Western Railroad Discussion > Extant Former ATSF GP30R's and GP35R's on BNSF

The ATSF did a bang up job rebuilding it's GP30 and GP35 fleet to Dash Two Standards (with Dash Two AAR controls stands, complete rewiring and addition of Dash Two electrical cabinet, and, the addition of cab air conditioning). In short, these units were "gold-plated" rebuilds, and I think they all emerged with 645 power assemblies, and all were standardized at 2500 HP. Most, I believe, were done at Cleburne.

Am wondering how many of these are still on the BNSF roster? While they have quite a bit of mileage on them since the initial rebuild, I'm sure routine Class C's have kept them in pretty good shape. Since there has been no low horsepower new-unit construction since Moby Dick was a minnow, I'd reckon that many of these are still on the roster?

Also, there were some GP30's that were rebuilt in a similar fashion by Morrison Knudsen for Burlington Northern, and they received a GP39M classification, or something like that, in addition to some GP40's. Again, are these units still on the roster?

According to the new BNSF 2004-2005 Locomotive Review by Del Grosso, BNSF has 77 ex-ATSF GP30's and 148 ex-ATSF GP35's still on the roster. There are 34 of the GP39M's (that were rebuilt from GP30 hulks by MK for BN) currently on the BNSF roster (2800-2834).

Rich

Red Wrote:

> The ATSF did a bang up job rebuilding it's GP30
> and GP35 fleet to Dash Two Standards (with Dash
> Two AAR controls stands, complete rewiring and
> addition of Dash Two electrical cabinet, and, the
> addition of cab air conditioning). In short,
> these units were "gold-plated" rebuilds, and I
> think they all emerged with 645 power assemblies,
> and all were standardized at 2500 HP. Most, I
> believe, were done at Cleburne.

Glad to hear somebody likes them. The GP30's and 35's used to have reputations as "bell ringers," slippery troublemakers with a complicated electrical system that had "Murphy works here" written all over it. See frontrangeflyer's post in this thread: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,850824,851138#msg-851138 . Did the rebuild take care of those problems? How do their Mean Time Between Failures numbers look?

By the way, I'm pretty sure San Bernardino did the GP30 and 35 remanufacturing, not Cleburne.

> Am wondering how many of these are still on the
> BNSF roster? While they have quite a bit of
> mileage on them since the initial rebuild, I'm
> sure routine Class C's have kept them in pretty
> good shape. Since there has been no low
> horsepower new-unit construction since Moby Dick
> was a minnow, I'd reckon that many of these are
> still on the roster?

I picked up a copy of Diesel Era yesterday and found a picture of former BNSF GP30 2404 (originally an ATSF unit) wearing the colors of the Bountiful Grain & Craig Mountain RR, the outfit that took over the Camas Prairie Grangeville line. Is BNSF starting to retire and sell off the GP30's as they fail, ala the GP9's, or is a mass purge ala the GP20's in the offing?

A poster had pictures of mainline freights through Abo Canyon, east or Belen, NM. One freight had a GP-30 leader!

Evan:

Yes, the original GP30's and GP35's were indeed bell-ringers. They were similar to the GP and SD50 series in that they had pushed the 567 engine to it's upper limits (just as the 645 had been pushed to its upper limits in the 50-series), and, had rather complicated electrical systems. After rebuild, they had 645 power assemblies, and, basically nothing left of their original electrical systems. They had a standardized Dash Two electrical system. In fact, other than the looks (the unique cab of the GP30), I believe that mechanically, there was no difference whatsoever between the GP30's and the GP35's, and, I think they were quite good performers after that.

Same goes for the MK-rebuilt GP39M's. 645 power assemblies and greatly simplified, totally new Dash Two electrical systems.

I think that as built, the GP30's and GP35's had a complicated, multi-stage transition series...maybe as many as five stages of transition. This is covered in the Cotton Belt diesel book (the one with the Bicentennial SD45T-2) on the cover...the SP and Cotton Belt, and the KCS (which had GP30's) all had similar troubles with them. When they were degutted to the bone, and rebuilt with simpler, more modern electrical components, they became as simple to maintain and as reliable as a GP38-2.

Getting off the subject, there's a good article on the problems with the 50-series in the current Trains. Wheelihan (formerly of EMD) spoke quite frankly about a new team of "whiz kids" who designed the 50-series (not the original team of tried and true experts who designed the industry-standard 40-series). A lot of minor, stupid mistakes were made in the design of the 50's that ended up making what should have been an excellent locomotive a lemon that almost destroyed EMD's reputation. I think the 50's that have had very extensive rebuilds have had most of these problems corrected, and, the 645F engine was resurrected (quite surprisingly) in the Motive Power MP36 commuter engines, an interesting case in which General Electric built an improved version of the 645F engine for MPI for their commute engine.

IIRC the EMD GP35 had a 16 stage transition to the electrical system that made them a nightmare. As for the original GP30's , they were just plain slippery. Have seen numerous instances of GP30's chewing down into the head of the rail when their wheelslip system did not function correctly with a inattentive crew.

We still have tons of former ATSF GP35u's in service at West Quincy as well as lots of former BN GP39M's.

Regards
Q-GP30