Western Railroad Discussion > SCRM Diesel Locomotive Load Bank

=15.600000381469727pxDiesel locomotives, especially those with 2 cycle engines, operate best when under load. About the worst thing there is for them is to spend hours idiling, like at a museum. An alternative solution is to sometimes connect them to a load bank where the electrical power from the main generator  is turned into heat in monster sized resistors. We have just finished refurbishing a load bank to do that. It was a derilect chassis and has now been outfitted with dynamic braking grid resistors and meters to monitor the current and voltage generated by a locomotive main generator. This one is designed to handle up to 2000 amps at 1000 volts. It should be able to work up to about 2500 HP. This will help clean out the exhaust systems of our Fairbanks Morse H12-44, EMC SW1, and EMD E8. It can also be used on 4 stroke engines like our U25B, and ALCO's. The DB grids came out of a scrapped GE U28 and fit perfectly into the load bank. The grid resistance is .42 ohms as wired. The blower motor is 65 horsepower so there is a tremendous amount of cooling air available to get rid of the 2 million watts of heat. The extension cables from the load bank are either 500 MCM or 1000 MCM if we double them up.

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Bravo. You and your crew do amazing work!

Great shop heater.

I enjoy your posts, even though I don't understand much of what you say! 

A 1500-2000hp shop heater !   You won't find one of those at Harbor Freight.

Thank you for the comment. As you may have guessed, my postings intentionally get into technical details. There are many TO members that are in the RR industry and live with these issues all the time. My goal is to expose the guts of what we do to others so they can appreciate the complex work that we must do at a museum if we expect to operate locomotives that were already declared to expensive to maintain by the railroads. Most commonly, by the time we acquire a locomotive, it is in serious need of repair of some kind. The restoration of our SP1006 1939 EMC SW1 locomotive took 18 years. We bought it in the late 1980's, a week before it was going to be cut up for scrap. So to restore and operate old locomotives take a lot of patience and funding. Our Fairbanks Morse restoration will need about $40,000. I'm asking for donations so we can make it happen.https://socalrailway.org/collections/santa-fe-railway/560-details/

Not a very graceful looking device but it sure looks up to the task.
I appreciate your posts!
Go

Probably a good reason why it couldnt be done easily. but could you sell power to the local utility, or EV charging station? 

No, no one else could use this electricity. It's DC with variable voltages. Utilities and the grid need a roughly constant AC voltage and it must be in-phase with their 60 cycle frequency. The only thing it's good for is running locomotive traction motors or making a lot of heat in a load bank.