G&W 20 does have some significance as the very first Genesee and Wyoming diesel. Now that corporate successor GWI has affiliated railroads around the globe, owning scores of diesels, there are probably lots of folks interested in the very first of their orange diesels. A companion orange caboose (former DL&W) resides at the New York Museum of Transporation near Rochester NY. The book Mixed Train Daily (Beebe / Clegg, Howell-North 1947) has a photo of sister G&W 21 hauling that caboose. It's good to hear that the 20 will be preserved.

EK-6 at the R&GV Museum (pictured above) has been wired so that the one good prime mover drives all four traction motors. This has been a very satisfactory arrangement for the 1 1/2 mile museum operation - adequate tractive effort for most movements, at speeds that are rarely above a few miles per hour. I believe that the wiring modification was a rather simple one. If your unit has four good traction motors, you might want to consider running on "one lung".

JR

I have not been able to find a photo of the G&W 20. This unit has the G&W style end stripes but is painted yellow. Was the 20 painted yellow or orange on the G&W?

You can put a Series 60 Detroit (up to 630 HP) in it with a AC Alternator rectified to DC fairly inexpensively. Wire this up to all 4 traction motors and with a good traction control system it would pull better than it ever did. the series 60 is easy to service and get parts for with over 1 1/4 million of them in service in trucks etc etc
Preston, about a year before Cat bought E.M.D. they pulled any and all support for rail engines from the market. Has something to do with the fact they bought progress rail who was building Genset's go figure. You think they are trying to enter the market??
We are redoing switchers with our Lean and Green package ( not another genset)and I would love to retro-fit an older cab unit Alco or E.M.D. I know not its not original but you could take a gutted hulk and redo it and would never know visually. Not only that but depending where you live in the country the government would help pay for it.

I have never seen a color photo of any of the G&W 80-tonners. However, I've been told that the orange locomotive color scheme originated with them. The photo in the book cited above is black and white.

JR

Answering Jack's post, yes that is my understanding too, that when CAT acquired Progress Rail that organization took over the marketing, distribution and technical support for CAT engines in rail applications. However I was recently told by a person on a major railroad that they expect that once EMD is fully integrated into the Caterpillar organization, they will be providing the technical support functions. I have not seen anything advertised by Caterpillar yet to confirm that.

It would be very interesting to see a museum or shortline put a modern power plant under one hood of these old twin-engined switchers.

PC

I am with the Pacific Locomotive association here in California. We have an 80 Ton GE switcher just like yours with a pair of L1-600 Cummins engines. We had one engine Hydro, bend a rod, and crack the block a year or so ago. I found a place that had a lot of parts including heads, sleeves, injectors and any gasket you can ask for! The shop is called S&R Mechanical Services. Somehow in the distant past these guys ended up with a bunch of new-old-stock Cummins parts for these engines. Here is the contact information.
S&R Mechanical Services Inc
614-755-7601
sdodson@srmechanical.com
Talk to Sam Dodson.

They had a lot of parts, and he told me that they have one or two complete engines he would be happy to sell me
Sam supplied a brand new connecting rod and cylinder sleeve for the engine, and I managed to get the broken block repaired. We use that engine every week on our railroad. It is the favorite of the engineers here.

Here is a link to some info about our engine.
www.ncry.org
http://www.ncry.org/roster/diesel.shtml

I highly recommend S&R Mechanical Services as well. They had the fan belts we needed for the Cummins HBI-600 engines in our 45 tonners.

Joe

OK great I'll give them a call.

I would like to install a prelube system on the LI-600 engines. There is a 1" line that comes out of the block, goes through an oil cooler, then a filter, then splits at the front of the engine where a large line enters some sort of unit bolted to the front of the block. A smaller line goes to the other side of the engine, goes through two more filters then re-enters the block.

I am assuming that the oil pump is inside the block. Correct? What is the unit at the front of the block? I can tie in a prelube pump anywhere in these lines, but would like to know more about where the two oil ports go to.

Any advice?

I was able to cobble together enough batteries to turn over and start one of the engines on our 80 tonner today. As soon as she started up I could hear this hideous knock, so Iran into the cab to shut her down. One of my helpers stated that the noise seemed to be coming fro mthe generator end of the engine, so I pulled off a couple of access plates to find that the conn. rod bearing on the second to last cylinder was toast. The conn. rod was very loose and some of the babbitt had flowed up alongside the conn. rod.

The good news is that at least she started! So Monday I'll have to call and see if I can get a new rod bearing. I am hopeful that this is the only major problem and that we can get that engine running before winter.

I would check the rest of the rod bearings also if one is bad. I don't know the oil flow path for that Cummins engine but that rod at the generator end might be the last one to get lube. It might be toast because the rods and/or main bearings may have excessive clearance resulting in low flow and oil pressure the further away from the oil pump it is.

I checked the fourth, fifth and sixth rod bearings and no. 5 was bad while the other two did not show any appreciable movement. Before I'm done I'll pull the otehr three covers and give the first three rod bearings a look.

Thanks for the tip.

PSRM, Campo, CA has an 80 tonner that was repowered in 1986 with Cummins NTA-855-L4 engines. For details, look for SD&A 7285 in the diesel locomotive section in the roster portion of our web site, http://www.psrm.org

Thanks for the link. Very informative site. I wish every museum's online roster was as detailed as theirs is.