CSX Receives New Tier 4 Locomotives

CSX has begun taking delivery of 10 new SD70Ace-T4 locomotives built by Progress Rail.

The EPA Tier 4 compliant units were built in Muncie, Indiana, and moved from there to Cincinnati over Norfolk Southern rails to be interchanged with CSX.

From Cincinnati the units will be moved to Waycross, Georgia, for setup.

Once that is finished, they are expected to be assigned to trains carrying phosphate in the Bone Valley region of Florida, Trains magazine reported.

The new units will carry roster numbers 8900-8909 and be designated as ST70AH units.

The last of the order, No. 8909, is expected to be released this week.

The units are the first new EMD locomotives purchased by CSX since 2004 when it acquired 20 SD70ACe units.

NS Testing EMD SD70 ACe Demonstrators

Norfolk Southern has been testing Progress Rail’s EMD SD70ACe Tier 4 demonstration locomotives on its Winston-Salem District in Virginia and North Carolina.

Nos. 1607 and 1608 were recently moved from the facility in Muncie, Indiana, to Roanoke, Virginia and will operate on the route between Roanoke and Winston-Salem.

The demonstrators have a livery similar to that of Union Pacific and are similar to EMDX Nos. 1609 and 1610, which are still being tested on CSX.

CSX Testing EMD Demos in West Virginia

CSX is testing two EMD Tier-4 compliant locomotives on trains operating over its Mountain Subdivision between Grafton, West Virginia, and Cumberland, Maryland.

EMDX SD70ACe-T4s Nos. 1609 and 1610 had been operating between Cincinnati and Nashville, Tennessee, since June.

Trains magazine reported that the demonstrators traveled from Cincinnati to Cumberland this past weekend.

Nos. 1609 and 1610 are expected to be assigned to trains Q316 and Q317 between Queensgate Yard in Cincinnati and Cumberland.

A Few from NS Chicago Line in Amherst

The westbound 21Q had a pair of Tier 4 compliant locomotives on the point. ET44AC No. 3637 was assembled by GE Transportation in May 2016 and still has that new locomotive look.

The Forest City Division of the Railroad Enthusiasts had its annual summer picnic at the former New York Central freight station in Amherst, Ohio, on Sunday, Aug. 7.

As he does for the Akron Railroad Club, Marty Surdyk manned the grill and also showed a one-tray slide show of photographs made during a trip to Oklahoma and Texas in 1999.

The RRE has held its picnic in Amherst for the past several years and as I’ve done in the past I got in some train photography of operations on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.

Nothing that was particularly out of the ordinary came by during the picnic. In fact, NS traffic was slow and we endured a two-hour lull in late afternoon. But, overall, it was a enjoyable outing highlighted by Marty’s show.

Photographs by Craig Sanders

Another westbound stack train, this one the 25T.

The L13 from Bellevue to Rockport Yard in Cleveland makes an appearance.

A pair of well-worn Canadian National locomotives were in the motive power consist of this westbound frac sand train.

The setting sun was right down the rails as the L13 came past on its way home to Belleveue.

CSX Testing EMD SD70ACe Demonstrators

CSX is testing Electro-Motive Division SD70ACe Tier 4 demonstrator locomotives on its Cincinnati to Nashville, Tennessee, route.

Nos. 1609 and 1610 have been spotted on CSX trains Q573/Q574. The units have Union Pacific colors, but EMD logos and decals.

Trains magazine said the demonstrators are expected to remain in service for a few weeks and said it is the first time that CSX has tested EMD locomotives since giving a try out to EMDX SD70ACe demonstrators in 2013.

A Few Sightings on NS at Rootstown

The class leader Norfolk Southern tier 4 GE 3601 led train 34N on Tuesday through Rootstown.

Also the pass through were the Penn Central heritage locomotive — I missed that — and the Virginian heritage unit. I did see, though, a new Union Pacific EMD SD70ACE came through.

Photographs by Todd Dillon

NS Now has 28 Tier 4 ET44ACs on Hand

Twenty-eight of the 47 Tier 4 locomotives that Norfolk Southern has ordered from General Electric Transportation have been shipped to the carrier.

Thus far GE has released Nos. 3601-3614, 3616-3628, and 3630 from its Fort Worth, Texas,  plant.

The units move over the BNSF to Memphis, Tennessee, where NS takes possession of them.

Trains magazine reported that the assembly of the rest of the units, which are the first NS has purchased from GE to be built in Texas, is largely complete.

The ET44ACs will have roster numbers 3601 to 3647. NS accepted the first of the order in late May.

NS To Take Delivery of Tier 4 Locomotives

General Electric Transportation expects to deliver Tier-4 compliant locomotives to Norfolk Southern this spring, making it the fifth Class I railroad to receive ET44ACs.

The units are being built  in Fort Worth, Texas, and are part of a 47-unit order.

Tier 4 emission standards were issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and took effect last year.

The first of the locomotives, No. 3600, will be tested by the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio before being delivered to NS. The units will have roster numbers 3600-3646.

NS also has on order three ES44AC locomotives that meet Tier 3 emission standards, but are permitted under existing regulations by having the builder apply emission credits already banked toward the locomotives.

Those credits were earned by applying energy-saving design technologies to locomotives already built and in operation.

Carrying roster numbers 8166-8168, those units are being built in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern are the only North American Class I railroads that have yet to buy Tier 4-compliant locomotives.

Market for New Locomotives Has Gone Soft

They look good, perform well and garner a lot of favorable publicity. But during a time when freight traffic is down, environmentally friendly locomotives are having a tough time finding buyers.

An analysis by Railway Age of Tier 4 compliant locomotives compared them with DOT-117 hazmat tank cars.

Both are well suited to achieve desirable goals, but those are not necessarily the most pressing or immediate goals of the railroad industry.

Tier 4 refers to emission standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Although the railroad industry has embraced Tier 4, it doesn’t have enough Tier 4 compliant locomotives to pull its trains.

The railroad industry remains profitable and is outwardly optimistic about its future.

But month after month of reports from the Association of American Railroads show freight traffic in decline, particularly the coal business.

Some freight business has remained stable or achieved some growth, but that hasn’t been enough to offset the large losses resulting from falling coal traffic.

Those are not the conditions that are likely to lead to railroads wanting to buy new locomotives or tank cars.

Another falling commodity has been crude oil and the number of available tank cars exceeds the demand for them.

Likewise, Class 1 railroads have many locomotives in cold storage.

“Two years ago, every serviceable locomotive was reactivated,” said Oliver Wyman’s Jason Kuehn at Rail Equipment Finance 2016 in an interview with Railway Age. “Now, 15 percent or more of the road locomotive fleet is in storage. The price spread between natural gas and diesel has choked off interest in LNG and CNG-fueled locomotives. And Tier 4 emissions levels are so strict that they’ve halted the virtuous cycle supporting locomotive replacement. We’ve gone from the perfect storm to a dead calm in two short years.”

Railway Age reported that some locomotive builders and leasers are looking to the export market for business.

Progress Rail/EMD, GE Transportation, National Railway Equipment, MotivePower, Railserve, RJ Corman, Brookville Equipment, Knoxville Locomotive Works and Republic Locomotive are among the companies that have sent represents traveling to such places as China, India, Russia and South Africa in search of sales.

As a result of the soft U.S. market for locomotives, Railway Age said that you won’t find this year a builder offering something new and/or innovative.

Nonetheless, the companies are seeking to do what they can with what they have to serve what markets exist and to prepare for what they hope will be better times ahead.

That means tinkering with existing products and seeking to use technological advances to tweak them.

GE Pushing Internet Connectivity in Locomotives

General Electric expects that more than 3 million locomotives and other GE-built products will be connected to the Internet by 2020.

The company said in a recently published report that digital interconnectivity plays a critical role in its newer locomotives and industrial vehicles developed and produced by its transportation division.

“By the end of 2016, we expect it to have 200,000 assets under management, 100 GE applications and 20,000 developers creating many more applications,” said GE CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt.  “Our aspiration is to offer with every GE product a pathway to greater productivity through sensors, software and big-data analytics.”

GE estimates that more than 700 of its locomotives that meet Environmental Protection Agency Tier 4 emission standards have digital components that have saved their railroad owners $197 million in fuel expenses.

Digital components also have reduced the amount of time needed to make a diagnosis of problems and to make repairs.

Norfolk Southern began to adopt in 2010 GE’s Movement Planner software to streamline train operations.

In its factories, GE uses Predix software, a cloud-based productivity management system that may have applications for the railroad industry.

GE Transportation, which has an assembly plant in Erie, Pennsylvania, produces the majority of locomotives for the North American market.