• EMD to build North American passenger locomotives once again

  • Discussion of Electro-Motive locomotive products and technology, past and present. Official web site can be found here: http://www.emdiesels.com/.
Discussion of Electro-Motive locomotive products and technology, past and present. Official web site can be found here: http://www.emdiesels.com/.

Moderator: GOLDEN-ARM

  by DutchRailnut
 
It really does not matter who is in Charge at EMD its the Customer that counts.
So be it Commutyer or Amtrak, EMD is their bitch.....
  by Desertdweller
 
If there is significant fuel savings with the CAT engines, I think that may well be the deciding factor. As far as maintenance expense, there are ways around that. The locos may be acquired on a lease that includes a maintenance clause. Or, they may be sold with a service contract to cover the maintenance.

Weight is not always a disadvantage, as long as track structure can handle it. I recall my final runs as an engineer. I was running one of the new BNSF ES44 variants with A1A trucks. The center (idler) axles are suspended on arms that can raise or lower them to affect weight distribution on axles. When more tractive effort is needed, the center axle is raised slightly to transfer more weight to the powered axles. This feature, when combined with modern wheel slip control and automatic sanding, was effective handling 14,000+ ton coal trains on grades at 25 mph.

Les
  by The EGE
 
"Clearence"? "stpeed"? "controled"? Looks like EMD needs a spellchecker.

Interesting locomotive, though. I wonder if Amtrak's next diesel will look similar.
  by MEC407
 
Notice in the fine print that this locomotive requires urea. I personally don't have a problem with urea being used in this manner, but I thought EMD had previously gone on record as being against it and was trying to assure the railroads that they would not need to use urea in order to meet Tier 4.
  by RickRackstop
 
MEC407 wrote:Notice in the fine print that this locomotive requires urea. I personally don't have a problem with urea being used in this manner, but I thought EMD had previously gone on record as being against it and was trying to assure the railroads that they would not need to use urea in order to meet Tier 4.
That's for EMD sourced diesels, i.e. the 710. Progress rail has their fingerprints all over this and the owner will probably have to go to the nearest CAT dealer for service on the diesel.
Last edited by RickRackstop on Tue Feb 05, 2013 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
  by MEC407
 
Exactly, but they're marketing this as an EMD product, not a Progress Rail product... which is a smart move for sure, but also a bit misleading. I think they'd have a much harder time trying to sell this product to private railroads than to public commuter agencies and/or Amtrak.

Again, I'm not making any kind of judgment call about the C175 or the use of urea; I'm just annoyed whenever a company (ANY company) talks out of both sides of its mouth.
  by Allen Hazen
 
Kaitoku--
I think the same thing. Maybe not even a different marketing strategy: the artwork shows "Electromotive" on the side of the locomotive, and the "brochure" you're asked to download for more details has the address of the Electromotive home office at the bottom of the page.

(One-page brochure with some pretty pictures, but I think no technical details not already available from things linked to in earlier posts. Model number of the AC traction motors, if that hasn't been listed.)
  by Fan Railer
 
The documentation released on the EMD site is basically a more finalized version of the locomotive's specifications. Remember that Progress Rail has had a description of their conceptual passenger locomotive out for some time now, and now that an order has been won for delivery of a set of them, EMD has had to finalize a few of the specifications. I know that the webmasters of those sites are not extremely diligent in keeping their documentation up to date all the time, but I expect that the Progress Rail site will be updated EVENTUALLY to reflect the new documentation that has been released via the EMD site.
  by Fan Railer
 
BandA wrote:What does the urea do to operating costs? disposal/maintenance/supplies? (can't they just extract urea from the lavatories ;) )
You pretty much answer your own question just buy asking it.
  by Bright Star
 
For locos that operate between fixed points on a predictable schedule, the maintenance of urea levels on the locos shouldn't be an issue. As to the cost of the material, who knows ?

To my eyes, the way PR/EMD markets their products appears to be...'wacky.' There are the traditional EMD products marketed as such-there are Cat-engined,reconfigured EMD road units marketed as PR...and there is also a Cat/KATO equipped version of an EMD export design being built for Tazmania In Patterson, GA.

What does one expect-given that the current EMD senior management depth of experience with locomotives... concerned scrapping them for salvage.

BS