Huge info dump about the auxiliary generator and the load regulator. The system is very similar to that used in a lot of stationary power plants. To generate electricity, you move a wire through a magnetic field. The stronger the magnetic field, the more current you can get out of the wire. If you use the strongest possible magnets, your electrical field will still be weaker than what you can generate with an electromagnet. Increasing current though the electromagnets (called field current) let's you make more current. So the reason that the main alternator on those locomotives uses power from a separate generator is so that they can essentially make a more efficient/powerful/compact generator. Another benefit of this generator system is that with the load regulator, you can control the torque load on your diesel engine. This can let The generator spin completely freely if no current is required by cutting off the field current, which turns off the electromagnets. It also lets you choose how much current you want at any engine speed ( as long as it's under the maximum that could be produced at that engine speed). This is what Hyce was talking about in the governor section. If the engine is slow to ramp, the load regulator drops the field current in the alternator, which demands less torque of the engine, which lets the engine spin up. In stationary applications, you can't change engine speed from whatever speed your generator is designed to produce 60HZ at, so to change power output you MUST change magnetic field strength by changing current into the generator. Very long-winded comment. So if anyone has a question, please ask.
its not used much but this also applies to some electric motors some company's have bean trying to make reliable brushless ones. also when it comes to field current there is 2 types self exciting and battery exciting, self exciting as explained by the OP uses an auxiliary generator where as battery exciting mostly seen on cars taps a tiny bit of energy off the battery to power the field current and also lets the regulator see how charged the battery is as to not fry it.
@@phalanx3803 Older EMD locomotives used both Battery excitation as well as self excitation, they had two fields in the main generator. In lower engine notches they would use Battery field to excite the main gen but as you got to higher notches where the batteries could not supply the needed output the Shunt Field would use generator output voltage through a resistor increase the generator out put
28:40 You may have heard about that one time that a small town in I think canada, lost power in the winter. They took one of these engines off the rails and rolled it down the street, hooked it up to the local power grid and it actually WORKED. Now you know why.
If you read articles about that, you'll note that they had the diesel generator running at a specific speed. That was too match the 60HZ of the Canadian power grid. Because of how electricity works, you must match power generation exactly to power consumption. See my other comment for more details, but this was possible because of that auxiliary generator
@@ilikepie1974The power came from the main alternator, the engine speed (RPM) was adjusted to give the 60HZ frequency out of the alternator which is the standard for north American electrical grids and electrical devices. The auxiliary Generator is only for 74V DC which is used for control and battery charging.
@chuck osborn yes. I was trying to say that the auxiliary generator and load regulator allowed this to happen by matching power used to power generated in the main alt, sorry if that was not clear.
@@ilikepie1974 The governor on the locomotive engine was adjusted to achieve the 60 HZ frequency output of the main alternator. The frequency is directly related to engine speed (RPM). Don't know how the aux gen/load regulator would do much here. Load regulator would be at max field as long as the engine is in decent shape to provide the expected current output and does not affect frequency of the alternator at all just load output. Aux gen simply supplies 74 DC output at any engine speed regardless of the load regulator or engine speed, the aux gen does related to the AC output of the SCR but again that is related to load not frequency.
small correction and some additional info on roots blowers. the air actually travels along the outer walls from the center of the intake, rather than being pushed through the middle. if they went down the middle it would be a twin screw blower, not a roots. they're similar, but roots has a matching number of blades per side, while twin screw does not normally. the difference in boost creation is the twin screw compresses air between the rotors, while a roots just scoops the air and forces it down by creating a seal in the middle that air can't really go back through (where in a twin screw it works opposite)
@@Hyce777 no problem, and thanks for the pin! I grew up going to the drag strip with my dad, so I've been around a lot of superchargers in my life. I also used to work for a vacuum pump company, and had to know the difference for service reasons. Its a really niche knowledge, but when you try to say one is better than the other you get people mad lol. Roots is my favorite, just because it takes less effort efforts the engine to make boost
The roots blown EMD engines ended years ago, with mostly 567 series, the 645 and 710 series engines use a gear driven Turbo that freewheels on its own in throttle 7 and 8, providing significant airbox pressure, the Roots type was only around 7Psi , while the turbo could produce much higher Airbox pressures
@@Hyce777 the 710s began in the mid 80s if I recall, while testing at the DOT facility run by AAR in Colorado GM EMDs were being tested and power assemblies were replaced while our testing was going on, that facility is incredible...
Thanks for doing this hyce, because of your videos, my love for trains has been reborn stronger, and I plan on becoming a diesel loco mechanic, so this is probably really useful
Thank you Hyce for this. This has to be the best explanation video i can show my child along with your other 10 levels 101 videos. Keep up the good work.
Small note to add on the dynamic braking part: In the case of heat generation power is the unit (watts), if i remember correctly dynamic braking tends to be quite close to the maximum power of it so around 2-3.5MW are dissipated on the resistor array. To be able to do it regenerative on a diesel one with batteries a large number of them and/or very high charge performance would be needed which wouldn't be very feasible. Assuming a very snazzy LFP that is able to charge at 5C one would need around 2 cubic meters of batteries, ~600kWh of batteries would also be expensive to maintain. Phones have variable charge rates but for simple values most low-mid range phones use 5V 2A which are 10W. Ha, also, actually it is "how diesel electrics" work, hydraulics are used in mainly shunters/low power.
From my rough and quick calculation, that means you should in his example be running 3500 volts at 1000 amps to get to that wattage figure... But that amperage number is scary, it will really melt cables unless they are silly thick!
@@CMDRSweeper Not only can it melt the wires in the cables, they do melt the grids at times also. That likely is going to happen on a long downgrade where you already have one loco that has lost its dynamic braking. As the engineer applies more braking the grids in the loco keep getting hotter and hotter. And then bingo, another set gone. Hopefully the train is under control and the air brakes can keep it that way. If not, time to look for a safe way off the train as you now have a runaway on a downgrade. And that isn't going to end well.
a small note on lvl 0: there are diesel-mechanical locomotives (British shunters for example) as well as diesel-hydraulic locomotives (both hy.static and hy.dynamic). Diesel-electric is the most efficient, but there seems to be a debate whether or not diesel-hydraulic might be more reliable and/or cheaper to build.
Diesel-hydraulic loco is sometimes used in flooding situations (where diesel-electric might short circuit itself?) over here in Thailand. We have 2 diesel-hydraulic train types mostly for shunting and flooding works By regulations, all diesel-electric can go through flood up to 5cm of water over the top of rail, whereas diesel-hydraulic can go through flood up to 25cm. Every trains going through floods have a speed limit of 5 km/h YT link for train footage in flooding in another comment below
Diesel-hydraulic through floods, this one is manufactured by Krupp, and can go through 25cm of water. ua-cam.com/video/JqD4nWIlI_c/v-deo.html Another type, made by Henschel, can go through 15cm
from what I recall, the Krauss-Maffei diesel hydraulics SP and DRGW had did not take well to American railroading practices, namely heavy loads up long grades in harsh climates. I know both CNR & CPR experimented with a Machinenbau-Kiel 900hp diesel hydraulic switcher in the mid 1950's, but they mustn't have been too happy with it as it was sent back to Germany within a year or two.
Good video. As a trucker that used to haul replacement parts for Norfolk Southern....Alternators weigh about 19,000# and pistons, for a v-16, are about the size of 5 gallon buckets. Something I didn't know until I saw a new locomotive cab at a supplier....the sleeping and bathroom accomodation in the nose of the cab.
14:00 Fun Fact: The russian M62 locomotives use Roots blowers to get the air moving (0.2 bar) when starting the engine. After that, the turbos automatically take over to raise the intake pressure to 1.2 bar.
I was looking forward to this video. So I prepared a nice cigar and a bit of tea that I can spit out in anger onnce I realise you aren't talking about my beloved diesel-Hydraulics.
Lol! I covered what I know and what we have mostly in the states. I've got a buddy who's worked on the rest of the other diesel types and we'll likely do a video on those down the road.
Thanks, it’s really cool to learn all this information. As someone in the maritime world, I’ve seen the EMD 567 in an old tugboat called Jupiter that was re-engined with one that came out of a WWII landing craft, so it’s cool to see these engines in their “natural habitat” so to speak.
Of course what you got to see here Hyce is the most common locomotives, the diesel electrics. However Germany have been a little more silly in Europe, you have Diesel Hydraulics and some even have transmissions and you can hear them shift. Examples of this is the BR 642, Siemens Desiro and the hated Norwegian Rail's Type 93. The latter a locomotive where you can hear it shift, but was dreaded by passengers as they got the brilliant idea of using a DMU on long haul rail routes. In the end, the old style of locomotive with consist powered by an EMD prime mover that saw its hayday in the 60s, the EMD 16-645E3B is still running on that route today with an updated consist. Oh and they did try to replace that Di4 locomotive as well, but in the winter they didn't like tunnels and had a tendency to shut off in the cold, so they were returned to Germany and the old EMDs put back in operation. :D
All of these mechanical videos are fascinating. They give brilliant insight to the complex mechanical workings of trains. However it seems kind of like an episode of Lost, where I've got more questions than answers. I'm interested in all things mechanical and I hope you keep putting out videos involving mechanical systems on trains. Like I said I find them fascinating
Great intro. Learned a lot mostly about the cooling and governor/fueling interaction. I had assumed a simpler system of the governor preventing the engine from over revving and the alternator excitation controlling load.
Yea, I had watched it with my dad who has been a mechanic for the engines for the last 20 out of his 29 years working at the BNSF and the first 9 years he was a traveling mechanic. But also he was in the navy and worked on the ships which most were steam turbine powered. Also the engines and trains you showed he first learned on. But a couple things he pointed out were that you mixed up the place where the fan and radiator was on the war pumpkin. Plus also that the trains that had the electronic control wouldn't have a governor.
Oh yeah, those dash 9's might have a different radiator setup than I drew, huh. And yeah, most of the modern stuff wouldn't have a governor or mechanical fuel rack at all. But, it's less interesting to just talk about the computer just doing it, right? :) Hope your dad didn't think it was too terribly bad of an explanation for a white hat :P
The two stroke engine is like a big version of the 2 stroke Detroit Diesel engines used in tanks, busses, trucks and even boats from the 1930’s all the way to the 90’s.
Actually if you look into it, EMD was originally EMC or Electro-Motive Corporation, before being bought by General Motors and converted to EMD or Electro-Motive Division. GM was also the same parent company of Detroit Diesel when they were still pumping out their 2-strokes (71, 53, 110, 92 etc).
@@ThinBlueWarrior General Motors Diesel was the name stamped into the stamped steel valve covers. Detroit Diesel was in the cast Al valve covers in later models. It later became Detroit Diesel Allison. We had both styles at work. The stamped steel on the 12V71s and the cast ones on the 6-71s.
Hey there Hyce, Love the content. I completely know what you mean with a maintenance job taking way too long. I work aviation, and we refer to them as hanger queens.
I used to work for L&S Electric near Minneapolis, MN. At the time we did a ton of rail motors and generators. We used to get A/C traction motors shipped up from BNSF Topeka. Our shop guys would year them down and usually have to cut the stator cap off and restack them, at least in part. Then rewind and rebuild. We did DC motors and generators as well. I did transport. Did an onsite swap of a DC generator on a Red River Railroad loco at a grain silo once. Brought fresh rebuilt generator out and a crane swapped them. We did a bunch of work for Loram and CP as well. Sometimes some other stuff as well. At least for rail. Tons of other stuff as well, like paper mills and power plants.
Really enjoyed learning about the diesel electric locomotives! One thing you might want to look into was the steam turbine locomotive that tried to make a appearance around the same time diesel really started to take over. I know that Norfolk western had a prototype don’t know if it actually got anywhere though
@@pootmahgoots8482 UP had both steam and Gas turbines. The steam ones were a huge disappointment. The gas ones, not so much. C&O had 3 steam turbine electrics before the N&W built their only one. As you had electrical, fire, water and coal all in the same locos, they were maintenance headaches. The three for C&O were to power passenger trains, " The Chessie ", while N&W planned theirs for freight. The N&W looked more conventional as it rode on standard 6 wheel trucks with span bolsters. UP Steam Turbines: ua-cam.com/video/K9mo9Ald6EI/v-deo.html C&O Steam Turbines: ua-cam.com/video/HPaJKdBzwZs/v-deo.html N&W Jawn Henry: ua-cam.com/video/5n0VuljeSM0/v-deo.html
In Sweden there were 3 M3T steam turbines in regular service on the TGOJ line, they pulled a lot of iron ore and they needed the constant force of a turbine to not rip the coupler off. And to honour the memory and history of the railway the last ore train was pulled by a turbine. After that the line was taken over by the state. ua-cam.com/video/Z9ZcLUbQg14/v-deo.html
They still use steam (and gas) turbine electric locomotives to this day, some even run in water power! They just do not put the generator on the actual locomotive and use long wires to connect them both! :-P :-b
I have went to school for auto mech. It was only 2 semesters of it during high school. You done a great job of explaining a diesel motor from what I know. I took the class just to be able to wrench on my stuff.
I needed this video for so long, i am a huge huge huge fan of trains and aspecially EMD desiel locomotives, because its the first locomotive i have seen in my life, and to this day i am still thrilled by seeing a train in action.
Whew…boy Howdy! Your explanation for the exciter, is very simple, I’ll give you that. Bless you…you tried. Alternators, Generators and Exciters were my specialties in the Navy, so I appreciate the fantastic explanation you gave. Again, I bow to your effort!
Some additional info on blowers: The EMD engines have a turbo-supercharger, and it's an example of one of the less common meanings of the phrase. Depending on era and application systems called "turbo-supercharger" can be any of the following: A) A supercharger 'feeding' a turbocharger, the air is compressed by each in series. B) A supercharger and turbocharger in parallel. The super feeds the engine at low RPM when the turbo isn't spinning fast enough to be effective. At higher RPM the turbo takes over feeding the engine and the supercharger is unclutched so as not to waste engine power running it. While turbos and supers complement each other well this arrangement is, in my opinion, overly complicated and an inefficient usage of weight/space. (Then again, I love the Napier Nomad and turbo-compound engines in general so what do I know). C) A centrifugal compressor driven mechanically with engine power. This usage is frustratingly common in American aviation literature from the 30s and 40s. Not heresy on its own but distinctly unhelpful, especially with engines that also have exhaust driven compressors. D) The EMD! This is a centrifugal compressor that can operate as a supercharger or a turbocharger and arguably counts as both. I call this arrangement a super-turbocharger ostensibly to avoid confusion with A or B but mostly because it sounds cool. Initially the centrifugal compressor is driven by the engine (as the author notes in video, at a gear ratio of 18:1). Centrifugal types work best when they spin really fast! An air molecule is drawn in and picks up a lot of kinetic energy when it gets whacked by the impeller blade. It flys off to the edge of the circle and enters an area of the unit called the 'diffuser'. You can think of it like a funnel or a que line. The air molecule runs into a crowd of other molecules and all of them have high kinetic energy and the diffuser gets them all moving in the same direction and in a somewhat orderly fashion. Another way to put it is that the diffuser uses geometry to convert a gas's kinetic energy (velocity) into potential energy (pressure). (This is further proof of math being effectively witchcraft. Geometry is especially sorcerous) You may ask, 'whats the point of having a compressor at all? A blower of any type is extra mechanical complexity, is it really worth it? The majority of engines commonly encountered by an average person don't have a turbo or a supercharger; they're naturally aspirated. They work just fine with all natural air just like god intended.' First of all, never be satisfied with the way god put the universe together: it's suboptimal and can be engineered to be much better. Just one example: thermodynamics has "free energy" as strictly illegal and you can hope to "break even" but that's mostly optimism. Whenever energy changes from one form to another there will be losses. In a closed system entropy only goes up. So you have to be efficient when dealing with energy and heat. That's where superchargers and turbo chargers come in. Engines are heavy, you have to haul the weight around with you and they only provide so much power. Forcing more air into the engine let's you get more power out of it for minimal additional weight. The forced induction can be either 'positive displacement' or compression. Positive displacement is less efficient, but it's useful at all RPMs. The work it does is linearly proportional to RPM. Using a rotary compressor, usually centrifugal, is more efficient but the work it does rises exponentially with engine RPM. So at higher speed it's amazing but at lower speeds it doesn't do much. Superchargers are usually positive displacement and driven mechanically. Turbos are usually centrifugal compressors and powered by an exhaust driven turbine. (That's not free BTW. Nothing in this universe is free. But harnessing exhaust gasses to drive a turbine is pretty efficient.)
@@Hyce777 You're welcome :) I'm happy to contribute; moreso, I feel it's appropriate to offer what knowledge I can to supplement a great video. I'm an academic and for the most part I haven't learned from practical experience but by voraciously consuming the published works of those who have. Or other academics who have already done the hard work of research and correlation. (Their work that is; academics don't consume each other to gain their power.) On the topic of forced induction I would recommend fellow UA-camr Greg's Airplanes And Automobiles and his excellent video "Turbo Vs Supercharging in WWII Aircraft". A lot of my insight comes from that, and from going through the NACA reports that Greg based the video on.
@@GRudolf94to piggyback off of this comment, it got the name of turbo-supercharger because it was a supercharger that was turbine-driven off of exhaust gasses rather than mechanically linked to the engine. One of the largest issues the USAAF had with their early turbochargers was that the turbine blades were at risk of _melting_ while in use and causing loss of power.
the EMD 645 uses a centrifugal turbo charger that is gear driven until the exhaust force drives the turbo faster than the centrifugal clutch on the turbo drive gear, at that point the exhaust takes over and drives the turbo, a 2 stroke diesel requires a forced air supply to operate as there is no vacuum on the intake in a 2 stroke diesel
Very informative video that was well communicated ! Appreciate the analogy and explanations of how these systems relate to the more common things we use and understand. Thank you !
37:44 those holes aren't actually for balancing the flywheel, they're for 'barring over' the engine (rotating it with by sticking a lever in the hole and pulling on it) The balancing holes are usually on the inside face towards the engine.
This video is very informative to me & I actually have spent the last 14 years working for a supplier of these companies lol. Heck we even built an engine rollover for BNSF a couple years ago... The mock-up 4 cylinder is interesting - There's a decent chance we actually made that one as we've done quite a few of those for GE/Wabtec , including all the ones in their Learning Center at the old GE factory in Erie...
We also made a GE turbo cutaway like the one you have pictured, except ours was done on a 45 degree, while still keeping the shafts, disc & impeller fully rotational like the one you showed.
on Wabtec's battery powered loco they have so much battery that they are planning to use the frame of the cab as the mounting point for the batteries because they have it so jam packed with battery.
@@Hyce777 lol. We've been supplying GE/Wabtec for like 30 some years. We're working with Progress Rail on some other projects as well & have done work directly for NS, BNSF, Canadian Pacific, and some railroads.. Lots of interesting things have come through our shop over the years.
I love this, great job Hyce. I’m enthralled with your industries engine design. I wish we could pull liner/valve assemblies and swap em independently. That’s awesome. That and heavy mining trucks, even though they have a similarly sized engine, they’re all high pressure common rail injection 4 strokes with after treatment systems. Anything 2 stroke that we see are Detroit Diesel dinosaurs 😂 I really enjoyed the video. Thank you sir!
@@Hyce777 I’d be in Heaven. I have to remove the engine in the field, load it in the truck, take it to the shop to rebuild then go put it back where it belongs.
I saw a video recently about the diesels that power large ships. They are designed so that the piston/cylinder assemblies can be replaced while the engine is running and the ship underway. Absolutely amazing.
I shouldn't have been so surprised that you had a picture of something 'Santa Fe style' at the "Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway co." and yet ... 47:19 ...
I repaired EMDs for 7 years and GE for 5.. I found EMD to be more complicated honestly. The SD70MAC has one advanced traction system. Not an easy system to diagnose.
@@krakenwoodfloorservicemcma5975 oh Lord. Yes. The higher power EMD stuff is an electrical nightmare, as far as I can tell. The EMDEC system... Yeah. We had all kinds of problems with those and we would've been SOL without our rep from EMD.
EMD's and their smaller cousins... Detroit Diesel on-highway truck diesels were a brilliant design. But 2-cycle engines have nasty exhaust emissions and worse fuel economy.
24:36 Do you lose field diverts on those if you set a pair of motors to cut out? I'm sure remember hearing someone mention the 50 on the line I used to volunteer on having a couple of motors isolated, which I recall somehow affected the diverts and caused it to behave different. At least it ran though.
Woohoo, I've totally climbed on top of the old signal things that used to go over the tracks (probably still do in some places but they've changed them for smaller signals around here) and so I've seen those big fans on the top of the train from above. Pretty cool! I used to sit up there and read, plus watch the trains when they've come by.
Yeah, GE's load REALLY slow in comparison to EMD's. A buddy of mine told me he put a unit in run 8 from sitting at 6. About 4 miles down the line, the motor was STILL loading up. EMD's load up just about as fast as you can notch 'em. Also, plenty of the older EMD's with the 567's used the main gen as a starter motor. GE wasn't the first to do that!
Worst loading GE we ever had on Conrail was the U28B. Fortunately we only had two of them. I got one as a trailing unit on a 120 car train of empty hopper cars going out to trap rock roughly 17 miles west of West Springfield yard with a GP38-2. I sat with the Gp isolated for over 6 minutes while the GE ever so slowly accelerating from idle then put the GP back on line, it was my first train as an engineer. West Springfield yard had a 1 percent grade heading west to CP 100. When we got to trap rock we had to pick up 60 loads of trap rock going to Selkirk, New York. It took over an hour to get that Uboat to full throttle. I complained heavily about it to Selkirk fuel pad Foreman about it’s performance. He shopped it.. had the same engine several months later only this time it responded with black smoke and loaded up much faster than before. I asked the foreman at the Selkirk shop what was wrong with it to load that way and was told “ nothing was wrong with the governor, that’s simply the way GE avoided black smoke was by crippling how fast the engine loaded. Once you got to the 5th notch or higher after they reset the governor the turbo kicked in and the smoke disappeared. All other GE’s while they loaded slower than an EMD we’re about 10 second behind an EMD in loading up in response to a higher throttle notch setting. When the dash 7 GE came out the slower loading GE became a thing of the past. The GE B23-7 became my favorite switcher engine after my first time using it. The trainmen could stand vertically on the bottom step without a problem, it had a bigger air compressor and was quieter compared to an EMD SW-1500. It also weighted more compared to an SW-1500, had a full bathroom and a better cab fully electric cab heater. I showed up for my third trick switcher and the B23-7 had all the windows and doors left open with the cab heat off an 2 feet + of snow in the cab. I closed all the windows and doors except the engineer’s window, turned the cab heat on low fan and 35 minutes later I was dry as a bone in the cab and comfortable. All the snow melted inside that 35 minutes. Food for thought
@@james5360 That's an awesome story. Thanks for sharing this! Really gives more insight on the how and why. With steam locomotives, it's almost all a "feel through the seat of your pants", you can really get a much more clear cut answer with diesels. You know more of what you're getting into and what to expect.
Talk about throttle handles. When I hired out on the Soo Line in 1968 I was placed on the Eastern Division Board at Marquette, MI but worked on the Old DSS&A #40 & 41 working out of Superior, WI to Ewen, MI. Soo Line had leased two engines from the LS&I #2500 & 2301 (GE U25c AND U23c) The throttles had half notches and an unusual throttle handle that was at least two feet long. Later when I was promoted, the first switch engine I worked on at Shoreham Yard in Mpls., MN was engine 319. A Fairbanks and Morris H12-44, that engine didn't have a reverser. It had a handle with a U-shaped slot. One slot was forward and the other reverse. I had no idea which was which, If I remember right the bottom slot was forward and the top reverse. I has a fifty percent chance to get it right the first time. Luckily I did. Those LS&I engines and the Soo 800's (GE U30c's)they were the best to stay warm in the winter as they had a slightly pressurized cab as far as heat went. Also, not to be picky, but the control stand has a whistle handle, not a horn handle. Railroad instructions give whistle signals not horn signals. I once had a whistle handle break off during a road trip. Jack Peterson hogheaddotnet
Cheers Jack! That's cool. I'd wager it was one of those holdover terms like the fireman's emergency brake valve. That's neat, hadn't heard about those styles of control levers!
Great job. I was in search of some detailed understanding of these locomotive's workings, hoping for a better overview of them operationally. You did it. Thanks
About how you power the Main Alternator I maintained aircraft alternators and I am quite familiar with them. From my understanding, newer locomotive alternators and aircraft alternators work essentially the same. You have 3 stages, with both Rotor (rotating electric parts) and Stator (stationary electric parts). Stage 1 Rotor starts it with 'self excitation' (no outside electricity) and produces more power on the Stage 1 Stator. Then power goes to Stage 2 Stator, Stage 2 Rotator receives this power and boost it. This goes to the Stage 3 Rotor, Stage 3 Stator receives this power and boost it again. The output of the alternator is controlled by changing the amount of power going from Stage 1 to Stage 2. Yes, the traction motors are powered by magnets and turning torque only, making electricity. No outside generators needed. Cool stuff.
That sounds about right from what I've heard with the GE style main alts. The EMD's still have the separate generator for supplying the excitement, though maybe not the newest tier 4 locos. Thanks for the comment :)
I have a Ho scale C44-9w in the good old war bonnet scheme. The war pumpkin looks pretty cool. I might model that one. Very informative video too Hyce!
In a car, the difference between a generator and an alternator is just how the AC produced by the windings gets straightened out into DC. The generator used a rotating switch called a commutator, which being on the same shaft as the windings means it was synchronized; this straightened the current out (rectified it into a single direction). But a big, heavy current switch had mechanical wear and was expensive to build and maintain. An alternator used solid state diodes to do the same thing cheaper and more reliably. So instead of communtators wearing down, you have diodes blowing out. Congratulatins! Anything having to do with excitation of the windings at start up or the simple reliance on residual magnetism remaining in the iron, or the use of solid state control circuits instead of electromechanical relays flapping around to regulate the output are just details of design and the improvements of time rather than any differences between the two. Any time you scale up to monster equipment, you are going to have little devices needed to get the big devices started, e.g. diesel semis.
Very informative. Learned a lot of stuff that I'd been curious about. Being a bit pedantic, "regenerative braking" means using the power generated to either charge a battery to use later or other trains on the line through the catenaries or third rail, so it'd only apply to electric locomotives/EMUs as far as trains go. It's not practical to do so on those really long stretches of track where only one train is in an electrified block. Without another train to draw the electricity, the dynamic braking fails and a backup resistor grids are needed to take on the load. This is why even trains that can do regenerative braking tend to have resistor grids on them.
35:25 the GE is the same. The "front" of the engine is in the back of the frame like the EMD. They just mount the turbo at the front of the engine, which puts the exhaust duct in the back too.
@ 14:46 I like the 710X16 and my favorite is progress 1010X12 it's a 4 stroke and rated at 4500 HP, they both have a maximum RPM of 1500, the 710 is 183 liters and the 1010 is 198 liters
Great video. I learned much more about Diesel Engines than I already knew. I do have two comments though. When I went to electronics school in the '70s, we learned about DC generators and AC generators. Both were called generators. I believe that when the automotive industry switched from DC to AC generators, they wanted a "cool" name to call this new component and created the name Alternator for their new AC generators. Two is that you said several times that it was water and not coolant then later you called it coolant. Since the purpose of the water is to cool the engine, it is coolant. We just usually mix antifreeze with water for car coolant. Plain water used to cool an engine, is still coolant. Again, great video.
There is a slight technical difference to alternators vs. generators but you're probably right they wanted a fancy name. And, fair enough on the coolant. Totally right, but I wanted to point out it's not the same as buying antifreeze. :)
Great video, about the electrical aspect. A basic overview of charging systems, obviously the locomotive has more complicated aspects, should be a simple topic. I feel like you when it comes to forgetting more than I learned. Feels that way but it's not realistic. The basics of it is pretty cut and dry and simple to figure out. Learning about the differences between half, full and three-phase goes a long way. Rectifiers, voltage regulators and the concept of fielding coils too. Motors are a whole different topic in my opinion. Induction as a whole, in my opinion again, can be hard to wrap your mind around. Loved the video.
The sample turbo is oriented such that the compressor stage is facing the camera. The turbine stage (that which receives the expanding exhaust gases) is at the back.
The "war pumpkin" looks like an employment opportunity for sure. The EMD blocks are a welded fabrication and one can weld on one even while it is running to keep it limping along if it has a bad leak. The little GM two strokes however, had cast blocks. The disadvantage was that welded fabrications have a higher expansion coefficient when heated and higher vibration characteristics. The master connecting rod idea was used on radial aircraft engines and explains the characteristic lopping sound in the GEs. My friend's VW had natural magnetism in the field windings and regulated by current through them as well. That was all DC so I missed your point about AC being needed to control the field to control final output. Anyway, the natural magnetism died and I showed him how to polarize the regulator to make his battery light go off until we could pull the generator out and take it to the electric shop. An 8V-71 Detroit (similar to a miniature EMD two stroke) I worked on had one injector rack freeze up. The other seven injectors were frozen with it because of the linkage they were all connected to that went to the governor. I completely loosened up the adjustment on the injector that was locked up and the diver got the semi back to the shop on seven cylinders. Yep, tappet wrenches were a thing you really had to have 40 years ago. Please go into more about the electric. AC has induction caused by cycles that allow transformers to work as an example. Is that partly why alternators are used? Is AC to DC done with great big diodes? Did improvements in semiconductor design allow builders to get away from DC generators? Are AC traction motors, not having brushes, a type of big shaded pole motor? How do they control the rotational speed of those big beasts?
Great questions David - definitely some I'm going to have find answers for myself :) I'm a mechanical engineer, and I know a -little- about the electrical side, but not that much...
On locomotives, the AC-DC conversion was done in the early (1990’s) AC-traction locos by Gated-Turned-Off (GTO) thyristor, though they have since been replaced by Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs). Also, generators produce D.C. electricity, while alternators produce AC. The reason why locomotive manufacturers changed from generators to alternators is because as locomotives become more powerful, they produce more electricity, and the generator had to get bigger to handle the bigger load on the generator, which resulted in a feedback loop as the generator continuously got bigger as the engines got more powerful, which eventually got to a point that the generator was too big to fit on the frame. Therefore, locomotive manufacturers went to alternators and then used a bridge rectifier to convert the AC electricity to DC electricity.
What is found on modern diesel-electric locomotives are 3-phase self-exciting alternators. They can have permanent magnets used at start-up (self-starting), or supply the start-up exciting current from an external source, like a battery or other small generator, but once running, it generates it's own exciting current. This exciting current goes through the electromagnets, but only if the Generator Field switch is on. Of course, more current in the electromagnets equals more induced current in the stator which results in more resistance force in the rotor. That's why the need of huge powerful diesel engines. Now, the alternator's AC has a frequency. The problem is this frequency varies with the rpm of the engine, and the traction motors (3-phase AC induction motors) need other frequency in order to spin, as they carry the huge load of the train. Frequency gives rpm which costs torque which means less tractive effort. Simply put, you cannot tell them what frequency to run, they ask for it. So, to give them what they need, the AC is rectified into DC via rectifiers, which are usually mounted on the alternator. Doing this, you lose the frequency physical property of the current. The DC is now inverted to AC using inverters. These inverters can supply the AC at whatever frequency the motors want. There may be one inverter for each motor (GE) or one for each truck (EMD) and they are located on the left side "box" behind the cab.
Great lecture. Thanks. Do continue with your thought to do collaborative videos with technicians and such. Consider videos modeled on automotive videos that compare ‘brands’ from the techs’ POV. I also would like to see a an actual teardown of a locomotive in maintenance. I otherwise don’t get to see this kind of thing that was maybe ‘all in a days work’ for you.
That was really cool. It will take some time to go through the comments -- you didn't mention the engine exhaust. Going to look for the steam locomotive video -- I hope it's half as interesting as this was. Respect.
Small note from marine applications. EMD does produce 8cyl engines, which is what it looks like is on display in your pictures. I dont think theyre that common in rail applications however. Out vessels have 8-710s and 12-710s. Those engines are new and replaced the older, but in my opinion far cooler, Fairbanks Morse OP 38d 1/8. However the more research i do into the design and operation of the EMDs, they're growing on me. Edit: A possible reason for the EMDs traditional electric start is due to the various other applications for the engine, such as the marine industry. I know our engines are fitted with a compressed air starter, as I'm sure are other vessels. I am, however, unsure of the other uses for GE engines so my theory may not hold up. Just an idea!
For sure, that would not be surprising. I know the EMD engines have ended up in all sorts of uses. Always neat to hear about that. And yeah, they make 8's, 12's, 16's, and the used to make even 20 cylinder variants. The picture I was drawing on is actually a cut down 20 cylinder engine (the PA's are marked 1, 9, 10, and 20).
Also note on those EMDs that because they are 2-cycle, that clutch driven Turbo is mandatory or you would never get ANY pressure to the crankcase because you'd never get it to start in the first place.
If we could switch the right side engineer console position with the conductor left position, you basically have the 18 wheel OTR truck driver setup. If the diesel electric setup could be adapted to a COE design then I could see the diesel electric setup being useful in an EV setup for commercial trucking application.
The air pressure on the crankcase is actually very high, much more than you are stating in the video, around 15 PSI minimum, and up to 35 PSI when the turbo is really working - say at 45 + MPH. This is why the engine can burn it's own oil and "Run Away". That is why some have a block off for the air intake, so they can stop the engine that is running on engine oil. The 15 PSI is required to quickly push air into the cylinders, and also push out the exhaust air through the tiny exhaust valves. Knowing how many cubic feet of air that is going into and out of the brakes is very important. One time the third car of a train had a block on the that car and prevented application of the brakes rearward of the third car. This caused the train to plow into the station, and into the control booth, with no loss of life on the train, but the locomotive soon ended up in the basement of the train depot.
When I worked in the gulf our dive ship had 2 Wartsila mains. I'll never forget when the engineer took me down to watch routine engine maintenance cleaning the carbon at sea. They had a valve that introduced room temperature water. I'm assuming it injected a fine mist of cool water, somewhere around the turbochargers. It was quite interesting intentionally injecting cool water into hot running diesel engine, just seemed like catastrophe wasn't too far away.
The EMD turbos * have * to be clutch driven on the low end because of the 2-stroke thing, they absolutely need the pressure differential to work at all. 4-stroke work just fine at atmospheric pressure and can happily wait for the boost to build and do without the extra complexity.
Do you think it would be possible to power a locomotive with a Stirling engine? I recently found out about them, and it seems an interesting concept. They are mostly low wattage, but it seems like the technology could still be further developed, and it might be able to make full use of the energy from dynamic braking, since it runs on heat.
Interesting. But when you need to kill power, you can't just swing the heat out of the way. Easily. It's something to explore. It all comes down to economics. If it could increase profits, it'll happen. If not, it just becomes a cool engineering experiment unfortunately.
@@slowpoke96Z28 I think a solution could be to then charge batteries with the slow down, then they could help it accelerate faster during the slower rev up
As you increase the power setting on the engine throttle, the engine speed goes up, the output frequency to the drive motors increases, and the voltage also goes up, as much as 3000 VAC on some models, but both the frequency and voltage drop as less power is needed to pull the locomotive. So at 100 RPM, the frequency is very low, say 20 hz, and the voltage is also pretty low, say 300 - 400 volts, so the motor is not hit with the full 3,000 volts until the frequency is much higher and the output amperage is at the most.
So I am not aware if there is, but to my knowledge two stroke diesels cannot run without positive inlet pressure which is why you have those blowers or clutch driven turbos. These engines solely rely on the intake pressure to drive the spent gasses out the exhaust. Fun fact: you call them blowers, because that´s actually what they do, they blow air. The positive pressure they make is dependent on your valve size, how much air your engine consumes and the rate you spin them at, but that´s getting into hot rod territory.
The air flow meter shows just that, flow. It will show when air is "moving" in the brake pipe. When the system is fully charged with no leaks or actuation, no flow. It is useful to see leaks in brake pipe
@ 17:21 2 stroke engines with intake ports NEED forced induction or they will not run the turbos are clutched because they will not work at very low RPM, they are essentially blowers rather than turbos just like you said the 4 stroke has poppet valves for the intake side also so they can run naturally aspirated whereas the 2 strokes cannot, you can blow a turbo on a GE and it will still run.
![[SFS] The time I told someone to BREAK a train, instead of FIX it... | Stories from the Shop](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XUa0GHqHgyU/mqdefault.jpg)
Huge info dump about the auxiliary generator and the load regulator.
The system is very similar to that used in a lot of stationary power plants.
To generate electricity, you move a wire through a magnetic field. The stronger the magnetic field, the more current you can get out of the wire. If you use the strongest possible magnets, your electrical field will still be weaker than what you can generate with an electromagnet. Increasing current though the electromagnets (called field current) let's you make more current.
So the reason that the main alternator on those locomotives uses power from a separate generator is so that they can essentially make a more efficient/powerful/compact generator.
Another benefit of this generator system is that with the load regulator, you can control the torque load on your diesel engine.
This can let The generator spin completely freely if no current is required by cutting off the field current, which turns off the electromagnets.
It also lets you choose how much current you want at any engine speed ( as long as it's under the maximum that could be produced at that engine speed).
This is what Hyce was talking about in the governor section. If the engine is slow to ramp, the load regulator drops the field current in the alternator, which demands less torque of the engine, which lets the engine spin up.
In stationary applications, you can't change engine speed from whatever speed your generator is designed to produce 60HZ at, so to change power output you MUST change magnetic field strength by changing current into the generator.
Very long-winded comment. So if anyone has a question, please ask.
Very long winded but very accurate and detailed comment! You cleared up a few things that I didn't quite see right myself! Thanks :)
its not used much but this also applies to some electric motors some company's have bean trying to make reliable brushless ones.
also when it comes to field current there is 2 types self exciting and battery exciting, self exciting as explained by the OP uses an auxiliary generator where as battery exciting mostly seen on cars taps a tiny bit of energy off the battery to power the field current and also lets the regulator see how charged the battery is as to not fry it.
I always wondered about that, thanks. I’m learning a ton about this this morning!
@@phalanx3803 Older EMD locomotives used both Battery excitation as well as self excitation, they had two fields in the main generator. In lower engine notches they would use Battery field to excite the main gen but as you got to higher notches where the batteries could not supply the needed output the Shunt Field would use generator output voltage through a resistor increase the generator out put
''''Xzibit
I’d suggest putting the “___ 101” videos in a playlist so it’s easier to find them
I meant to do that when I uploaded this! Thanks for the reminder.
1 year later and I'm thanking yall for that xD
Le cours est très bien expliqué, maïs s'il te plaît desormais faites la traduction en Français.
28:40 You may have heard about that one time that a small town in I think canada, lost power in the winter. They took one of these engines off the rails and rolled it down the street, hooked it up to the local power grid and it actually WORKED. Now you know why.
If you read articles about that, you'll note that they had the diesel generator running at a specific speed. That was too match the 60HZ of the Canadian power grid.
Because of how electricity works, you must match power generation exactly to power consumption. See my other comment for more details, but this was possible because of that auxiliary generator
Video about it, ua-cam.com/video/FWYbD2ga8DM/v-deo.html
@@ilikepie1974The power came from the main alternator, the engine speed (RPM) was adjusted to give the 60HZ frequency out of the alternator which is the standard for north American electrical grids and electrical devices. The auxiliary Generator is only for 74V DC which is used for control and battery charging.
@chuck osborn yes. I was trying to say that the auxiliary generator and load regulator allowed this to happen by matching power used to power generated in the main alt, sorry if that was not clear.
@@ilikepie1974 The governor on the locomotive engine was adjusted to achieve the 60 HZ frequency output of the main alternator. The frequency is directly related to engine speed (RPM). Don't know how the aux gen/load regulator would do much here. Load regulator would be at max field as long as the engine is in decent shape to provide the expected current output and does not affect frequency of the alternator at all just load output. Aux gen simply supplies 74 DC output at any engine speed regardless of the load regulator or engine speed, the aux gen does related to the AC output of the SCR but again that is related to load not frequency.
Loving these deep dives. It makes modeling and playing Train Simulator so much more rewarding when you know how the real things work.
Finally, a video that takes a deeper dive into how diesel-electric locos work. I've always wondered how the engine speed and power output was managed.
small correction and some additional info on roots blowers.
the air actually travels along the outer walls from the center of the intake, rather than being pushed through the middle. if they went down the middle it would be a twin screw blower, not a roots. they're similar, but roots has a matching number of blades per side, while twin screw does not normally. the difference in boost creation is the twin screw compresses air between the rotors, while a roots just scoops the air and forces it down by creating a seal in the middle that air can't really go back through (where in a twin screw it works opposite)
Cheers for the correction! Interesting. Didn't know the difference myself.
@@Hyce777 no problem, and thanks for the pin! I grew up going to the drag strip with my dad, so I've been around a lot of superchargers in my life. I also used to work for a vacuum pump company, and had to know the difference for service reasons. Its a really niche knowledge, but when you try to say one is better than the other you get people mad lol. Roots is my favorite, just because it takes less effort efforts the engine to make boost
The roots blown EMD engines ended years ago, with mostly 567 series, the 645 and 710 series engines use a gear driven Turbo that freewheels on its own in throttle 7 and 8, providing significant airbox pressure, the Roots type was only around 7Psi , while the turbo could produce much higher Airbox pressures
@@ChiefCabioch true, but plenty of 645 roots blown engines are around... More than 567's I'd say.
@@Hyce777 the 710s began in the mid 80s if I recall, while testing at the DOT facility run by AAR in Colorado GM EMDs were being tested and power assemblies were replaced while our testing was going on, that facility is incredible...
Thanks for doing this hyce, because of your videos, my love for trains has been reborn stronger, and I plan on becoming a diesel loco mechanic, so this is probably really useful
Thank you Hyce for this. This has to be the best explanation video i can show my child along with your other 10 levels 101 videos. Keep up the good work.
Small note to add on the dynamic braking part: In the case of heat generation power is the unit (watts), if i remember correctly dynamic braking tends to be quite close to the maximum power of it so around 2-3.5MW are dissipated on the resistor array. To be able to do it regenerative on a diesel one with batteries a large number of them and/or very high charge performance would be needed which wouldn't be very feasible. Assuming a very snazzy LFP that is able to charge at 5C one would need around 2 cubic meters of batteries, ~600kWh of batteries would also be expensive to maintain.
Phones have variable charge rates but for simple values most low-mid range phones use 5V 2A which are 10W.
Ha, also, actually it is "how diesel electrics" work, hydraulics are used in mainly shunters/low power.
From my rough and quick calculation, that means you should in his example be running 3500 volts at 1000 amps to get to that wattage figure...
But that amperage number is scary, it will really melt cables unless they are silly thick!
@@CMDRSweeper Not only can it melt the wires in the cables, they do melt the grids at times also. That likely is going to happen on a long downgrade where you already have one loco that has lost its dynamic braking. As the engineer applies more braking the grids in the loco keep getting hotter and hotter. And then bingo, another set gone. Hopefully the train is under control and the air brakes can keep it that way. If not, time to look for a safe way off the train as you now have a runaway on a downgrade. And that isn't going to end well.
@@CMDRSweeper bigstackd channel melted some locomotive cabling
Hey Mirage. This is such a long shot, but I am working on this exact problem right now. Could we chat?
@@borntobattery For now i got good availability. What are you thinking?
these 10 levels are my favorite videos. Keep up the great work!
a small note on lvl 0:
there are diesel-mechanical locomotives (British shunters for example)
as well as diesel-hydraulic locomotives (both hy.static and hy.dynamic).
Diesel-electric is the most efficient, but there seems to be a debate whether or not diesel-hydraulic might be more reliable and/or cheaper to build.
Very true, we had a few of those in the states... but 99% are diesel electric.
Diesel-hydraulic loco is sometimes used in flooding situations (where diesel-electric might short circuit itself?) over here in Thailand. We have 2 diesel-hydraulic train types mostly for shunting and flooding works
By regulations, all diesel-electric can go through flood up to 5cm of water over the top of rail, whereas diesel-hydraulic can go through flood up to 25cm. Every trains going through floods have a speed limit of 5 km/h
YT link for train footage in flooding in another comment below
Diesel-hydraulic through floods, this one is manufactured by Krupp, and can go through 25cm of water.
ua-cam.com/video/JqD4nWIlI_c/v-deo.html
Another type, made by Henschel, can go through 15cm
@@user-gP4UJA makes sense.
why only 25cm though? electrical systems?
from what I recall, the Krauss-Maffei diesel hydraulics SP and DRGW had did not take well to American railroading practices, namely heavy loads up long grades in harsh climates. I know both CNR & CPR experimented with a Machinenbau-Kiel 900hp diesel hydraulic switcher in the mid 1950's, but they mustn't have been too happy with it as it was sent back to Germany within a year or two.
Good video. As a trucker that used to haul replacement parts for Norfolk Southern....Alternators weigh about 19,000# and pistons, for a v-16, are about the size of 5 gallon buckets.
Something I didn't know until I saw a new locomotive cab at a supplier....the sleeping and bathroom accomodation in the nose of the cab.
Oh man, i knew the alts we're heavy but not that heavy. Neat.
14:00 Fun Fact: The russian M62 locomotives use Roots blowers to get the air moving (0.2 bar) when starting the engine. After that, the turbos automatically take over to raise the intake pressure to 1.2 bar.
a note on the roots style blowers, air actually flows around the screws of the blower, not trough. the screws turn opposite of eachother
Yup, I've since learned that on this video. Had no clue, thanks for the comment :)
@@Hyce777 Yes... A roots blower is really just an external tooth gear pump (like an engine oil pump) with long gears.
Loving this series so far, keep it up!
I was looking forward to this video. So I prepared a nice cigar and a bit of tea that I can spit out in anger onnce I realise you aren't talking about my beloved diesel-Hydraulics.
Lol! I covered what I know and what we have mostly in the states. I've got a buddy who's worked on the rest of the other diesel types and we'll likely do a video on those down the road.
As a railway engineering student, this whole video just helped me so good! Thank you!
Most enjoyable. Learned a lot and I’m looking forward to more videos like these. 😎
I love the oddities that BNSF has floating around. I find them funny, i remember seeing GEVO with the logo saying BSNF one time!
I have had a BSNF and a BNS at my shop before. lol
Thanks, it’s really cool to learn all this information. As someone in the maritime world, I’ve seen the EMD 567 in an old tugboat called Jupiter that was re-engined with one that came out of a WWII landing craft, so it’s cool to see these engines in their “natural habitat” so to speak.
Of course what you got to see here Hyce is the most common locomotives, the diesel electrics.
However Germany have been a little more silly in Europe, you have Diesel Hydraulics and some even have transmissions and you can hear them shift.
Examples of this is the BR 642, Siemens Desiro and the hated Norwegian Rail's Type 93.
The latter a locomotive where you can hear it shift, but was dreaded by passengers as they got the brilliant idea of using a DMU on long haul rail routes.
In the end, the old style of locomotive with consist powered by an EMD prime mover that saw its hayday in the 60s, the EMD 16-645E3B is still running on that route today with an updated consist.
Oh and they did try to replace that Di4 locomotive as well, but in the winter they didn't like tunnels and had a tendency to shut off in the cold, so they were returned to Germany and the old EMDs put back in operation. :D
All of these mechanical videos are fascinating. They give brilliant insight to the complex mechanical workings of trains. However it seems kind of like an episode of Lost, where I've got more questions than answers. I'm interested in all things mechanical and I hope you keep putting out videos involving mechanical systems on trains. Like I said I find them fascinating
So stoked to see this uploaded. Love this series!
Great intro. Learned a lot mostly about the cooling and governor/fueling interaction. I had assumed a simpler system of the governor preventing the engine from over revving and the alternator excitation controlling load.
Dude this video was super informative and entertaining. Thank you so much for posting
Hey Hyce, can you do a video on railroad signaling or railroad yards?
Planning on it :)
@@Hyce777 Can't wait for that one. Even having grown up around this stuff, its always nice to get an even more in depth view on it
Do railyards have lot lizards, like truck stops do?
Yea, I had watched it with my dad who has been a mechanic for the engines for the last 20 out of his 29 years working at the BNSF and the first 9 years he was a traveling mechanic. But also he was in the navy and worked on the ships which most were steam turbine powered. Also the engines and trains you showed he first learned on. But a couple things he pointed out were that you mixed up the place where the fan and radiator was on the war pumpkin. Plus also that the trains that had the electronic control wouldn't have a governor.
Oh yeah, those dash 9's might have a different radiator setup than I drew, huh. And yeah, most of the modern stuff wouldn't have a governor or mechanical fuel rack at all. But, it's less interesting to just talk about the computer just doing it, right? :)
Hope your dad didn't think it was too terribly bad of an explanation for a white hat :P
@@Hyce777 yea he thought it was pretty good for someone who was a foremen
@@proeman6289 I will take that compliment and run :)
@@Hyce777 my dad meant it as a compliment
The two stroke engine is like a big version of the 2 stroke Detroit Diesel engines used in tanks, busses, trucks and even boats from the 1930’s all the way to the 90’s.
Yup!
Actually if you look into it, EMD was originally EMC or Electro-Motive Corporation, before being bought by General Motors and converted to EMD or Electro-Motive Division. GM was also the same parent company of Detroit Diesel when they were still pumping out their 2-strokes (71, 53, 110, 92 etc).
@@ThinBlueWarrior General Motors Diesel was the name stamped into the stamped steel valve covers. Detroit Diesel was in the cast Al valve covers in later models. It later became Detroit Diesel Allison. We had both styles at work. The stamped steel on the 12V71s and the cast ones on the 6-71s.
Anyone interested in seeing some great vids servicing and rebuilding classic Detroit Diesel two-cycle engines? Check out Bus Grease Monkey on UA-cam.
Hey there Hyce,
Love the content. I completely know what you mean with a maintenance job taking way too long. I work aviation, and we refer to them as hanger queens.
Yup... Shop queens are a thing too. Hah!
I used to work for L&S Electric near Minneapolis, MN. At the time we did a ton of rail motors and generators. We used to get A/C traction motors shipped up from BNSF Topeka. Our shop guys would year them down and usually have to cut the stator cap off and restack them, at least in part. Then rewind and rebuild. We did DC motors and generators as well. I did transport. Did an onsite swap of a DC generator on a Red River Railroad loco at a grain silo once. Brought fresh rebuilt generator out and a crane swapped them. We did a bunch of work for Loram and CP as well. Sometimes some other stuff as well. At least for rail. Tons of other stuff as well, like paper mills and power plants.
Don't worry about it, you're good at this.
Really enjoyed learning about the diesel electric locomotives! One thing you might want to look into was the steam turbine locomotive that tried to make a appearance around the same time diesel really started to take over. I know that Norfolk western had a prototype don’t know if it actually got anywhere though
I think UP had a few turbine powered ones as well.
@@pootmahgoots8482 UP had both steam and Gas turbines. The steam ones were a huge disappointment. The gas ones, not so much. C&O had 3 steam turbine electrics before the N&W built their only one. As you had electrical, fire, water and coal all in the same locos, they were maintenance headaches. The three for C&O were to power passenger trains, " The Chessie ", while N&W planned theirs for freight. The N&W looked more conventional as it rode on standard 6 wheel trucks with span bolsters.
UP Steam Turbines: ua-cam.com/video/K9mo9Ald6EI/v-deo.html
C&O Steam Turbines: ua-cam.com/video/HPaJKdBzwZs/v-deo.html
N&W Jawn Henry: ua-cam.com/video/5n0VuljeSM0/v-deo.html
In Sweden there were 3 M3T steam turbines in regular service on the TGOJ line, they pulled a lot of iron ore and they needed the constant force of a turbine to not rip the coupler off. And to honour the memory and history of the railway the last ore train was pulled by a turbine. After that the line was taken over by the state. ua-cam.com/video/Z9ZcLUbQg14/v-deo.html
They still use steam (and gas) turbine electric locomotives to this day, some even run in water power!
They just do not put the generator on the actual locomotive and use long wires to connect them both!
:-P :-b
I have went to school for auto mech. It was only 2 semesters of it during high school. You done a great job of explaining a diesel motor from what I know. I took the class just to be able to wrench on my stuff.
I needed this video for so long, i am a huge huge huge fan of trains and aspecially EMD desiel locomotives, because its the first locomotive i have seen in my life, and to this day i am still thrilled by seeing a train in action.
I love the refresher. Even though I have no love for the things I once thought of be coming a Railroad Engineer.
Whew…boy Howdy! Your explanation for the exciter, is very simple, I’ll give you that. Bless you…you tried. Alternators, Generators and Exciters were my specialties in the Navy, so I appreciate the fantastic explanation you gave. Again, I bow to your effort!
Very, very simple indeed. I'm not an electrician, nor would I claim to be :D I'm thankful for the folks like you who actually know it in detail.
Excellent presentation! I never realized desal -electric locomotives were so complicated! Great job Hyce!
Some additional info on blowers: The EMD engines have a turbo-supercharger, and it's an example of one of the less common meanings of the phrase. Depending on era and application systems called "turbo-supercharger" can be any of the following:
A) A supercharger 'feeding' a turbocharger, the air is compressed by each in series.
B) A supercharger and turbocharger in parallel. The super feeds the engine at low RPM when the turbo isn't spinning fast enough to be effective. At higher RPM the turbo takes over feeding the engine and the supercharger is unclutched so as not to waste engine power running it. While turbos and supers complement each other well this arrangement is, in my opinion, overly complicated and an inefficient usage of weight/space. (Then again, I love the Napier Nomad and turbo-compound engines in general so what do I know).
C) A centrifugal compressor driven mechanically with engine power. This usage is frustratingly common in American aviation literature from the 30s and 40s. Not heresy on its own but distinctly unhelpful, especially with engines that also have exhaust driven compressors.
D) The EMD! This is a centrifugal compressor that can operate as a supercharger or a turbocharger and arguably counts as both. I call this arrangement a super-turbocharger ostensibly to avoid confusion with A or B but mostly because it sounds cool.
Initially the centrifugal compressor is driven by the engine (as the author notes in video, at a gear ratio of 18:1). Centrifugal types work best when they spin really fast! An air molecule is drawn in and picks up a lot of kinetic energy when it gets whacked by the impeller blade. It flys off to the edge of the circle and enters an area of the unit called the 'diffuser'. You can think of it like a funnel or a que line. The air molecule runs into a crowd of other molecules and all of them have high kinetic energy and the diffuser gets them all moving in the same direction and in a somewhat orderly fashion. Another way to put it is that the diffuser uses geometry to convert a gas's kinetic energy (velocity) into potential energy (pressure). (This is further proof of math being effectively witchcraft. Geometry is especially sorcerous)
You may ask, 'whats the point of having a compressor at all? A blower of any type is extra mechanical complexity, is it really worth it? The majority of engines commonly encountered by an average person don't have a turbo or a supercharger; they're naturally aspirated. They work just fine with all natural air just like god intended.'
First of all, never be satisfied with the way god put the universe together: it's suboptimal and can be engineered to be much better. Just one example: thermodynamics has "free energy" as strictly illegal and you can hope to "break even" but that's mostly optimism. Whenever energy changes from one form to another there will be losses. In a closed system entropy only goes up. So you have to be efficient when dealing with energy and heat.
That's where superchargers and turbo chargers come in. Engines are heavy, you have to haul the weight around with you and they only provide so much power. Forcing more air into the engine let's you get more power out of it for minimal additional weight. The forced induction can be either 'positive displacement' or compression. Positive displacement is less efficient, but it's useful at all RPMs. The work it does is linearly proportional to RPM. Using a rotary compressor, usually centrifugal, is more efficient but the work it does rises exponentially with engine RPM. So at higher speed it's amazing but at lower speeds it doesn't do much. Superchargers are usually positive displacement and driven mechanically. Turbos are usually centrifugal compressors and powered by an exhaust driven turbine. (That's not free BTW. Nothing in this universe is free. But harnessing exhaust gasses to drive a turbine is pretty efficient.)
Thanks for the brilliant comment adding way more insight than i had. :)
@@Hyce777 You're welcome :) I'm happy to contribute; moreso, I feel it's appropriate to offer what knowledge I can to supplement a great video. I'm an academic and for the most part I haven't learned from practical experience but by voraciously consuming the published works of those who have. Or other academics who have already done the hard work of research and correlation. (Their work that is; academics don't consume each other to gain their power.)
On the topic of forced induction I would recommend fellow UA-camr Greg's Airplanes And Automobiles and his excellent video "Turbo Vs Supercharging in WWII Aircraft". A lot of my insight comes from that, and from going through the NACA reports that Greg based the video on.
@@GRudolf94to piggyback off of this comment, it got the name of turbo-supercharger because it was a supercharger that was turbine-driven off of exhaust gasses rather than mechanically linked to the engine. One of the largest issues the USAAF had with their early turbochargers was that the turbine blades were at risk of _melting_ while in use and causing loss of power.
the EMD 645 uses a centrifugal turbo charger that is gear driven until the exhaust force drives the turbo faster than the centrifugal clutch on the turbo drive gear, at that point the exhaust takes over and drives the turbo, a 2 stroke diesel requires a forced air supply to operate as there is no vacuum on the intake in a 2 stroke diesel
This is super neat! I will be a mechanical intern at BNSF this summer and this video is very helpful to someone new to trains.
Good luck! I didn't intern but I did the MT program. Have fun :)
Oh man! I commented on one of your other videos about this very subject. You have a goldmine of great content. I'm going to binge watch your videos!
Very informative video that was well communicated ! Appreciate the analogy and explanations of how these systems relate to the more common things we use and understand. Thank you !
My man, this is one of the most awesome videos on UA-cam. Well done sir!!!!!
37:44 those holes aren't actually for balancing the flywheel, they're for 'barring over' the engine (rotating it with by sticking a lever in the hole and pulling on it) The balancing holes are usually on the inside face towards the engine.
Oh really? huh, we had bar-over machines that grabbed the ring gear. That's neat. Cheers for the correction.
@@Hyce777 The tool that grabs the ring gear is probably a bunch more ergonomic to work with though. 👍
@@AlexanderBurgers sounds like a 2 (or more) man job
0:51 yeah, GEs do that sometimes.
This video is very informative to me & I actually have spent the last 14 years working for a supplier of these companies lol. Heck we even built an engine rollover for BNSF a couple years ago... The mock-up 4 cylinder is interesting - There's a decent chance we actually made that one as we've done quite a few of those for GE/Wabtec , including all the ones in their Learning Center at the old GE factory in Erie...
We also made a GE turbo cutaway like the one you have pictured, except ours was done on a 45 degree, while still keeping the shafts, disc & impeller fully rotational like the one you showed.
on Wabtec's battery powered loco they have so much battery that they are planning to use the frame of the cab as the mounting point for the batteries because they have it so jam packed with battery.
Jeeze. That's cool to hear your experience!
@@Hyce777 lol. We've been supplying GE/Wabtec for like 30 some years. We're working with Progress Rail on some other projects as well & have done work directly for NS, BNSF, Canadian Pacific, and some railroads.. Lots of interesting things have come through our shop over the years.
I love this, great job Hyce. I’m enthralled with your industries engine design. I wish we could pull liner/valve assemblies and swap em independently. That’s awesome. That and heavy mining trucks, even though they have a similarly sized engine, they’re all high pressure common rail injection 4 strokes with after treatment systems. Anything 2 stroke that we see are Detroit Diesel dinosaurs 😂 I really enjoyed the video. Thank you sir!
Detroit Diesel and the EMD engines are quite literally the same design by GM, so yeah, dinosaurs. :P
The GE stuff is common rail high pressure as well, also 4 stroke, but still w/ replaceable power assemblies.
@@Hyce777 I’d be in Heaven. I have to remove the engine in the field, load it in the truck, take it to the shop to rebuild then go put it back where it belongs.
I saw a video recently about the diesels that power large ships. They are designed so that the piston/cylinder assemblies can be replaced while the engine is running and the ship underway. Absolutely amazing.
@@LandNfan whaaaa? How the hell do they do that?
I shouldn't have been so surprised that you had a picture of something 'Santa Fe style' at the "Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Railway co." and yet ... 47:19 ...
here in the UK we actually did have diesel trains that used big shafts to run the wheels as opp[osed to a main alt and motors
We did have a few in the states too, it's just that's 1 out of 10000.
From what I learned from this EMD's seem simpler & beefy, while GE's are more the complex model of Loco
Yes, that's accurate.
@@Hyce777 EMD supremacy
I repaired EMDs for 7 years and GE for 5.. I found EMD to be more complicated honestly. The SD70MAC has one advanced traction system. Not an easy system to diagnose.
@@krakenwoodfloorservicemcma5975 oh Lord. Yes. The higher power EMD stuff is an electrical nightmare, as far as I can tell. The EMDEC system... Yeah. We had all kinds of problems with those and we would've been SOL without our rep from EMD.
EMD's and their smaller cousins... Detroit Diesel on-highway truck diesels were a brilliant design. But 2-cycle engines have nasty exhaust emissions and worse fuel economy.
excellent presentation for my simple mind, good enough to watch all the way through, thank you
24:36 Do you lose field diverts on those if you set a pair of motors to cut out? I'm sure remember hearing someone mention the 50 on the line I used to volunteer on having a couple of motors isolated, which I recall somehow affected the diverts and caused it to behave different. At least it ran though.
Good question, I am not 100% certain. You definitely lose pulling power as you cut motors out.
Woohoo, I've totally climbed on top of the old signal things that used to go over the tracks (probably still do in some places but they've changed them for smaller signals around here) and so I've seen those big fans on the top of the train from above. Pretty cool! I used to sit up there and read, plus watch the trains when they've come by.
Really enjoyed learning how GEs and the GPs engine configurations are different, I knew they were, but not the details.
Yeah, GE's load REALLY slow in comparison to EMD's. A buddy of mine told me he put a unit in run 8 from sitting at 6. About 4 miles down the line, the motor was STILL loading up. EMD's load up just about as fast as you can notch 'em.
Also, plenty of the older EMD's with the 567's used the main gen as a starter motor. GE wasn't the first to do that!
Not surprised on that fact! Interesting. I was surprised the one time I've run an EMD just how quick it set off.
Worst loading GE we ever had on Conrail was the U28B. Fortunately we only had two of them. I got one as a trailing unit on a 120 car train of empty hopper cars going out to trap rock roughly 17 miles west of West Springfield yard with a GP38-2. I sat with the Gp isolated for over 6 minutes while the GE ever so slowly accelerating from idle then put the GP back on line, it was my first train as an engineer. West Springfield yard had a 1 percent grade heading west to CP 100. When we got to trap rock we had to pick up 60 loads of trap rock going to Selkirk, New York. It took over an hour to get that Uboat to full throttle. I complained heavily about it to Selkirk fuel pad Foreman about it’s performance. He shopped it.. had the same engine several months later only this time it responded with black smoke and loaded up much faster than before. I asked the foreman at the Selkirk shop what was wrong with it to load that way and was told “ nothing was wrong with the governor, that’s simply the way GE avoided black smoke was by crippling how fast the engine loaded. Once you got to the 5th notch or higher after they reset the governor the turbo kicked in and the smoke disappeared. All other GE’s while they loaded slower than an EMD we’re about 10 second behind an EMD in loading up in response to a higher throttle notch setting. When the dash 7 GE came out the slower loading GE became a thing of the past. The GE B23-7 became my favorite switcher engine after my first time using it. The trainmen could stand vertically on the bottom step without a problem, it had a bigger air compressor and was quieter compared to an EMD SW-1500. It also weighted more compared to an SW-1500, had a full bathroom and a better cab fully electric cab heater. I showed up for my third trick switcher and the B23-7 had all the windows and doors left open with the cab heat off an 2 feet + of snow in the cab. I closed all the windows and doors except the engineer’s window, turned the cab heat on low fan and 35 minutes later I was dry as a bone in the cab and comfortable. All the snow melted inside that 35 minutes.
Food for thought
@@james5360 That's an awesome story. Thanks for sharing this! Really gives more insight on the how and why.
With steam locomotives, it's almost all a "feel through the seat of your pants", you can really get a much more clear cut answer with diesels. You know more of what you're getting into and what to expect.
Talk about throttle handles. When I hired out on the Soo Line in 1968 I was placed on the Eastern Division Board at Marquette, MI but worked on the Old DSS&A #40 & 41 working out of Superior, WI to Ewen, MI. Soo Line had leased two engines from the LS&I #2500 & 2301 (GE U25c AND U23c) The throttles had half notches and an unusual throttle handle that was at least two feet long. Later when I was promoted, the first switch engine I worked on at Shoreham Yard in Mpls., MN was engine 319. A Fairbanks and Morris H12-44, that engine didn't have a reverser. It had a handle with a U-shaped slot. One slot was forward and the other reverse. I had no idea which was which, If I remember right the bottom slot was forward and the top reverse. I has a fifty percent chance to get it right the first time. Luckily I did. Those LS&I engines and the Soo 800's (GE U30c's)they were the best to stay warm in the winter as they had a slightly pressurized cab as far as heat went. Also, not to be picky, but the control stand has a whistle handle, not a horn handle. Railroad instructions give whistle signals not horn signals. I once had a whistle handle break off during a road trip. Jack Peterson hogheaddotnet
Cheers Jack! That's cool. I'd wager it was one of those holdover terms like the fireman's emergency brake valve. That's neat, hadn't heard about those styles of control levers!
Great job. I was in search of some detailed understanding of these locomotive's workings, hoping for a better overview of them operationally. You did it. Thanks
About how you power the Main Alternator I maintained aircraft alternators and I am quite familiar with them. From my understanding, newer locomotive alternators and aircraft alternators work essentially the same. You have 3 stages, with both Rotor (rotating electric parts) and Stator (stationary electric parts). Stage 1 Rotor starts it with 'self excitation' (no outside electricity) and produces more power on the Stage 1 Stator. Then power goes to Stage 2 Stator, Stage 2 Rotator receives this power and boost it. This goes to the Stage 3 Rotor, Stage 3 Stator receives this power and boost it again. The output of the alternator is controlled by changing the amount of power going from Stage 1 to Stage 2.
Yes, the traction motors are powered by magnets and turning torque only, making electricity. No outside generators needed. Cool stuff.
That sounds about right from what I've heard with the GE style main alts. The EMD's still have the separate generator for supplying the excitement, though maybe not the newest tier 4 locos. Thanks for the comment :)
I have a Ho scale C44-9w in the good old war bonnet scheme. The war pumpkin looks pretty cool. I might model that one. Very informative video too Hyce!
BNSF should paint all the locomtives to the "War Pumkin" scheme. It looks good.
To date my favorite locomotives are the draper tapers. HR616, c40-8m SD40-2F and my top favorite being the SD60F
In a car, the difference between a generator and an alternator is just how the AC produced by the windings gets straightened out into DC. The generator used a rotating switch called a commutator, which being on the same shaft as the windings means it was synchronized; this straightened the current out (rectified it into a single direction). But a big, heavy current switch had mechanical wear and was expensive to build and maintain. An alternator used solid state diodes to do the same thing cheaper and more reliably. So instead of communtators wearing down, you have diodes blowing out. Congratulatins!
Anything having to do with excitation of the windings at start up or the simple reliance on residual magnetism remaining in the iron, or the use of solid state control circuits instead of electromechanical relays flapping around to regulate the output are just details of design and the improvements of time rather than any differences between the two. Any time you scale up to monster equipment, you are going to have little devices needed to get the big devices started, e.g. diesel semis.
Oh neat! I hadn't heard that before. That makes sense. Thanks for the comment :)
Very informative. Learned a lot of stuff that I'd been curious about.
Being a bit pedantic, "regenerative braking" means using the power generated to either charge a battery to use later or other trains on the line through the catenaries or third rail, so it'd only apply to electric locomotives/EMUs as far as trains go. It's not practical to do so on those really long stretches of track where only one train is in an electrified block. Without another train to draw the electricity, the dynamic braking fails and a backup resistor grids are needed to take on the load. This is why even trains that can do regenerative braking tend to have resistor grids on them.
Good job explaining it all, really like your locomotive video’s, keep going!
The quality of your videos is great! Thanks for making good content
35:25 the GE is the same. The "front" of the engine is in the back of the frame like the EMD. They just mount the turbo at the front of the engine, which puts the exhaust duct in the back too.
@ 14:46 I like the 710X16 and my favorite is progress 1010X12 it's a 4 stroke and rated at 4500 HP, they both have a maximum RPM of 1500, the 710 is 183 liters and the 1010 is 198 liters
The 710 can do 1500 rpm? Really? I only ever saw them with max RPM's around 900.
Never got to see a 1010 in person.
So I looked up what 1000 amps would do to you apparently it would vaporize a human
Great video. I learned much more about Diesel Engines than I already knew. I do have two comments though. When I went to electronics school in the '70s, we learned about DC generators and AC generators. Both were called generators. I believe that when the automotive industry switched from DC to AC generators, they wanted a "cool" name to call this new component and created the name Alternator for their new AC generators. Two is that you said several times that it was water and not coolant then later you called it coolant. Since the purpose of the water is to cool the engine, it is coolant. We just usually mix antifreeze with water for car coolant. Plain water used to cool an engine, is still coolant. Again, great video.
There is a slight technical difference to alternators vs. generators but you're probably right they wanted a fancy name. And, fair enough on the coolant. Totally right, but I wanted to point out it's not the same as buying antifreeze. :)
Great video, about the electrical aspect. A basic overview of charging systems, obviously the locomotive has more complicated aspects, should be a simple topic. I feel like you when it comes to forgetting more than I learned. Feels that way but it's not realistic. The basics of it is pretty cut and dry and simple to figure out. Learning about the differences between half, full and three-phase goes a long way. Rectifiers, voltage regulators and the concept of fielding coils too. Motors are a whole different topic in my opinion. Induction as a whole, in my opinion again, can be hard to wrap your mind around. Loved the video.
3:28 hey that's in my daily driver a bit hard to see out the car tho
edit: very good vid talking about the engines i enjoyed
Hyce That is a GOOD video! Well done ! Brian
The sample turbo is oriented such that the compressor stage is facing the camera. The turbine stage (that which receives the expanding exhaust gases) is at the back.
The "war pumpkin" looks like an employment opportunity for sure. The EMD blocks are a welded fabrication and one can weld on one even while it is running to keep it limping along if it has a bad leak. The little GM two strokes however, had cast blocks. The disadvantage was that welded fabrications have a higher expansion coefficient when heated and higher vibration characteristics. The master connecting rod idea was used on radial aircraft engines and explains the characteristic lopping sound in the GEs. My friend's VW had natural magnetism in the field windings and regulated by current through them as well. That was all DC so I missed your point about AC being needed to control the field to control final output. Anyway, the natural magnetism died and I showed him how to polarize the regulator to make his battery light go off until we could pull the generator out and take it to the electric shop. An 8V-71 Detroit (similar to a miniature EMD two stroke) I worked on had one injector rack freeze up. The other seven injectors were frozen with it because of the linkage they were all connected to that went to the governor. I completely loosened up the adjustment on the injector that was locked up and the diver got the semi back to the shop on seven cylinders. Yep, tappet wrenches were a thing you really had to have 40 years ago. Please go into more about the electric. AC has induction caused by cycles that allow transformers to work as an example. Is that partly why alternators are used? Is AC to DC done with great big diodes? Did improvements in semiconductor design allow builders to get away from DC generators? Are AC traction motors, not having brushes, a type of big shaded pole motor? How do they control the rotational speed of those big beasts?
Great questions David - definitely some I'm going to have find answers for myself :) I'm a mechanical engineer, and I know a -little- about the electrical side, but not that much...
On locomotives, the AC-DC conversion was done in the early (1990’s) AC-traction locos by Gated-Turned-Off (GTO) thyristor, though they have since been replaced by Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs). Also, generators produce D.C. electricity, while alternators produce AC. The reason why locomotive manufacturers changed from generators to alternators is because as locomotives become more powerful, they produce more electricity, and the generator had to get bigger to handle the bigger load on the generator, which resulted in a feedback loop as the generator continuously got bigger as the engines got more powerful, which eventually got to a point that the generator was too big to fit on the frame. Therefore, locomotive manufacturers went to alternators and then used a bridge rectifier to convert the AC electricity to DC electricity.
What is found on modern diesel-electric locomotives are 3-phase self-exciting alternators. They can have permanent magnets used at start-up (self-starting), or supply the start-up exciting current from an external source, like a battery or other small generator, but once running, it generates it's own exciting current. This exciting current goes through the electromagnets, but only if the Generator Field switch is on. Of course, more current in the electromagnets equals more induced current in the stator which results in more resistance force in the rotor. That's why the need of huge powerful diesel engines.
Now, the alternator's AC has a frequency. The problem is this frequency varies with the rpm of the engine, and the traction motors (3-phase AC induction motors) need other frequency in order to spin, as they carry the huge load of the train. Frequency gives rpm which costs torque which means less tractive effort. Simply put, you cannot tell them what frequency to run, they ask for it. So, to give them what they need, the AC is rectified into DC via rectifiers, which are usually mounted on the alternator. Doing this, you lose the frequency physical property of the current. The DC is now inverted to AC using inverters. These inverters can supply the AC at whatever frequency the motors want. There may be one inverter for each motor (GE) or one for each truck (EMD) and they are located on the left side "box" behind the cab.
4-Stroke: Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow
Pretty much. XD
@Hyce I think I found the WARPUMPKIN (BNSF 4729) on the Flagstaff, AZ Virtual railfan cam yesterday in a light power move.
I'm glad it remains it's beautiful self :)
oh, so THAT's what that giant grill on the top of some diesels is for. I wouldn't have guessed it for braking.
Thank you for the most informative video on how a diesel locomotive works. I learned a lot.
Great lecture. Thanks. Do continue with your thought to do collaborative videos with technicians and such. Consider videos modeled on automotive videos that compare ‘brands’ from the techs’ POV. I also would like to see a an actual teardown of a locomotive in maintenance. I otherwise don’t get to see this kind of thing that was maybe ‘all in a days work’ for you.
That was really cool. It will take some time to go through the comments -- you didn't mention the engine exhaust. Going to look for the steam locomotive video -- I hope it's half as interesting as this was. Respect.
Cheers Randy. Yeah, I realized after the fact I didn't really cover fuel or the exhaust - maybe for a short followup video.
lots of interesting info, thanks!
Small note from marine applications. EMD does produce 8cyl engines, which is what it looks like is on display in your pictures. I dont think theyre that common in rail applications however. Out vessels have 8-710s and 12-710s. Those engines are new and replaced the older, but in my opinion far cooler, Fairbanks Morse OP 38d 1/8. However the more research i do into the design and operation of the EMDs, they're growing on me. Edit: A possible reason for the EMDs traditional electric start is due to the various other applications for the engine, such as the marine industry. I know our engines are fitted with a compressed air starter, as I'm sure are other vessels. I am, however, unsure of the other uses for GE engines so my theory may not hold up. Just an idea!
For sure, that would not be surprising. I know the EMD engines have ended up in all sorts of uses. Always neat to hear about that. And yeah, they make 8's, 12's, 16's, and the used to make even 20 cylinder variants. The picture I was drawing on is actually a cut down 20 cylinder engine (the PA's are marked 1, 9, 10, and 20).
Also note on those EMDs that because they are 2-cycle, that clutch driven Turbo is mandatory or you would never get ANY pressure to the crankcase because you'd never get it to start in the first place.
If we could switch the right side engineer console position with the conductor left position, you basically have the 18 wheel OTR truck driver setup. If the diesel electric setup could be adapted to a COE design then I could see the diesel electric setup being useful in an EV setup for commercial trucking application.
The air pressure on the crankcase is actually very high, much more than you are stating in the video, around 15 PSI minimum, and up to 35 PSI when the turbo is really working - say at 45 + MPH. This is why the engine can burn it's own oil and "Run Away". That is why some have a block off for the air intake, so they can stop the engine that is running on engine oil.
The 15 PSI is required to quickly push air into the cylinders, and also push out the exhaust air through the tiny exhaust valves.
Knowing how many cubic feet of air that is going into and out of the brakes is very important. One time the third car of a train had a block on the that car and prevented application of the brakes rearward of the third car. This caused the train to plow into the station, and into the control booth, with no loss of life on the train, but the locomotive soon ended up in the basement of the train depot.
Very nice video. Looks like you put a lot of work into it. I, for one, appreciate all the work.
Can't wait for you to do one on Electric Trains, these are incredibly well done.
Cheers :) we'll stick with things that I actually know, so electric locomotives will be... eventually. lol!
When I worked in the gulf our dive ship had 2 Wartsila mains. I'll never forget when the engineer took me down to watch routine engine maintenance cleaning the carbon at sea.
They had a valve that introduced room temperature water. I'm assuming it injected a fine mist of cool water, somewhere around the turbochargers.
It was quite interesting intentionally injecting cool water into hot running diesel engine, just seemed like catastrophe wasn't too far away.
The EMD turbos * have * to be clutch driven on the low end because of the 2-stroke thing, they absolutely need the pressure differential to work at all.
4-stroke work just fine at atmospheric pressure and can happily wait for the boost to build and do without the extra complexity.
Do you think it would be possible to power a locomotive with a Stirling engine? I recently found out about them, and it seems an interesting concept. They are mostly low wattage, but it seems like the technology could still be further developed, and it might be able to make full use of the energy from dynamic braking, since it runs on heat.
Interesting. But when you need to kill power, you can't just swing the heat out of the way. Easily. It's something to explore. It all comes down to economics. If it could increase profits, it'll happen. If not, it just becomes a cool engineering experiment unfortunately.
@@slowpoke96Z28 I think a solution could be to then charge batteries with the slow down, then they could help it accelerate faster during the slower rev up
Good video, can’t wait for the videos on direct drive diesels, and diesel hydraulic engines! 😁🤓
As you increase the power setting on the engine throttle, the engine speed goes up, the output frequency to the drive motors increases, and the voltage also goes up, as much as 3000 VAC on some models, but both the frequency and voltage drop as less power is needed to pull the locomotive. So at 100 RPM, the frequency is very low, say 20 hz, and the voltage is also pretty low, say 300 - 400 volts, so the motor is not hit with the full 3,000 volts until the frequency is much higher and the output amperage is at the most.
Great video, nice job !
I love the way you laugh at the BROKE stuff : ) great job on this video!
Amazing video! Thank you very much for the explanation. I enjoyed it.
So I am not aware if there is, but to my knowledge two stroke diesels cannot run without positive inlet pressure which is why you have those blowers or clutch driven turbos. These engines solely rely on the intake pressure to drive the spent gasses out the exhaust.
Fun fact: you call them blowers, because that´s actually what they do, they blow air. The positive pressure they make is dependent on your valve size, how much air your engine consumes and the rate you spin them at, but that´s getting into hot rod territory.
The air flow meter shows just that, flow. It will show when air is "moving" in the brake pipe. When the system is fully charged with no leaks or actuation, no flow. It is useful to see leaks in brake pipe
The War Pumpkin is definitely a blursed locomotive in appearance (though for cursed I'd look at the KCS Bicentennial scheme)
Yikes, just looked that up.
@ 17:21 2 stroke engines with intake ports NEED forced induction or they will not run the turbos are clutched because they will not work at very low RPM, they are essentially blowers rather than turbos just like you said the 4 stroke has poppet valves for the intake side also so they can run naturally aspirated whereas the 2 strokes cannot, you can blow a turbo on a GE and it will still run.
I'm not trying to embarrass you I just have some knowledge that I like to share and thank you for the corrections.
The best way I found out to explain a 4 stroke without big words is Suck, Squeeze, Bang, Blow. Yes it makes you smile but you for sure won’t forget it
Very accurate! Haha
I like the comment "This is a lot bigger than what you could put on your muscle car" because some absolute mad lad actually tried it.