Electro-Motive E-Units and F-Units

The Illustrated History of North America's Favorite Locomotives

Brian Solomon

• Publisher: Voyageur Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781610597746
• Topic: Tecnología e ingeniería
• Subtopic: Transporte ferroviario

Blending automotive manufacturing and styling techniques with state-of-the-art diesel-electric technologies, General Motors' Electro-Motive Division conceived and marketed America's first commercially successful road diesels: the fabulous E-Units and F-Units. This illustrated companion to Voyageur Press' Alco Locomotives (2009) and Baldwin Locomotives (2010) is the most comprehensive history of the most recognizable locomotives ever built. Beginning with 1937 debut of the fast and powerful E-Units designed for long-haul passenger service, author Brian Solomon treats readers to a wonderful array of archival imagery while explaining the impact the locomotives made on the locomotive market and the railroad industry.

CHAPTER ONE
E - UNITS

Illinois Central E6A No. 4001, built by EMD in November 1941, lays over at Indianapolis Union Station in October 1967. New York Central and IC operated run-throughs on Cincinnati-Indianapolis-Chicago (Central Station) passenger trains. Originally lettered for IC’s Panama Limited, No. 4001 was among the last of the early Es in regular service and survived until the early 1970s. Jay Williams

The prehistory of the Electro-Motive E-unit involves the early application of internal-combustion–powered railcars on American railways. Technology that emerged to power a light self-propelled single car was gradually developed into a powerful high-speed locomotive. This took many years and involved a variety of technological innovations and the talents of key inventive minds. Lightly traveled branch lines posed problems for American railways in the early years of the twentieth century. Solving this problem presented an unrivaled opportunity for builders. It was their solutions that contributed to the technological revolution that ultimately changed and saved the U.S. railroad industry.

Branch lines suffered from relatively high operational costs, yet were needed to feed traffic to main lines. When competition emerged—first from cheaply built interurban electric rail, and later from improved roads and motor vehicles—railroads needed to cut costs to preserve branch-line traffic. This spurred a niche industry building lightweight, self-propelled railcars for branch-line work. Dozens of companies built railcars in a variety of designs, including small steam-powered cars and cars with internal-combustion engines. Among the designs were cars powered by primitive gasoline engines coupled to mechanical transmissions, though the most successful cars were those that combined gasoline engines with electric-traction technology similar to that applied to electric interurbans and rapid-transit trains.

In the postwar period, Electro-Motive’s E-units emerged as the most common American passenger locomotives, taking the place of war-weary Pacifics, Hudsons, and Northerns. Santa Fe, Kansas City Southern, and Frisco E-units congregate at Kansas City Union Station, one of several key Midwest passenger hubs. Richard Neumiller

General Electric was the early leader in this field. During World War I, it paved the way for diesel-electric locomotive development a decade later. GE’s engineers refined electrical control systems as well as diesel engine designs. However, its initial diesel foray proved premature and commercially unsuccessful, leading the company to exit both the railcar and diesel engine businesses before either technology had the opportunity to mature. While this did little to further GE’s bottom line, it was significant because it established the knowledge pool for these new technologies. Many of GE’s key engineers, including Richard Dilworth, went on to refine gas-electric technology, ultimately developing commercially successful road diesels in the form of Electro-Motive’s E- and F-units.

ELECTRO-MOTIVE EMERGES

The optimism of the early 1920s provided fertile ground for entrepreneur Harold L. Hamilton to pick up where GE and other large companies had left off. Hamilton’s experience with railroad technology and the railroad industry in general, and as a successful highway motor truck salesman, gave him insights to building a thriving business as a railway motor designer. Hamilton and his business partner, Paul Turner, formed the Electro-Motive Engineering Corporation on August 31, 1922 (soon renamed the Electro-Motive Company). Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Hamilton recruited experts in gas-electric car design, among them GE’s Richard Dilworth. By using unconventional sales and production techniques, Electro-Motive rapidly established its gas-electric railcar design business. Instead of engaging customers in the design process and constructing the cars itself, as was the industry standard, EMC engineered standard designs then coordinated subcontractors to manufacture its engines, other internal components, and the cars themselves. Most of its engines were supplied by the Winton Engine Company, also of Cleveland, while electrical components were typically supplied by GE.

By clever design and careful refinement of a standardized product, EMC lowered engineering costs while producing a more dependable product. During the 1920s, it produced low-cost and highly reliable cars that enhanced the company’s reputation, while perfection of gas-electric technology put it on the path toward development of mainline diesel-electric locomotives.

EMC’s earliest cars were small and intended to run singly. As a result they were powered by a relatively low-output Winton gasoline engine rated at just 175 horsepower. Gradually, larger and more powerful cars were built; some of the later cars were capable of hauling a trailer or two, or even a few freight cars in mixed-train service. The power and versatility of EMC cars were ideal for branch-line service where traffic conditions might vary from day to day but weren’t heavy enough to warrant application of a steam locomotive with its associated high costs. Among EMC’s noteworthy designs was Santa Fe M-190, a progressive articulated-type intended to haul up to five passenger coaches. Significantly, this was powered by a pair of Winton 900-horsepower V-12 distillate engines that set a technological precedent for the articulated streamlined trains developed in the early 1930s. This arrangement, characterized by pairs of engines, foretold the diesel-electric E-unit locomotives in the later 1930s.

Electro-Motive’s independence was cut short by several related events. With the onset of the Great Depression, traffic declined and orders for new equipment dried up. Already on a weak footing, branch lines suffered badly; investment in these lines all but evaporated after the 1929 stock market crash. The Depression would have doomed EMC and its achievements to obscurity if General Motors hadn’t stepped in. The automotive giant made a bold investment in 1930, first by acquiring the Winton Engine Company, then, upon further investigation, deciding to take the Electro-Motive Company under its wing a few months later. As a GM subsidiary, the railcar builder was renamed Electro-Motive Corporation.

Whether GM had a preconceived plan for developing the diesel-electric locomotive or if it stumbled into this role by accident has been the subject of some debate, yet these acquisitions did supply the talent GM needed to move into locomotive manufacturing. And during hard economic times, GM had the necessary capital to make diesel locomotive development a reality.

DIESEL DEVELOPMENTS

The convergence of significant technological advances and new manufacturing techniques made the mass-produced diesel road locomotive a practicality. At the same time, streamlining proved a novel means of showing off these advances. Gaining rapid acceptance of diesel-electric technology was as important in its widespread application as was development of the technology itself. General Motors’ path to success was its ability to put together all the pieces faster and better than anyone else.

By 1930, Rudolf Diesel’s compression engine had been around for 35 years. Its high efficiency and great power potential made for an attractive locomotive powerplant. Yet various early attempts to build a successful “oil-electric” (as the diesel locomotive was often described in its early years) had fallen short. Part of the problem was with the early diesel engines’ requirement for a heavy cast-iron block to contain high-compression forces. This led to a high weight-to-horsepower ratio—typically 60 pounds per horsepower—which made design of a high-horsepower locomotive impractical.

Crucial technological advances changed engine design during the late 1920s and early 1930s. With an eye on advanced submarine propulsion, the U.S. Navy encouraged intensive research and development that accelerated domestic engine designs, while comparable programs in Great Britain and Germany yielded similar results. Among the breakthroughs were new metallurgy and new welding techniques allowing for exceptionally strong, lightweight steel alloys, greatly lowering the weight of the metal needed to make a high-powered diesel engine and cutting weight-to-horsepower ratios by nearly two-thirds. Meanwhile, the perfection of precision-machined high-pressure fuel-injection pumps and multiple-orifice fuel injectors greatly simplified engine design, eliminating the need for high-pressure fuel lines with external fuel delivery apparatus that had complicated earlier engine designs.

General Motors’ Charles F. Kettering directed research and worked with Winton’s engineers in the development of a state-of-the-art, lightweight, high-output, two-stroke diesel prime mover. The December 1937 Railway Mechanical Engineer hinted at General Motors’ intent, quoting Kettering as saying “We do have the greatest confidence in the world that the Diesel can be developed into a most important industry.”

GM’s design choice was unconventional. Although two-stroke internal-combustion engine designs—which accomplish the intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust of fuel in two piston stokes—had been around for decades, most commercial diesel engines used the more common four-stroke design (separate strokes for intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust). Kettering and his GM design group chose to refine a two-stroke design to obtain greater power without a substantial weight increase because a two-stroke engine can obtain greater power than a four-stroke engine of the same size. (In GM’s design, this allowed for a smaller engine block that would also better suit marine applications.) On the downside, two-stroke designs are inherently less efficient and place significantly greater stress on components.

Kettering and his team refined a marine diesel engine designated Model 201. In its original format it used an eight-cylinder inline block with 8x10-inch cylinders operating at 750 rpm. Each cylinder produced 75 horsepower for a total output of 600 horsepower. Its power-to-weight ratio was about 20 horsepower per pound, approximately 10 times lighter per horsepower than most earlier successful locomotive diesel engines.

BIRTH OF THE STREAMLINERS

There’s nothing like nationwide publicity to sell an idea.

While mass-produced private automobiles and publicly financed highway projects had cut railroad passenger revenues in the 1920s somewhat, ridership plummeted with the onset of the Great Depression. Nationwide rail ridership reached a modern low by 1933. Across the United States, railroad executives watched with dismay; something had to be done to reverse the trend. German design progress set the tone for American innovation. Since 1924, German railways had been making headlines with their application of diesel-powered railcars. In 1932, manufacturer Waggon und Maschinenbau AG had built a two-piece articulated, diesel-electric railcar powered by pair of 12-cylinder, 410-horsepower Maybach diesel engines. The railcars used a svelte state-of-the-art aerodynamic design made possible by extensive wind-tunnel experiments conducted at the Zeppelin Works in Friedrichshafen. The world watched as the Germans set speed records with the new train.

Then, on May 15, 1933, Deutsche Reichsbahn’s railcars entered high-speed service as the Fliegende Hamburger (Flying Hamburger). It was the fastest regularly scheduled train in the world. All across Europe similar diesel trains were in the works. Diesel railcars were seen as the future for fast passenger services. Diesel Railway Traction expressed this prophetic view in its January 26, 1934, edition: “There is little doubt that a vast market awaits the high speed diesel train, whether in the form of a locomotive with coaches, or as a triple-articulated train set.” The reasons cited were simple: The diesel was seen as capable of offering a “cleaner, faster, and more economical service than can be attained with steam traction.” However, the magazine also explained, “As with all new inventions and devices, the diesel engine as applied to railway traction has had a hard uphill fight.” The diesel was still a frail device, and even the Flying Hamburger had “required a deal of nursing.”

The Fliegende Hamburger’s debut coincided neatly with Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition in 1933. The lightweight, high-speed concept and the expo provided the synergy that brought together the right people and th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One E-Units
• Chapter Two Early F-Units
• Chapter Three Postwar F-Units
• Chapter Four The Dual-Mode FL9
• Chapter Five Repurposed F-Units
• Chapter Six Executive E-Units and F-Units
• Sources
• Index
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright Page