NS 8439 quietly smoking and burning in Lafayette, Indiana. I had not heard of this. I found the photo on a train photo website. Pretty neat shot by Mat Wright. RRPicture Archives.
If you look at a lot of GE's, you'll notice on the long hoods, a burn mark where the paint is missing, or the units been primered, from a "stack fire". Old Alco's had the same problem. It looks really awesome if you can catch one at night doin' it!
Gives a whole new meaning to the term "hot freight". It could have a bad turbo, or something called "pooling", where the prime mover runs too rich, and unburned fuel pools in the exhaust manifolds, until it catches fire. It's exciting watching a fireball erupt from the stack.
It's been a while since last hearing the term "toaster" used... I'm sure the mosquito population was unhappy. Boxcab E50
"HELP!!!! I'VE FALLEN AND I CAN'T GET UP"!!!!!, said the mosquito. or We can have a weinie roast with S'mores.
yep a blown turbo charger! love the ge's just for this. never failed just when you needed them the most, they go and do this, i had an ex-cr dash 8 out of chicago blow up in homewood and crawled home toward decatur at 25 mph downhill. ran out of time at gibson city and had a crew from decatur run up with a sd40-2.
Wonder if that unit is available this weekend here in Muskogee....we seem to have a mosquito problem lately, thanks to all this rain. I'm just trying to imagine which was burning up worse- the GE or the poor engineer?
Yep, as has been said, bad turbo or possibly fuel injection problems. In any event it needs to be shut down and forwarded to a shop for repair. George Widener CN Fond du Lac, WI
