Western Railroad Discussion > Gensets-A Disappering Act

Gensets: A disappearing act (msn.com)

As will be the battery locomotives.
Just give them time.

Good riddance!

A ill-concieved idea. The only reason more than one was even made was due to government money we the taxpayers will paying on for a very long time in the form of the national debt.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

funnelfan Wrote: > ...  in the form of the national debt ...

Our national debt rose by 7 trillion in '17 ~ '21 because of the Gensets??? Wow...

Hmmm... ;^)

santafe199 Wrote:
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> funnelfan Wrote: > ...  in the form of the
> national debt ...
>
> Our national debt rose by 7 trillion in '17 ~ '21
> because of the Gensets??? Wow...
>
> Hmmm... ;^)

Nope Gensets were out of style by then.

Since you seem to want to make this a political post by choosing those dates, much of that debt was Covid relief.   Today the national debt is 34 trillion, a 13 trillion dollar raise since your quoted numbers.


national-debt-clock

santafe199 Wrote:
-> Our national debt rose by 7 trillion in '17 ~ '21
> because of the Gensets??? Wow...
>
Stop pretending you thought I meant that the gensets were the totallity of the national debt, that just makes you look foolish. Of course the gensets are just a tiny part of the sea of government funded ill-concieved ideas we are paying for long after the usefulness, and the lack thereof, has since passed.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

funnelfan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> santafe199 Wrote:
> -> Our national debt rose by 7 trillion in '17 ~
> '21
> > because of the Gensets??? Wow...
> >
> Stop pretending you thought I meant that the
> gensets were the totallity of the national debt,
> that just makes you look foolish. Of course the
> gensets are just a tiny part of the sea of
> government funded ill-concieved ideas we are
> paying for long after the usefulness, and the lack
> thereof, has since passed.

These things were doomed to failure.....but I guess they had to be tried...and what if they had worked? We'd have a new way to make locomotives. I would like to think that something useful was learned for the future...but I am not smart enough to figure what it would be. My gut tells me you need big power to pull big tonnage. A million batteries might pull it...but only a short distance. The gensets could have worked out but the software that favored fuel saving over getting work done doomed them. Set up to acutally do work however...they will not save fuel...so they will likely stay doomed. 

Proof of concept.  When you want to experment its always nice to use someone elses money.
RB

funnelfan Wrote: > ... Stop pretending ... just makes you look foolish ...

Gee Ted I thought was pretrending to follow your lead, which happened to be on All-Fool's Day. And just WHO first mentioned taxpayers & national debt??? (turning YOUR OWN THREAD into a political thing.)

Who's the fool now?
 

It’s hard for me to accept that the genset concept is inherently flawed and a reliable genset locomotive is an utter impossibility. Locomotives with more than one prime mover are certainly not a new concept (E-units, 44-tonners, DDA40X’s, etc.) and while having those prime movers turn on and off automatically is different, most of the genset failures I’ve read about weren’t due to the auto-start/stop feature (would be glad to hear otherwise).

From what folks have posted on here in the past, my impression is that genset locomotives were generally under-engineered, perhaps because the companies designing them had little experience building new locomotives. The vast majority of gensets were built by Railpower, which had only built the even more unsuccessful Green Goat battery hybrids previously, and NRE, whose previous work was mostly rebuilding old EMD’s with varying degrees of success. The result was air and fuel filters that were too small, inadequate cooling, unreliable electronics, etc.

Of course, that doesn’t explain why MPI and Brookville, who have certainly built new locomotives before, couldn’t seem to make a reliable genset either. They made far fewer than NRE (which used the same Cummins QSK19 genset power plants) but their products have reportedly been troublesome as well.

…as long as we’re on the subject, who is still using gensets? Last I knew, Modesto & Empire Traction was using their fleet of Railpower RP20BD’s, and nearby Sierra also had a wad of Railpower units they either built from kits on old geep frames or acquired second-hand from UP. I haven’t heard that California Northern has retired their NRE 3GS2B-DE’s yet, though they are probably just waiting for the contractually obligated term-of-use to expire.

Both the Army and the Navy still use Gensets , for how long remains to be seen.

But, they don't know better.

tomstp Wrote:
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> But, they don't know better.

Or being small operations that are within the capabilities of these units they have made them work.

Englewood Wrote:
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> As will be the battery locomotives.
> Just give them time.

I don't believe you.

Since the PHL new Joule has been vetted and tested it would be interesting to send it East on the next
MLAYR and see how close it gets to Yermo before need a Supercharger.

Out 

callum_out Wrote:
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> Since the PHL new Joule has been vetted and tested
> it would be interesting to send it East on the
> next
> MLAYR and see how close it gets to Yermo before
> need a Supercharger.
>
> Out 

Well considering that it's not meant for road use what kind of test would that be? Besides guaranteed to fail.

It'd run plenty fast for anything UP headed to Yermo and what would it prove? How
about that for continuous road use they ain't ready for prime time.

Out 

callum_out Wrote:
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> It'd run plenty fast for anything UP headed to
> Yermo and what would it prove? How
> about that for continuous road use they ain't
> ready for prime time.
>

As PHall already said, the Joule is for yard/switcher use.