Locomotives Then and Now

The business of buying and selling railroad locomotives has its roots in the days of steam. Before the early 1900s steam power was high tech. Boiler horsepower was the source of energy for industrial enterprise on land and sea, and the railroads made abundant use of their share of it. Steam locomotives developed over the years to become the mighty iron horses that transported both people and freight overland faster than any other means. Wherever railroads were available, economic expansion flourished. However, since time is of the essence in railroad operation, every railroad had to have its own locomotive shop to maintain and rebuild its locomotives in a timely manner so as to keep the trains running. The gross inefficiency of the steam locomotive's use of energy, 4-6% at best, was technically embarrassing if anyone thought about it, but in those days steam meant power and opportunity. To optimize that, mechanical efficiency was of no economic consequence.

Later, when locomotive builders began thinking seriously about improving efficiency, calculations showed that diesel-electric power stood head and shoulders above steam and everything else. However early attempts to build diesel-electrics were such a departure from steam experience that these early efforts didn't go well. Vibration from the diesel engine and the unfamiliar road action of the running gear caused unanticipated surprises for both the locomotive builders and their railroad customers. General Electric became an early builder of diesel-electrics along with ALCO, and shouldered most of these problems in the process.

This situation was a sitting duck for a disruptive technology if one were to appear. Enter, GM's Charles F. Kettering, who had fostered Detroit Diesel Division's development of a large two-cycle diesel engine for marine applications. He was also an innovative designer of electrical equipment. By combining the two cycle diesel engine with an innovative high rpm traction motor, GM's Electromotive Division produced a diesel electric locomotive from scratch that was presented to the railroads as the successor to steam. The railroads were skeptical and locomotive builders were concerned that General Motors was using its clout as a railroad customer to force the railroads to buy EMD locomotives. But EMD locomotives just ran and ran and ran quite smoothly without serious maintenance and soon the steam locomotive was a thing of the past. EMD 's SD40-2 became the best performing, and most reliable heavy haul locomotive ever produced up to that time.

But the railroads still had their locomotive overhaul shops and EMD was only too happy to show them how to maintain and rebuild their new locomotives. With EMD's system of insignificant part numbers, it maintained an ironclad hold on the supply of spare parts. If the parts list called for a 40077367, there were only two places to go to get one. Either you bought a new one from EMD at a non-competitive price or you swiped one from an existing locomotive that was out of service or scrapped for one reason or another. Nobody else knew what it was and could only guess at how to make one. And EMD would not even talk to you unless you were a railroad locomotive owner. Only railroads and scrap yards were the players in that game.

So EMD could do no wrong. - Until the EPA entered the picture. Diesel locomotives as a group were easy to identify as an atmospheric pollutant. They were owned by a few large corporations vulnerable to government scrutiny, and furthermore they spilled black dirty oil everywhere they went. EMD was too fat and happy to pay attention to storm clouds on the horizon but GE took this as their opportunity to excel.

By introducing a new diesel engine plus upgrades to existing systems, GE was able to not only meet, but exceed the EPA requirements with its new GEVO (Evolution) locomotive series. GE was going "green" for all it was worth - and being successful at it. But GE locomotives were a significantly different breed from EMD locomotives While EMD had designed, built and tested substantially all of the components of its locomotives, GE locomotives were to a considerable extent built from components purchased from suppliers in the open market. GE engineers had to pick and choose from components they were available to buy, while EMD engineers designed and had built what they considered to be right. Like horses and mules, either one could do the required job but their genetic makeup and temperament were different.

There were differences in the railroads' maintenance and overhaul operations as well. Although GE put its own part numbers on the spare parts it sold, their commercial counterparts could also be obtained at more competitive pricing. To combat this, GE decreed that its locomotive warranty would be void for locomotives in which non-GE part numbered parts were installed. The logic for this was that GE purchases its parts in accordance with specific Purchase Specifications that include critical to quality (CTQ) characteristics not always found in the open market. Another difference between the maintenance and overhaul of the two breeds of locomotives is that, understandably, there is more commonality among the components of various EMD models than among the GE locomotive models. Some railroads, CSX for example, maintain two separate overhaul shops, one for each of the two makes of locomotives.

There will never be another SD40-2. But watch out for the next disruptive technology to hit the railroad scene. It will come from China. China has already published its Locomotive Purchase Specification and nobody makes a locomotive quite like it. China can take the opportunity to build its future high speed, heavy-haul railroad infrastructure around new technology while the US and others remain economically and politically tied to the past wherein every new railcar and locomotive must be capable of functioning properly with the oldest equipment still available, and also with the roadbeds, curves and tunnels designed long ago and which is difficult to change.