The Anonymous Widower

Wabtec Breathes New Life Into Older Locomotives

This title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Railway Gazette.

This is the introductory paragraph.

This month Wabtec completed the 1 000th locomotive it has remanufactured for customers in the Americas under a programme launched in 2015. Norfolk Southern has taken delivery of 500 of the locos, with other customers including Canadian Pacific, BNSF, Union Pacific and Brazilian operator Rumo.

This second paragraph gives Wabtec’s aims of the remanufacturing.

Wabtec said locomotive modernisation is a key element of its sustainability efforts, with revitalised locos offering fuel efficiency improvements of up to 25%, reliability increases of more than 40%, up to a 55% increase in haulage capability and reductions in maintenance, repair, and overhaul costs of up to 20%.

This ongoing program, which although it only offers a 25 % reduction in carbon emissions, shows the size of the diesel locomotive market in North America.

• A lot of these locomotives were built by GE Transportation Systems, which is now owned by Wabtec.
• It is obviously, a market that is commercially rewarding.

In Freightliner Secures Government Funding For Dual-Fuel Project, I talked about s UK project to decarbonise one of our North American-built Class 66 locomotives.

I do wonder how long it will be before Cummins or one of the other big diesel engine manufacturers like Caterpillar offers a hydrogen conversion for these big beasts.

The numbers shown in the article, show it could be a very large and profitable market.

In the future, a lot of decarbonisation will be driven by commercial interests.

August 15, 2021 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Class 66 Locomotive, Cummins, Decarbonisation, Wabtec