Applying center pair of wheels and motor to a Baldwin six-wheel,
swivel truck.
generator to be used in passenger service. Since
we do not have passenger service, we utilize this
space for an additional fuel tank which has doub-
led our fuel capacity to 1,995 gallons.
One of the major problems of our conversion
has been the difficulty of diesel maintenance and
repair in steam locomotive shops. We have over-
come this difficulty by erecting a movable, collap-
sible wall to close off three pits at one end of the
steam shop. We then remodelled this section into
a diesel shop, putting in depressed floor to bring
the eyes to truck level, and adding elevated plat-
forms. As we require more diesel maintenance
space, we move this wall further into the shop
and remodel behind it.
We have designed and made a considerable
amount of our own diesel servicing equipment,
partly to cut costs, partly because we feel our
home-made equipment suits our particular needs
better than any now on the commercial market.
We have, for instance, made our own automatic
ing cabinets to hold the variety of filters we use.
Our own variable resistance unit cost less than
$500 to build and has saved us both the guess-
work operation of trial runs, and the $5,000 we
would otherwise have expended on a resister
bank. The principle of our box is that of station-
ary plates and a changing water level. By con-
necting up the diesel after an overhaul, we are
able to get an exact resistance measurement. The
efficiency of our locomotive operation has been
greatly increased by this check on horsepower.
We are opposed to guesswork at Union, and are
great believers in running a locomotive exactly
according to the maker's specifications.
During the summer we built a new running
repair shop which cost approximately $1,000,000.
This shop is of the very latest design and provides
the necessary facilities for maintaining our diesels
so that we are able to realize the maximum oper-
ating economies.
A 1,500-hp, 8-cylinder diesel engine generator set of the type
which powers the Baldwin road switching locomotives used by the
Union Railroad Company.
