| Posted by beano on December 1, 2021 | |
Wonder why these didn't work out for the UP. They looked like they could pull a mile long train of loaded reefers on a fast train across the flatlands. Thanks guys.
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@beano According to Wikipedia, their retirement had more to do with economics than performance. The turbines burned Bunker C fuel oil, which in the 50s was mainly considered waste and therefore extremely cheap. But in the 60s the plastics industry found uses for it and improvements in technology helped refine the fuel into more useable forms, which caused prices for it to go up. The turbines were already very fuel hungry, so this increase pretty much doomed them. They were also more labor intensive than traditional diesels.
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| Posted by SES on December 2, 2021 | |
Word is these gas turbines were plenty powerful but they weren't fuel efficient at all. These were designed to run on Bunker C, which is the thick crude oil substance left over from gas and diesel refinng process. Bunker C was used to fuel steam engines when they switched from coal to oil. And when all the railroads dieselized their power fleets, nobody was purchasing Bunker C. It was so cheap that when they first ran these gas turbines, it was cost effective and a way to burn the surplus Bunker C. Unfortunately for UP, just a couple of years into their use, the plastics industry took off, and plastics are made from Bunker C, so the unit price of the once useless oil skyrocketed quickly. Within a few years, it just became too expensive to run them so they were sidelined in hopes the fuel price would drop but it never did, so they eventually were scrapped. It's possible one or two may have been saved for museums but not sure.
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They did work out but prodigious fuel consumption and improving technology in the oil industry making that fuel more expensive rendered them more costly to operate. The turbines also had relatively short lives running on the residual bunker 'c' oil.
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They worked well while in service. What took them out was the oil crisis, because they had poor fuel economy. They were also quite loud and were banned from operating in some areas. A turbine engine gets better performance at higher power, so these units were only viable on long uninterrupted runs. They didn't have the versatility of other locomotives.
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SES ? There's one at the Railroad Museum in Ogden , Utah and Museum in Union , Illinois
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They burnt as much fuel idling as they did pulling trains.
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44 years ago, this British kid was 4 and he saw his first GTEL in a book. He thought it was the most beautiul locomotive in the world. He still does aged 48.
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