Railroad Forums 

  • Ideas (4-axle ES44AH)

  • Discussion of General Electric locomotive technology. Current official information can be found here: www.getransportation.com.
Discussion of General Electric locomotive technology. Current official information can be found here: www.getransportation.com.

Moderators: MEC407, AMTK84

 #1016961  by Allen Hazen
 
The "middle radiator" on a GP 40 (or other hood unit from the 1950s/1970s/1970s built by that non-GE company) is the dynamic brake installation, with its cooling fanon the roof. This isn't really a very good place for the dynamic brake: exposed to engine heat, and in the way if you want to get at the engine from above in the shop. EMD used it because they didn't have anywhere else to put it: the GP 40 was too short (60 feet long, compared to well over 70 feet of modern six-axle units) to put the d.b.anywhere on the roof BUT over the engine. When they started building long enough hood units (the SD 50 of about 1980 and later six-axle units), EMD put the d.b. in front of or behind the engine rather than directly over it.

Domestic GE locomotives havenever had the d.b. in the middle, over the engine (though some Alco hood units did have GE-supplied dynamic brakes there). On U-series and (most) Dash-7, the dynamic brake resistors were in the radiator compartment at the rear of the unit. (This always struck me as a very elegant design: when the dynamic brake is in use, the engine is not running at full power, so the dynamic brake grids could be cooled by the radiator fan. It wasn't as fuel-efficient as it could be-- running the fan all the time, whether needed or not, used power-- so, starting with some late Dash-7, GE switched to dynamic brake installations with their own cooling fans, driven by electric motors.) On recent GE locomotives, including the ES44, the dynamic brake is in the forward part of the hood, ahead of the engine: the square openings high on the side of the hood, just forward of the point at which the roofline drops over the engine compartment, are the air vents for the d.b.

If you are, so to speak, a "fan fan," you ought to like the ES-series: they already have multiple fans in the long hood (though buried, and not having circular fan housings on the roof like the GP 40)! In addition to the radiator fan (underneath the rear part of the radiator "wingspan") there is a separate fan for a heat exchanger in the "humped" forward half of the radiator area. ... If you just generally think that the visual interest of the locomotive is enhanced by having extra radiators in odd places, look at the overhanging radiator (with a couple of rear-facing vents) on the AC 60, or the extra radiator vents (for the auxiliary diesel engine supplying HEP)on the rear end of a P30CH.