Domestic orders.

Any info on any domestic locomotive orders for 2011 and beyond for GE? It has been some time the word Domestic has been spoken of.

I live in Erie. The last thing the newspaper said was something about building FOREIGN locos.. so sadly, no news on any new domestic orders.

kf7strng--
Sad news. Erie isn't that big a city: the GETS plant is probably a bigger proportion of the local economy than any one factory would be in a bigger city.
We can -- must -- hope.

Within the last month or two CN purchased thirty-five DASH 8-40C's of CNW heritage from UP. Class I's purchasing large lots of power from other Class I's is exceptionally rare. Still, it shows the current mechanical mind-set of at least one large road, buy used power instead of new. Well, at least there are always parts sales.

I believe that during the pre BNSF and AT&SF and the CNW u.p.rr mergers -the 1990's- AT&SF took delivery of some GE DASH 8-40C's that had a horsepower rating of 4,135 and CNW took delivery of some GE DASH 8-40C's that had a horsepower rating of 4,150. I am not sure just how many of the A.T.& S.F. RR loco's were comfort cab or spartan cabbed and the same for the CNW loco's.

Allen Hazen wrote:kf7strng--
Sad news. Erie isn't that big a city: the GETS plant is probably a bigger proportion of the local economy than any one factory would be in a bigger city.
We can -- must -- hope.

Allen,
I'm not quite sure what direction you were headed with that comment. The size of a city in relation to the amount of domestic orders it processes for railroads who are most often not even based in the same state as GETS are what drive domestic orders. Your comment confuses and amazes me because it almost seems like you mean to say that there are no domestic orders because the city of Erie isn't buying any? I'll go you one better.. the radiator fans AND traction motors are made in my hometown at a GETS owned facility. Population? about 4,000. Again though.. if railroads again started demanding a 100 locos a a time domestically, would this plant move to a bigger city?

What is meant I believe by Domestic orders is. Comp in the US such as BNSF, UP, CSX etc.

kf7strng--
Sorry if I wasn't clear. All I meant was that in a smallish city like Erie, hard times at the GE locomotive factory would be hard times throughout the community.

In the recent GE Transportation 2nd qtr earnings review, it is stated that the higher (nearly quadrupled) equipment orders received were "driven by North American locomotive orders scheduled for delivery in 2013 and 2014". Has anyone seen mention of who ordered these new units?

GEVO-- Delivery in 2013 and 2012? That's a fairly long lead-time: I would think that if you went to GE today with an order they could deliver a locomotive -- of an existing design -- by early in 2011 at the latest. This is puzzling news.

That is true. But during the most recent boom, some NA railroads were ordering locomotives with distant delivery dates to guarantee themselves a place in line since the factory was running at pretty much capacity. Those orders are still being filled today keeping a lot of people working (as well as some of the new foreign orders). So I don't think it would be unreasonable for them to order more for when the current backlog would be finished. I just find it odd that there has been no mention of this anywhere that I have seen other than in the financial report.

Found one of them, BN ordered 200 C4's to be delivered through 2014.

GEVO--
Thank you! (Where, for curiosity, did you find the information?)
The engineers at Erie who came up with the C4 design must feel pleased: after (maybe at a guess about) 25 locomotive-years of testing, BNSF has decided their idea really was good enough to put into production!

GEVO wrote:Found one of them, BN ordered 200 C4's to be delivered through 2014.

Can you post the site adress where this info came from?

Any word yet on orders being worked on for 2011 locomotive builds. Looks like another slow yr for the Erie plant seeing there is nothing to mention.