GE PowerHaul Locomotives

[Allen Hazen]

A British railfan magazine has published an article on the new locomotive, available at
http://www.railwayherald.co.uk/BackIssues/Issue111.pdf
(link provided by a poster tto the "World Diesel Locomotive" Yahoo forum; article on page 3.)

Apparently the locomotive is to have a narrow hood between its cabs. This is not an unprecedented configuration (numerous Irish diesels were built this way by EMD, and the British Rail Class 58 -- a British-design CC of about the same weight as the new GE project, powered by a 12-cylinder Ruston diesel about the size of a GEVO 12, introduced in 1983 -- is also like this).

[MEC407]

All of this is really fascinating. I can't wait to see what these beasts look like.

[MEC407]

A British railfan magazine has published an article on the new locomotive, available at
http://www.railwayherald.co.uk/BackIssues/Issue111.pdf
(link provided by a poster tto the "World Diesel Locomotive" Yahoo forum; article on page 3.)

Thanks for posting that link! Very, very interesting. There is so much that I have yet to learn about the railways in the U.K. I think many of us in North America and Australia would be quite surprised to learn that things like dynamic braking, AC traction motors, and high-horsepower (3000+) engines, are things that have -- for the most part -- not yet been utilized in the U.K. Even the C30-7 and C36-7 locos that we exported to Estonia -- old and outdated by our standards -- might be considered to have "new and untested" features by some U.K. railways. Go figure!

[Allen Hazen]

Bengt Dahlberg posted this link to the Loconotes Yahoo group:
http://www.therailwaycentre.com/index.html

As of today (2 December), that gets you another short article, this time with a bit of a data sheet:
--42 inch wheels
--126 Metric tonnes weight
--Main generator in the GTA series (surprise)
--TRaction motors will be 5GEB30 (5GEB is the prefix for GE alternating current t.m., but the domestic AC44/ES44AC have 5GEB13: so the British unit will probably have something smaller and lighter)
--1320 gallon fuel tank

[MEC407]

Some new details about these new locos for the U.K.:

* They are now called PH37ACmi

* Slated to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2009

* Powered by the GE "PowerHaul P616" engine -- apparently this is the new name for the diesel-burning version of the Jenbacher J616

More info at:

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news_view ... _show.html

[Allen Hazen]

Thanks for that!
...
Well, the 42-inch wheels, at least, are common to North American GE units!
...
More seriously. British railways have very restricted loading gauges: closer to those on such narrow-gauge systems as South Africa's than to U.S. (Note that the overall weight is about 285,000 pounds: equivalent to a large BB diesel in American practice.) Very few British locomotives have had dynamic brakes (I think the Class 50 were delivered with d.b. which was removed when they were rebuilt: too much maintenance hassle, not enough benefit), partly because it was hard to fit into the clearance envelope. Evidently the advantages of d.b., even for small (by U.S. standards) fast freights were seen as sufficiant to make serious development efforts worth while!

AC motors were adopted only very slowly in Britain (I'm not sure, but I think some m.u. cars now have them), partly because Britain doesn't have the sort of heavy drag freight that AC units specialize in in North America (it is a passenger-dominated rail system, and freights have to have a power/weight ratio high enough to let them scoot out of the way of passenger traffic) and partly because of fears of signal interference: getting a new design certified for operation on the British network has tended to be a lengthy and costly process, and GE is maybe being braver than some other buiolders in even trying it.

"Common control architecture" (or whatever the phrase was) is not very specific. Makes it SOUND as if the control electronics and software are similar to those on domestic ES44AC, but without letting on just HOW similar or different. Given the much lighter weight and very different intended operating style, I'd bet there is at very leastt a LOT of new software code.

[MEC407]

According to this article, the P616 engine will in fact be manufactured in the U.S.:

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/art ... /809250287

[FCP503]

So it seems that the FDL and GEVO prime movers are just too large to package into the UK loading gauge.

The only thing I can see being "based on the Evolution Series" are some aspects of the fuel system. Maybe the transfer pump from the fuel tank It would make sense that they borrowed some of that they are already using when they redesigned this engine to operate on diesel fuel.

[pwormald]

Engine and model of GE PH37ACmi for UK market was unveiled in Berlin this week.

Model of the new Freightliner GE at Innotrans on this link:
http://locopage.fotopic.net/c1585306_23.html

Engine here:
http://locopage.fotopic.net/c1585306_64.html

[FCP503]

The Jenbacher engine looks to be more the size of a CAT 3516. It would be interesting to compare specs on this engine. 3700hp didn't sound all that impressive until you see the photo with people standing next to the display engine to give a sense of how small this engine appears to be.

I had never heard of Jenbacher before. It appears by looking at their website that they were doing all natural gas, or other simular fuels. (not run of the mill diesel fuel powered engines) Maybe they are more well known outside of North America? Did GE buy a "sleeper" company seeing potential that others hadn't?

The PH37ACmi looks very Blue Tiger like to me.

The 311D (repowered M62) looks pretty nice. One would think that the market for this might be fairly sizable if the cost is attractive vs purchasing totally new locos. (considering how many M62 seried lcos were made) Are the traction motors in the M62 of the same design lineage as those used in the TEM2? (I.E. a copy of the the GE 752 form the RSD1's that the Russians copied? (and HOW!)

[pwormald]

I had never heard of Jenbacher before. It appears by looking at their website that they were doing all natural gas, or other simular fuels. (not run of the mill diesel fuel powered engines) Maybe they are more well known outside of North America? Did GE buy a "sleeper" company seeing potential that others hadn't?

Jenbacher is an Austrian company and their class 2143 diesel hydraulic locos of about 30 years ago had Jenbacher engines, maybe similar to this but I am not engine expert afraid

The 311D (repowered M62) looks pretty nice. One would think that the market for this might be fairly sizable if the cost is attractive vs purchasing totally new locos. (considering how many M62 seried lcos were made) Are the traction motors in the M62 of the same design lineage as those used in the TEM2? (I.E. a copy of the the GE 752 form the RSD1's that the Russians copied? (and HOW!)

There are now four versions of M62 repower locos running around, fitted with Caterpillar engines (Lithuania, Hungary, LHS Poland), GM (Rail Polska Poland), Kolomna 5D49 (many countries) and now the 311D in Poland! I don't know about the traction motors.

[Allen Hazen]

I don't know what traction motors a TEM2 has, let alone an M62, but I very much doubt that the TEM2 has a copy of the GE 752. The TEM2 is derived from (not an exact copy, thought the diesel engine seems to be pretty similar) the Alco RSD-1, which had GE 739 traction motors. The Cold War had set in by the time GE introduced the 752, so no more Alco locomotives would have been exported then (cf. the history of the "Little Joe" GE electric locomotives).

[FCP503]

The Penza engine IS a copy of the 539T. (I work with 539T's all the time) There are some adaptations, such as the turbocharger isn't quite the same.

That monster fuel injection pump looks just like the one on the ALCO, and the governor is so faithful a reproduction of the Woodward SI governor that one wonders if it is interchangable with the origional. Looking at drawings of the internals of the Penza governor should give anyone familiar with the Woodward SI de ja vu.

Still the 539 is tough beast, and I imagine with all the additional decades of experience added to the origional that the Penza is even more bullet proof.







The TE3 truck is clearly not the same, although Russian sources claim that this truck is a derivitive of the RSD1 design. I read an article the said that the Russian designers used (and continue to use) fabricated trucks because they are lighter than a comparable cast design, and that axle loading was an issue in the truck's design. They also wisely chose not to use the dreadfull bolster design with little oil cups that need filling all the time! There also looks to be more room to access the traction motors as well. ALCO seems to have forgotton that someone needs to actually get in there once in a while when they designed the RSD1 truck.

Be they 739 or 752 the traction motors sure have a GE look to me. I seriously doubt that Soviet designers came up with an almost identical nose mounting setup to GE's purely by chance.



I think I can find drawings of the traction motors and governor if anyone wants to look.

[Allen Hazen]

FCP503--
Many, many thanks for the information and drawings! I was pretty sure it was a copy of the 539T, but was being cautious in writing it.

One of my few international reference books is a "Jane's World Railways," 28th edition (1986-1987). In the "Manufacturers: diesel engines" section there is an entry, pp. 220-221, for Energomachexport (headquarters: Moscow) with tabular descriptions of a wide range of "diesel locomotive engines." One that I assume is the 539T clone is their "Series D50": 6-cylinder inline, cylinders 12.5" bore and 13" stroke (bit of a giveaway that the dimensions are round numbers in inches: a native design would have dimensions that are memorable in metric and need two digits after the decimal point to specify in inches!), 1000hp output at a speed of 740rpm, BMEP of 110, 39,700 pounds, 205" long, 59" wide, 98" tall. (They also list what seems to be an uprated, 1200 hp, version*: pity Alco couldn't have back-cloned that to power an S4 derivative directly competitive with the 1200hp switchers of the other U.S. builders!)

Where does the name "Penza" come from? It doesn't, to my ear, sound Russian.

As for the traction motors, my guess would be 739 copy, but maybe the drawings would allow someone familiar with traction motors to verify that.

---

* Uprated version called the "11D1M": the caption in you drawing calls the depicted engine a "PD1M."

[FCP503]

I believe that the Penza name comes from the Penza Oblast (more or less a county) Differant designations could be the result of manufacture by differant companies. (especially in the post USSR.) The "11DM1" could be a mistranslation. If you connect the two "1's" together with a horizontal line at the top it would look more or less like a Cyrillic "P." "M" is often used to denote a "modernized" design. The MPS-Penza website has a pic of the engine and generator calling it a Дизель-генератор ПДГ1М (Diesel-Generator PDG1M,) which I logically take to stand for "Penza Diesel Generator 1 Modernized.

I have often read this engine called the Penza engine in differant Russian literature. I found a lot of parts info from the MPS-Penza website. http://www.mps-penza.ru/catalog.html While there is a lot more info available in this day and age of the internet, I have still had a fairly hard time finding detailed information on the internal workings on Russian locos. Every once in a while I find a little gold mine of information hidden in the vast wilderness of the internet. (like the above site) There may well be books written in Russian that cover this in detail, but they are a nonexsistant item here in the US. Working with RSD1's on a regular basis has also provided insight (and interest) as well. There are internal parts of that immediatly familar, and others that have obviously been redesigned and improved.

At least 9500 TEM2 series locos built makes this an amazingly successful design. That they arose from such interesting origions makes them even more fascinating. It would be interesting to know how they acheived the additional power over the origional engine since so much of the basic design seems to have persisted. A 30% HP increase is fairly sizable. I have also seen companies offering items such as microprocessor controls, and 8 cyl V engines to repower/modernize TEM2 family locos as well.

I have been able to locate quite a bit of info for the TEM2's. It would be most interesting to be able to look into the TEM1, TE1 that predate that TEM2 family in as much detail. The TE1 is the origional "copy" of the RSD1. Seeing such close simularities with the origional Alco is rather remarkable considering what is seen in the TEM2 is already 3 or more design generations removed from the origional.



Here is a pic of a TE1 http://www.locopage.net/rzd-te120135.jpg

---------------------------

Alco's problem didn't derive from a lack of horsepower or suitable power plant to build a good switching loco. The 8 cyl. 251 produces 1500hp. I think the trouble lie more in what was quite frankly a dreadful design in the C415. Had Alco made a more conventional switching loco I think they would have had far more market acceptance. True, the 8 cyl. 251 has a bad rap in the railroad business, but I think a lot of that resulted from the loco it was placed in as opposed to the actual engine itself.