Railworks America

Wow. Just wow.

Development Weekend Special - The NS SD45 High Hoods coming soon to Train Simulator

OOOhh ! Like it

imnew wrote:OOOhh ! Like it

Well this is what I have been waiting for,ever since the first talk of an SD-45. Looking good!

I won't get it mainly because I find high hood turbocharged engines very strange. I've never come across one in real life. I'm so used to hearing a roots blown engine in high hood geeps. Hearing one turbocharged would just mess with my head. Kinda like hearing a cat bark like a dog. Otherwise it looks nice enough.

Cat barking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdwoaFFLEMM

Looks good. Hint Hint to one of my friends who is a route builder. The Wheeling and Lake Erie had a few of these when they started up in the early 1990.

Never quite understood what the purpose of the high hood EMDs were. The passenger trains like the E7 had the bulldog nose with windows in front at the time. Aerodynamically I'd guess the high hood was better than the spartan cab that was introduced in the 1959 GP20, but has worse visibility. I can only think it was for extra protection from collisions for the engineer. But based on accident pictures of them, they don't offer as much extra protection as you'd think. Besides.... those that have been concerned with that simply ran the engine long hood forward.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't recall Southern Pacific (my local railroad growing up) having any turbocharged high hoods. A GP9 would sometimes be assigned to my town when the SW1500 was out for repairs or whatever. Otherwise the GP9 was only here about 15%-20% of the time.

Yes... the high hood's purpose is a mystery to me......ESPECIALLY since they still produced them years later after the spartan cab was introduced. Not sure why NS wanted them.

Development Weekend Special - The NS SD45 High Hoods coming soon to Train Simulator

A former Southern SD45, hopefully these will be setup to run long hood forward?



N&W SD45's were in the 1700 and 1800 number series and both roads kept their unit numbers under NS until the units were retired.



RSC totally dropped the hat on the NS SD40-2's. They should have been setup to run long hood forward, but for some unknown reason RSC set them up to run short hood forward???

Why long hood forward, because that was the way a steam locomotives was setup, the cab was behind the boiler. The crews preferred to have that hood out in front of them at grade crossings. Most people don't realize the NS Dash 8's and SD60's were setup as long hood lead, even though they had a low short hood. During recent rebuilds, the control stands on NS SD60 are being moved to the other side of the cab and the low short hood is now designated at the front.

GSkid wrote:Never quite understood what the purpose of the high hood EMDs were. The passenger trains like the E7 had the bulldog nose with windows in front at the time. Aerodynamically I'd guess the high hood was better than the spartan cab that was introduced in the 1959 GP20, but has worse visibility. I can only think it was for extra protection from collisions for the engineer. But based on accident pictures of them, they don't offer as much extra protection as you'd think. Besides.... those that have been concerned with that simply ran the engine long hood forward.

To the best of my knowledge, I don't recall Southern Pacific (my local railroad growing up) having any turbocharged high hoods. A GP9 would sometimes be assigned to my town when the SW1500 was out for repairs or whatever. Otherwise the GP9 was only here about 15%-20% of the time.

Yes... the high hood's purpose is a mystery to me......ESPECIALLY since they still produced them years later after the spartan cab was introduced. Not sure why NS wanted them.

After a little digging, here are a few things I found about the purpose of high nose locomotives:

For one thing, it was done to avoid union conflicts. Since the high hood limited visibility, you needed two crew members aboard the train at all times to see both sides of the track. Another reason was the high nose portion of the locomotives often held a steam generator which was used to heat passenger cars (later passenger locomotive deigns like the SDP40 extended the length of the long hood and moved the steam generator behind the radiator section). And finally, when diesel hood units first started being introduced, many railroads preferred to run them in long hood forward configuration:



There were a couple of reasons for this. For one thing, many crews were used to having the longer portion of the locomotive in front of them ( a la steam locomotives) so they preferred to operate this way. Another reason was safety concerns. It was felt that in the event of a collision, the crew would be safer if the long hood was leading. So since the long hood was mainly being designated as the front of the locomotive, it didn't matter if the short hood was high or low.

As time went by and the advantages of low short hood locomotives became more apparent, the high hoods gradually fell out of favor but EMD continued offering it as an option for hold out railroads. As far as I know, the Southern Railway was the only one who continued using high hood locomotives exclusively right up until the end. I believe The last locomotive EMD offered in high hood configuration was the SD45.

NS ran them both ways. I think after a time they went to the short hood forward. Google it and you will see a ton of U-tube stuff.

Rich_S wrote: During recent rebuilds, the control stands on NS SD60 are being moved to the other side of the cab and the low short hood is now designated at the front.

Hi Rich

Was that part of mandated regulations or just to standardize the fleet.

Nice pick of the classy Southern unit.

EDIT

Rich_S wrote:A former Southern SD45, hopefully these will be setup to run long hood forward?

A quick observation after looking at the WIP shot Rich .. zoom in on the Cab window and take a look at the figure inside

Thanks for the comments.
I can tell you than it is set up to run long hood forward.

LordMannu wrote:Thanks for the comments.
I can tell you than it is set up to run long hood forward.

That reminds me, I have to send you the P5OC for the SOU/NS, and RS5T for the N&W.