That there was not a lot of market for an articulated locomotive 190' long seems to sum up a great deal. It's sort of a parsing game whether or not separate bodies, separate engines etc constitutes a building block concept. On the other hand, this design, as you said, despite how the connections were made, arguably this separation of the engines as discrete units laid the foundations for what would shortly be more of a revision than a complete redesign in terms of flexibility. And while there was a reaction from Baldwin in following suit, the ability to control other manufacturer's engines by also following suit in compatible MU design ( or at least thats what my foggy memory tells me) seems to have been a sort of strange lapse, if so. The more I think about this in regard to diesel's flexibility, it was not that long ago that EMD as a subsidiary of GM who had their hands in every pie as a sort of diversified steam roller, and now GE occupies this predominate niche of diversification. When I think about this as well, the diversification of Baldwin seems to have been motivated by a losing streak in the railroad market, while EMD and now GE utilises this as a front end advantage as a sort of monopolistic leading edge. I cannot help but notice in terms of future histories that GE has a goodly sum of their hands in turbine technology and it makes me wonder if all this natural gas trending will result in GE being in the catbird seat if the roads current experimenting means the return of turbine technology to the rails fueled by natural gas. Of course this is idle speculation that was brought to mind by Baldwin in Jawn Henry and the CO\ PRR's ill fated turbine flirtations fueled by them..seemingly brought back from the archives through UP's "Big Blows"...not that long ago.

Don't turbines suffer some of the same thermal efficiency problems that traditional steam locomotives do, in that it's hard to achieve optimal thermal efficiency in a package small enough to fit a railroad vehicle? My guess would be, (a very amateur guess at that), that even given the price of natural gas remaining depressed for the long-term, it would still be cheaper to use that gas to either fire a traditional stationary steam power plants or peak-load gas turbine power stations, than it would be to use them for locomotives, and use the electricity to directly power electric locomotives. At least with stationary plants there is the opportunity for co-generation use of excess/waste heat and steam.

Also, there is a distinct possibility that the current over-exploration of shale-based natural gas and oil will lead to a drastic drop in prices (especially for natural gas, since it's best use is local - ie., within the continent of origin, given the difficulties and expense in liquifying it to ship overseas) making the current exploration boom go bust. If that happens the price of gas will climb back up again, most likely quickly, but not before wreaking havoc on the whole market.

I know that fuel consumption was an issue with all turbines regardless of fuel as it was high even when idling. The Bombardier passenger intended JetTrain makes an end run around this low demand waste of fuel by the use of a HEP engine and the two are geared together in a single gearbox which powers a generator to provide power to four traction motors, and so when not at full power the HEP runs and when more power is needed, the turbine kicks off. The turbine itself is lighter than a diesel equivalent so theres some fuel economy there. Bunker C was always an issue with fowling blades, Coal ate them, so maybe natural gas avoids this. Who knows if anything will come of this? But it's interesting to me. That is, the further possible development of turbine railroad engine...With the exception of a yard switcher in Russia, all the experimenting seems to have gone nowhere so far. If I remember right the Russian engine or some other Soviet engine set a Guinness Book of Records benchmark for pulling power. Can't recall the specifics.