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Author Topic: A Visit ToThe Union Pacific Steam Shops Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 02-03-2007 05:04 AM                     quote: Mark Gulbrandsen One of the Electro-Motive E-9 units that is in better than new condition. These famous diesels powered all UP Streamliners starting in 1955. That Diesel reminds me of the English Electric 'Deltic' prototype, which would have been just about contemporary with it. Photographs here. The Deltic was said to be modeled on American practice at the time, possibly the machine in your picture? The American one looks a bi more curved; possibly a drop or two of German design added to it. Twenty two production Deltics were built, and operated on the East Coast Main Line in England, the line that Leo hates, until replaced by the 125 mph high speed trains, in the '70s. The production machines were somewhat different; there is a picture of one here Externally the main difference was the omission of the large headlight, very similar to the one on the American machine. British trains were not normally fitted with headlights until many years later. The Deltic engines are incredible things, very small for their power output, but expensive to maintain. They were originally designed for marine use.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-03-2007 09:40 AM                     Stephen, Thanks for those interesting links. NEver knew that engine existed and its quite interesting! Musta been a pain to overhaul one though.... The Electromotive E-9 is actually quite different than the Deltec and less powerful (2400 HP) originally being equipped with two 1200 HP V-12 engines each turning its own genny. There is a link here. Note that the Surviving set of UP engines have been re-engines with dual current production V-16 engines to make maintainance easier today. MAny engines have survived today and along with these famous UP units the other perhaps more famous units are the single surviving operational Burlunngton Zepher at the Illinois Railway Museum. The surviving Zepher continues to do regular "film" duty having appeared in "League Of Their Own" and most recently "Flags Of Our Fathers". The US built Opposed Piston engine most similar to the Deltec would be the Fairbanks-Morse . This diesel engine was first used in Submarines during WW-2 because of the high power and very compact arrangement. In 1994 Fairbanks Morse aquired ALCO Locomotives so they are still in the buisness of manufacturing locos. The largest Fairbanks Morse engines in use also power the NASA Crawler thet moves the space shuttle to the pad after assembly in the huge VAB. Mark  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 02-04-2007 04:23 AM                     Mark, I don't know if you noticed, but the small picture of the sectioned Deltic power unit is clickable to get a larger version, and there is then a link available to download a still larger, hi-res version, on which you can see quite a lot of detail. This is an eighteen cylinder engine, I think most of the marine ones were as well, and the locomotives had two of these fitted, with the train heating boiler mounted between them. When steam heating was in use the boiler was the responsibility of the second-man on the locomotive, who had to go into the engine compartment to attend to the boiler. In the early days no ear protection was provided! British Railways had another Deltic-powered class of locomotives, I think they were class 23, though I'm not an expert on these things. They were always known as 'Baby Deltics', and were fitted with nine cylinder engines. I'm not sure whether they had just a single engine, or a pair. They were not a success, and all were withdrawn after a few years. I only ever saw one once. Another problem that the Deltic engines were prone to was fires in the exhaust systems due to build-ups of carbon deposits, and oil carry-over. Some years ago an engine was damaged by such a fire, and the means used to extinguish it, and had to be completely re-built. Unfortunate for the owners of the engine, but fortunate for us, as if you go to this site: web page , go to he 'Technology' section and then scroll down, there's a link to a very large library of photographs of the rebuild in progress. There's some very fine engineering there.  |  IP: Logged Mark Gulbrandsen Resident Trollmaster Posts: 16657 From: Music City Registered: Jun 99 posted 02-05-2007 07:30 PM                     Stephen, Thanks for that link... those are fantastic photos of what is obviously one of the more incredible deisel engines ever developed. I wonder if was very smooth running and if it had a normal vibration canceling effect to itself? Mark  |  IP: Logged Charles Greenlee Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 801 From: Savannah, Ga, U.S. Registered: Jun 2006 posted 02-07-2007 11:50 PM                        That is crazy. Wonder what that engineer was smoking when he designed it. Well, the line goes "What are you smoking and where can I get some?" But I'm not sure I'd want what he had. But hey, it obviously works.  |  IP: Logged Stephen Furley Film God Posts: 3059 From: Coulsdon, Croydon, England Registered: May 2002 posted 02-08-2007 08:17 AM                     Mark, it gets even more incredible; I once saw a drawing of a proposed engine, I don't think it was ever built even in prototype form, which had the same three banks of cylinders, but was larger, and in the central space there was a gas turbine! It's interesting that it was a development of the German Junkers flat opposed piston aircraft engine designs of the WWII era. So the same idea started out in aircraft, and then moved on to marine, and finally railway, use. There's a picture of one of the Junkers engines here Somewhere on the web site that I linked to previously all of the engines are listed, with the number of times that they were installed in different locomotives, anything from 20 to 36 times. Given that these locomotives were in use for not much more than twenty years, engines were swapped very frequently. This obviously explains some of the high maintenance cost. Charles, what the designer was thinking of was very simple; to get the maximum power out of the smallest possible space. quote: Mark Gulbrandsen The Electromotive E-9 is actually quite different than the Deltec and less powerful (2400 HP) originally being equipped with two 1200 HP V-12 engines each turning its own genny. I was thinking of the body styling, rather than the power plant. [ 02-08-2007, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: Stephen Furley ]  |  IP: Logged

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