ES44ACs for Canadian National

[MEC407]

Canadian National Railway has placed an order for 35 ES44ACs. These will be CN's first AC traction locomotives.

Brief news blurb at:

http://www.goerie.com/article/20120323/ ... ews-briefs

and a press release at:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/cn-to- ... 3-22-14000


CN is also adding quite a few Dash 8-40Cs to their fleet. Who says there's no market for old GEs?

[Allen Hazen]

After Norfolk Southern decided to go for higher tractive effort, CN was the only major North American freight railroad to continue with DC power. And the ES44C4 (and its off-brand imitator) show that AC motors aren't JUST for drag freight.

Probably not quite time to write "R.I.P. 752 traction motor (1947-??)," but getting there.

[MEC407]

It was a helluva good run for the 752! Still the gold standard for DC traction motors as far as I'm concerned.

[Allen Hazen]

Re:
"It was a helluva good run for the 752! Still the gold standard for DC traction motors as far as I'm concerned."

Too right! (as they say in Oz). ... Though I think by the end "752" was more of a brand-name than model number: surely the differences between a 1960s/1970s 752E and the 752AG or 752AH of later locomotives with Sentry wheelslip control were greater than those between a 1946 "726" and a 1947 "752." (Where "surely," in the previous sentence is what a linguist would call an "evidential marker," marking that the main assertion is something I reckon ought to be the case though I don't have any first-hand experience or documentation.) I think I do remember a news story (maybe in "Railway Age"?) about the time that B36-7 etc were introduced that quoted a GETS employee as saying that GE wouldn't do anything that would endanger the 752 "brand."

(Thanks for the off-board e-mails, b.t.w.)

[Allen Hazen]

On a tangentially related tack... I also remember a "Railway Age" (I think) article from the early 1980s saying (i) that GE was thought to be ahead of EMD in developing AC traction motors (*) and (ii) that the Santa Fe in particular was interested in acquiring AC-motored locomotives, not so much for increased tractive effort as for maintenance-related reasons: less damage from moisture and frost.

(*) GE certainly did do r. and d. on transit/commuter railcar AC drive systems, though the prototypes (on New York City subway and Metro-North commuter cars) don't seem to have hit the rails much before the SD60MAC. But of course EMD bought in AC motors (etc) from an outside supplier (Siemens): probably admission that any in-house development program they had was hopelessly far behind GE's!

[Jay Potter]

The best media references to the early EMD-versus-GE AC-traction competition that I've found are the following three articles that The Wall Street Journal published during 1993: "DC Locomotives Near End of the LIne After 50-year Run on U.S. Railroads" (3-25 by Daniel Machalaba), "GE Locomotive Unit, Long an Also-Ran, Overtakes Rival GM" (9-3 by William Carley), and "GE May Be Pulling Ahead of GM in Locomotive Race" (12-23 by William Carley). The December article mentioned GE's use of circuit boards from urban mass transit cars.

[Allen Hazen]

Jay Potter--
Thank you! Very much! for the references. I will try (I have access to a couple of libraries...) to follow them up.
Timeline:
---I ***think*** (memory sometimes ... makes up ... details so you end up with a VIVID memory of something that didn't happen) that a European experimental diesel electric locomotive with AC drive was on the rails by the end of the 1970s.
---Canadian Pacific 4744 (the MLW M-640) was converted into an AC-drive test-bed in February 1985(*), using Brown-Boveri traction motors. (Brown-Boveri, a Swiss company, later merged with Sweden's ASEA. I don't think they have been major players in more recent AC diesel locomotive development and production, but I could be wrong.)
---EMD's AC test/demonstrator F69PH-AC passenger units built in June 1989, and their first AC freight test demonstrator SD60MAC in June 1991,both using Siemens motors.
---EMD's production model, the SD70MAC, came out in November 1993. (First customer-- with a massive and highly publicized order-- BNSF.)
---GE's first, test, AC4400CW built in June 1994; first production order (for CSX) entered service no later than September 1994.

So there was a very long period in which locomotive builders were at least THINKING about AC-motored diesels before their (North American) commercial launch in 1993. I think Southern Pacific would have PREFERRED AC-motored locomotives in 1994: their 101-unit C44-9W order (April-December 1994) was a stop-gap becauseGE didn't think the AC4400 was quite ready for release. (SP then followed with a large -- 379 unit-- AC44 order in 1995, showing what they really wanted.)

[Allen Hazen]

Sorry, forgot to put in the footnote:
(*) The dates, after the vague memory one, are from Marre and Withers, "The Contemporary Diesel Spotters Guide" of 2008.

[Jay Potter]

I believe that (1) CP 4744 was converted during 1984; (2) the F69PH's were built in September 1990; (3) the first AC4400CW was built in June 1993; and (4) the first CSXT AC4400CWs were built and delivered during August 1994.

Also, EMD converted SDP40F 531 into research vehicle (3800-hp, 390,000-pound nominal weight) 268 in June 1988. Unlike EMD's later six-motor AC-traction units, it had one inverter per traction motor. I suspect this was to allow the traction motors to be tested at high horsepower levels; but I don't know. Also during 1988, EMD replaced the DC traction motors in Amtrak F40PH 202 with AC traction motors.

[Allen Hazen]

Jay Potter--
O.k., about those dates.
(1) Feb 1985 is what Marre and Withers say for CP 4744: maybe the conversion work started in 1984 and was completed in 1985?
(2) Marre and Withers say June 1989 for the F69PH-AC, and have a photo of one supposedly taken at the Pueblo test track in January 1990: perhaps it wasn't officially "built" (didn't have builder's plates affixed) until it was ready to go into service for Amtrak, after a period of EMD-run tests?
(3) My bad. Reading Marre and Withers more carefully: June 1994 is the build date they give for the first CSX AC44 (the first unit delivered to a customer). The test unit (the one with MLW-style "Dofasco" trucks) was photographed (incomplete) in 1993, I think, and come to think of it I recall photos of it (in its silver with red and blue ribbons paint scheme) testing somewhere in Pennsylvania in early 1994 when there was still snow on the ground: photos in "Extra 2200 South"; I'll look for them and get back.
(4) They say built in June 1994: I'm willing to believe that GE spent a couple of months debugging and fine-tuning before delivering to CSX in August.
---
I didn't know about SDP40F 531 or F40PH 202: thanks for the details!
---
And apparently I can get 1993 "Wall Street Journal" through my local university library: I'll look at the articles and get back if I have any intelligent comments to make. I looked at the December 23 one today. The snide remark by an EMD person (GE hasn't pulled many trains with their AC locomotive yet) seems, in retrospect, like whistling in the dark. I'd take issue with the author's remark that EMD seemed to be ahead of GE in the development of AC drive: EMD didn't HAVE an AC drive technology at that stage-- they were buying it in from an outside supplier (Siemens). GE was well advanced in developing their own, totally under one roof, AC-drive locomotive! ... Probably didn't happen, but I can imagine a GE sales person (with a sense of history and a sense of humour) talking to a railroad motive power official and saying:

"Remember back in the 1950s when you bought Alco locomotives with electrical gear that Alco bought from an outside supplier? And remember the grief you had trying to get either company to take responsibility when something went wrong? Well, that's what you're in for if you buy an EMD-Siemens locomotive: wait a few months and you can get an AC-drive locomotive that has a single company backing it, a manufacturer equally committed to supporting and improving both the electrical and the mechanical parts!"

Hasn't EMD in fact switched suppliers for its AC motors, so some SD70MAC have Siemens and some have ??? ? That must be a joy and a delight to any railroad with a mixed fleet!
---
(Thanks again for the information, and for catching my erroneous dates!)

[Jay Potter]

At least on CSXT, all the SD70MAC, including the SD70MAC-T1, units have Siemens inverters; and all the SD70ACe units have Mitsubishi inverters. I don't believe that's been a significant issue for the railroad.

One particularly good reference regarding EMD's efforts leading up to the SD60MAC demonstrators is a technical paper titled "System Considerations for Heavy Haul Diesel-Electric Locomotives with Three Phase Traction Motors". It was written by two of EMD's traction engineers for the 1990 ASME/IEEE Joint Railroad Conference and won first prize there.

I think that the 1993 EMD comment about GE having not pulled many trains with AC-traction locomotives was valid; however I also think that the same thing could have been said about EMD, even considering the tests of its SD60MACs. At least on CSXT, the GEs that it acquired beginning in 1994 didn't perform as expected; but neither did the EMDs that it began acquiring in 1997.

[Allen Hazen]

For the record, early photos of the prototype AC4400...
---"Extra 2200 South" issue 101 (official cover date October-December 1993; the cover photo, of a CNW C44-9W, was taken on 30 December 1993...), page 33, has a (b&w) photo of "The AC4400CW prototype, GE 2000, at Erie brand new in June 1993." There's no builder's plate, various vent grills are missing, and the paint scheme might -- hard to tell in a b&w photo -- be primer: it certainly isn't the decorative scheme it later demonstrated in. Caption says "As built and for initial testing the 2000had the old stye trucks, these were to be changed to the HiAd(TM) truck." Photo is dark enough that it is hard to make out truck details, but it MAYshow GE FB-3 trucks and not the "Dofasco" trucks used later on this unit.

---"Extra 2200 South" issue 102 (nominally January-March 1994), inside front cover, has a colour photo of "Finally out and about is GE's AC4400CW prototype/demonstrator 2000. It was testing with GE test car 90 on the Buffalo & Pittsburgh at Johnsonburg, Pa., 15 Feb 94." Vent covers and builder's plate installed, "Dofasco" trucks (reflection from snow on ground probably helps make underbody details visible: it's a very good photo). In the demonstrator paint scheme: silver with blue and red "ribbon" decoration, tray GE logo off centre on front of nose-- in its treatment of the red and blue decor, I've always thought this scheme, though simpler, was inspired by that used on the Amtrak Dash 8-32BWH units built for Amtrak in 1991, which had won a design prize.