Locomotives: not your father's smoke-belching bucket of bolts anymore

Few passersby can ignore a train's thundering down the line, shaking the ground, and overpowering the senses. At least, that's the way it used to be.

Over the past two decades, locomotives have gone high-tech, appearing antiseptic compared with the greasy, smoke-belching diesels of yore. Gone is much of the noise, pollution, hot grease, moving parts exposed to the elements, and clickety-clack from steel wheels slamming into uneven rail joints. Now, trains quietly sail along smooth quarter-mile sections of welded rail.

From solar-powered trackside signaling to remotely controlled yard locomotives, railroads have entered the digital age. And, although many years ago, your hometown probably lost its passenger station, yard tracks, or rail service altogether, much heavier trains are carrying more freight and commodities than ever.

Skyrocketing demand, economics, regulation, and the squeeze of consolidation have raised the need for more powerful, cleaner, reliable, and less thirsty locomotives. Electronics are a big part of that equation, as my first EDN feature describes. (Both General Electric and General Motors officials said it was the first such story in their memories to attack the topic in any depth.)

But you can't truly appreciate a locomotive until you ride in one, which I have done on several occasions. The two most memorable experiences were both in 1995, once heading east from Missoula, MT, to Garrison, MT, on a frigid February day, and the other time moving west to Spokane, WA, from the same spot the following August.

The first trip was in the lead unit of a tired SD40-2 (Link 1) from EMD. The 3000-hp hulk had to be 15 to 20 years old, what with the edges of the windows lined with masking tape to keep out the cold. The Montana RailLink line, formerly Burlington Northern, and Northern Pacific before that, ran parallel to the defunct Milwaukee line, which was punctuated by electrical substations. The line was electrified until 1974 and lasted for another half-dozen years before the Milwaukee, long considered redundant, was torn up.

The second trip—12 hours in duration—was more interesting, although in the same model locomotive, albeit a newer, cleaner one. With 104 loaded jumbo grain hoppers (263,000 lbs per car), this train was much heavier than the February transport, which pulled a similarly long but much lighter intermodal train.

From a stop, the heavy train strains to accelerate and moves slowly in notch one. (The throttle has eight speed notches.) Similarly, a train stopping next to us took about as long to coast to a stop. Although it was a warm, dry day, there was plenty of dirt and dust for the locomotive to contend with. Such forces are the province of designers developing locomotive systems.

Midway through the trip, which took us along the Clark's Fork River and through the Cabinet Mountains (one of 13 ranges in the Montana Rockies), a talking hotbox detector sensed excessive heat on a midtrain axle (Link 2). The engineer walked back to the afflicted axle and put a temperature probe on the wheel but did not discover anything out of the ordinary. He noted the defect alarm, and we soldiered on.

The engineer was also confounded that the dynamic braking was inoperative. Another engineer found that no one had switched on. Dynamic braking, which uses the locomotive's traction motors to help slow down the train, is essential on a locomotive this heavy. When more than half of a 10,000-ton train tips a rise and is heading downhill, it exerts enormous pressure on the locomotive that, if engineers handle it incorrectly, often results in a loud bang and a rude push. That's when dynamic brakes then come in handy.

If you want to know how a locomotive deals with all that it encounters, read my article.

Design Ideas continue to be among our most popular articles. As such, starting with our April 14, 2005, issue, we are hiking payment from $100 to $150 for published submissions. So, get your ideas in early and often.

As always, write me at john.dodge@reedbusiness.com.