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| Re: Early Conrail on NEC VIDEO (678075) | |||
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Re: Early Conrail on NEC VIDEO |
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Posted by WillD on Sun Sep 7 21:41:00 2008, in response to Re: Early Conrail on NEC VIDEO, posted by Dave on Sun Sep 7 21:19:47 2008. It was a GM6C. At the time it looked like Gonerail was going to keep their electric freight ops, perhaps even electrifying the West Shore line from North Bergen to Selkirk. Western railroads like UP, BN, and AT&SF were looking at electrifying their Powder River coal basin routes, or the LA-Chicago main in the case of the Santa Fe. UP actually strung several test installations of constant tension wire on their main line through Nebraska and Wyoming to test its resistance to weather (supposedly there are photos of a dead F unit with a pantograph on the roof which was towed back and forth through the test segments). The GM6C and the more powerful GM10B was a demonstrator for a new series of locomotives built to equip these proposed electric freight lines. The GM6C was supposedly quite similar to the AEM7 in that it used an ASEA designed traction system and DC traction motors. The GM10B was a 10,000hp unit, but used series wound AC induction motors of a type similar to the old P5, GG1, and such and thus had rather poor starting tractive effort compared to DC designs. In both cases the locomotive was designed to maximize the use of compatible components with standard diesel locomotives, to the point where the GM6C was basically just an electrically powered SD40-2 with 6000hp and E77 traction motors.GE developed the E60C at the same time to fulfill the same percieved market growth. BN supposedly allocated numbers for an order of E60CFs but scrapped the electrification scheme before the units were built. The only E60Cs for freight went to the Black Mesa and Lake Powell in Arizona and New Mexico, and the design served as the basis of Amtrak's E60CP.  
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