I find this thread genuinely disturbing. There are a few hints that some folks here think this isn't a good idea, but the majority of the conversation is enthralled with the technical details; details that have no relevance to preservation. The headline should be "One of Two Preserved F40PHs to be Gutted."

I've said this before. Our preservation movement, such as it is, can't be taken seriously if we can't take preservation seriously.

I had not noticed this issue in my delight over the tech. Of course you are right.

I had thought (without attention to the 'right' details) that the project was using a F40PH that had already been gutted or was otherwise destined for retirement.

If this is a full preserved example, with its running gear and appearance intact, it would be as much of a crime to vivisect it as Boyd did in cutting up a 'perfect' original '49 Cadillac to make CadZZilla.

It's a bit less of a problem if the engine in question has had much of its running gear removed ... and if the 'project' carefully designs the new power components to fit the "historic fabric" and does not plan extensive changes to the external appearance of the locomotive or most of the appearance in the cab, neither of which were guaranteed in the story or material I have seen so far.

Did we not have a list of 'surviving F40s' a while back, and could we not update it to find whether LTE and other places still have "suitable" locomotives with a pair of good trucks and wheels and decent frame integrity? Is a current blue card important to this project? What I suspect is that this is a "North Carolina" deal: the university gets free use of the museum's artifact and everyone gets their piece of the pie at minimum overll cost and maximum convenience. But as Mr. Ruiz noted, both the idea and the reality of preservation suffers if it is done that way.

The external company involved has the following interesting page:

http://railpropulsion.com/path

You can see their primary interest is in things like F59s with 645/710 power and HEP; the immediate question I would have is whether they intend to 'gut' the existing powertrain at all. But the logical target for this project would be one of the locomotives about to be supplanted by Siemens Chargers or EMD F125 Spirits... with the resulting 'demonstrator' then being donated to Spencer when the work has been done, as an interesting (and under those circumstances, now legitimate) piece of innovative railroad history. I have already gone on record as saying one of the great preservation failures in recent history was that we didn't keep one of the Starship FL9s.

I am tempted to note, only partly tgongue-in-cheek, that a far better project for them would be a 12,000 HP GG1. They could even bill it as a plug-in BEV! I think I still have copies of the welded frame replacement drawings somewhere...

The result would certainly be better PR... and not use something that hasn't already been mangled mechanically or represent a good surviving example,,,

It's my understanding that a remanufactured locomotive must meet the most current crash worthiness standards. How are they going to get around that as I'm pretty sure that the F40 did not meet those standards. I believe this is the reason that a good deal of Norfolk Southern's locomotives were all given new cabs when they were heavily rebuilt in the 60E, 70APU and the various 40 series rebuilds.

Assuming that they are going to meet these standards, this thing will likely be pretty hacked up. Looking at a satellite image of the Bear Shops in Delaware, there are still a few F40s parked there. It's a pretty recent image that was taken in 2017. I wonder why they're hanging on to them so long. They've been out of service over ten years now.

Section 229.203 Applicability, Section 229.5 Definition of Remanufactured Locomotives, and Section 229.206 Design Requirements.

PC

I had thought there were more preserved F40s than there are.

That makes this even more of a puzzle than I thought.

It would seem there are plenty of available former freight locomotives around, and even other passenger engines that could be had, that would be closer to the starting point of what this firm wants to build, and would be closer in terms of meeting current requirements, than an F40. So why not pick one of those?

Alternately, it may be that the F40 may not be altered too much. . .it looks like the way to get 8,000 hp and keep weight in bounds won't be to have a huge battery pack squeezed into the unit, but to use a straight battery second unit as a booster or, perhaps with more appropriate terminology, a battery tender!

http://railpropulsion.com/products/hybr ... e-systems/

In any event, this brings up the problem that railroads don't like with boosters in general; it's what amounts to a second unit, and one of seemingly limited application, as well as being non-standard in a lot of ways.

As to F40PH's preserved:

Three technically qualify as preserved: Amtrak 307 at Spencer; Amtrak 281 at CSRM Sacramento; and Amtrak 231 at ORHF Portland, Oregon (private hands). Amtrak also retains 406 as a non-powered cab "heritage unit" for its display train and other things.

The Grand Canyon's fleet of rebuilt locos (and they are supposedly still seeking more at the right price)is not technically preserved, but the railroad's current staff is at least willing to consider preservation of a unit upon retirement.

I believe all units that were at Larry's Truck & Electric in Ohio are gone.

I don't think any F40PH's still lurk on Amtrak, stored or otherwise.

I would suggest that if the NCTM lets this F40PH--which was supposed to be preserved, not stored for future use--loose to go through with this proposal, then it calls into question whether they really are a museum or not. There are still plenty of other options for a base for this proposed "kitbash" project besides a museum relic.

My approach all along with this idea was to fit the 'megabattery' array, the cooling, the turboalternator and whatnot onto a cross between an old GE MATE and a modern road slug ... the result of course being perfectly suitable for freight service, possessed of the most modern crash attenuation protection available (plus extra room as needed), and easily equipped with additional fuel bunkering, LNG tanks, etc. Note that this gets around much of the 'issue' with lower-speed acceleration of commuter consists, while maintaining the advantage of low-unsprung-mass B trucks as "standard"

You'd probably need a few more connections than the 'standard' cabling from a slug mother plus the wiring needed for standard HEP, but it wouldn't be too difficult, especially for an academic group, to come up with, formalize, and see adopted an appropriate standard.

Yes, I'd use something more modern than an F40 as the 'mother', but as noted I see a number of synergies here -- it's just that the project as it's described now throws preservation under the bus, and that's not really appropriate for a preservation institution that would have a very, very hard time making a good case for deaccessioning the locomotive, in fact or in effect.

I will wager that the Coalition for Sustainable rail will have the modified ATSF 3463 making its way about the country as a proof of concept demonstrator before there's an 8,000 HP 4 axle.

This is NOT preservation.

Not preservation? Why not? The railroads continuously upgraded their equipment. So shouldn’t preservation also preserve that constant state of change?

Continually upgrading an operational asset is part of that asset's service life by an owner who acquired to serve a business purpose is their prerogative, just as scrapping is their prerogative-but that wouldn't be preservation either.

Museums acquire those assets after their service lives, often by donation and with explicit donor intent and implicit public expectation to maintain them as they were during their service lives.

Interesting how far this forum has come from the days when some people insisted that all locomotives be stuffed and mounted, so that nothing was degraded-even consumables like bearings-because to do otherwise would do "violence" to the object.

This is their mission statement:

http://www.nctrans.org/About-Us/Mission.aspx


Our Mission

The mission of the North Carolina Transportation Museum and Foundation at historic Spencer Shops is to preserve and interpret the history of transportation in North Carolina and to present this history in a manner that allows visitors to enjoy their experience as well as learn from it.

Objectives related to the mission are:
To preserve the buildings and other historic features of Spencer Shops.
To interpret the history of the Southern Railway repair facility, the community and the people who were associated with it.
To operate an on-going program of transportation artifact restoration and conservation.

So tell me how going Lizzie Bordon on the thing meets this criteria.

Yes and no.

The difference is between preserving intact an example of a kit-bashed Honda Civic or VW Rabbit that some garage hobbyist turned into an electric car on his own as an example of how the second generation of EVs emerged (and you're saving it as a kitcar, not a Rabbit or Civic).........

............ and ripping apart a museum's already-acquired Tucker, '53 Corvette, prototype Jeep, or Shelby Cobra to convert it into a "hot rod" or drag racer.

Any museum director that allowed the latter would be fired, if not lynched by angry car aficionados.

There's a good reason the PRR T1, N&W Jawn Henry, C&O steam turbines, Baldwin Centipedes, etc. didn't get preserved: They were unsuccessful at best and abject failures at worst, no matter how "sexy" they looked or sounded.

One could argue (and I have no dog in this fight) that an Amtrak F40 has nothing to do specifically with the site or the history of the people who worked there. This might not be accessioned into a collection that requires its conservation. You'd need to contact the state to ask about it.... or it in fact might be owned by the private support foundation rather than the state. If the first is the case it could lead to some pretty interesting situations since many of the pieces aren't of Southern Railway heritage, and have nothing to do with the site specifically.

Amtrak still has at least 5 in bear,de
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictur ... 0_2173.JPG

First, where does the press release state '8000 hp'? I only see a reference to a possible 6000.

Second, it sounds like this research is geared toward the HEP unit, with a possible later application to use the 'excess' HEP battery power to boost the 3000 HP from the diesel prime mover. Although, how do you recharge the HEP system? Solar panels on the roof? A wind turbine? Axle generators?
{I answered my own questions by going to RPS' website. They are proposing a CNG-powered HEP unit and a second, booster locomotive, equipped with capacitors and CNG fuel tanks to help along the output of the prime mover, I 'spose. NOT QUITE the same thing as the Release implies}

Third, aren't D-E units already 'hybrids'? Someone needs to send the PR writer (or Mr. Stewart) back for some schoolin'.

Guess I'll have to contact Mark Brown at NCTM, since this PR is awfully confusing to a mechanical engineer such as myself.

I agree with your position on this, but I have often heard it expressed that the natural evolution of upgrading equipment was historic practice and so it is a legitimate part of the preservation objective. Of course, it is the opposite of preservation, so it requires the gymnastics of broadening the definition preservation to include non-preservation as something to be preserved.

This seems to always come up in discussions about the need to completely save the original fabric. I believe I have heard the same justification for the proposed massive upgrading of AT&SF #3463 that you mentioned. Many advocated returning the locomotive to steam no matter how much of the original historic locomotive was lost in the process.