Unlike some people (I won't name names!), I quite enjoy occasionally speculating about locomotives that EMD might have built but didn't: indeed, if the speculations include reflection on technical (etc!) feasibility and the explanation of WHY the imagined model was not built, I think they can teach useful lessons about "real" locomotive history.
BUT this post isn't about making up fictional locomotive models.
It's about the ones that EMD themselves "imagineered": locomotive models CATALOGUED, or otherwise proposed, by EMD which no customer wanted to pay for, and which therefore never got built.*
I can think of three or four. Does anyone know of others?
---DD40 (with conventional cab): The original catalogue for the 1966 line included a 645-engined unit externally similar to the DD35A. At the time, Union Pacific wasn't interested; a few years later they bought a modified design (wide-nose, and I think longer overall).
---"F45B": The F45 design was EMD's response to an ATSF request for bids for cowl-type freight units in both cab and booster variants. GE refused to bid for boosters (and offered U33C in U30CG-style bodies), but Alco and EMD offered quotes for boosters as well as cabs. In the event, only A-units were sold. Did EMD prepare drawings of the F45B? Would it-- like some wreck rebuild SD units and ATSF's much later GP60B-- have had the dynamic brakes moved away from the engine to the location of the absent cab?
---US passenger streamliner of the 1970s: EMD published a colored booklet, and pitched at a conference on high-speed rail that was held in Pittsburgh in the mid-1970s, a scheme for an American answer to Britain's "Intercity 125" HST. Seven or so cars-- as I recall, the pictures made them look like Amfleet-- with a low-slung streamlined 3000 hp at each end. The locomotive was illustrated on a new design (anybody know how much actual truck design work, if any, EMD put into this?) of B trucks, but the booklet said A1A trucks (from retired E-unit?) could also be used. Third rail pickup may have been an option: the booklet gave sample times for the New York to Buffalo run.
---Canadian ditto: GM of Canada, of course, had the MLW (etc) LRC project to compete with. A "Trains" story reported their answer: again, a passenger consist with a "power car" at each end. In the drawing, the locomotives looked much more boxy and conventional: perhaps they would have been standard F40.
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* Of course, there is a further category: ideas EMD built prototypes for but which didn't sell. The BL-20 and the diesel-hydraulic switcher designs of the 1950s come to mind.
BUT this post isn't about making up fictional locomotive models.
It's about the ones that EMD themselves "imagineered": locomotive models CATALOGUED, or otherwise proposed, by EMD which no customer wanted to pay for, and which therefore never got built.*
I can think of three or four. Does anyone know of others?
---DD40 (with conventional cab): The original catalogue for the 1966 line included a 645-engined unit externally similar to the DD35A. At the time, Union Pacific wasn't interested; a few years later they bought a modified design (wide-nose, and I think longer overall).
---"F45B": The F45 design was EMD's response to an ATSF request for bids for cowl-type freight units in both cab and booster variants. GE refused to bid for boosters (and offered U33C in U30CG-style bodies), but Alco and EMD offered quotes for boosters as well as cabs. In the event, only A-units were sold. Did EMD prepare drawings of the F45B? Would it-- like some wreck rebuild SD units and ATSF's much later GP60B-- have had the dynamic brakes moved away from the engine to the location of the absent cab?
---US passenger streamliner of the 1970s: EMD published a colored booklet, and pitched at a conference on high-speed rail that was held in Pittsburgh in the mid-1970s, a scheme for an American answer to Britain's "Intercity 125" HST. Seven or so cars-- as I recall, the pictures made them look like Amfleet-- with a low-slung streamlined 3000 hp at each end. The locomotive was illustrated on a new design (anybody know how much actual truck design work, if any, EMD put into this?) of B trucks, but the booklet said A1A trucks (from retired E-unit?) could also be used. Third rail pickup may have been an option: the booklet gave sample times for the New York to Buffalo run.
---Canadian ditto: GM of Canada, of course, had the MLW (etc) LRC project to compete with. A "Trains" story reported their answer: again, a passenger consist with a "power car" at each end. In the drawing, the locomotives looked much more boxy and conventional: perhaps they would have been standard F40.
---
* Of course, there is a further category: ideas EMD built prototypes for but which didn't sell. The BL-20 and the diesel-hydraulic switcher designs of the 1950s come to mind.
