Railworks America

A local freight train had a fire as it was rolling through town. Looks like they were able to coordinate with authorities to have fire crews on site when they stopped, but damages may be upwards of $1 million.

http://nky.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll ... 303210051/

It's a GE. Surprise surprise! Seriously though, was there something about the way the Dash 8/9's were built that was condusive to fires in the engine comparment? I've seen quite a few with rusty doors and hoods, and some that were straight out burned in that area.

Most common is a lube line cracking and spraying oil all over the turbo.

"Another cause on the early AC4400CW's and Dash 9's was the fuel injection system would inject excess fuel if the engineer throttled up too quickly. What resulted was a lot of unburned fuel going up the stack. As the turbo spooled up, the exhaust temperature would get hot enough to ignite the unburned fuel in the stack, often resulting in a brief, but multi-foot-high flame from the stack. If this happened in a tunnel or under and underpass, it would typically scorch the paint on around the stack of the locomtotive and often considerably down the side of the hood."

Most recently were GEVO's (the early ones) sending pistons flying out of the long hood. Crews were warned not to stand on the walkways when the engines where under load. Just my luck while railfanning in Marion, Ohio I had two of these things start up right next to me. This is a Dash 9, but it was basically the same thing: http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/thread ... 5#M1190655

Whoa.

Just another reason I like the older EMD power haha. We need fire suppression systems on modern locomotives like the Pennsy had in the 1940s- they had a safety feature then we don't have today, how backwards is that?

Csxgp38-2 wrote:Just another reason I like the older EMD power haha. We need fire suppression systems on modern locomotives like the Pennsy had in the 1940s- they had a safety feature then we don't have today, how backwards is that?

I saw an old school video of that on The Rail Channel a while back.

most cases that i have heard that involved engines blowing up, it was NS power