Progress Rail drops "Electro-Motive Diesel" from company names

MGWR

Trains Magazine

On Sept. 1, Progress Rail will officially eliminate the Electro-Motive Diesel name from its business entities, according to a letter Trains News Wire received.

This change only affects the business side of the companies and does not affect the locomotive and engine branding, which will continue to be marketed and sold as EMD products under Progress Rail. ...

• Electro-Motive Diesel Inc. will become Progress Rail Locomotive Inc.
• Electro-Motive Canada Co. will become Progress Rail Locomotive Canada Co.
• Electro-Motive Diesel International Corp. will become Progress Rail Locomotive International Corp. ...

So goes a brand that started as the Electro-Motive Company in 1922 before being bought by General Motors in 1930 to become their Electro-Motive Division (original meaning of the EMD acronym), with Canadian subsidiary General Motors Diesel (GMD) created in 1949 due to Canadian tariff laws.

tabbey

EMD used be a byword for reliable motive power on railways worldwide.

When GM Canada took over from Electro Motive Division, in La Grange, Illinois, reliability went out the window. Consequently GE overtook GM as the leading locomotive brand in the US. One only has to look at the failure rate of 201 class on the Enterprise, to see this, although the DD coaches may have been a major factor also.

Continuing to use the EMD acronym was a travesty when the product was junk.

God be with the days when 121 class locos were delivered, and within weeks were working passenger trains, out of the box, and reliably.

MGWR

There's more to the story than that. The 710 is not inherently less reliable than the older 645s or 567s; but environmental regulations were pushing hard against the two-stroke diesels, which literally pushed EMD out of the US and Canadian markets, never mind the European ones. Also, IE's special requirements (they were the only customer for the JT42HCW) resulted in an engine whose quality could not be guaranteed. (Note that there are no GE engines on Ireland's rails.)

Some older SD40-2 freight engines have been re-engined with the 12-cylinder 710 instead of their former 16-cylinder 645s. If any of IE's JL8s featuring 8-645s had been able to be rebuilt with 8-710s, you'd have a machine with 2,150 horses instead of its original 1,100.

tabbey

MGWR wrote: »

There's more to the story than that. The 710 is not inherently less reliable than the older 645s or 567s; but environmental regulations were pushing hard against the two-stroke diesels, which literally pushed EMD out of the US and Canadian markets, never mind the European ones. Also, IE's special requirements (they were the only customer for the JT42HCW) resulted in an engine whose quality could not be guaranteed. (Note that there are no GE engines on Ireland's rails.)

Some older SD40-2 freight engines have been re-engined with the 12-cylinder 710 instead of their former 16-cylinder 645s. If any of IE's JL8s featuring 8-645s had been able to be rebuilt with 8-710s, you'd have a machine with 2,150 horses instead of its original 1,100.

An 8 cylinder 645 engine produced 1,100 hp without turbocharging, or 1,650 hp if turbocharged.
An 8 cylinder 710 would only produce 2,150 with turbocharger.

But a roots-blown 710 doesn't exist. So it would have to be turbocharged.

tabbey

Karsini wrote: »

But a roots-blown 710 doesn't exist. So it would have to be turbocharged.

Another way of increasing power output is to increase the engine speed (rpm).

An EMD diesel 710 engine is 710 cubic inches per cylinder, or about 11 litres per cylinder, so about 132 litres per 12 cylinder engine, fitted in a 201 class loco. This produces 3,200 bhp or so.
A twelve cylinder petrol engine fitted in a Ferrari sports car, is just under 6.3 litre, and produces 730 bhp, so four Ferrari engines, totalling 25 litres, has almost as much power as an EMD 132 litre diesel loco.

I am not suggesting that IE should rebuild the 201 class with four Ferrari engines, we can leave that to Jeremy Clarkson. The point I wish to make is that by having a smaller engine, running at a higher speed, considerable improvements can be made to power output. The EMD diesel runs at about 800 - 900 revs per minute, while the Ferrari does over 8,000 revs for max power.

A faster engine can result in a more economic power / weight ratio, and is appropriate for fast passenger operation, but comes at the cost of shorter working life.

To achieve efficient diesel traction, with lower carbon emissions, faster engines must be developed for sustainable diesel rail traction in the future.

dowlingm

Higher speed engines like the C175 and QSK95 found in US Tier 4 engines have shorter time to rebuild. EMD has gone back to their unsuccessful four stroke 265 engine (now marketed as the 1010) to achieve Tier 4 in the freight market
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/trade-shows/take-a-tour-of-emds-sd70ace-t4.html

tabbey

dowlingm wrote: »

Higher speed engines like the C175 and QSK95 found in US Tier 4 engines have shorter time to rebuild.

I quite agree, the faster the engine, the shorter the lifespan, that is inevitable.

However, over the lifetime of a locomotive, typically 40 years, it is not unreasonable to renew / recondition the engine, or prime mover as our friends across the pond might say, a number of times.

The EMD two stroke engine, especially the 567, was superbly reliable but technically inefficient. The 567 cubic inch cylinder was enlarged to 645 by boring out the cylinder, this seemed to cause no problem. However the increase to 710 cubic inches was only achieved by lengthening the stroke, and seems to me to have been a change too far.
Of course, over the years countless minor modifications also took place, possibly having a detrimental effect on ease of maintenance, and so reliability.

Just as GM's EMD locos were crude but reliable, both Ford and GM cars (Opel/Vauxhall) had similarly crude but functional engines until the 1970s. This all changed following the oil crises of 1973 & 79, they both developed fuel efficient engines for the 1980s.

On rail, it may be OK to have 400 or 500 tons of motive power at the front of 5,000 ton freights crossing the Rockies, but for fast passenger work, a smaller, faster, more efficient diesel engine is the way to go.

The 710 isn't any less reliable than the 645. In fact, the 645F was quite unreliable due to the increase in max RPM from 900 to 950; the design just couldn't handle it.

tabbey

Karsini wrote: »

The 710 isn't any less reliable than the 645. In fact, the 645F was quite unreliable due to the increase in max RPM from 900 to 950; the design just couldn't handle it.

Tell that to Enterprise passengers disrupted by frequent failures.

tabbey

tabbey wrote: »

Tell that to Enterprise passengers disrupted by frequent failures.

It's not the 710 engine that's the problem there. The 201s have a few issues which aren't necessarily engine related.

- HEP was the problem with the Enterprise, not the 710 engine itself. Any engine running at full bore for long periods of time will develop problems. The 710 is used successfully in many locos in the US and is known to be as reliable as the 645, if not more.

- The EM2000 computer will shut down the loco if even the slightest issue is identified. Generally the older locos will carry on with minor faults.

- The exhaust system is flawed, allowing pressure to build up inside. IE successfully proved this by isolating the silencer on 233 about 10 years ago. At one point, 233 was the most reliable loco in the fleet and it was planned to extend this modification across the fleet. But EMD balked at the idea and wouldn't support it.

dowlingm

Agree with Karsini, the 710 is employed in commuter platforms like F59PH and MP40 and operates solidly, but most of those operations use 16 cylinder 710s, not 12s like the 201, and for the most part separate HEP engines from Caterpillar or the like.

The issue with the 201 may be trying to do too much in the engine space available, having sacrificed the space a HEP engine could use for the 2nd cab most North American diesel locos do without, and not wanting to run Enterprise DVTs with generators (like Mark 4) due to platform length considerations.

Captain Chaos

dowlingm wrote: »

The issue with the 201 may be trying to do too much in the engine space available, having sacrificed the space a HEP engine could use for the 2nd cab most North American diesel locos do without, and not wanting to run Enterprise DVTs with generators (like Mark 4) due to platform length considerations.

And the big irony there is that they had to reduced set size from 8 down to 7 due to passenger falloff due to all the failure rates in the early 2000s. Then they go and modify some Mk3 EGVs bringing set size back to 8.

They whole thing was a farce and they should have went for Mk4 style DVTs from the start.

But I believe with the 201s they wanted to eliminate the use of EGVs on Mk3 sets too but that didn't work out either with static tests carried out in Inchicore.

Now you have the situation today where HEP mode is isolated on all 201s and some 201s are having the external connections finally removed like 216.

dowlingm

The Tier 4 compliance effort has caused massive upheaval in the US. Exhaust gas recirculation has not brought as much gain as hoped but freight doesn't want to be stuck with figuring out urea refills which commuter operations can sort on nightly basis. At the same time they don't want the frequent rebuild costs of high speed engines.

Meanwhile the commuter/passenger market is now wholly high speed with Siemens Charger and MotivePower MP54AC using Cummins, and Progress-EMD F125 and Bombardier ALP45DP using Caterpillar. (MotivePower's MBTA HSP46s with GEVO power barely made it before Tier 3 sales had to end)

Captain Chaos

Captain Chaos wrote: »

Now you have the situation today where HEP mode is isolated on all 201s and some 201s are having the external connections finally removed like 216.

Good spot. I never noticed that the HEP sockets are missing on 216.