No more Gen Sets - Cheaper with gearbox to OEM Alternator?

[bengt]

"Over the last five years, an important trend in the U.S. freight railroad industry
has been the introduction of "GenSet" locomotives to reduce fuel consumption and air
pollution. While a proven technology, widespread use of GenSet locomotives has been
slow due to high capital costs compared to the older-technology locomotives that
they would replace. A new GenSet locomotive is approximately six times more
expensive than the cost of a traditional diesel locomotive in rebuilt condition."


http://www.gwrr.com/about_us/community_ ... motives.be

Probably a cheaper way would be to have a gearbox as for the Knoxville
loco but with input from two (or when possible, three) truck type diesel-engines by cardan shafts and couplings.
http://www.knoxvillelocomotiveworks.com ... _flyer.pdf

[RickRackstop]

Its a lot more complicated to rig up an connection between a 1800 rpm high speed diesel to a medium speed locomotive alternator designed to operate at half that. The first thing as explained in the Knoxville thread is that the original alternator is a single bearing unit, that is that the weight of the front of the alternator is carried by the rear engine crankshaft bearing through the flywheel connector. To get the correct rpm from the MTU engine, it is equipped with a 2 to 1 speed reducer and then they have to have some sort of connecting drive shaft with flexible joints to relieve the alignment problem. Also the gear reduction will have to be an inline double reduction so that the alternator will spin the right way.

Using multiple engines is only feasible with each engine driving a pinion on a bull gear through a clutch and in this case they would all have to be right hand rotating instead of the standarf left hand rotating. I think this set up will be too wide to fit under the hood anyway.If you really want to use the standard alternator its best just to buy the 22ECO package from EMD.

[mtuandrew]

Its a lot more complicated to rig up an connection between a 1800 rpm high speed diesel to a medium speed locomotive alternator designed to operate at half that. The first thing as explained in the Knoxville thread is that the original alternator is a single bearing unit, that is that the weight of the front of the alternator is carried by the rear engine crankshaft bearing through the flywheel connector. To get the correct rpm from the MTU engine, it is equipped with a 2 to 1 speed reducer and then they have to have some sort of connecting drive shaft with flexible joints to relieve the alignment problem. Also the gear reduction will have to be an inline double reduction so that the alternator will spin the right way.

Using multiple engines is only feasible with each engine driving a pinion on a bull gear through a clutch and in this case they would all have to be right hand rotating instead of the standarf left hand rotating. I think this set up will be too wide to fit under the hood anyway.If you really want to use the standard alternator its best just to buy the 22ECO package from EMD.

Maybe it's just me, but that still doesn't sound very difficult in the grand scheme of things. A steel support with a bearing for the alternator shouldn't be hard to fabricate, though I'd expect Knoxvilles to have trouble with failures unless they have a very good R&D department. Also, multiple engines could be accommodated with an extension drive shaft past the first engine, or with multiple engines geared to the same driveshaft (like a Shay locomotive driveshaft in reverse.)

That said, this certainly seems like Red Green's answer to locomotive repowering.

[RickRackstop]

More like Rube Goldberg.

[DutchRailnut]

lets see they build 1 or 2 or 3 locomotives and foamers already know that this company is succesfull??
If concept is viable the orders would stream in and we would see a lot of them, but so far , nahh not much of a improvement.