Arrow Train Master article

[NW Mailing List]

Maybe Frank could comment on a couple of things in his Train Master 
article.

On page 23 it states:
/    "Much routine maintenance required removal of the upper cylinder 
head and crankshaft"./

The FM engine doesn't have a head.

/"There are also reports of incomplete fuel combustion (causing blue 
smoke) in the lower combustion chamber."

/There is only one combustion chamber, rather than an upper and lower as 
the sentence would suggest.

      Just for information, it is very common for diesels to put out a 
lot of smoke when not up to operating temperatures. Back when we had 
GP9's, sometimes a consist would be setting around for hours idling 
waiting for an assignment and a lot of carbon and unburned fuel would 
collect on top of the dished piston head. We would get them off of the 
outgoing track and baby them down to the train. After pulling the train 
past Randolph St. Tower the engineers would open them up and look back 
to see a pretty good smoke screen being laid down. Usually by the time 
we got to North Roanoke the smoke had cleared up.
     Try and start up a cold four axle GE unit in the middle of 
Waynesboro, Va. and see if people don't call the law on you! Yikes!
     With emissions what they are today, it is sometimes hard to see 
smoke from the diesels. Good for the air, but now it can be very hard to 
look back and tell which unit just shut down you.
     One other thing in looking at the way FM designed their engine is 
that I wonder why they put the cool intake air coming in at the top and 
exhaust going out the bottom. Seems to me they would have breathed a 
little easier with the cool intake air forcing the hot exhaust out the 
top. Maybe they didn't realize that hot air rises.

Jimmy Lisle
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