LCJ wrote:When were they sold? Not soon enough.
When were they scrapped? Same answer.
They were Erie's lame attempt to compete with GP40s, and there was no comparison in my book. And no, I haven't yet written my book, but someday I will.
I liken running a train with a U30B in the lead to those things where you put in a coin and turn a crank trying to pick up a toy and move it over to the chute -- very little connection between what you do and what happens as a result.
Move the throttle down a notch or two and the ammeter would go up! Pull the throttle out and the load would drop to zero as you attempt in vain to stretch the slack.
OK -- the GE lovers can have at me now.
I'll agree with one exception. There are good GE's, when they're less than six months, make that 90-days, old. After that, their "I'll load when I'm damned good and ready" attitude takes hold and everything starts falling apart. Some of the BN's newer GE's are a testimony to this fact. They're less than a year old and the buttons for the wipers, gauge-intensity dials, etc. are missing. How many times have we seen fusees and/or track spikes driven between the desk-top and the bulkhead in an attempt to eliminate/minimize the vibration? Forgot to mention those lovely front-doors on the older GE's. It was all I could do to shoe-horn my big arse into the cab!