Eastern Railroad Discussion > IHB retires their six-axle gensets

Indiana Harbor Belt has announced the retirement of their four six-axle gensets.  From what I've been able to gather, nothing has been decided yet as to their disposition.  

They were purchased in 2011 and were in service for a little over ten years.  As I understand it, they were obligated to use them for that period of time according to a contract with local trackside communities who partially funded their purchase.  Apparently, fuel savings were offset by excessive maintenance and repair costs, especially in their last years of operation.  

IHB's four-axle gensets were retired last year.  Three of them are being converted to slugs.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/13/22 07:38 by calumet.

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First-class image to illustrate your news.
Bob

I wonder if any railroad has had success using a genset locomotive or genset fleet. I personally have experienced nothing but failures, extended out of service time diagnosing the failures, waiting on expensive custom parts, and such when it comes to gensets.

Posted from iPhone

JOHNY5ALIVE Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I wonder if any railroad has had success using a
> genset locomotive or genset fleet. I personally
> have experienced nothing but failures, extended
> out of service time diagnosing the failures,
> waiting on expensive custom parts, and such when
> it comes to gensets.
>
> Posted from iPhone.........short lines love them

Proud Foamer
OAKLEY, CA

I will miss these from an observer's standpoint but then I never had to run or maintain them. IHB has certainly provided lots of interesting variety over the years.

Badorder Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> JOHNY5ALIVE Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I wonder if any railroad has had success using
> a
> > genset locomotive or genset fleet. I personally
> > have experienced nothing but failures, extended
> > out of service time diagnosing the failures,
> > waiting on expensive custom parts, and such
> when
> > it comes to gensets.
> >
> > Posted from iPhone.........short lines love them


Switching a small amount of RR cars they were ok, switching large(r) cuts of cars...NO WAY!!

Posted from Android

Badorder Wrote:
.........short lines love them

Oh, really?  Which ones?

 

some one gobbled some UP ones going to Cali in another thread, safe to say they suck

Tax payer funded un-proven JUNK.

Yep.  Shortlines don't love these things.  But just like the Class 1s, if someone else pays for it, they'll take it (and retire it when it hits 10 years old or whatever the funding stipulation is).
 

An intelligent person would deduce that if you have to basically give something away to get someone to take it, it's probably not worth much. Of course that logic would escape just about anyone in the governmental bureaucracy. Never let facts and the truth get in the way of fawning press releases and mindless feel good gestures.......

From what I've heard, there was no reluctance on the Harbor's part in accepting the gensets.  Back then, no one knew that they would develop reliability problems.  The Harbor simply could not afford to purchase the units with their own funds, so other sources were sought out, including four local towns along the mainline.  They agreed to help out because of the gensets' low emissions.

a LOT of people knew the whole idea was pointless and stupid, But but nobody actually making the decisions wanted to look into it that closely. They were blinded by the idea of getting something on someone else's dime.  Well, you know what they say about something being worth what you paid for it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/22 14:23 by junctiontower.

I worked in management on a regional with MP15's. We had a gen-set demo that performed ok overall, then a meeting with the vendor, finance, transportation,  purchasing, mechanical, grants and others and we in mechanical were highly encouraged to bite on it and sign off. We then sat down with the vendor to do a cost benefit life cycle analysis.
That is when it got ugly. Grants and Finance were determined we could recoup the cost on fuel savings and they loved the "green" aspect of it. Well, when I ran the fleet fuel cost for the switchers and the expected fuel costs for the gen-set there was no way it would repay itself in fuel costs. Then looking at the maintenance costs of the switchers and the maintenance costs of the gen-set it wasn't even close ...... not even in anyones wildest dreams. During the meeting we went over the lifecycle and overhaul costs with the vendor and when it was all laid on the line the meeting was over and the concept was dead. The company listened to me and understood the analysis in spite of the "green appeal" and we declined to go down that road. The reality was, it was not a good idea and with the life cycle replacement and overhaul costs it defies logic as to how really "green" it is. More like scorched earth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/22 17:22 by train1275.

Like I have said all along, if these things were truly worth a damn, people would be more than willing to stake their OWN money on them. The fact that they are not tells you pretty much all you need to know.  As most of you know, I'm in trucking.  Several years back, there was a government program that basically gave away semi trailer aero skirts to get them out into the market. We qualified for I believe four sets, got them and put them on because they were basically free. Haven't bought a single one since.  That tells you something of what our fleet managers think of them. I think a lot of fleets run them because they they were sucked in by the "green pitch" and the desire to show people they were doing "something".  OR, maybe some people are getting kickbacks from the manufacturer.  We couldn't see a lick of fuel economy improvement using them, and not ONE of our lease fleet customers has ever been willing to spec them, so that too should tell you something.