Precision Locomotive running a self load test on an MP20B-3 locomotive equipped with a CAT 3516C prime mover and QES III microprocessor control system.
EVEN THE UP FOUND OUT JUST HOW UNRELIABLE THESE CATAPILLAR ENGINES ARE!UP HAS JUST ABOUT CLEARED THEIR ROSTER OF THESE UNRELIABLE ENGINES, DUE TO THEIR HIGH FAILURE RATES.
Not gonna lie, that 4 stroke sound is pretty underrated. Is it fine if I use these sound recordings for use as TS2020 freeware with proper credit to Precision Locomotive? Thanks in advance
Run them long enough, and you can pick up a bucket's worth of bolts (and God knows what else) all over the running boards. Seriously, an engineer friend of mine did that after the NS PR43C rebuild he was on failed.
The sound character remind me about Germany diesel-hydraulic locomotive with MTU 12 cylinder prime mover fron 1960-1980's era. Unique to hear it from EMD locomotive.
Q: When they do a load test in a yard with other locomotives, do they connect the generator to the other locomotive with a cable and run up the engine? I heard it's to test a generator under load... If so, why can't they always do a "self load test"...
@@TrainTrackTrav So again, WHY do they use another locomotive for these load tests instead of self load testing like here? I even read they'll rig a decommissioned loco to conduct the tests? Do they just run a giant cable from loco "A" to loco "B"?
no, they don't do that at all! if a locomotive can not "self load" they will run leads to a load bank beside the locomotive to load test the locomotive using its generator.
The other way is to run on the mainline with a locomotive that has dynamic brake, to retard the speed of the powering locomotive at set speeds to monitor ammeter and engine load.
@@rearspeaker6364 So, it all depends on the circumstances when they conduct the test: It can be dynamic grids on the loco, another decommissioned loco's grids or like you said, a load bank...
i wonder what RPM the engine runs at in notch 8. specs from CAT say the rated speed is 1750rpm with max torque at 1300rpm. ( i presume 1300rpm for notch 8)
You can actually find out yourself with a sound editor! It's really simple. Take a sample, count the exhaust pulses, and divide them into the clip length in seconds. Multiply by 60. For a two-stroke engine, that gives an RPM value, but exhaust pulses come every other stroke on a four stroke engine, so multiply by two. These calculations hold true even though there's multiple cylinders - it's just a freak coincidence of cylinder scavenging, from what I've been told Anyway, I can make a quick educated guess for you. The pulse spacing feels about the same as a 567C, which runs at 835 RPM, so, doubling that, my guess when I was watching the video was around 1700 RPM, which is pretty close to the quoted 1750 RPM. The torque the engine produces isn't terribly important in and of itself. What matters is that the generator is being spun fast enough to produce the desired electrical power. Of course, that requires engine power, and torque is a component of that power. The only torque that is useful to traction is that which is generated by the motors, but, again, what really matters here is the linear force (tractive effort) that is derived from that torque. And, of course, the weight of the locomotive determines how much of that force, which is inversely related to speed, can actually be used to start a train, with the extra power only being useful at higher speeds, where the available tractive force drops below the amount of force that will spin the wheels.
It would be closer to the rated 1750 rpm. The engine is apparently rated at 1800 rpm in 60 Hz generator settings - and the exhaust in this test sounds much like a 2-stroke EMD engine running at 900 rpm.
@@ErickC That holds true for many engines - but once you get up to locomotive engines it's not as obvious. Often the vee angle means the cylinders don't fire evenly, and even when they do, there's not always an obvious exhaust pulse. On 16-cylinder EMD units (even firing) the dominant frequencies at 900 rpm are 120, 135 and 150 Hz, even though 16 x 900 / 60 would suggest exhaust pulses at 240 Hz. On some 12-cylinder 4-stroke engines (like the ALCO 251 and GEVO, with uneven firing) the "burble" comes from a distinct 3 pulses per full cycle, perhaps due to there being 6 pairs of cylinders with 3 pairs closer to the exhaust stack.
@@trainiax : This process has never not worked for me. I use it almost exclusively to blend clips of locomotive engines taken at different power levels together into a seamless progression from idle to maximum RPM in the context of railroad simulators. Bear in mind that it's not, in any way, a frequency analysis. It's 100% a volume and timing analysis. You're right in saying that trying to predict RPM with the frequency of the overtones would never work - it absolutely doesn't for the precise reasons you've outlined. However, I am not comparing overtones (although analyzing overtones can be helpful in predicting where spikes in the spectrum will be at different RPM values), I'm counting the BPM. I see no fundamental difference between the exhaust pulse of an EMD 567 and a snare drum. If it didn't work, you would end up with two problems: one, phasing issues as the pulses go out of sync, and two, beat in the overtones in the transition areas where you're in an RPM range where two samples are blended together. Neither problem presents when using this method. I can take any set of samples and seamlessly blend them together across the whole RPM range of the engine and end up with a result that is a 1:1 match to reference videos where the RPM can be verified with a tachometer (as is the case with modern locomotives with digital displays), even if the RPM was at the limits of specification at each power setting when the samples were collected (that is, even when there's a certain degree of deviation from nominal values in the samples). This includes a perfect match in the frequency spectrum at any given RPM. And I do this purely with math once the number of exhaust pulses and time of a clip are known. I have never not had a perfect blend in overtones from one clip to the next that also precisely matches samples taken at known RPM values. It's a powerful but simple method. True story, this direct relationship between RPM and a host of other things (like exhaust timing and engine overtones) works for jet engines as well, and was used in the post-crash investigation of Palm 90 to determine the precise engine RPM. This was how they discovered that the captain was using an amount of thrust that was nowhere near correct for takeoff (which was the result of blocked inlet probes because the captain failed to use engine deicing).
@@trainiax : also - you're absolutely right that the process is slightly different, and more difficult for Alco and GE engines for the exact reasons you mention. When I determine the "pulse" length on those engines, I have take into account the "beats per measure," as it were. I was building new frequency curves for someone else's Baldwin sound package for funsies not too long ago, and that was indeed the first challenge - determining the rhythm of the engine to avoid accidentally labeling intermediate "beats" in the measure as the dominant overall heartbeat of the engine.
CAT’s site states that this engine is “U.S. EPA Tier 2 Nonroad Equivalent Emission Standards (Not Currently EPA Certified)” Still, sounds awesome as, up there with the 2 stroke EMD’s IMO.
@@markrhuett not what I've heard. the old mechanical truck engines are good but I've heard the big engines they've used in locomoves and stuff were lemons
This is why you don't put a different prime mover in your emd locomotives. These type of engines are nor reliable! And from the sound of it, it isn't worth it! The only thing the catapillar engine is worth putting in is diesel trucks, and tractors! NOT LOCOMOTIVES! THESE ENGINES ARE PRONE TO FAILURES! THESE ENGINES ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR RAILROAD SERVICE,DUE TO THEIR PENCHANT FOR FAILING ON THE ROAD.
It’s not censored, it doesn’t belong to them anymore. This is a way of deleting the previous owner’s name without a paint job to avoid confusion as to who owns it, just like UP did with SP and CNW locomotives after their mergers were completed.
Not once has a CAT powered locomotive ever been successful out in the field under the usual rigors railroad usage. They've failed every time, and yet they keep on trying again and again. Just like NS with those horrible "PR43C" rebuilds. Complete pieces of junk.
I love switching with screaming EMDs but this CAT repower is just beautiful! I could listen to that all day! Great video.
👍
If you haven't seen it Yadkin Valley has a Cummins powered EMD SD90 that is pretty wicked, too.
This CAT prime mover is my new favorite. It has character like the 567 or the FDL 16.
To anyone not knowing which railroad this MP20B used to be in, yes. It was Union Pacific.
EVEN THE UP FOUND OUT JUST HOW UNRELIABLE THESE CATAPILLAR ENGINES ARE!UP HAS JUST ABOUT CLEARED THEIR ROSTER OF THESE UNRELIABLE ENGINES, DUE TO THEIR HIGH FAILURE RATES.
sure ain't no 645 though... best prime mover ever
Damn Straight,👍
Picking up where Generation III Locomotives left off eh? Pretty neat, I do love the sound the GeepCats at RRVW and TCW make.
Beautiful sound ! As this Kitty Cat spools up that sweet turbo whistle kicks in.
Gee, and I thought the CAT C175s were smokey prime movers. Either way, excellent CAT sound in this clip for sure.
These loco’s are rebuilt UP EMD GP50’s, however Pacific Harbour Line has used GP40FH-2’s as the base for their rebuilt locos.
Best way to upgrade the early GP50s. That whole thing was a flop
Not gonna lie, that 4 stroke sound is pretty underrated. Is it fine if I use these sound recordings for use as TS2020 freeware with proper credit to Precision Locomotive? Thanks in advance
Now THAT would be great...
Ts20 is kinda crap tho
It has *soot!* (righteous trains have this. Awesome!)
I like the way this CAT sounds.
Man, would love to hear about 5-6 of these on the point of a coal drag heading up Cranberry Grade.
Sounds like a Bucket of bolts... Love it!
that's what CAT repowers sound like.
Run them long enough, and you can pick up a bucket's worth of bolts (and God knows what else) all over the running boards. Seriously, an engineer friend of mine did that after the NS PR43C rebuild he was on failed.
The sound character remind me about Germany diesel-hydraulic locomotive with MTU 12 cylinder prime mover fron 1960-1980's era. Unique to hear it from EMD locomotive.
That sounds sick!
Loving the new tier4 emissions
Only designed as Tier 2.
@@rdlehmer nowhere near a pre tier0!
Love the way the dynamic brake hatch is installed BACKWARDS!!!😆 {I know - probably for inside clearance}.
Just like they did on GP38's to clear the paper air filter box.
I remember ns having one of those geeps with cat engines in them
ns designation GP 4.5.
Ns cat engines were TC10s , those old NW GP9s with half the cylinders removed were the 4.5s.
POWER
absolutely, positively,NOT tier4!
Trying to compete with an ALCO
@@CyberSoldat lmao
Tier 2
@@rdlehmer it's a little rich for tier2.......like the smoke anyhow!
How does this work? Does it load the generator with the dynamic brake?
Yes
Sounds awesome... More....
Sounds like a Cat but smoke like an Alco !
CAT: when you are not sure you’re an emd or a ge person
These sound like an MP15 with a VGT. And also a 7.3 power stroke 😅😂
This locomotive is hydraulic, AC or DC driven?
It's a great sounding engine, but it's no 645
Q: When they do a load test in a yard with other locomotives, do they connect the generator to the other locomotive with a cable and run up the engine? I heard it's to test a generator under load... If so, why can't they always do a "self load test"...
During load tests, the power from the main generator is directed to the dynamic brake resistor grids creating an artificial load.
@@TrainTrackTrav So again, WHY do they use another locomotive for these load tests instead of self load testing like here? I even read they'll rig a decommissioned loco to conduct the tests? Do they just run a giant cable from loco "A" to loco "B"?
no, they don't do that at all! if a locomotive can not "self load" they will run leads to a load bank beside the locomotive to load test the locomotive using its generator.
The other way is to run on the mainline with a locomotive that has dynamic brake, to retard the speed of the powering locomotive at set speeds to monitor ammeter and engine load.
@@rearspeaker6364 So, it all depends on the circumstances when they conduct the test: It can be dynamic grids on the loco, another decommissioned loco's grids or like you said, a load bank...
Very interesting stuff and thanks for sharing. Question please, What about emissions? That sure seems smokey given current EPA regs.
This engine and locomotive are grandfathered in. The SD50's were made before today's emissions regulations.
@@electric7487 Thanks!
@@electric7487 *GP50 -- it's a four-axle unit.
i wonder what RPM the engine runs at in notch 8. specs from CAT say the rated speed is 1750rpm with max torque at 1300rpm. ( i presume 1300rpm for notch 8)
You can actually find out yourself with a sound editor! It's really simple. Take a sample, count the exhaust pulses, and divide them into the clip length in seconds. Multiply by 60. For a two-stroke engine, that gives an RPM value, but exhaust pulses come every other stroke on a four stroke engine, so multiply by two. These calculations hold true even though there's multiple cylinders - it's just a freak coincidence of cylinder scavenging, from what I've been told
Anyway, I can make a quick educated guess for you. The pulse spacing feels about the same as a 567C, which runs at 835 RPM, so, doubling that, my guess when I was watching the video was around 1700 RPM, which is pretty close to the quoted 1750 RPM.
The torque the engine produces isn't terribly important in and of itself. What matters is that the generator is being spun fast enough to produce the desired electrical power. Of course, that requires engine power, and torque is a component of that power. The only torque that is useful to traction is that which is generated by the motors, but, again, what really matters here is the linear force (tractive effort) that is derived from that torque. And, of course, the weight of the locomotive determines how much of that force, which is inversely related to speed, can actually be used to start a train, with the extra power only being useful at higher speeds, where the available tractive force drops below the amount of force that will spin the wheels.
It would be closer to the rated 1750 rpm. The engine is apparently rated at 1800 rpm in 60 Hz generator settings - and the exhaust in this test sounds much like a 2-stroke EMD engine running at 900 rpm.
@@ErickC That holds true for many engines - but once you get up to locomotive engines it's not as obvious. Often the vee angle means the cylinders don't fire evenly, and even when they do, there's not always an obvious exhaust pulse. On 16-cylinder EMD units (even firing) the dominant frequencies at 900 rpm are 120, 135 and 150 Hz, even though 16 x 900 / 60 would suggest exhaust pulses at 240 Hz.
On some 12-cylinder 4-stroke engines (like the ALCO 251 and GEVO, with uneven firing) the "burble" comes from a distinct 3 pulses per full cycle, perhaps due to there being 6 pairs of cylinders with 3 pairs closer to the exhaust stack.
@@trainiax : This process has never not worked for me. I use it almost exclusively to blend clips of locomotive engines taken at different power levels together into a seamless progression from idle to maximum RPM in the context of railroad simulators. Bear in mind that it's not, in any way, a frequency analysis. It's 100% a volume and timing analysis. You're right in saying that trying to predict RPM with the frequency of the overtones would never work - it absolutely doesn't for the precise reasons you've outlined. However, I am not comparing overtones (although analyzing overtones can be helpful in predicting where spikes in the spectrum will be at different RPM values), I'm counting the BPM. I see no fundamental difference between the exhaust pulse of an EMD 567 and a snare drum.
If it didn't work, you would end up with two problems: one, phasing issues as the pulses go out of sync, and two, beat in the overtones in the transition areas where you're in an RPM range where two samples are blended together. Neither problem presents when using this method.
I can take any set of samples and seamlessly blend them together across the whole RPM range of the engine and end up with a result that is a 1:1 match to reference videos where the RPM can be verified with a tachometer (as is the case with modern locomotives with digital displays), even if the RPM was at the limits of specification at each power setting when the samples were collected (that is, even when there's a certain degree of deviation from nominal values in the samples). This includes a perfect match in the frequency spectrum at any given RPM. And I do this purely with math once the number of exhaust pulses and time of a clip are known. I have never not had a perfect blend in overtones from one clip to the next that also precisely matches samples taken at known RPM values. It's a powerful but simple method.
True story, this direct relationship between RPM and a host of other things (like exhaust timing and engine overtones) works for jet engines as well, and was used in the post-crash investigation of Palm 90 to determine the precise engine RPM. This was how they discovered that the captain was using an amount of thrust that was nowhere near correct for takeoff (which was the result of blocked inlet probes because the captain failed to use engine deicing).
@@trainiax : also - you're absolutely right that the process is slightly different, and more difficult for Alco and GE engines for the exact reasons you mention. When I determine the "pulse" length on those engines, I have take into account the "beats per measure," as it were. I was building new frequency curves for someone else's Baldwin sound package for funsies not too long ago, and that was indeed the first challenge - determining the rhythm of the engine to avoid accidentally labeling intermediate "beats" in the measure as the dominant overall heartbeat of the engine.
Tier 4?!? Thing is running like a damn alco!
CAT’s site states that this engine is “U.S. EPA Tier 2 Nonroad Equivalent Emission Standards (Not Currently EPA Certified)”
Still, sounds awesome as, up there with the 2 stroke EMD’s IMO.
Like the cat engine and emd engine Sound
Parece el sonido de las Alstom que llegaron de Portugal hacia la Argentina entre 2005 y 2006
Please tell me this is more reliable than most Repowers
Cats are very reliable...
@@markrhuett not what I've heard. the old mechanical truck engines are good but I've heard the big engines they've used in locomoves and stuff were lemons
@@harrimanfox8961 That's because the railroads cheaped out WAY too much on maintenance.
@@electric7487 they can't hold up for 92- or 184-day maintenance cycles.
A good reliable prime mover would be the EMD 645. An absolute unit but a great running workhorse too.
It sounds like a vibration box. I wonder if i'm accurate on that one.
in sri lanka class m5c rebuild with kitty cat 3516DITA power plant with 1800hp
Sea engines?
There are marine variations of these engines.
Send this to atherns or atlas and have them make a HO scale model of this. I would buy it without a doubt
This sounds just so wrong, for that classic GP40 carbody.
Somethings not right, that’s a lot of smoke just for powering up the engine in place.
The engine isn't running at high idle, it's running under full load. They're conducting a self-loading test.
@@Bill-sp8kb That would explain it.
way better than a alco
Just needs a paint job
This is why you don't put a different prime mover in your emd locomotives. These type of engines are nor reliable! And from the sound of it, it isn't worth it! The only thing the catapillar engine is worth putting in is diesel trucks, and tractors! NOT LOCOMOTIVES! THESE ENGINES ARE PRONE TO FAILURES! THESE ENGINES ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR RAILROAD SERVICE,DUE TO THEIR PENCHANT FOR FAILING ON THE ROAD.
Caterpillar practically owns the oil&gas industry, with the 3500 and 3600 engine family.
Then why do they work fine everywhere else??
Why censor the union pacific text whats wrong with you
It’s not censored, it doesn’t belong to them anymore. This is a way of deleting the previous owner’s name without a paint job to avoid confusion as to who owns it, just like UP did with SP and CNW locomotives after their mergers were completed.
@ralfie8801 bro this was a year ago I was crazy back when I wrote this comment
@@nightsun152
Well I sure hope you’re getting along a lot better now!
Not once has a CAT powered locomotive ever been successful out in the field under the usual rigors railroad usage. They've failed every time, and yet they keep on trying again and again. Just like NS with those horrible "PR43C" rebuilds. Complete pieces of junk.
GE U10B:
Sounds like a damn CAT D9 Dozer......NO Thanks😡😡😡🤬
Sounds ratty