MEC407 wrote:Noel Weaver wrote:Based on my experiences with these units from when they were fairly new to nearly the end of them, they were good engines and Guilford got a very decent engine for a reasonable cost. I also had them once or twice as trailing units after they had been sold to Guilford as a payback unit and while they were trailing units, again they ran well.
That does mirror what I've heard from Guilford folks who have run them. I've also heard that their ex-NS high-nose GP40s are good runners, and that the NS crews don't mind having them "back" when they occasionally meander down to NS country to pay back HP hours.
Noel, you probably ran some of CR's late-model U23Bs while you were working there. Can you share your thoughts on those? I'm thinking about the newest ones, some of which were eventually sold to Providence & Worcester. They were built toward the end of domestic Universal Series production (1977-ish) and seemed to perform admirably while on P&W.
Thanks,
-R.T.
I did not run them very much as I was in through freight service and for
the most part, the U-23b's were local freight engines although they some-
times were used. I ran the earlier ones a fair amount on the River
Division and although the cab controls were better than the earlier U boats, they still had a number of the disadvantages of the earlier ones.
After my Metro-North stint from 1983 to 1987, I returned to Conrail in
Selkirk and what few U-23b's that were still around were mostly used on
yard and local freights and many of them had already been disposed of or
were stored so I did not work on them during that period either.
All of the GE's right up to the end of the dash 7's were far inferior to the
EMD's of the same general arrangement. The dash 8's were an
improvement but I always thought EMD built a better locomotive.
Even look at what is still around today, there are still a fair number of EMD
GP-7's and GP-9's around but very few "U" series GE's.
I could relate to a number of unpleasant experiences that I had with the
earlier GE's.
Noel Weaver