GP69 ?

[Allen Hazen]

At a guess, 1300 hp is a maximum: even the GE U34CH of 1970 was able to take a variable amount of power for HEP depending on the train's demand. It would make sense to have HEP equipment capable of producing more HEP power than you expect to use in normal service: life is full of surprises.
---
As for how much is needed... Somewhere in the back of my memory I seem to have a recollection that HEP for passenger trains is on the order of 75hp/100hp per car. Remember that it's not just lighting: modern passenger cars have electric heating. Electric heating (as I have noticed at electric-bull time!) really eats up the old kilowatts. And these locomotives are going to be pulling and heating trains in ALASKA!

[junction tower]

realize you can rebuild a loco and reuse frames. But even that is not an infinite possibility. Sooner or later someone somewhere will have to make a new 4 axle. Its not gonna be like they're be able to take an old battered Dash 9 years from now and assign it to local industrial work like they could when the geeps, even the newer ones started coming to age. That is, if years from now if there still are small branch lines and industrial tracks and its not just mainline intermodal point a to point b....

They wont be using Dash-9's for the job because by th time all the GP38's finally wear out, the Dash 9's will have long ago gone through Cycle Systems! LOL!