Does anybody know of any diesel hyradulic locos used on any railroads? i was intruigued by one that is at the Rosewood Railway museum here in Queensland Australia while i was working there. Its a nice looking loco, and while having nothing to do i enjoyed looking at all the old equipment they have there. I i looked at the trucks and could see drive shaft sort of things in there, it interested me alot, and i dont think ive ever seen any Queensland rail locomotives that have 4 wheel trucks. i am going to try to post a photo and hope that it works, it is of DH1 i am unsure who took the photo.
There are or have been quite a lot of diesel hydraulics around the world. Germany had several including the famous V200 range, we had a version of those here in the UK on the Western Region ("Warship" class), also some 6-axle "Western" class, and some smaller 4-axle ones. Western Region Warship class More British diesel hydraulics In the US there were some Krauss-Maffei diesel hydraulics some years ago, (links below). Krauss-Maffei locomotives
Plus most of the UK's DMU fleet has hydraulic transmission, here's a pair of class 159 units heading west near Starcross...
Thanks guys I read that information about diesel hydraulics, it was interesting Martyn, i always thought the DMU's would have been diesel electrics, but just had never looked into it. I did find a picture of this on the internet today. I says that its an alco DH643, and that it has 2 engines. It looks HUGE!
There are a couple of classes of diesel-electric MU's over here, the old Southern region classes 205 and 207 units have an engine compartment in the body, and the new Virgin Voyager units are diesel-electric as well, though with underfloor engines. Most of BR's original DMU's (1950's built) had mechanical transmission with gears, but these are now almost totally gone from passenger service. The majority of diesel units over here have been built from the 1980's on and have underfloor engines driving both axles on one truck on each coach, so all six cars of the above set are powered on one truck each. [ 12. October 2002, 23:42: Message edited by: Martyn Read ]
The Rio Grande tested some high horsepower Krauss-Maffei(sp?) diesel-hydraulics during the late 50's and/or early 60's. Unfortunately, the locos, being European, were not designed to handle the massive loads and long grades of American Rocky Mountain railroading and were returned within just a few years as failures. Sorry that I can't post any photos. I'm sure you can search for some under D&RGW and Krauss-Maffei (or something similar).
Alan I saw a couple of those German engines back around 1959-60 while working for the Southern Pacific. I was a Telegrapher Wirechief at a little terminal station called Gerber. Ca. It is less that a dot on the map but the train crews changed there. That German engine came through several times, then disappeared. We were told the SP was trying them out. They must not have liked them as I haven't seen any since.
There were two different examples of diesel-hydraulics used on american RRs. The Alco DH643 was rostered by SP (only 3 ever built). They were built in 1964, and were stricken from the roster in 1972. The other example were the Krauss-Maffei ML-4000 diesel-hydraulics, imported from Germany. They were owned by Rio Grande (3 units) and SP (18 units delivered; DRGW would later sell theirs to SP). They came in two varieties - either a cab configuration (built in 1961 - think F-unit), or a later hood version (built in 1964). Rio Grande got the cab version, while SP sampled both (3 cab, 15 hood). On the SP at least, they were good pullers, but weren't suited to the harsh operating environments in the US - weeks between shutdowns, extended periods at full throttle, etc. That, and the increased maintenance they needed quickly lost them favor, and after spending their last few years in low-priority drag and mty service, were retired in 1968. One did survive, though, and was converted by SP into a camera car to record footage for their locomitve training simulator. It was eventually donated to the California State RR Museum, where it currently sits.
Being high horsepower of that time and era, what was the horsepower rating of the Krauss-Maffei diesels??? This is very interesting, being I liked the Veranda diesels by the UP and the G.E.'s U-50's, plus GM's DD-35-40's... What was the horsepower rating for these unique loco's? For some reason, I grown fond of the looks of the U-50 with the 4 trucks, NOT the U-50C which had two 3 axle trucks, and the Veranda side gas turbines that also had 4 trucks! I have 3 HO models of the Athearn DD-40, which is actually a DD-35....Got to love that dual motor per loco for hauling long heavy freight trains! EDIT: Forgot to ask, I noticed Rivarossi made an HO scale version of the Krauss-Maffei diesel in the early 1970's. My question is, They show to have one 3 axle truck, and one 2 axle truck. I can't remember exactly where each one is located, such as the front truck the 3 axle truck, and the rear one the 2 axle truck. I looked for this spotting feature on the links Jim had posted. Thing is, on the ones that you can see the trucks their all 3 axle trucks. Any idea of why Rivarossi done this on the models ???? [ 13. October 2002, 09:53: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]
Thanks Jim! Anyway, I see these were 4000 HP. Thats a pretty big rate of HP for its time! Thing is, I also see that they were made with truck differences! The ones shown are all 3 axle trucks, not the B-C type with one 3 axle truck and one 2 axle truck. Good thoughts tho on them tho, with all the information given... Makes for good reading and learning...
