We had 4/5/6 cyl Duetz air cooled engines in equipment underground at a gold mine, I worked at, till it shut down in the early 1984. I found them to be very durable, diesel engines, but you gotta make sure those twin V belts are in good shape that drives the cooling fan, or they will cook themselves to death, real quick like.
Two shots of CSX L647 from yesterday, the first at the north end of the siding at Camden, SC and the other at Elgin, SC. There was a rare meet on this end of the (former SAL) line with this train and a local, but the Dispatcher and crews timed it perfectly and I wasn't able to get there in time for a photo. This train and another on this route were recently restored after being eliminated by PSR for several years. I'm impressed that CSX recognized the error in their analysis and corrected it.
I work at Napa Auto Parts now, and can't help but see the pair of red filters and the discussion about V-belts... Napa has those! Golden hour at Minot West on CP in Minot: And a nicely-posed SD70ACu rebuild in the Minot CP yard:
First excursion train into Balmorhea, Texas. The Pecos Valley Southern Railroad reached that West Texas town earlier in 1910. A few years before that, in 1906, three Chicago land promoters had purchased a $14,000 tract of rolling far West Texas plains and sold it to eastern investors. The three developers, Balcom, Morrow and Rhea, dubbed the plat after themselves: Bal-Mor-Rhea. The area's greatest asset was San Solomon Springs (originally Mescalero Springs) which gushed forth at a rate of 26 million gallons per day. During the 1930s, 300 young men with the Civilian Conservation Corps built Balmorhea State Park around those beautiful springs and that wonderful legacy is still there to enjoy today.
Ah yes, multiple V-Belts driving a single shaft. Back in the day, V-Belt manufacturers sold matched sets of V-Belts to assure all belts were doing equal duty, else as you describe, their life would be short. My career was spent in heavy manufacturing and we had many applications where four belts worked in unison. Matched sets eventually became less of a thing as production tolerances improved amongst quality manufacturers like Gates. Toward the close of my career, someone determined we could save money by sourcing belts in China, and so it was written. What a mistake that was! Even an untrained eye could see varying coloration in the rubber and their life, even in single applications, was measured in minutes. Thankfully, wisdom prevailed and we soon returned to our proven U.S. suppliers.
Either a grade school kid with a box of chalk or it was added to the negative like the caption at the bottom.
I wondered when that would get noticed. It does make me wonder what happened as the missing coupler is on the uphill side of a loaded car that is halfway up the hill. Maybe the DPU failed? That would be a sudden and violent bit of slack action. Or a brake failure resulting in a dynamited brake stop? I may never know, but it is a neat story some where...
The reason I noticed was that description says it is a loaded car. Set out at a place no such load should be, I knew something else was in play.