Rock Island's EMC TA locomotives

This topic came up on another board. The Rock Island's EMC TA diesels were all built with GE electrical equipment and all to the same wiring diagram. The road numbers were 601-606. The EMC serials were 735-740 completed on order E151. Production was completed between August and October 1937. These were the first General Motors B-B cab units.

I'm researching 16-201A engines to see if there is any there, there.

Ed in Kentucky

So, mechanically and electrically they were similar to some of the later Zephyr motors, which had GE electricals. "Only" the carbody design was new!
Given the degree to which diesels before 1937 tended to be one-off semi-experimental, having a whole series built with the same wiring diagram was probably sort of a mile-stone: mass production comes to the locomotive industry.

(And, though we all know that searching for system and rationale in EMD model numbers is madness, my own favourite theory about the choice of "FT" for the first freight cab with a sixteen cylinder engine and B-B running gear, has always been that it was an "F" variant on the T. Other equally plausible theories are out there.)

The 201 engine was the common ancestor of the 567 locomotive diesel and the 248'278 marine diesel: I think U.S. Navy support went into its development, and I think at least one or two submarines were built with 201 engines.

(And I look forward to seeing what you find out!)

The EMC 16-201A engine was used in both railroad and marine service. A total of 18 were used in railroad applications and 16 were used in U S Navy submarines. The Rock Island TAs were the last units assembled with the 16-201A engine. Other locomotives using the engine were Burlington 990^B-9907B, the Illinois Central #121 power car on the Green Diamond train, and nine Union Pacific units eventually used on the City of Denver trains CD5, CD6, and CD7.

The U S Navy installed four 16-201A engines in each of the four Porpoise Class Submarines SS172-SS175. The Porpoise Class is unique in that they were the first U S submarines with diesel electric drive systems.

Ed in Kentucky

Thanks, Ed! (I should have tried to look up some of the details myself instead of lazily waiting for you to post them!)
---The Burlington unites you mention are the Zephyr motors I referred to.
---As to submarines: I think I have mentioned in the past that military writer Norman Friedman has published a number of books with title of the form "U.S. [type of ship]: an illustrated design history" -- strongly recommended to technically-minded naval history buffs. Submarines may have been divided into two volumes. At one point Friedman mentions that the U.S. Navy encouraged (maybe helped fund) a number of engine builders to develop suitable Diesel engines for submarines. Turns out that submarine and locomotive engines were about the same size, so several companies undertook the project with possible locomotive applications in mind. In addition to EMD with its 201 (which was then developed into separate different models optimized for locomotive and marine use), Fairbanks-Morse's opposed-piston engine was part of this program. (During WW II, about as many U.S.N. submarines had GM and F-M engines.) So was the Cooper-Bessemer F series engine, which didn't make it into submarines (a small number went into other post-war navy ships) but ultimately became a noteworthy locomotive engine...
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Everybody is familiar with the idea that the U.S. Air Force in effect subsidized the development of the jet airliner. (The 707 owes a lot to Boeing's experience with the B-47 and B-52.) We've got something analogous here: the U.S. Navy made an important early contribution to railroad dieselization!

For some light reading on the subject pick up a copy of Railroad magazine, the January 1938 issue. There is a feature story: Trains That Are Making Good No. 16 - The Rockets. The magazine merely records the fact that the new Rockets are diesel powered. And then goes on to disparage the diesel stating that the motive power weight to car weight is off. The TA weighed in at 110-115 tons versus a 133.5 ton three car train or a 167 ton four car train.

Maybe Dick Dilworth read that article . . .

Ed in Kentucky

Hmmm... As to weights.
EMD tried a 1200 hp passenger locomotive again, and actually managed to sell to the Rock Island!
Comparison?
The "Aerotrain" demonstrators -- famously trialed on the New York Central and the Pennsylvania -- had 8 or 10 car trains, but the cars were 40-foot, aluminum bodied, derivatives of highway bus designs: so the train weight may have been comparable. (Rock Island had a Talgo train -- built by (?) ACF -- pulled by the same sort of locomotive.)
As for the power, EMD's LWT-12 locomotive got its power from a 12 cylinder 567 instead of a 16 cylinder 201A, and transmitted it to the rails through only two traction motors. (Performance seems to have been adequate on more level railroads, but didn't impress the ATSF on a later demonstration stint.) According to a "Popular Mechanics" article linked from the Wikipedia article on the LWT-12, the locomotive (which had an aluminum body: EMD really tried to keep the weight down) only weighed 175,000 pounds.
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I suspect, but haven't checked, that the TA was heavier than some of the Zephyr, etc, power cars that shared its 16-201A power plant. In retrospect, I guess it was an "in-between" model: a half-way point between the light-weight streamliner power cars that preceded it and the bigger E-series locomotives that EMD sold as steam replacement for conventional trains.

The TAs had twin steam generators located in the back of the unit. The EMD Product Data shows 1600 pound per hour steam generator capacity, but doesn't state if this is the combined effort of the twin SGs. There was a large water tank located under the cab floor. Overall length was 60 feet ten inches. The Railroad Magazine RI roster shows a weight of 226, 400 pounds for the TA. The Extra 2200 South RI roster shows a 226,000 pound weight.

The TAs being the first EMC B-B road locomotives are often compared to the FTs. At the time of the TA's construction the 567 engine was under development, with the first demonstrators and production units appearing late in the third quarter of 1938.

Ed in Kentucky

Steam generators and water tanks... are heavy. The 113 ton weight of the TA is not surprising. (But note that it is not, by the standards of U.S. railroading, all that heavy: EMD undoubtedly hoped to sell the type to other customers. USRA light designs had 55,000 pounds per driving axle: I can imagine EMD's designers thinking of this as good weight, light enough to allow free use on most U.S. main and semi-main lines, and so taking it as a goal in designing the TA. The FT had abut the same axle-loading, and early(*) E units perhaps just a bit less.)

Steam boilers... Obviously the idea was to have a diesel passenger locomotive which was retro-compatible with steam-hauled stock. (Insert rant about intense conservatism of American railroad management and hint that this causes technological backwardness.) This became the industry norm: even Amtrak, a dozen years after the end of main-line steam, had steam boilers on its first new passenger diesels (the SDP40F). Head-end Power was already feasible: railroads buying new streamliners as complete trains, rather than buying locomotives to haul old-tech cars, had already employed it: the "power cars" for the Zephyrs and UP's "City" trains had HEP: probably a significant part of why they could be lighter than the TA even though some had the same propulsion package (16-201A and GE generators and traction motors).

I've always liked the TA since first reading about it. Thinking about it now, it seems like a very interesting design historically, representing a particular stage in EMD's "strategy" to dieselize U.S. railroads.
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((*) Near universal law of engineering development: things get heavier!)