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  • RailServe Leaf Gen-set Locomotives

  • All about locomotive rebuilders, small locomotive works, and experimental works
All about locomotive rebuilders, small locomotive works, and experimental works

Moderator: Komachi

 #1216086  by Sir Ray
 
This forum has been pretty quiet - perhaps the rebuilder market has been pretty quiet in the real world too.

Anyway, a targeted banner ad started following me around today as I browsed various non-railroad site (e.g. Politico) - the ad was for RailServe Leaf Locomotives - clicking led to this website.
Some points:
"The Railserve LEAF Gen-Set locomotive has been in service since 2008"
- It has - under what brand name? I don't recall reading about it before.
"The LEAF uses a Cummins engine that meets EPA Tier III emissions standards"
- OK
"One-button push start eliminates up to 30 minutes of startup preparation"
- Cool - but do most modern-era locomotives require 30 minutes of prep before start-up?
"Maximized tractive effort at speeds less than 10mph"
- Ugh - this seems optimized for excepted track service...or...
"Built for industrial in-plant and commercial yard applications"
- So, no short-line road service it seems, or at least they are not promoting such usage

Going to the photo-gallery, it seems clear these are rebuilt, with the post-1990 switcher standard format of low nose and long hood (well, low hoods I guess). The second set of images down seem to me to be a modified GP30. Is the third set of images down a rebuilt GP9 (round cab roof?)

Hey, you can register for a free test ride on a RailServe Leaf! Possibly you need to supply your own railroad, I dunno.
 #1229369  by Allen Hazen
 
The three locomotives shown in the photos all have different cabs: at a guess, Railserve uses the original cab from the unit to be rebuilt. 3016, the one in the middle row, has an unmistakable GP-30 cab, looking even weirder than normal because the long hood behind it is so much lower than the cab roof.

(As they say in the model railroading community, there's a prototype for everything! I can imagine a modeler building a model of this, waiting for guffaws of "That's TOTALLY implausible," and then pulling out the photos.)