and styling drawings, ongoing changes to basic components requiring drawing revisions and updates, general customer requests for cab appertenances, wiring diagrams, shop assembly instructions, parts catalogs, etc. Special features beyond what we consider normal added hours to that total. When it got to the shop floor, there was a learning curve figured in - the first unit of an order always takes twice the hours to build as the 10th unit. Then there is the cost to purchase the material for a small quantity versus large. With switchers weighing about 260K lbs versus a GP40-2 at 272K lbs, the basic raw material cost is not much different. We also looked at how many different models we were building each month to try to keep it as low as practical for shop efficiency, sometimes with exports included we were doing 8-10 different orders per month in the 70’s when the factory was running at capacity which was a killer for efficiency. Just changing over shop tooling fixtures as the model mix changes adds cost.
Even though switchers couldn’t command a greater price than a road loco just based on HP, they could have cost more to build especially based on size of order.
Dave