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Re: ET44C4 Failure Stories?
Author: ex-BN
Date: 12-20-2016 - 17:34
George Andrews Wrote:
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> As I understand it, GE felt that having all the
> locomotives' weight on only 4 axles ( when the
> center axles are lifted ) , would result in more
> tractive effort. Apparently this is not the case.
What they are saying is that a C4 (6 axle/4 AC traction motors) has the same pulling power as a 6 motor DC unit. You will notice that coal trains almost always have 6 AC motor units.
Bottom line is that that C4's don't cut it on mountain grade. Especially on wet/greasy rail conditions. We went through all this with the LMX engines that despite much more HP than an SD40-2 were no match in mountain grade territory. Six axle AC locomotives are the gold standard. Anything else comes up short when the chips are down.
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> As I understand it, GE felt that having all the
> locomotives' weight on only 4 axles ( when the
> center axles are lifted ) , would result in more
> tractive effort. Apparently this is not the case.
What they are saying is that a C4 (6 axle/4 AC traction motors) has the same pulling power as a 6 motor DC unit. You will notice that coal trains almost always have 6 AC motor units.
Bottom line is that that C4's don't cut it on mountain grade. Especially on wet/greasy rail conditions. We went through all this with the LMX engines that despite much more HP than an SD40-2 were no match in mountain grade territory. Six axle AC locomotives are the gold standard. Anything else comes up short when the chips are down.
