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General Electric 70-Ton Diesel Locomotives by Ronald D Sims Soft Cover
General Electric 70-Ton Diesel Locomotives by Ronald D Sims
Soft Cover
171 pages
Copyright 2013??
CONTENTS
1Introduction6
2Common Carrier Shortline Operators22
3Class I Railroad Purchasers50
4Switching and Belt Line Users64
5Industrial Users of Standard 70-Tonners78
6Loggers and Wood Processors 90
7Industry Specials and Narrow Gauge102
95-Ton, 85 Ton and 841/z -Ton Units103
65 Ton End-Cab Units112
Domestic Narrow Gauge Units114
U6B and U8B Locomotives 118
8Export 70 Ton Locomotives 120
9Competitive Locomotive Designs from Other Manufacturers 140
10Numeric Production List, 1946-1959148
FOREWORD
About two hundred General Electric 70-ton diesel "road locomotives" were built for domestic customers between 1946 and 1957, compared with about 5,700 contemporary Electro-Motive F-units. The GE machine was exceptionally well-suited to the needs of its potential customers, able to tread light rail and yet pull significant tonnage while displaying a modest turn of speed. In its role as the replacement for worn-out steam locomotives, the 70-tonner "saved" many a shortline from oblivion.
This distinctive locomotive would not have happened but for the development of a relatively lightweight 660-horsepower diesel engine during World War II. GE ultimately decided upon an inline six-cylinder design built by Cooper-Bessemer at Grove City, Pennsylvania, about ninety miles south of Erie. This turbocharged engine, model FWL-6T, had cylinder dimensions of 9-by-10' inches and was rated at 660 gross horsepower at 1000 r.p.m. Combined with GE's modern, high-tech manufacturing processes, the 70-tonner was able to compete in a market niche all of its own.
In many ways, introduction of this new locomotive model broke new ground for both the engineering team and the sales managers at General Electric. Before and during World War II, GE sold most of its locomotive production to industries or the military; there wasn't a single "railroad" locomotive in the catalog. As the war wound down, however, strategic planners in management anticipated that locomotive orders for the military (and for defense-related manufacturing) would dry up. It was a safe prediction that the demobilizing military would cancel ongoing locomotive orders and dump many relatively new locomotives on the used-equipment market.
Faced with that threat-and not wishing to compete with business partner Alco-GE took advantage of technological advances in diesel engine performance and its already cutting-edge manufacturing techniques to develop a locomotive with 600 net horsepower that weighed thirty tons less than an Alco or Baldwin switcher rated at the same power. A truly bare-bones machine, the proposed new GE switcher could be sold at a significantly lower base price and be at home on rail too light to support an Alco S-1 or and EMD SW1. The "Cooper's Rating" of a 70-tonner was E-38 and its minimum allowable rail weight was 59 pounds per yard-while the EMD SW1 had a rating of E-46 and required a minimum rail weight of 85 pounds per yard. Within this weight limit, the locomotive could provide full train air brakes, utilizing a standard air compressor appropriate for trains of up to thirty cars.
These 70-ton locomotives were 37'0" over couplers and with a truck axle spacing of 6'10" were capable of negotiating 75-foot radius of curvature. The official maximum design speed was fifty-five miles per hour, but with this primitive (no swing motion control) truck, the practical upper speed limit was in the thirties. Four model GE-748 traction motors drove the axles through single-reduction gearing. The continuous tractive effort rating was 23,600 pounds at 7.9 miles per hour.
Published GE specifications assert that the 70-tonner had a more effective electrical system than the EMD SW1, delivering 22,600 pounds of tractive effort at a minimum continuous speed of only eight miles per hour-while the EMD product (clinging to a pre-war traction motor design) was good for just 18,750 pounds at ten miles per hour. Furthermore, with its foot-shorter-wheelbase trucks and a more than two-foot-shorter overall wheelbase, the
70-tonner could access tightly curved trackage denied to the EMD machine. Mainline railroaders generally shunned it, however, pointing, out that the simple truck design was not compatible with Class I operating speeds.
At least four 70-tonners were built as demonstrators: 28238 (the prototype) of May 1946; 30179 of July 1949; 30448 of July 1950; and 32281 of March 1955. This last unit was built for Cuba and apparently never operated in the United States. It was eventually sold to a Cuban sugar mill.
Eventually, however, the railroad industry outgrew small diesel locomotives. Freight cars grew in weight and volume, requiring heavier rail...which in turn erased the need for locomotives that could safely operate in a sub-standard environment. GE stopped building them in 1957; by the mid-1980s, most had been retired from common carrier service. Only a few line-haul operators continued to use them into the 21st Century.
In the late 1940s, shortlines, log haulers and industrial line-haul railroads whose managements did not want to upgrade their physical plant to accommodate 100-ton-plus diesels had few options for dieselization other than the General Electric 70-tonner. As a result, this distinctive locomotive model was sold (and re-sold) to hundreds of customers over its decade-plus of actual production and more than five decades of productive use in venues from northern Canada to southern Chile.
Joseph A. Strapac
Publisher
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