01/03/03 21:53 David
N. Hepper I
too have wondered why NP chose not to sample more of the new GE and EMD locomotives of the 60s,
and instead purchased greater quantities
of fewer models. Here is my
conjecture: Steam lasted
until late 50s on NP, being finally replaced by large purchases of GP-9s and F-9s. The '-9s'
extended the first
generation diesel horizon for NP a few years beyond that of other similar railroads. The 1800 HP GP-18s
were derated to 1750 HP, perhaps causing NP's
mechanical dept. to be skeptical of
higher HP locos. I also believe there was an economic slow-down in the early 60s (someone
help me on this?) that relieved need to
purchase additional locomotives. By 1964, fleet age and economic revival required new
locos, and NP took a bold move by
purchasing the U25C, and was evidently impressed by the tractive effort
and performance of 6-axle locos over the
many steep grades that all subsequent purchases were for high-hp 6 axle. I think NP wisely, or luckily, made
the U25C gamble and
just got hooked on the future of high HP 6-axle several years before most other roads. Other roads not
heavily investing in U25C had little
alternative than get strung along with the short interval of years between GP-20, GP-30,
GP-35, U-25B, U28B, U30B, etc. as their
1st generation locos aged and good trade-ins
were offered by GE and EMD. Some roads, GN for example, wound up with a real
dog's dinner of locomotives, with some of almost every model offered, and some specialty
locos, (SDPs, F-45s). By time time NP
invested in F-3s for passenger trains, the E-unit had proven inadequate on heavy grades
(GN and SP) so there wasn't any point in
looking further at 6-axle(A-1-A) passenger diesels. GN buying F-45s - that decision must have
been an image decision.
The SD45 was already on the road, and with the walkway and side doors, maintenance
and accessibility was easier than having
to work inside the carbody of the F-45. I would bet the Mechanical Dept. was
out-voted by Marketing
on the decision to buy F-45s instead of more SD45s. I think GN was more image
conscious than NP, and needed something jazzy
to show off Big Sky BLue, as well as pull
expedited freight. What better than an
F-45? It would seem that NP got the
performance and economics
correct early on - 6-axle power prevails in mountainous
terrain to this day, and really, on most
road freight everywhere. Also, NP was probably influenced by growing
coal traffic in the late 60s, and wisely
continued purchasing 6-axle power. I
will guess NP saw the added costs of carrying diverse inventories of parts for a widely diversified
locomotive fleet, and instead chose to
economize with fewer models. Also, shop maintenance forces were better able to work most
efficiently with fewer models to deal
with. THe inventory and shop force issues appear to have been well
managed on NP so far as the locomotive fleet was concerned. It was also easier for NP to keep consistent
locomotive consists running,
that had very predictable performance, as opposed to widely
varying consists of 2nd gen units. Why
NPs FTs lasted as long as they did - I don't know.
I've heard praise
for the quality of NP's mechanical forces in maintaining the fleet, but I don't have any facts to support
that. Except for external
appliances, I don't think the NP FTs
were in any significant way upgraded or
rebuilt to extend life. NP's fleet of
newer F-9s kept the passenger locomotive pool "young" relative to other roads, and thus NP
wasn't forced to look to the SDP models
as did GN. CB&Q - that was a road
that was in the thick of passenger travel in many high-density, high-visibility markets.
And operating out of
Chicago, CBQ of necessity "on stage" for the world to
see. CBQ had so
many passenger trains serving so many markets:
01/04/03 6:47 Blair Kooistra A
look at the train order operator OS sheets from Toppenish, Washington for
selected months in 1968 and early 1970 show that, at least on the long-distance
freights (600 series), the second-generation power was firmly in command. In
fact, in a two-month period I looked at, only one of the 600-series trains was
led by an F-unit or a Geep, leading me to believe
that at least on the long-haul freight, NP had enough high-horsepower C-C power
to keep its schedules. I don't think NP
was THAT hesitant in buying new high-horsepower locomotives. It took a bold
leap with the U25C and followed that up with an order for U28C's; it went to
EMD three times for batches of SD45s (the third one delivered after the merger),
and back one last time before the merger to GE for U33C's. Apparently, based on
the size of the orders, NP didn't wish to take on the additional burden of
paying for all these new units when it still had a good servicable
fleet of B-B EMDs and Alcos. My gut feeling is that at least into the
early 1960s, NP embraced the "building block" concept of motive
power, believing that consists for any freight train need could be assembled
from their fleet of lower-horsepower B-B locomotives. Of course, it wasn't
until 1958 that the first of the EMD turbosupercharged
567 locomotives hit the road in the form of the SD24, and two years later, the
GP20. NP could well have ordered GP20s, but instead went for the 10 GP18s. Why didn't NP go for the SD35? No need to, as
long as the U25/28C's were performing well and traffic demands were being met.
Why no turbocharged B-B power like GP20s, GP30s and
GP35's? Apparently management felt the additional costs for new "secondary
power" (NP having bought into the C-C high-horsepower concept) were money
squandered, especially since the Geeps and Fs weren't
yet fully depreciated. GE Alco EMD
second generation 2nd motive power 600 freights geep U-Boat SD45 F-unit Compiler C Frissell
01/04/03 16:35 Gary Tarbox Bill
Shannon, Chief Mechanical Officer in the later years of the NP, said that the NP purchased the GE's
in part as an attempt to encourage a
strong second source of locomotives. The NP gave up on Alco after the RS-11s in 1960 and was
very happy when GE started their own
development program GE Alco EMD second
generation 2nd Compiler C Frissell
01/05/03 14:03 D. T. Sprau I
would weigh in, in favor of the contemporary NP practicing the laudable art of
not fixing things that aren't broken and not scrapping diesel locomotives until
they had been fully amortized. I also
believe that when they had servicing facilities at South Tacoma,
01/05/03 19:31 John Moore In some
thoughts on NP's diesel acquisitions vs GN I offer
the following reflections: NP could very well have done a N&W when
it came to steam running them much
longer than they did, probably up into the late 1960s. Unlike GN, much
of whose power was rebuilds, and
wearing out fast due to WW2 traffic demands, NP had a wealth of fairly modern steam power in
the A-3s thru A-5s and in the Z-6s thru
the Z-8s. Most of this big power was delivered new starting in 1934-35 for the A-2s, and the Z-8s marking
the last new steam in 1943-44. In 1958
a lot of miles remained in these units. With the ready source of cheap online coal both in the middle of the system
and at the western end the economics
kept the steamers running longer and the pressure off the need to replace them ASAP. Thus they could afford to
set back and make their replacement
purchases slowly and wisely after seeing the results on other roads.
The oldest power on NP was in their Mikes, Parries, and Pacifics, along with
the Z-3 thru Z-4 class articulateds. And it is
here that NP started replacing units
with diesels, like the Alco RS-1 thru RS-3s and the GP-7s and of course the FTs in road
service. A comment
on the Z-5 Yellowstone. Although able to pull the drawbars off of about anything they could not move tonnage
at speed, even when modernized with
roller bearings. And NP started to find a need to move that tonnage at speed which the Z-6 thru Z-8s could do. As
soon as the first Challengers arrived
the Yellowstones got pushed west into helper service
where that slow speed and brute power
got put to use replacing the older articulateds. When the FTs
first came on board they saw primarily helper service, and as more were delivered they bumped the articulateds off the helper service role and road engine role on the heavy grades of
the system, particularly the western
end. Another thing that influenced
some of the diesel purchases was the need for
light weight on the rails and maximum tractive
effort particularly on a number of the
branch lines. Back in my days in the 50s branch line traffic was seasonably heavier than today. Heck
today a lot of those branch lines don't
exist anymore. Today the trend is for big regionalized grain elevators with delivery by truck then bulk delivery to
markets by rail. In the 50s grain
elevators dotted the landscape at every little town with a lot of 40 and 50 ft boxes being loaded and shipped,
making some fairly big and heavy consists coming off of a number of branches. Add to that the
beet harvest, and potatoes, following
on the heels of the grain and you have a lot of branch line traffic needing power that's
light on the rails to traverse the
number of wooden bridges and light rail on those branches. Thus the Geeps replacing the Mikes and Prarries
in that service. One of the
indications of the shape that NP was in power wise after WW2 was indicated by the comments about handed down
power from the GN and NP to the
SP&S. SP&S crews rated the NP power as overall better steamers
than the GN power and usually preferred
them to the former GN units. In
conclusion by the mid 1950s the increase in car size and weight became to much for the
Challengers and later Northerns to roll off the
tonnage at the speed needed to compete,
and resulted in the diesels taking over. By that time double headed Challengers were being
utilized for tonnage increasing costs.
The FTs, and later F-3s and F-7s, could be multiplied
to handle the tonnage, with one head
end crew, and far fewer stops. It is
interesting to note though that after the NCL became dieselized and the first light weight cars in the Pine Tree
scheme are in the consist that a portion of the NCL still got the roofs
dusted with steam smoke. This was the
01/06/03 16:42 John Moore Later Alco products
had some annoying to downright serious engine problems and the RS-11 was one of them. The 251-B
series engine in the RS-11 was one of
those. The 12 cylinder 244 series engine
in the FA-1s and FA-2s was a far more
reliable engine after some initial teething problems along with the 539T
in the RS-1 and 244s in the RS-2s and
3s. An awful lot of later Alco series
were re-engined at some point by EMD and Alco itself went out of business in 68. The
SP&S was the logical point for Alco
equipment after the big merger day since it had been a predominately Alco road and it's
shops and personel could handle them. A lot of the
older 1000, 1500, and 1600 HP products
soldiered on for some time in BN service
with a number of NP Alcos now running on
former SP&S trackage. Alco RS11,
RS3, FA Compiler C Frissell
01/06/03 21:07 Jim Fredrickson Same thing happened with SD-45's which
EMD assured could handle 4250 tons. When they slipped down EMD flew a plane
load of experts out to assess what was wrong. They did the water squirting on
the rail bit and finally gave up. Only explanation I heard from all this was a
theory that it was sap from the trees dripping on the rail that caused the
problem. At the time it seemed logical
to us at Tacoma Union Station. We parked our cars under trees when coming to
work and the windshields were always spattered with tree juices at the end of
our shift. GE Alco EMD second generation
2nd motive power 600 freights geep U-Boat SD45
F-unit Compiler C Frissell
01/07/03 1:47 Jim
Fredrickson A little clarification.
The first NP road diesels were the FT's received in 1944. Incidentally, in the
early days diesels were not thought of as individual units but as a consist as a whole. So the first order was regarded as 11
FT engines rather that 44 units. It remained this way
until a dispute with the Brotherhoods was resolved. Engineers were claiming pay
for running four engines while the company said it was one. The FT's solved a longtime problem for NP which
was the Stampede Tunnel and the Z-3 engines which were the biggest that could
be operated through it NP was 90 miles longer from the Coast to Spokane and
this together with the Z-3's top speed of 35 MPH gave the GN and Milwaukee a
big advantage in running time across the state. Extensive electrification
studies were made and in 1939 Z-6 5117 was tested for 3 months
01/07/03 9:39 Steve
(Cruiser95fm) Right after the merger in
1970, we seen the Alcos in Hoquiam.
They became a regular fixture when BN
switched our locomotive assignment
territory from the
01/09/03 15:16 John Moore That's
funny, I've always read the exact opposite of that- the 244 > was junk and marred the reputation of
the PA and other locomotives > built
with it, but that the 251 solved the problems.
> I'd be interested where you got that? > I figured the SP&S was the main reason
the Alcos lasted as long as > they did. >
SP&S's first Alcos
(FAs and RS2s and 3s) with 244s arrived in 48 and
other than some basic teething problems
continued in service sucessfully until the arrival of the C-424s and 425s in 64 thru 68
when a number were traded in on the new
units. There were a number of variants of both the 244 and 251 engines produced by Alco and yes there were
problems with the 244s in the PAs. Part may have been the version of the 244 which was
1000HP and the unit mounted two engines
to the one of the FA producing 1500 HP.
The later C-424s and 5s had the 251 2400 HP, and 2500 HP, along with
the later C-636 which had the 251 at
3600 HP. Other than some electrical problems
with the C-636 all ran reliably during thier
service lives. SP&S had been an
early user of Alco locos before delivery of the RS2s, 3s, and FA so it may explain their relative
success in running them and servicing
them. On the other hand I've never heard much in the way of negative things about the RS 3s or earlier units that NP rostered that were 244 equipped. However I have heard that NP was not very
happy with their RS-11s and they were
the only other venture by NP into Alco diesels other than the RS-3s and the smaller Alco switchers. I'm curious about the track record of the
Baldwin VO-1000s on NP. The five owned
by the SP&S were found to be mechanically unreliable, and were labeled as Shop Queens. Through out thier lives on SP&S they never were assigned any distance away from the shops. What was NPs
luck with them? Alco, RS11, RS3, FA, PA,
01/09/03 20:22 Terry (tmlafrance) I
talked with Jim Boyd last night (author of the PA book frome
4 Ways West) and I confirmed my assessment. The 244 was the bad engine, the 251 was the
good one. The 244 was rushed into
production and is the reason the RS3s
"slobber". They have problems
with the seals and get water in the oil.
Alco, RS11, RS3, FA, PA,
01/11/03 19:50 Allen Rueter Terry,
Once ALCO finished beta testing the 244 on it's
customers, and pissing most of them off, the 244 became tolerable. If I
remember right, the big three problems were the Turbo (air cooled was replaced
by water), manifold cracks (exhaust I believe), Bearings. For more discussion see
<http://www.railroad.net/forums/messages.asp? Alco, ALCO Compiler C Frissell