Ex- Pittsburgh & Lake Erie power! I have 35mm slides of this girl working in her original livery in western Pennsylvania many years ago. This was AWESOME to see!
The MP15 is doing about 45mph in the daylight clip. The locomotive passes a fixed point in about 42 frames of video, and it's about 49ft long. That makes about 70 feet per second, which is about 47mph.
Very cool! I live in the Bay Area, south of San Francisco, and we will often see CalTrain use their MP15s to haul broken down trains to the repair shop down in San Jose, and they do it at high rates of speed. It is super fun to watch, and a nice change from the usual power.
"You might be able to go over 100, but speed isn't everything. I can only hit 65 but I do more work than you do! Look a sight better than you do while I'm doing it, too, you young whipper snapper!"
I recall seeing a Seaboard System MP15 in a lash-up with GPs on the point of a freight going through Biloxi MS in 1987. None of us has to feel guilty about running our model train switchers at "road speed"!
Some of their older switchers and or GP38's from Amtrak that still has the old style of "strobe like ditch lights" like get them swapped out into more modern ones that they have.
Sweet catch! Can MP15's do that speed normally? Or does this particular locomotive have special "road gearing"? (which is a thing, but I've never heard of it on a switcher, though the MP15 is more of a utilitarian road diesel/switcher/etc...)
Yeah, the MP15s and the later SW1500s were designed to do track speed like this. Most of them have functionality to automatically transition between yard and road service as the current speed requires. Those transition systems actually go back to very early diesels!
@@zackbobby5550 They don't "automatically transition between yard and road service as the current speed requires." They're just diesel-electric locomotives, just like any other. Using an MP15 in the yard and then taking it out on the road is just like using a GP38 in the yard and then using it on the road. There is no "transition system", and no change in configuration of the locomotive when it leaves the yard. The engineer just sets the throttle to go faster. The "MP", by the way, stands for "multi-purpose" -- the locomotives were designed to be useful both as switchers and on the road. Their top speed is 65mph, and the locomotive in the video is doing about 45mph in the daylight scene.
@beeble2003 Dude, I'm literally an actual engineer lmao. Yes, many diesels have different settings they can transition between. Many of the newer ones, or ones retrofitted with newer computer systems, allow you to select whether you want Road Mode or Switching Mode. This basically sets the Load Regulator to different settings based on if you want to get going quickly or get going smoothly. A lot of older units and road-switcher units are set up to be set to switcher settings at lower speeds, and somewhere in the low 20s of mph they transition to road mode. I don't know where you got your information or why you're so sure of it, but I know for a fact (because ya know, I'm actually an engineer that went to school for this) that what I'm saying is true. Many locomotives absolutely have road and switcher settings.
@@zackbobby5550 Are you referring to the traction motor connection transition? Series, series-parallel, full-parallel. Full parallel for zoomies, if the locomotive is equipped for it.
@@beeble2003 They do automatically transition, although the older ones were transitioned manually by the engineer. Most switchers were not equipped with the transition control of traction motor connections that allowed higher speeds. This, along with switcher trucks and low-speed, high-torque gearing, limits such locomotives. It doesn't matter how much you notch up the throttle, you won't hit these speeds in a conventional switcher. At least, not without damaging something.
