Stopped at Martinsburg in the gloomy overcast on Monday and NA is still there alright. Caught this CSX movement.
It appears to be a GE Tier 4 test unit, maybe in the lease fleet by now, being as GE is producing Tier 4 units now. I saw 3 of them go thru Grand Junction a few weeks ago. https://www.wired.com/2015/05/tech-makes-ges-new-locomotive-cleanest-ever/
BN leased D&RGW power once in a while. One day while working the pit in alliance this Rio Grande SD40T-2 came in. Sure was different to see this Black and Aspen Gold unit mixed with all that Green and Black.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/LocoPicture.aspx?id=210085 ES44AC - looks like it's been in the East up to now - New Jersey and Illnios .. must be flying west for the summer. ;-)
Struck a gold mine this morning - take a look: Last pic I found of 344 was from 2002 - former Santa Fe, looks like. ..and then, what arrived to pick up my wife and whisk her off to Seattle! And this poor guy - looks like he's strapped together with duct tape!
On my previous post, just above - did you notice that you can see the "F" of the "new" BNSF logo on the side? Musta been something pretty catastrophic to replace all that acreage.
Aaaaah, Wenatchee!! Love that town ever since my Dad took me there as a kid on the Empire Builder back in '71 when we lived in Edmonds, got off there and the Conductor got us some apples from the building behind the loco in your first pic, then waited for the WB to get back home! Memories.....
Yea - hope they don't wind up dumping the Builder - talk about memories. Wenatchee has to be close to unique, I think - you can catch the train at 6am, be in Seattle at 10am, wander the waterfront all day doing touristy stuff and then catch the Builder home at 5 and be there by 9.
I'd say it was a blown turbocharger. The grey panels, as well as the replacement ones with the old logo on it, are around the exhaust. Pictures on the internet show big burn marks around that area. Most of the pictures I saw were of GE locomotives, so I don't know if that is an indicator of anything...
Wow. To be honest, I never thought that much about it. Locomotives just seem to run forever, but I guess that's not any more the case than CARS running forever. Generating that much heat must mean a lot of smoke and fire - must be pretty spectacular when it happens. Do they just shut the damaged one down and drag it in with the rest of the set? Does the MU equipment survive pretty well? I suppose I should just search the forum, I'm sure there are pictures and a whole thread about the above sort of thing. Don't want to hijack a picture thread with non-picture stuff!
Burn damage can be the result of a few different failures. Like has been mentioned a turbo seal failure can certainly cause a fire and damage, but these newer locos with the emission standards run at extremely high fuel pressures, which can cause the injector/fuel lines to crack and spray hi pressure diesel fuel around the engine compartment, it can also mean the tip of the injector itself is cracked or broken off resulting in raw fuel being dumped into the combustion chamber, not being able to burn completely during the power stroke, and staying on fire thru the exhaust stroke sending raw and still burning fuel thru the turbo and out the stack, if this happens for too long it will result in the turbo overheating and seals/bearings failing there too. There is a lot of oil pumped thru these big turbos, and if it gets hot enough to set that oil on fire upon a catastrophic seal/bearing failure, you gots a sizable fire a going on. You may have seen on EMD's balls of fire coming out of the stack, especially on older units (many, many hours on the engine, or idling waay to long), what can happen over the years is a build up of basically waste in the intake/exhaust chambers of these EMD's and they can get hot enough to catch fire too. When these balls of fire happen intermittently, we used to call it turbo bark, as it kinda sounds like a big old dog trying to bark. I sure there are other reasons too but you get the general idea. I cant say for sure about the newer GE's (dash8-9 ect) but EMD's had a big heavy metal screen in the exhaust manifold just before the turbo to catch big chunks of material before it made it to the turbo impellers, called them garbage collectors.
There is an old M&St.L video out there, which shows a view from a caboose as it passes through a curve, heading toward Albert Lea, etc. This has me wondering how close to that same site.
New Jersey's Black River & Western maintains its shop in Ringoes, NJ. Their lovely ex-Great Western (Sugar) 2-8-0 No. 60 was hiding in the engine house last weekend and is ready to steam up for the season. The Ringoes depot is the original PRR structure. Here's last Sunday's train arriving in Ringoes.
Here's what a fuel fire can result in! According to a friend, who works for the railroad. Old Rio Grande Burnham Shop tour, during Narrow Gauge Convention in Denver.
WOW - what a mess. I wonder how many times a year they have to deal with this sort of thing? Of course, any class 1 road has a LOT of locomotives out there covering thousands or MILLIONS of miles a year. I seem to remember that BN often just didn't shut locomotives off at all, since it was so expensive to replace batteries. Short sighted bean counters? -
