Eastern Railroad Discussion > NS SD70M-2 delivery begins

The first NS SD70M-2's have now been delivered. NS #2652,2662, and 2651 (in
that order) were present at the Paducah & Louisville Oak Street yard in
Louisville,KY this morning 10-22-05. The units were set out for pickup by the NS a
couple hours ago and were subsequently picked up by the NS. These units were
constructed from kits at VMV in Paducah and are fully painted. All 3 units
were dead in tow, don't know if they will be setup for operation here in
Louisville or if they will be sent to another location for setup.

Bryan Jones
Brooks,KY

Hmmm... Could they be on route to Enola? 'Twere the location of the demo units for a few weeks...

--Dan

Someone reported seeing a primered one going west on UP at Rochelle, IL this week, and I got this one at Toluca, IL on the BNSF in fresh paint.

---

What is that GE model on the NS roster that best corresponds to the SD70M-2? Will the SD70M-2s be used any differently than the corresponding GE power?

DocJohn
Macon, GA

The GE model is the ES40DC. The new SD70M-2 units may be tested in particular types of service when first received, but after that they will be used in general service.


Chris Toth

Doug0308 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> redneckrailfan Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The first NS SD70M-2's have now been
> delivered. NS
> > #2652,2662, and 2651 (in
> > that order) were present at the Paducah
> &
> > Louisville Oak Street yard in
> > Louisville,KY this morning 10-22-05. The
> units
> > were set out for pickup by the NS a
> > couple hours ago and were subsequently picked
> up
> > by the NS. These units were
> > constructed from kits at VMV in Paducah and
> are
> > fully painted. All 3 units
> > were dead in tow, don't know if they will be
> setup
> > for operation here in
> > Louisville or if they will be sent to
> another
> > location for setup.
> >
> > Bryan Jones
> > Brooks,KY
> >
> >
>
> Bryan,
>
> Would you tell me what you would feel comfortable
> with, concernintg the EMD Kits? How are they
> recieved? What do they look like? What is the
> process? How do they leave (appearance/status)
> and any personal comments you might like to make
> about the process? It is very interesting for me
> to understand how all this is done and what the
> end-product-quality is. How can all of this be
> coordinated for quality assurance? Are there
> traveling field engineers on the road all the time
> or what?
>
> Thanks alot......I only take the liberty of asking
> these question because you have been very
> kind/informative in the past.
>
> Thanks again,
>
>
> Doug Dunham
> Alto, GA
>


Here's my take on it Doug. Now just as a disclaimer, I don't work for the company, I'm just a railfan observor whose particular interest is in locomotives. If you look a a new thread at the top of the Eastern RR board page you will see a thread about new EMD units being shipped and the photo you see shows an EMD frame with trucks and shrink wrap covering over various mechanical components. More or less the units are shipped with all of the mechanical guts installed with VMV doing final assembly, installing the cab and carbody and actually making the locomotive operational. VMV is known to produce a quality product, though most of its experience has been in the rebuilding market. The only fair way to compare the quality of the VMV built SD70M-2's will be to compare them to those that are fully assembled by EMD themselves.
Personally I don't like the idea of having outside vendors do final completion of new locomotives or outsourcing the entire order themselves. Quality control issues can definitely evolve and this can give the parent company a black eye. There were many quality control issues reported in the Mexican built SD70MAC's that BNSF recieved and you can bet that BNSF was unhappy with EMD over this. Right now though until EMD can increase its own capacity now that it is under new ownership the only way that they can continue to compete with GE at a decent level is to outsource production, which will keep from having to turn away orders. What will help though is that they listen to the customers and quickly work to resolve any quality issues that may arrise with locomotives that are outsourced and do what they can to keep the customer happy.
(for what its worth I work on the assembly line at Ford Motor Co building the F series Super Duty trucks so I have a lot of experience in quality control and the issues that can come up. Many of these same issues can apply to locomotive building)

Bryan Jones