The Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company will speed up freight service in the progressive Southeast with General Motors' motive power leader, the GP-30 Diesel locomotive. By replacing twenty-nine 1500 horse power locomotives with twenty-nine broad range GP-30's, the L & N takes a major step forward in a program of planned locomotive replacement. The L & N looks to increased earning power through measurable economies in operation and maintenance. ELECTRO-MOTIVE DIVISION GENERAL MOTORS. LA GRANGE, ILLINOIS The miles you travel between your soup and dessert in the ARRIVALS & DEPARTURES LOCOMOTIVE NOTES: Turbocharged 2250 h.p. GP30 has won the fastest customer acceptance of any diesel ever produced by Electro-Motive. Orders for more than 600 units have been placed since the model was announced last October. Union Pacific will M.U. its 8500 h.p. gas turbine-electrics with diesels, has tested them with SD24's. . . . Narrow-gauge White Pass & Yukon is buying three more 800 h.p. C-C cab units from General Electric to give it a total of eight diesels; move will consign Baldwin 2-8-2's, previously employed in rotary service and on summer passenger excursions, to standby duty only. Recent orders: for New York Central, 10 EMD GP30's and 10 Alco DL-721's; for Southern Pacific, 10 Alco DL-721's; for Pennsylvania, 7 GE U25B's; for Mexico's newly extended Chihuahua al Pacifico, 8 Fairbanks-Morse 1600 h.p. B-B hoods. A NEW WORLD'S HEAVIEST?: Pittsburgh & Lake Erie recently moved the contents of two ore boats in one train of 224 cars behind four units with a net payload of 17,560 tons and a gross weight of 23,380 tons! SIGN OF GOOD FAITH: Pennsylvania Company, wholly owned subsidiary of PRR, has sold 212,449 shares of Norfolk & Western preferred stock to N&W, reducing Pennsy's ownership of N&W's outstanding stock from 33.72 to 32.09 per cent. Pennsy says it will sell the rest as a condition to its planned merger with NYC. SUPER PIONEER III'S: An order of 38 multiple-unit electric commuter cars to the Budd Company by the City of Philadelphia for lease to Pennsy will be Pioneer III design--but with a difference. As compared with the six Pioneer III's in PRR service since 1958, newcomers will be heavier (104,000 pounds vs. 89,400 pounds), faster (an acceleration rate of 1.7 to 1.9 mph per second vs. 1.2 for the older cars), and more powerful (four 850-volt 155 h.p. D.C. motors vs. four 650-volt 100 h.p. D. C. motors). Cars will have Budd trucks (with outboard disc brakes, air springs, inside journals) but traction motors will be mounted parallel to axle with double reduction gearing (instead of crosswise with Spicer drives to axle, as in earlier 1958 lot). French-style, elbow-shaped Faiveley pantographs (such as are used on PRR E-44 freighters) will be used. Cars will have automatic air and electric couplers. ON UP: Norfolk & Western President Stuart T. Saunders has been appointed by the White House to the President's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Policy. FOR REAL: Drivers of Santa Fe 4-8-4 2903 actually rotate in new Chicago Museum of Science & Industry exhibit. 8, the world's most famous train (consisting of a 4-6-0 and five cars worth $115,000) carried 42 passengers, one of whom (John W. "Bet-A-Million" Gates) declared that the express made "Chicago a suburb of New York." Since then the train has run off more than 62 million miles, carried more than 6 million passengers (peak year was 1928, with more ne than 225,000 tickets picked up), and remains comfortably in the black, thank you. .. Expanding parlor-car trade of the Long Island (33,695 first-class fares last year vs. 5690 in 1955) has now been topped off by an afternoon all-parlor express from Long Island City to Montauk complete with ex-Lehigh Valley diner and ex-business car open-platform observation! . . . A nine-state, 500-milliondollar Eastern Seaboard authority set up to acquire, operate, and modernize the rail passenger services of Pennsylvania and New Haven in the 459-mile zone between Washington and Boston is the brainchild of Senator Claiborne Pell (Dem., R. I.), who envisions single-unit, one-man cars hitting 70 mph and operating on 15-minute headway . . . Following protests of Chicago, Milwaukee, and commuters, the I.C.C. has postponed effective date of its May 18 abandonment order for Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee [page 3, July TRAINS]. . . . Chicago & North Western's meritorious, newsworthy overhaul of its Chicago suburban service (based on more than 43 million dollars' worth of air-conditioned gallery-type push-pull equipment) is in the red thanks to subsidized competition. In 1959, first full year of operation after moderni=zation, "the most modern and finest suburban train service in the United States" was in the black by $29,554. In 1960 the net was $10,008. Last year new expressways (notably the 292-million-dollar Northwest Edens project) siphoned off 7.2 per cent of C&NW's riders and helped, along with added interest and depreciation costs, to run up a 1.9-million-dollar deficit. At the present rate of losses this year, 1962's deficit should exceed 2 million. To offset existing losses (as well as impending wage boosts) the road wants to hike most fares 10 per cent, also introduce multiple-ride bargain tickets to boost off-hour riding between Chicago and inner-belt stations (e.g., Evanston, Oak Park, Irving Park), and a convenient mail-credit ticket plan. KM verdict: O.K. Six months of experience with its three Krauss-Maffei 4000 h.p. C-C diesel-hydraulic imports from Germany have convinced Denver & Rio Grande Western that the locomotives "shall prove to be highly successful haulers of heavy highspeed freight traffic in mountainous territory." Included in the diagnosis rendered by Assistant Director of Research J. J. Schmidt to the American Association of Railroad Superintendents in June: ¶On a 2 per cent grade a 4000 h.p. KM is rated at 1500 tons vs. 1050 tons for a 2250 h.p. GP30 and 920 tons for a 1750 h.p. GP9, both conventional diesel-electric B-B's. In fast freight service (i.e., hauling 2500 tons at 25 to 45 mph) three KM's totaling 12,000 rated h.p. can equal the work of eight GP7's totaling 12,000 h.p. ¶Only major difficulty experienced to date was born of the pneumatic multipleunit control system, which Rio Grande found slow and unreliable and which is being replaced with an orthodox U.S. electropneumatic system. As for the hydraulic transmission itself, "semi-annual inspection . . . showed all gear teeth surfaces still bear original grinding and polishing marks with no discernible wear at all." Southern Pacific, fellow owner of KM's, avoided release of any test data, but an advance copy of a speech President D. J. Russell was to deliver June 22 at the 18th International Railroad Congress in Munich stated: "Results obtained thus far indicate that locomotives using the hydraulic drive principle may become effective competitors of the diesel electric in handling the faster and heavier trains operated in the U. S., but it is too soon to be certain." On the day before the speech was to be delivered the Wall Street Journal broke a story that Espee had asked U. S. and West German builders for bids on 21 additional diesel-hydraulics. Actually, Espee had asked if the firms would be "interested in bidding". but that's little consolation for dieselelectric manufacturers. N&W drops the overhead On July 1 Norfolk & Western became a fully dieselized railway. The day before pantographed hood units had made their Continued on page 14 "A wealth of stirring and nostalgic pictures . . substantial blocks of historical and explanatory story . . . due emphasis on the striking and the picturesque . . . -NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE "Superb collection of photos reproduced by a quality printer . . ." -NEWARK EVENING NEWS RIO GRANDE, MAINLINE OF THE ROCKIES, by Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg, is the season's favorite - high in quality, rare in context, thrilling to own. It's a BIG book 81/2" x 11" in size, FULL 380 pages, PACKED with 525 pictures plus 4 full-color reproductions of paintings, maps and other features - a whole range of coverage for the spectacularly reasonable price of $10.00, postpaid. See it at your local bookseller, or order direct from: HOWELL-NORTH BOOKS 1050 Parker Street, Berkeley 10, California Books sent postpaid promptly on receipt of purchase price No C.O.D., please. |