With the Siemens Charger locomotive on its way, is it safe to say they will be replacing the P40dc’s? Or is it to supplement the Genesis roster?
Please stop asking these wacky questions.
The Siemens Charger is purpose-designed for 125 mph trains. It has nothing in common with anything a P40 (or any other Genesis locomotive) would pull. Even with a Cummins QSK (instead of the lame Caterpillar C175 in the EMD Spirit) I have my doubts that high-speed diesel prime movers would have a happy future in ‘ordinary’ Amtrak passenger services, even 110 mph services.
So you don’t think they’ll be successful?
We’ll see how reliable they are. They will displace locomotives from corridor services, but these will simply enter the national LD pool (where they will likely be needed due to the inevitable wreck attrition). The P40DCs will not disappear.
My personal opinion is that the market for 125 mph service is not the same as it was for the HSTs in Britain. The diesel services are more likely to thrive at 110 mph, and HSR in most American corridors where higher speed is warranted is likely to use a higher peak speed, probably above 150 mph, which I think will only be achievable with full electrification (or turbine power).
I’ll be delighted to see AAF or IDOT succeed with their 125 mph peak trains, but I have grave doubts that the expenses will prove justified (over what the 110 mph or much faster alternatives will offer)
Lame? huh, please elaborate.
Leaving aside that ‘Caterpillar’ and ‘success’ have not been particularly associated in the field of large diesel locomotive prime movers for decades…
C175 makes a fine constant-speed stationary genset engine … if you can overlook the emergent speed-stability problems when the engine is at full operating temperature that supposedly make it impossible to synchronize them to line frequency effectively. Makes a fine truck engine in the 797, if you overlook the bearing longevity issues … which I think are related to precisely the kind of power excursions that will be likely in HSR service. I know of no railroad that’s going to be happy with mandatory 250-hour oil changes, especially when they were promised much longer intervals, or having to ‘watch’ the results of frequent oil tests to catch the momentary ‘spike’ and then mildly higher levels of bearing metal that correspond to the incipient damage.
I trust that the problems with local dealers being clueless on locomotive support, with reported 6- to 10-week response times, have been corrected. I suspect that any 1800-rpm engine making that many hp at that peak piston speed is likely to have trouble in a locomotive environment, particularly in a light monococque structure operating at high speed. I would certainly like to be wrong, and I hope I am wrong on all counts. But so far I have seen little contradictory evidence.
I do have to chuckle a bit at Caterpillar claiming credit for the ‘over 70,000 rail engines’ that EMD has produced.
We’re drifting off of the original topic, but in past experience the OP hasn’t cared much about where these threads end up.
I think that the Vossloh UKLights (Class 68) will be an excellent preview of how the F125 will perform, as they are somewhat similar in mechanical arrangment (and as an aside, Vossloh is building the F125 body shells). I haven’t been able to dig up any reliability data on the 68s.
There’s truth to that, however over many of those projects SD-CAT and MK5000, CAT wasn’t in control and was left to a 3rd party to validate the installation, did things like mate a 3612 engine, ran it at 900 rpm with an AR10 gen end, the 3612 wasn’t designed to make full power at 900 and thus was a failure. As for the PR43C; it hasn’t shown to be a success, but niether have gen sets overall.
However I would say the 3512/3516 has had some success in rail, GP20D/GP15 built 15 years ago by MPI still in use today. Via rail repowers, PHL repowers, MK1200G.
Still Cummins hasn’t had anything to show for in rail other than gensets.
[quote user=“Wizlish”]
This I did hear about and the good news is, because of Caterpillar’s use of the C175 problems have been identified and I believe changes have been made to the engine block or crankshaft design, many haul trucks did recieve new engines. I’m reciving this as a field validation, problems are going to be found and improved. You could say the opposite.
Entropy,
While I hate to correct someone who is obviously ‘in the business’, I believe that there are more QSK 95’s out in the field than were mentioned within this thread.
Of singular note is a re-engined (if not outright re-manufactured) SD90MAC rated at 4000 hp operating on the Indiana Rail Road.There is also an ongoing program to remanufacture WP&Y GE ‘shovelnoses’ with 1500 HP Cummins. Several were done by the firm in Tacoma purchased by PR-and the rest (along with the 90MAC) were done by a newer firm located in the PNW. The name escapes me at this moment.
Additionally, Motive Power is supplying a group of new builds to a road down under, also with QSK’s.
It wouldn’t surprise me if both the new EMD and Siemens locos ultimately end up under contract maintenance, as Siemens has done with the new electrics.
CPM500
PS:FWIW, I don’t see Amtrak investing any money in the P40DC fleet. Some have been sold off-with others in storage. Among other factors, MFI and DC motors are both obsolete technology in the passenger rail world.
That’s true in the United States. And I’d have thought there would be published results from CECX 1919 long before now. Those results would have a direct bearing on the likely viability of the QSK in the Charger (which was the original subject of the thread) particularly if the engine is expected to be in ‘overboost’ or whatever they call it to reach nominal 125 mph speed with a train.
This actually appears to be an emergent problem with C175s, in the last couple of months. I haven’t figured out whether the ‘problem’ engines had ADEM or ACERT, but apparently when they warm up and come out of loop their stability goes out. In all fairness, this problem would have nothing whatsoever to do with locomotive performance (except perhaps if the frequency of the HEP system were determined by the traction alternator, which is unlikely). What I worry is that considering all the work Cat has put into designing the C175, this and the bearing problem are problems that shouldn’t be happening.
Likewise the PR43C was what I considered a fair test of the C175 in general railroad service, and the problems I’ve heard about it were not related to the ‘genset’ operation at either horsepower extreme with the little C18 cut in. (HAVE there been any problems with the C18 in this service? I’d be prepared to bet there were comparatively few
I concur; the only way I see any being rebuilt is if enough P42DCs are retired from wreck damage. Even among the units sold, only one NJT unit (4801) is in service, and NJT has been trying to get rid of them for a while.
I see this 90MAC is on the rails, havn’t heard news from INRR on it so far. What happend to the GO transit Cummins repower?
They should have them be reserve units, and sell the Dash-8’s to Alaska Railroad.
Uh, what?
ACERT is a description for Caterpillar Advanced Combustion Emission Reduction Technology. It was first applied in 2004 to meet Tier III, basically adding cross flow cylinder head, EGR, twin turbochargers, multiple injections on each compression stroke, and the ADEM - Advanced Diesel Engine Management, fancy name for an engine computer, within that you have A3,A4,A5 version ADEM.
CAT has adopted the ACERT name across the board, when you have ACERT engine, will also have an ADEM. 3500C engines don’t recieve ACERT labeling though they do employ EUI injection and ADEM. So with ACERT you have both ACERT and an ADEM engine ECM.
Far as the C18 is concerned, its a heavy duty industrial engine, typically used as a HEP in rail application, I don’t believe the issue was with the C18 in the PR43C.
647 seems to have dropped into a black hole. I presume it’s still in Boise, as there would be some excitement if from no other source than Cummins PR when the locomotive goes into actual service or testing on the Kitchener line.
I ASSume the other 10 locomotives will be awaiting the result of testing to make sure there are no ‘gotchas’.
These engines are interesting for having two QSK-60s for something like 5400 nominal hp. At that rating, I’d assume one or both prime movers would be supplying the HEP, rather than retaining the ACERT C27 that I think GO was using on the 710-engined MP-40s.
Who knows the current situation here?
Entropy wrote the following post 20 hours ago:
CPM500
Of singular note is a re-engined (if not outright re-manufactured) SD90MAC rated at 4000 hp operating on the Indiana Rail Road.
I see this 90MAC is on the rails, havn’t heard news from INRR on it so far. What happend to the GO transit Cummins repower?
The whole story about CECX 1919 is a little confusing, at least viewed from so far away…
The drawings that appeared in the trade press showed an SD90MAC with the QSK95 and the aftertreatment equipment fitted into the hood intended for the 16-265H, and retaining the original EMD radiators.
The photographs of the unit moving to the Indiana Railroad showed a locomotive retaining the original cab and hood for the inverters but everything else above the frame was new, including an entirely different design of radiator, possibly with vertical cores in the hood sides. The only reason to replace the radiator would be if the existing one was not adequate, which suggests that the QSK95 needs a lot of cooling.
What concerned me as much as anything was that CECX1919 had no headlights. Why would you ship a locomotive to a customer lacking headlights? I imagine they have spares they could install, but something isn’t right.
When and if the locomotive enters service, we’ll know more…
I’m not sure what GO were after with the MP36 re
Pictures of CEFX 1919 for reference: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locoPicture.aspx?id=205697
What is odd is that it has the rear headlight, but not the front.
The CECX 1919 SD90MAC-H repower/rebuild has not been placed into service on the Indiana Railroad yet. The photos of it on the net show it while it was in-transit to Brookville Equipment Company in Pennsylvania where it is being completed before being placed into service and delivered to INRD. The lack of headlights on inoperable and incomplete locomotive is irrelevant to how well it may or may not perform in service once testing begins.