By the time you buy all the requisite parts, pay for machining of axles to take rollers, pay for cranes to lift it off for the truck swap, and all of the other things you must do; more than likely the cost of the conversion will exceed the value of the locomotive.

There is a lot of erroneous information out there regarding standard (friction) bearings. As long as the locomotive is not used in interchange service, or being operated on track that the owner of the track forbids standard bearings, there is no compelling reason to convert it.

Trailer it or flatcar it.

Plain journals are thicker than roller journals and therefore must be machined to the proper OD to accept the rollers. I recently paid over $10,000 to have wheel sets for my S6 machined to accept rollers plus profiling all of the wheels to within 1/4".

OK - sounds I should just go with the flat car or truck. I really didn't want to convert it, but someone had mentioned it to me as an option.

Thanks all-

Mike

Just a observations about speed limits on a locomotive; I have to think that these were established by the manufacturer for NEW locomotives at the time they were sold. Very few Model T owners are out there nowadays blasting along at its top speed either, right?


Really, I doubt that GE expected anybody to run even a new 80 tonner at a constant 60 mph across country either?

I would expect they were ALL shipped on their own wheels but with the pinion pulled, at least to a certain point in time.

At one time GE would have sent a rider with every locomotive being delivered. They were there to be sure the railroads handled them as agreed to and to take care of any problems that developed enroute. The Erie Works news letter had lots of their stories in it.

What I was referring to as to wheel condition, is this.

Some shop can not turn the axle to mount the roller bearing with the wheel still on the axle. Largely depends on what they have for an axle lathe.

The remaining life of an GE 80 ton is very limited, more so if you have the old Cummins "L" engines. If you still have wheels that are in the thickness range of 1 1/2 to 2 inch, then run them with friction bearings.

A roller bearing conversion, if it were to be done, needs to be done at the time that the wheels are replaced on the locomotive or there is some other type of heavy repair that is need to the wheel sets.

Just converting over to roller bearings, just to be converting, is a very big waste of money.

According to my booklet, GE 80-ton locomotives can be towed at maximum 35 mph or 40 mph due to gearing limits. These are based on limits of centrifugal force inside the armature, which are unlikely to deteriorate over the years, though, worn wheels will make the motors spin faster.

They can be trucked. I know because I remember a news article where a GE 80-ton being hauled on the freeway struck and collapsed an overpass. I believe it was off its trucks, which weigh 32,000 lb. each according to my book. The carbody weighs 97,000 presumably empty of fluids and sand.