The Alco Millenium Series - Part 3
By the time the Morrison-Knudsen MK5000C first hit the rails in 1991, the battle lines had long been drawn North America's big freight rail movers. The ICC's merger moratorium, enacted in the wake of the Union Pacific-Rock Island Scandal in 1981-82, had become a more or less permanent fact of life, and the Railroad Alliance roads - Rock Island, Rio Grande, Western Pacific, Erie Lackawanna and Delaware and Hudson - had set up the templates for co-operation that everyone else was following. Prosperity in the 1980s and 1990s and the ever-higher cost of trucking had driven large shippers, package delivery services like UPS, FedEx and Purolator, power utilities, oil and chemical companies, automakers and customers large and small onto the rails, and it showed in freight traffic levels across the country, but most of all in the West. Conrail and Burlington Northern fought a heated battle over the Northwest, while Southern Pacific and Santa Fe fought a similar conflict over the Southwest - that situation made more interesting because of the fact the two competitors had wanted to merge and been thwarted by the merger moratorium, and SP had been sold back to its employees and management as a result, and by 1991 was in the midst of a dramatic, customer-service driven turnaround that would make American business history. Traffic was growing every day, and the railroads battled to keep up with it, going to quite large lengths to handle the loads they were being asked to move. Bigger and heavier trains had made remote-control helpers and mid-train locomotives along with air-compressor equipped cabooses de rigeur, and infrastructure improvements - more and heavier track, stronger bridges, clearance projects, concrete crossties, cab signalling and in some cases massive projects like entire cut-off lines - were all meant for these bigger trains.
It also meant more power was needed. The 'third-generation' diesels - the Alco Millenium 175/180/185/190, EMD SD50/SD50V/SD50M and GE Dash-7 series - had continued the evolutionary process of their still quite common predecessors, but the Dash-7 Series had had riding quality and traction issues from Day One and the initial SD50 had engine reliability issues, all of which benefitted Alco's revival but proved a problem for ever-hungry-for-power railroads. Rebuilds had become amazingly common in the 1980s - Santa Fe and Burlington Northern had gone the furthest by re-manufacturing hundreds of aging F-units in the CF7 program, and Conrail, BN, SP, New York Central and Southern had rebuilt hundreds of units each. Morrison-Knudsen, whose rebuilding of old GE U-Boats with Sulzer diesels and Siemens components had proven tough, strong engines, as encouraged by SP to go into the business for real, and the massive MK5000C had been shot number one at this. SP bought 50 of them at one go, and the MK5000C soon had orders pouring in to such a degree that Sulzer and Siemens began making components for them in North America rather than importing them from Europe.
Alco was would take three years to counter before the AC-drive 220DP began testing in 1994. As the Cummins QSK engines Alco had just started using had V20 and V24 assemblies available power was not an issue, but reliability and traction were, and the company wisely chose to use the AC traction motors from the 200EP and develop an Alternator and control electronics that could handle anything thrown at it from the huge Cummins engines. GM was quicker to respond thanks to the SD60 program (which had been the second use of EMD's new 710 prime mover, after the SD50M), but even that didn't last long before the company went right on first to the SD70 and SD70MAC with its AC traction motors. GE responded first with its Dash-8 Series and then with its AC5000CW, but while EMD and Cummins quickly countered the ever-bigger Sulzer diesels (and the entry of Caterpillar's Progress Rail division in 1995 into the new locomotive market), GE's 7FDL prime mover series was unable to move much before the 5000-horsepower mark before it began to have reliability problems. The result was the General Electric GEVO engine series, first seen in the new Evolution Series locomotives in 2000.
Power outputs rose quickly in this competition. The SD70MAC pushed the top threshold to 6000 horsepower, only for the Progress Rail PR64C to push it to 6400 with its truly-immense Caterpillar engines, then Alco upped it to 7000 horsepower with the Millenium 220DP quickly followed by EMD out-doing themselves with the 20-cylinder, 7250-horsepower SD80MAC. GE's double-engined 10,000-horsepower AC100CW was an attempt at keeping up with the competition, but only the Union Pacific and Norfolk and Western bought it out of concern for the ten-axle locomotive's nightmarish complexity, that failure being what resulted in the Evolution Series' development. In addition to one power expansion after another, everyone was rebuilding their own units to improve power outputs and reliability - this being rather easier for the roomy carbodies of the Alco Millenium Series as opposed to the hood units of other railways, something noticed by Morrison-Knudsen, whose MK6000C had a much longer cab section as a result.
The 220DP, introduced for sale in January 1995 after testing, focused on making sure its reliability was equal to its immense power. Still a six-axle unit but with trucks improved over the 210DP, the AC-powered 220DP dramatically improved its tractive effort abilities over the 210DP, and it showed in its pulling power, which was immense. Such grunt actually ran into concerns about wheelspin doing damage to the track itself, but this was shared with all of the high-powered engines and everyone was working on how to ensure it wasn't an issue both at the railroads and at the locomotive builders. Train weights (particularly on heavy unit trains) showed the need for power, even if said weights were such that it took considerable effort on places like Tehachapi and Cajon Passes on SP and ATSF in California, Stevens Pass on the BN in Washington and Soldier Summit on the DRGW in Utah to keep trains safely operated. (The DRGW ultimately electrified its Denver-Salt Lake City through the Moffat Tunnel and over Rollins Pass, energizing it in its entirety for the first time in September 2000.) The nearly 200-car, 15,000-ton freights common in the Midwest and the power needed for them resulted in all of the builders using their high-horsepower engines to their advantage, and while EMD, GE and Alco could (and did) offer excellent financing and trade-in terms, both Morrison-Knudsen and Progress Rail were able to carve themselves out a niche in the market in the 1990s.
Expansions of America's rail system, mostly stagnant from World War II until the 1980s, also contributed to the need for power, again most of all in the West. Conrail built its own main line from Roberts Bank, British Columbia, to Portland, Oregon, competing it in 1990 and closing up several gaps in the original Milwaukee Road routes, while the Santa Fe also closed up holes in its system in Texas in the 1980s. The Rio Grande too went south, building all the way from Pueblo, Colorado, to Amarillo, Texas, beginning operations on this route in 1995. Several railroads went out to the Powder River Basin, and the New York Central acquired a number of smaller lines and built new ones to extend a new route through Vermont and New Hampshire to Montreal and Ottawa and then north into the mineral-producing regions of Quebec and massively expanded its West Virginia secondary from Columbus, Ohio to Charleston and Deep Water, West Virginia, gunning (successfully) for some of the coal traffic that the Norfolk and Western and Chessie System were feasting on. Erie Lackawanna grew the most thanks to line sales from the New York Central, Conrail and Chessie System, acquiring the NYC Pennsylvania Division, most of the former Western Maryland and several Conrail lines, most notably from Youngstown, Ohio, to Connellsville, Pennsylvania and from Newberry, Pennsylvania to Philadelphia. (It has to be said that their partners in the Railroad Alliance really pushed for this to happen and funded many of the efforts, though the EL's market share grew dramatically as a result.)
Southern Pacific went the furthest on rebuilds and expansions though, first by beginning service to Las Vegas (through the purchase of Trona Railway and its own new track across southern Nevada) in 1991 and then being a partner in the building of the California High-Speed Rail System, scouting out lines for the CAHSR and convincing the state of California to build the HSR (and a parallel SP freight route) through Tejon and Newhall Passes between Bakersfield and Los Angeles, allowing SP's San Joaquin Division to completely bypass the Tehachapi and Cajon Pass routes between LA and the Central Valleys. This route, opened with the initial section of the HSR in 1998, was a costly building for SP but one which paid for itself really rather quickly. (It should be noted that SP's route through the San Fernando Tunnel between LA and Mojave remained in service for the Las Vegas line, but the Palmdale Cutoff and Cajon Pass remained for LA-bound trains, but the new route made the Palmdale Cutoff much less important.) SP also bought the New Mexico Central between Santa Fe, New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, in 1997 as the company was in receivership.
This new construction opened up several competing markets for railroads, and while in many cases there were not ideal routes, line improvements funded by the companies, shippers and in some cases states and Washington fixed a lot of that problem, and expanded freight rail traffic that much further. Several railroads, including the SP, ATSF, Southern and NYC, began experimenting in the 1990s with truck trains including coaches, food service and sleeping cars for truck drivers and hauling their tractors as well as trailers, a service that was quite popular with independent truckers but not well used by the big companies, but the traffic was quite enough for the companies to make profits on it, and indeed one result of it was a new life for a lot of older Amtrak units that were rebuilt by their new owners.
Indeed, Amtrak in 1997 handed Alco perhaps the passenger firm's biggest commission yet, looking for a complement (and eventual replacement) of Amtrak's overworked EMD F40PH diesels and its handful of newer GE Dash 8-32BWH units. The passenger firm had spent a rather large sum on GE P30CH and EMD SDP40F six-axle diesels, but the former had been mechanically unreliable and the latter had had several problems with balance resulting in poor riding, derailments or both, resulting in the F40PH, which while capable and effective was underpowered for the growing sizes and amenities of Amtrak long-distance routes. Alco and GE had both proposed completely new passenger units, and while the 8-32BWH was a capable unit, both GE and Alco figured they could do better - and in 1994, Amtrak ordered a demonstrator from both, challenging the firms to put their money where their mouth was.
Both delivered.
Alco's solution was the Millenium 225DP, a four-axle unit with Alco's first monocoque steel-alloy carbody replacing the traditional hydroformed chassis of previous Milleniums. (GE went this route with the Genesis as well.) Inside that carbody was Cummins' newest prime mover, the 5000-horsepower QSK45P, as well as a separate 800-horsepower engine designed expressly for HEP usage. Both were equipped with cylinder deactivation for better fuel efficiency, and the locomotive met the EPA's stringent air pollution standards. The monocoque frame still allowed the usual Chrysler-Alco trait of mounting the Prime mover as low as possible, and in this case the fuel tank wrapped completely around the prime mover to provide sufficient fuel capacity and making the locomotive ride well, a trait improved still by electronically-controlled active suspension in the trucks, which improved ride quality and both tractive effort and braking effectiveness. Capable of a top speed of 130 mph and with better fuel efficiency than the F40PH despite having a lot more power, Amtrak was impressed. The GE Genesis' innovative on-board diagnostic and control systems were a feature Chrysler-Alco integrated into the Millenium 225DP at Amtrak's request (in return for the license to do this, Alco licensed GE to use the active suspension system they had developed - an honest tradeoff in the minds of both companies and indeed Amtrak) and production models began service with Amtrak in March 1997, less than a year behind the GE Genesis. Both locomotives proved highly effective at Amtrak's heavier passenger trains, their additional power and better ride qualities and flexibility quickly bumping the F40PH models to secondary roles.
Indeed, the Millenium 225DP and Genesis P42AC came as Amtrak began major overhauls of their entire fleet. The roaring success of the Acela Express and Texas TGV has captured desires for speed among Amtrak's passengers, and both because of the desire for faster schedules and to get out of the way of many passenger trains, Amtrak's schedules got faster all the time. The Challenger-series passenger cars, which began arriving in 1993 to work with Amtrak's large fleet of Superliner passenger cars, were designed to work with the Superliners and allow speeds of up to 120 mph, and the Superliners were rebuilt in the 1990s for these speeds as well. Amtrak's other rolling stock - big boxcars, autoracks, baggage cars, sleeping cars - were all also rebuilt as a result, and the Colorado Railcar VisionChaser series of car, with their completely-glass roofs, began arriving in 1997 to add to the fleet. The trains needed power, and the two new locomotives were just the tools for the job they were being given. Even despite that, Amtrak developed huge plans for a high-speed system in the Midwest, hoping to accomplish it by 2040. The herculean efforts of Amtrak in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks changed that, as when Congress bailed out American airlines in October 2001, they gave Amtrak a pile of money and told them to get cracking on a high-speed rail system for as much of America as possible, and by 2020 virtually the entire Midwest had either 160+mph bullet trains of 135+mph turbine-powered feeder trains carrying passengers anywhere and everywhere, providing the money for both their operation but also Amtrak's long-distance trains and their ever-rising standards.
While other companies for the most part gathered up the high-speed business - GE had license-built the original Acela Express trains, EMD and Siemens had built the California HSR's trainsets and some of the Midwestern train sets and Bombardier had built the gas-turbine powered feeder trains, supported by the Budd Company, Colorado Railcar and American Car and Foundry - Chrysler-Alco moved into the field of light rail cars in the 1980s, helped by Boeing Vertol's messy failure in the field and big light rail car orders from San Francisco, Seattle, New Jersey and Toronto. These orders were such that the company built new facilities in Warren, Michigan, to help turn out the cars, a move that turned particularly beneficial when Detroit began rebuilt its street railway system in the mid-1980s. While this division was primarily known as Chrysler Rail Systems, it was well-known that Alco's engineers and designers were well-involved in the making of the light rail vehicles. It may have been far apart from what they had been used to, but it is well-known that the big five-unit light rail cars built for the TTC in the mid-to-late 1980s spent over 40 years in service, with many units never having mechanical problems.
After all, what would one expect from a company with over a century of experience building locomotives....
