Why Railroads HATED EMD's 'Upgraded' SD50 скачать в хорошем качестве

Why Railroads HATED EMD's 'Upgraded' SD50

Why Railroads HATED EMD's 'Upgraded' SD50 Subscribe: ‪@legendarylocomotives‬ EMD's SD50 locomotive was supposed to be the ultimate upgrade to their legendary SD40-2 workhorse. Launched in May 1981 with 3,500 horsepower and cutting-edge electronics, it promised to dominate the freight industry for decades. Instead, it became one of the biggest disasters in railroad history and handed the North American locomotive market to General Electric on a silver platter. The problems started at the factory. Every single SD50 rolling off EMD's LaGrange assembly line had at least twenty-five defects during testing. Headlights that wouldn't turn on, cooling systems that overheated, electrical gremlins everywhere. Deliveries were postponed for months while EMD frantically tried to fix problems they should have caught before production even started. The core issue was that 16-645F3B engine. EMD took their proven 645E3 powerplant from the SD40-2 and cranked it from 900 RPM to 950 RPM to squeeze out an extra 500 horsepower. The engine was never designed to spin that fast. Crankshafts failed constantly, power assemblies disintegrated, and the entire locomotive vibrated itself apart. Crews reported feeling the cab shake violently, and railroads kept spare crankshafts on hand because failures were inevitable. Canadian National bought sixty SD50F cowl units and immediately had to derate them from 3,500 to 3,300 horsepower just to keep them running. Conrail ordered 135 units and watched them suffer from transition failures, overheating, and wheelslip control systems that went haywire in rain. CSX inherited 144 units from Chessie and Seaboard and spent the next two decades derating them, first to 3,200 horsepower, then all the way down to 3,000—the same output as the SD40-2 they were supposed to replace. Norfolk Southern gave up entirely and rebuilt their fleet at Juniata Shops, ripping out the troublesome 645F3B engines and replacing them with reliable 645E3C powerplants from the SD40-2 era. They literally turned SD50s back into SD40-2s because the original design was that broken. Meanwhile, GE's Dash 7 line sold over 1,100 units while EMD struggled to move 431 SD50s, even with massive discounts. For the first time in decades, GE outsold EMD, and they've held that lead ever since. The SD50 didn't just fail as a product—it destroyed EMD's fifty-year dominance of the locomotive industry. EMD rushed the SD60 into production in 1984 with a new 710G engine running at a sane 900 RPM, but the damage was done. Railroads that had been loyal EMD customers for generations started buying GE locomotives instead. Today, most SD50s are scrapped or rebuilt beyond recognition. Only one survives in original condition at the Illinois Railway Museum—a monument to what happens when you push technology too far without making sure it actually works.