Re: Hope they pull as good as they look...and hold up well in a smash.

Chris - not arguing the point. But I'm not sure White Pass now has a dedicated switch engine at White Pass, which would have to be one of the Alcos or the 114. The 90 class never had switching steps, and would have to have been rebuilt with them unless they either got a waiver or fell under the road passenger service exception. Remember there is always the need to switch out passenger consists to adjust them or swap out cars for repair, and move cars and dead locos around the shop. And work trains are not exempt. I know the FRA does visit Skagway.

BTW - I thought these were NRE units built as 42" gage for Australia, but they were actually as light standard gage units ofr QUBE and leftover as the balance of the order was cancelled (these were intended to be QUBE 1109-1110?). MPI built a similar design to both gages. I did hear that one of the complaints on the previous units had been the windshields were too high, so NRE has raised at least part of the cab floor on these as part of the cab rearrangement. Those low sandboxes will have to be refilled often due to their small capacity and the high horsepower will makes these engines very slippery if they don't do it right. As standard gage units, they are supposed to have had six EMD D87 D78 traction motors which could handle the horsepower easily, but they still would have been slippery as a typical US six axle is 180-210 short tons.

https://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=416844

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRE_E-3000E3B



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2020 04:39PM by Dan Robirds.