E60 question

Yeah, one of the Staufer books said a GG1 took one car 0-100 mph in 64 1/2 seconds. Offhand I'm guessing that wouldn't demand 10000 hp, even if it were true. (On second thought, I seem to recall Hay's book showing the GG1 short-time power curve having some peaks and valleys. So I should say the claimed acceleration wouldn't demand 10000 hp all the way from 50-60 mph to 100.)

When they tested the AEM7 at Pueblo they did a seemingly pretty good tabulation of its acceleration with a six-car train, but they didn't say what the cars weighed, or what cars they were-- and they made a mistake on their tabulation of the grades around the test-track loop. So that's not much help either.

Two comments:
(1) I seem to recall that Amtrak gave its AEM-7 fleet a very thorough midlife rebuild/modernization: I'd want to know what effect this had on performance, and what the dates of any tests were, before intepreting claims about what they could and could not do. (The AEM-7 is a ***bit*** off-topic for a GE forum, though the first A and the E in "ASEA" stand for the Swedish equivalents of "General" and "Electric"!)
(2) Back to a GE design... The GG-1 had 50,000 pounds on each driving axle (a bit more on some of the fleet). This is closer to the AEM-7 than to the E60, I suspect. Obviously it didn't have electronic wheel-slip detection and correction like the later designs, but I think the GG-1's mechanical design might have given it intrinsically better adhesion. The quill drive would have reduced the unsprung mass (at least vis-å-vis the nose-supported traction motors on the E60 -- I think the AEM-7 had something like a quill drive) and so should have made it easier to control wheel bounce. And the GG-1's pilot trucks would have ensured that even the first driving axle encountered clean dry rail.
(Layman's opinion: I don't have any professional knowledge of locomotive design and adhesion problems.)

pennsy wrote:Hi All,

Correcting some misinformation. The E-60's were rated at 6,000 continuous HP, and 12,000 short term horsepower. They were considerably more powerful than the AEM-7's or even the GG-1's for that matter. Their problem was that the pencil pushers and bean counters wanted to save money and therefore gave them freight trucks, not passenger trucks, and the rest is history. Above 80+ mph the freight trucks had a problem with clearing switches without fouling. And that greatly limited their usefulness. Had they been delivered as originally specified, the situation would be totally different today. An E-60, with proper high speed passenger trucks, C-C configuration, all axles powered could easily handle a train of 18 or more cars at 130 mph. Never happened. If you have a few bucks available, make the modification to an existing E-60 and give her a run on the NEC. She will blow your mind.

Would essentially a E60BH (4 axles instead of 6) work here?