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Trains

The Heaviest Haul: A New Locomotive Factory Will Put This Indian State On The Fast Track

Tomas Kellner
December 25, 2016
GER: You were also involved in movies.
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Trains

Brains For Trains: How Software Is Making Trains Smarter

Dorothy Pomerantz
September 21, 2016
We fly connected planes and design self-driving cars, but what about smart trains? If you pay close attention, there is the faint sound of the whistle coming from around the digital bend.
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GE and Rio Tinto: partnering for peak locomotive performance

September 02, 2016
Old world: make, sell, break, fix, make, sell.New world: make, partner, predict, improve.

In an increasingly volatile world, certainty can seem like a bridge too far, but in May 2016 Australian mining company Rio Tinto and GE signed a five-year customer service agreement (CSA) to build mutual assurance around the miner’s rail operation.

The CSA covers the servicing of Rio Tinto’s 196 locomotives—a pure GE fleet—which ply 1,600km of private railway between 15 mines in the famously harsh, hot, red-dirt region of the Pilbara, north Western Australia.
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A digital revolution coming down the freight-rail track

August 08, 2016
Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coal a day rumbling out of 50 mines, along a network of some 2,700 kilometres of heavy-haul track to three coastal hubs for export. Aurizon’s Central Queensland Coal Network (CQCN) is one of the largest coal rail networks in the world. It carries dozens of trains running mine to port and port to mine—around 85 services daily—aiming to synch with the movements of ships bound for Japan, China, South Korea, India and Taiwan. Now, consider that most of that rail line is single track. Let’s pull over for a moment.
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railroads

GE Signs $2.5 Billion Deal to Supply 1,000 Locomotives to India’s Vast Railway Network

November 09, 2015
A recent five-year transportation study found that more than half of the trains running on India’s vast rail network didn’t leave on time. What’s holding them back? A lack of locomotives.
Not surprisingly, late departures lead to frustration for millions of travellers as well as businesses, which rely on trains to ship their goods.

But a multibillion-dollar Letter of Award to GE by the Ministry of Railways could help unclog this bottleneck and significantly boost the Indian rail network’s on-time record.
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Eyes in the Sky: #DRONEWEEK Will Beam Aerial Footage From GE’s Boot Camp for Jet Engines on Periscope

July 17, 2015
Before a new GE machine design gets cleared for production, it has to go through rigorous testing and endure conditions it will likely never see in service – from golf ball-size hail to exploding jet engine fan blades. In the U.S., the company’s testing facilities are sometimes located in remote corners of the country and even employees rarely see more than a couple.
But that’s about to change. Starting Monday, GE will use drones to beam footage from five testing sites and factories to everyone with the Periscope app on its channel @generalelectric.
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rail

This Software-Guided Supersonic Air Blower Sweeps the Rails Clean

April 27, 2015
Like an SUV towing a trailer in winter, locomotives can lose their grip on slick rails if they’re pulling too much behind them. Since the weather in mountainous areas can change quickly, railroads play it safe and usually only run trains long enough to pull though all weather conditions.
But shorter trains can get expensive. A single rail car can fit enough grain to bake 258,000 loaves of bread, according to the Association of American Railroads. That’s why GE locomotive engineers developed a software-guided supersonic air blower.
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Forget the Iron Horse, Here Comes the Iron Snake

September 05, 2014

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LNG Could Push Diesel Trains Into History Books

April 16, 2014
Liquefied natural gas could do to diesel-powered locomotives what the latter did to steam engines: put them into the history books.
A report from the Energy Information Administration said that LNG “will play an increasing role in powering freight locomotives in coming years.”
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Happy Rails To You: Amtrak’s Chief Mechanical Officer Mario Bergeron Talks about Thanksgiving Travel and a Workhorse GE Locomotive

November 27, 2013

If you are reading this on a railroad platform while waiting to board a train home for Thanksgiving, pay good attention to your train’s locomotive. In the early 1990s, engineers at GE Transportation designed the P42 Genesis diesel-electric locomotive for Amtrak, and the streamlined, low-profile engine remains a workhorse of the system. It can travel as fast as 110mph and pull 16 Amtrak Superliner coaches. GE manufactured more than 300 of them for Amtrak, Metro North and Via Rail.

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