Grassroots Railroad Sports?

The UP GTELs were easily the most successful turbine locomotives in the US, but it's debated whether they were a truly successful locomotive. For starters, Union Pacific owned 55 of them, but no other orders ever materialized from other railroads. They were also fairly short-lived: the first-generation units operated from '52/'53-'64, the second-generation units operated from '54-'63/'64, and the third-generation units operated from '58/'61-'69. That's about a decade for all three generations, not terribly long by railroad locomotive standards. 

The case can be made that UP was willing to put up with their various shortcomings because they offered more horsepower than anything on the market at the time. They were insanely loud, to the point where UP had to be mindful of where they operated them due to noise complaints. They were wildly inefficient anywhere other than wide-open throttle at speeds, burning 70% of the fuel used at wide open throttle when idling or running at low speeds, and even when operated at their efficiency sweet spots, they were still a thirsty machine. They also required a lot of specialized maintenance and service that was unique to them, always a death sentence to railroad equipment.

What happened to the GTELs to finally force UP to retire them? The first thing was that they burned Bunker C fuel oil. When UP introduced these machines, Bunker C was considered basically a waste produce, and so while the GTELs burned a ton of it, UP could get it for next to nothing. But by the mid '60s, the plastics industry had begun to find uses for Bunker C, and also the petroleum industry had found ways to crack Bunker C down into more useful products. Suddenly the price of Bunker C shot way up, and the GTELs cost a fortune to fuel. The other nail in the coffin was the advancement of diesel technology. When the first-generation GTEL came out, it could replace three F3s or GP7s. By the mid '60s, an EMD SD45 was only 900hp short of replacing a single turbine, and that was good old well-known EMD technology. And EMD, GE, and Alco were willing to build 5000-6000hp twin-engine diesels that exceeded the first- and second-generation GTELs. It also was more fuel efficient, quieter, and burned conventional diesel fuel. The increasing horsepower of second-generation diesels was also what doomed a lot of electrified rail in the US.

In 1950, Westinghouse constructed a gas turbine electric locomotive with a B+B-B+B wheel arrangement, rated at 4000hp. It was fully a Westinghouse-built product, but was marketed as Westinghouse-Baldwin, since Westinghouse fully owned Baldwin Locomotive Works and BLW was their railroad locomotive division. There are some definite Raymond Loewy styling vibes to it. It earned the nickname "the Blue Goose" due to the light blue paint scheme applied to it. It traveled around and demonstrated on several railroads, including the C&NW as shown in this photo, but failed to generate orders from any of the railroads it tested on and went back to Westinghouse to be scrapped.

Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern has resumed service to Revere Copper Products here in Rome, NY for the first time in about 6 years. Revere Copper Products is the the company founded by Paul Revere in 1801 and manufactures, amongst other things, the Revereware pans with the copper-plated bottoms. I remember as a kid, going by and seeing the huge animated neon sign that had Paul Revere riding his horse. The sign stopped functioning easily 2 decades ago, and while there has been a local desire to see it operate again, there has been no development.

The city of Rome spent a bunch of money sandblasting and painting and illuminating the water tower at the old abandoned GE plant a couple years ago, and there was a big uproar because people said the city should have granted the money to Revere to repair the Revere sign, since it was a much more important landmark and it's visible from the highway. The water tower is just that, a water tower, and a water tower in the middle of a brownfield and industrial ruins at that. Plus it's really only visible if you go down on East Dominick Street, which is also the rough part of Rome. Also, half the lights have stopped working on the water tower and the paint is already flaking off.

Now, if only some business would move back into Newton's Falls or Benson Mines so that the MA&N could reactivate their Northern Division. The state shelled out money to completely rehab the line from Carthage to Newton's Mines in hopes of convincing businesses to move into those areas, since they are the only locations in the Adirondack's that are zoned for industrial usage, but no one bit. So there's something like 40 miles of rehabbed tracks that have seen zero use up there

A big win for the 470 Railroad Club, they fired up their other Boston & Maine F7A, #4268, at Conway Scenic Railroad on Sunday. This locomotive was purchased by the club in the '70s as a stripped-out rusty hulk sitting on the deadlines at North Billerica and moved to Conway. Over the years they have performed rust repair, painted it into the classic B&M gold and maroon, and sourced another 567 prime mover and a generator (both were removed by the B&M when they retired it), and are getting closer to getting it operational. The 470 Railroad Club also has another operational B&M F7A, #4266, that is operated on special occasions. Once #4268 is fully up and running, they will be able to operate the pair back to back.

Right now the #4266 is the only other operating F-unit at Conway Scenic. She's a beauty, but when operated on their trains, it has to be paired with one of their Geeps. Having the #4266 paired up with with another F-unit will be much more visually appealing.

The 470 Railroad Club also recently purchased Springfield Terminal GP9 #72 off of the Heber Valley Railroads. The GP9 was originally B&M #1741. After B&M became part of Guilford Rail Systems, it then was later renumbered to #72, and then it was assigned to Springfield Terminal. It last ran in 2017, when the #3 traction motor leads started on fire behind the generator due to poor insulation and being soaked in oil. The fire was put out, but Pan Am Railways decided not to fix the old GP9. Heber Valley then purchased the #72 and two other GP9s from Pan Am Railway, and while the other two made the move and are operating out in Utah, Heber Valley hadn't moved the #72 from their Waterville, Maine shops. Late in 2020, the 470 Railroad Club purchased the #72/#1741 from Heber Valley and had it moved to the Conway Scenic Railroad. According to the club "the #3 traction motor leads should be replaced, the main generator should have insulated paint reapplied to the AC windings, and we must replace the traction motors that Pan Am had removed prior to selling the locomotive to the Heber Valley Railroad. The stacks have been properly covered and the motor is free of water and easily bars over. With a little care at the North Conway shops there is no reason why we can’t see the #72 operational again in the future." I would assume that it will revert to it's original B&M number and the Herb Matter-designed blue, black and white livery that the B&M used under Patrick McGinnis' presidency.

The 470 Railroad Club also has a Maine Central 2-8-0 at Conway Scenic, but that's just a display piece. MEC #501 is kind of the PRR #1361 of New England. Back in the '90s, the club was working towards an operational restoration and did some running gear work to it. They hired a contractor to do the boiler work and they did some really substandard repairs that required redoing, and that pretty much put a halt to it. The guy who had been handling a lot of the mechanical work also said that it got to a point where the club was constantly pulling his helpers away to work on the F-units or other equipment, and the club wouldn't cut a check to get some major work done, despite the club having the money and having wealthy individuals promising sizable donations. Combined with Conway Scenic management of the era being not very receptive to steam locomotives and the whole thing just stalled out. From what those in the know say, between deterioration from decades of sitting and the "repairs" made by the contractor, at this point, if one were serious about getting the #501 operational again, a new boiler would probably be required. Too bad, because the MEC Consolidations are nice little engines of a usable size, and Conway Scenic owns and operates the MEC's Mountain Division, so the #501 would be on home rails. Sister engine #519 is in Scranton at Steamtown, rotting away with no foreseeable future.

I didn't realize turbine power got out of the experimental phase. I did know UP ran a few for a short time, but that's all I was aware of. This thread remains awesome! Your knowledge and research are so impressive.

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

Yeah, Union Pacific was the only one to operate turbine locomotives in North America in any appreciable numbers and for longer than 1 or 2 years. The C&O M-1 steam turbines, and the N&W Jawn Henry steam electric turbines were short-lived and troublesome machines. PRR's S2 direct-drive steam turbine was a complete and utter disaster. The Westinghouse "Blue Goose" failed to generate any orders, but the details of it's actual performance are slim.

There were some gas turbine trainsets that had fairly long lives. Amtrak and VIA ran the United Aircraft Turbotrains, which used Pratt & Whitney turbines in a direct-drive configuration. Amtrak ran theirs from 1968 to 1976, while VIA ran theirs from 1968 to 1892.

There were also the turbine-electric Turboliners. Amtrak operated the original French-built Turboliners from 1973 to 1994. They also had Turboliners built by Rohr Industries. Those operated from 1977 to 2004, and three of them were completely overhauled and rebuilt but never actually saw service. Those rebuilt RTL-IIIs are stored, with one at New Haven,CT and two at Brunswick, NJ.

i worked for AMTRAK Police 1977 through 1982.   I started out in PHL and the last year there worked out of the  Wilmington shops ( covered  DE and MD).  One of the AMTRAK turbo liners sat under 30th Street station in PHL and we would 'have' to go check it out from time to time.  It was deep in the bowels of the station.

Interesting that VIA was able to develop time travel What happened in 1892?

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Whoops, 1982.

The Turbotrain, which was actually just called Turbo by Canadian National as a way to distinguish it as an entirely new way of travel, is credited as one of the reasons that Canada is the only G8 country to not have a high speed rail system of any length. On it's inaugural run, it struck a semi-trailer at a crossing that was signalled but not gated, and cut the trailer in half. There was actually a slow order at this crossing, because just a week before, the Rapido had also struck a vehicle at the crossing. No one was killed, and the Turbo remained on the rails and was able to return to service in 36 hours, which put to rest the concerns that the relative lightweight and aluminum body of the trainset would make it unsafe in a collision.

The whole incident though really freaked out CN. Although one of the New Haven/Penn Central/Amtrak Turbotrains hit 170mph on the North East Corridor in testing, CN’s Turbo never traveled at anywhere near that speed, because the company operated it over the same tracks on which it ran its other trains. Its speed was therefore limited by relatively tight turns, and, as its maiden voyage so graphically illustrated, the need to slow down at road crossings. Instead, the train topped out at around 95mph, and the Toronto-Montreal journey took four long hours. Given that the drive could be done in five, the Turbo had little chance of commercial success. If it could have been operated on a dedicated system at that 170mph that it was capable of, the trip between downtown Toronto and downtown Montreal would have taken two hours, less than the time it takes to fly, once ground travel to and from the airports is factored in. 

Canada, through both CN and VIA, has operated over the same lines as freight trains and freight took priority, so high speed passenger service never developed. The Turbo's end started when one of them caught fire in '79, and the remainder were retired and scrapped in 1982. While they never lived up their speed potential and had some teething troubles, the Canadian Turbos had a career availability rate of 97%, which is pretty damn good. Amtrak's lived shorter lives and were more troubled, but part of that is likely due to the condition of US railroads at the time and being owned by New Haven, Penn Central and early Amtrak. After retirement, Amtrak tried to sell theirs to Illinois Central, but they were in such poor shape by that time that Illinois Central had no interest in them.

Taken from a 2009 article regarding high-speed rail, or the lack thereof, in Canada:

Canada’s political and business leaders during the ’70s responded to the unprofitability of rail travel by making matters worse. Rather than investing in separate tracks to allow for the kind of rapid rail that might have attracted new riders, CN, then a Crown corporation, sought to divest itself of all passenger operations. The decline of passenger service became an election issue in 1974, when Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals pledged to create a nationwide carrier similar to Amtrak in the US.

Soon after the Liberals returned to power, CN formed a new division with the bilingual name VIA. In 1976, the Trudeau government, which was hoping to consolidate VIA with the country’s other passenger services, promised to furnish the new carrier with a fleet of fast trains. These were of course never purchased, because it was the tracks, not the trains, that presented the real problem.

When VIA finally became a separate Crown corporation in 1978, the deal included stations, routes, and trains. Crucially, the nation’s tracks remained under CN’s control, which meant that the Turbo—and all other passenger lines—had to defer to the freight carrier’s schedule, further adding to high-speed rail’s woes. In 1982, VIA finally pulled the underused Turbo from service. Its replacement, Bombardier’s conventional, diesel-electric powered LRC, had been designed to top out at 160 kilometres per hour.

In subsequent decades, passenger rail continued to languish. Even after CN was privatized in 1995, VIA had to pay to use the company’s tracks, its trains frequently forced to yield to freight cars. As a result, no passenger train in Canada has been capable of maintaining a schedule that can compete with air or even automotive travel.

Since Turbo’s demise, a parade of proposals to restore high-speed passenger rail to Canada have come forward. The restoration of rapid rail to the corridor between Quebec City and Windsor has been studied (or had a study initiated) at least sixteen times since 1973, most recently with a $3-million review launched in February of 2009, as part of a rapprochement between Quebec premier Jean Charest and Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty. 

“What’s the point of another study? ” asks Paul Langan. “It was viable in the 1980s. It was viable in 1995. Like all the previous studies, this one will come back and say, ‘Yes, we have the population to support it. Yes, people will ride it. Yes, it will pay for itself.’”

Langan, who lives just off Highway 401 in Cambridge, Ontario, and leads a citizens group called High Speed Rail Canada, says a Quebec City–Windsor line would pay for itself in three ways: First, even modest ridership projections indicate that passenger fares will cover operating costs, with enough left over to recoup the cost of building the railway within a few decades. Second, because the rail line would reduce congestion on the 401 and at airports, it would save millions of hours of passenger downtime, as well as sparing taxpayers the expense of further expanding highway and air infrastructure. And third, because high-speed trains use about one-third the energy of flying—and one-fifth that of driving—such a line would dramatically slash carbon use, just when caps and taxes designed to reduce carbon consumption start to take effect.

The Turbo was a gambit to revive interest in passenger rail in an era when policy wonks were questioning whether passenger rail was economically viable, and when ordinary Canadians were infatuated with airplanes and automobiles. Forty years later, the experts are seeing signs that air and auto travel are no longer sustainable, but Canadians have yet to fall back in love with passenger rail.

How could they? There’s nothing here to love. The Turbo has been all but erased from Canadian history. Railway museums have preserved hundreds of icons of Canadian rail legend, but not the Turbo. “They were all demolished. There are none left,” Langan says. Likewise, the legendary Montreal Locomotive Works, which built the TurboTrain, was reduced to a mountain of rubble in 2004.

https://thewalrus.ca/off-the-rails/

And 13 years later, the situation still hasn't changed. 

The UAC Turbo was replaced with the Bombardier LRC, which was the last gasp of Alco/MLW. Bombardier Transportation had grabbed up MLW in 1975, and continued to use the name until 1985, at which point it was fully integrated into Bombardier Technology. The LRC, which stood for Léger, Rapide, et Confortable or Light, Rapid, and Comfortable, used an all-aluminum body on the locomotives and passenger cars designed and manufactured by Alcan, a 3700hp 251 V16 manufactured by MLW, and an active tilting suspension designed by Dofasco (Dominion Foundry and Steel Company). The resulting design was quite small even by modern standards, several feet shorter than the GE Genesis that replaced them, and thousands of pounds lighter. The light weight and low wind resistance would allow higher speeds while using less power, improving fuel efficiency.  The LRC used slightly more than 1 gallon per mile with a five-car train, whereas existing fleets of EMD F-units and Alco FPAs used just under 2 gallons per mile, and the Turbo used 2 to 3 gallons. The monocoque aluminum coaches were also noteworthy; they weighed 105,000 lb empty, about one-third less than CN's existing fleet,and were lighter than the 115,000 lb Amfleet coaches being introduced. They also were noted to ride smoother than the Turbo at the same or higher speeds, and were easier to alter train lengths on the fly, since the coaches didn't share sets of trucks. Built between 1980 and 1984, the LRCs ran until 2000 before being retired. After the Bombardier/MLW locomotives were retired, many of the passenger cars persisted on, albeit with the tilting mechanisms locked out and towed behind GE P42s. 

Amtrak actually leased a pair of LRCs, assigning them to the curvy Puget Sound territory, where the tilting suspension allowed them to run faster than conventional equipment. Ultimately Amtrak decided to stick with Amfleets and F40PHs though. In a roster of EMD 567 and 645 power, Amtrak likely had no interest in purchasing anything Alco 251-powered.

Bringing the whole thing full circle: in the 1990s, Bombardier developed a prototype locomotive called JetTrain to replace the aging AEM-7 electrics and Amfleets being used on the North East Corridor. It would use the tilting mechanism from the LRC program, and the power car, rather than being full-electric, would use a 4000hp gas turbine turning an electric generator. Amtrak decided instead to go with the Acela trainsets, since they already had the overhead catenary to use.

Hair-raising video of an LRC nearly hitting a CP freight head-on

Even the railroad preservation industry has it's occasional barn find. An ex-CB&Q EMD SW-1 switcher was found tucked away in a barn in Billings, Montana, having last operated a decade ago for Billings Grain Terminal. Built in 1939 for the CB&Q, it then transitioned to the Burlington Northern after the merger, then was sold off Davenport, Rock Island & Northwestern in 1975, then sold to Peavey Grain in 1984, who assigned it to their Billings Grain Terminal operation. The locomotive was parked indoors back in 2012 and basically forgotten, until it was rediscovered by St. Johns River, a railroad equipment and operations provider, who is raising the money to give it a thorough mechanical evaluation and find it a new home at a museum or a tourist line, with hopes of it being repainted to the grey, red, black and yellow CB&Q "Blackbird" livery.

Also, if anyone is in the market for some Fairbanks-Morse locomotives, there are three of them looking for a home.  The Locomotive & Railway Historical Society of Western Canada had a Fairbanks-Morse (technically Canadian Locomotive Company) H-16-44 road switcher, Canadian Pacific #8554, and two C-Liner booster units, CP #4455 and CP #4456, stored at the defunct Mazeppa Processing Partnership gas plant near Calgary, Alberta. The plant is being torn down and the owners are looking for a new home for their equipment. Efforts to secure a home in Canada have so far been unsuccessful and the society is looking south for a potential home in the United States to save these rare locomotives from the scrapper’s torch. H16-44s don't exactly grow on trees, but the CPB-16-4s are the last two C-Liner B-units in existence. They are gutted shells, as they were converted to Locotrol I robot cars by BC Rail to create basically proto-DPUs, but the bodies are still intact and they still retain the original Fairbanks-Morse trucks.

This photo was taken of the #8554 when it was still stored at CP's Ogden shops in 2009. Why CP held onto it so long, no one really knows. It's since spent another 12 years outdoors, so I imagine it's only gotten rougher. But, F-M stuff doesn't grow on trees.

And BCRail RCC4 in much better days

On the subject of rare FMs in Canada, Canadian Pacific had the last remaining set of Fairbanks-Morse Erie-built B-units. CP had purchased four of them after the Pennsylvania Railroad had retired them and shipped them up to Smiths Falls, Ontario. They gutted them and bastardized them into a semi-mobile continuous rail factory that they ran from 1968 until 1989. In 1990 they moved them to Winnipeg to prepare them for scrapping, with three of them being scrapped in 1994.

Fortunately, before they were cut up, Doyle McCormack, the guy who lead SP #4449's restoration and repatriated two of the ex-D&H Alco PAs to the US, stepped in and secured the purchase of the General Steel Castings A1A trucks off of those three. The two Alco PAs were missing their GSC A1A trucks, and those trucks are rarer than hen's teeth now. EMD used their own A1A trucks under the E-units, GSC A1A trucks were used under stuff that is nearly extinct (Alco PAs), or completely extinct (Baldwin passenger cab units, Alco DL-109s, FM Erie-Builts), so you can't just go to a scrapyard and get a set of them. And, as far as people know, there aren't any just laying around, they've been gone for decades. So McCormack took one set for his PA, gave the other set to the museum restoring the other PA, and the third set was found to be so busted up and full of cracks that they were scrapped on the spot.

The fourth Erie-Built shell avoided scrapping at 1994, but was later cut up entirely in 2010. No other Erie-built B-units and absolutely no A-units survive. 

Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum received the Fairbanks-Morse H-16-66 that the Tennessee Valley Authority used at their Gallatin Fossil steam plant in Gallatin, TN this summer. There are only two H-16-66s known to exist, this one and one up in Canada. The TVA's #3060 was built in 1958, and the crazy part is that the TVA operated the unit, exchanging coal cars with a CSX interchange and bringing them back to the car dumper, as late as 1997, along with an ex-US Army Alco S1. Conversion of the power plant to burn gas retired the two locomotives, not mechanical failure, and while there's some surface rust and flaking paint on the #3060, it is rumored to be in good mechanical condition. Even better is that, as a late-build locomotive, it is equipped with GE electrical gear instead of the earlier unobtanium Westinghouse electrical equipment. And Fairbanks-Morse is still in business and still supports the 38D8 1/8 engine (as well as the Alco 251!) TVRM has said they fully intend to get the #3060 operational.

The nickname for the H-16-66 remains a point of contention in some circles. Fairbanks-Morse called the "Train Master" name for the 2400hp, 6-axle H-24-66 in official company documentation. The 1600hp, 6-axle H-16-66 has often been referred to as a "Baby Train Master" by some, but there are those who say that, at least on the Milwaukee Road, it was called a "Junior Train Master" and the 1600hp, 4-axle H-16-44 was the "Baby Train Master".

There are also rumblings that Norfolk Southern #1580 might be headed down to TVRM soon. NS has held onto the #1580, which is the first SD40 that Norfolk & Western purchased. It's one of the few high-hood SD40s left on NS (most have been rebuilt with NS's homegrown Admiral Cabs) and it's the only straight SD40 on the property that hasn't been rebuilt to SD40-2 specs. From what I understand, it was put in storage at Altoona in 2008, then was started back up in 2016 briefly. In 2017, NS announced they planned to repaint it into the original Norfolk & Western livery and return it to service, similar to what they had done with NS #3170, Southern's first SD40 that they repainted in Southern colors, as well NS #1700, an SD45-2 that they painted in original Erie-Lackawanna colors. But it never went into the paint shop, and instead continued to be stored at Altoona. Recently it was moved closer to the turntable, which usually does not happen unless NS is getting ready to do something with a unit, and there was an odd post by Altoonaworks' Facebook page mentioning it was "going to a new home in Chattanooga" that was then edited less than an hour later and removed all mention of Chattanooga. Considering that NS #3170 was donated to TVRM after it was repainted into Southern colors, it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to think that the same thing is happening with #1580. I can't imagine that NS would hold onto it for 14 years if they didn't have some sort of plan for the unit. Here's hoping that it turns out better than the situation with the #3170 though. The #3170 was not overhauled, just "returned to service", and it supposedly had a prime mover salvaged from a GP38 that NS tried cranking up to SD40 specs. Not long after it's arrival at TVRM it suffered a prime mover failure and has been relegated to a display piece.

There are those that are still pretty peeved about Norfolk Southern not offering up any of the "Conrail Cadillac" SD80MACs for preservation. Conrail was the sole buyer of the 5000hp AC traction model, and after Conrail was split, they were divided between NS and CSX. NS then traded SD40-2s to CSX to get all 30 of the SD80MACs. In February of 2020, NS sold six to Canadian Pacific to part out for their SD70ACU rebuilds, while the rest were sold to Progress Rail. Progress Rail ripped the V20 710-series engines and generators out to sell for marine use and just last month scrapped the remaining shells. The Conrail Historical Society supposedly tried talking Progress Rail into selling them even just an empty shell, but could not reach an agreement. Obviously, that falls on Progress Rail, but as a lot of people pointed out, NS is big on preserving Southern and N&W stuff, but not so generous when it comes to other railroads that make up the Class I. It's too bad the unique SD80MACs are all gone, but at least an effort was made by a group, and I have a feeling they won't be the only modern diesels to go completely extinct.