GTW SW engines on road trains

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AARR
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GTW SW engines on road trains

Unread post by AARR »

From NILE at the other board a good question I've wondered about to. https://members4.boardhost.com/RRHXHist ... 67720.html
Posted by NILE on 9/25/2020, 5:02 pm
In the 1980s I recall seeing SW engines on road trains quite often. Over the years I have read many theories for this, but as I thought about recently I figured this forum might have some insight. Can SW engines mu with road power (GPs and SDs)? One of the theories is that heavy trains needed more tracktive effort to get started, so the railroad would add an SW for starting and then it would "go offline" above 25 mph. Another idea was it was the closest engine to the train, and they just needed more HP. Finally and probably most realistically, it was off line and the railroad was just moving it from yard to yard. Can you expand on the usage of SW engines with road engines on road trains?
Here was the final response by RandallG and probably very accurate.
Posted by RandallG on 10/2/2020, 2:19 am, in reply to "Re: GTW SW engines on road trains"
GTW utilized SW1200's on road trains quite often on the Mount Clemens sub in the 1960's - always the 1500 series engines which were geared for higher speeds due to their flexicoil trucks and mu capabilities. Not aware of any other SW's that were mu equipped other than the 1500's, but could be wrong. Always easy to identify with the flexicoil trucks and the horizontal headlight package.

RandallG
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SD80MAC
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Re: GTW SW engines on road trains

Unread post by SD80MAC »

Randall is correct, the only switchers on the GTW equipped with MU were the 1500 series SW1200s. If you saw any other kind of switcher trailing in a power consist on a train, it was dead in tow.
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