Historical Footnote: The closing of Wabtec MotivePower Boise Idaho facility (formerly the Morrison Knudsen and MK Rail facility) was announced yesterday by the media in Boise and in Erie, Pennsylvania.......

https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/bus ... 58697.html

https://www.yourerie.com/news/local-new ... k-to-erie/

PC

I saw that too, it's too bad, they did good work. In the early 1990s when SP didn't want to pay for new units but needed them MK rebuilt SD45 cores into SD40-2s by chopping the last four cylinders off the block and crankshaft, the ex- Rio Grande crews half-jokingly said they were the best new units SP bought after the RG takeover. But I understand MK lost money on the project, part of the reason they were sold. You never know what will happen with the shop, but I'll bet Wabtec will not want to sell it to any potential competitor.

It will be very interesting to see what Wabtec does with the property. Yes, they probably will not want it being used to compete with their other operations. There is still lots of open space south and southeast of Boise for commercial development, a little further out of town from the MotivePower location on South Apple Street, and not far from town or the plant.

The former EMD plant one in La Grange, Illinois is being phased out by Progress Rail, but that plant is in an area where any available commercial real estate is in demand for redevelopment as warehousing and distribution centers.

PC

That's very sad news. I was a former locomotive mechanic and when AC locomotives began to takeover the DC market I knew many jobs would be lost. I remember disconnecting some traction motor cables on a AC locomotive and couldn't believe the size difference. At least half the size. Everything was so much simpler, better built, easier to work on. There is little question the newer locomotives don't require nearly as much maintenance and are much more reliable.

Unfortunately this has also been a death blow for older DC power which was the bread and butter of many shops around the country. Class ones have been dumping the market with old DC power some freshly rebuilt. Yet there is few buyers. This purge is eerie similar to trying to sell the E and F units to railroads when the SD40-2 came roaring in.

Motive Power much like General Electric, was a victim of building locomotives so good that they effectively killed off a good portion of their business which was overhaul, upgrades, leasing, parts, and re-selling locomotives. Business will come back when these AC locomotives need overhauls. But for now with this flood of newer AC power it's going to be difficult for shops to stay alive, as most railroads will not rebuild DC power and buy newer locomotives. Good news for Motive Power in the short run but can they survive on locomotive sales as their main source of income? Hard to say.

Rebuilding seems alive and well to me.

The Class 1's aren't exactly knocking down the builder's doors to place orders for Tier 4 offerings. And most seem to be underway with major rebuild programs of mid to late 1990's power, both DC and AC models (And often with the assistance of EMD and GE since they're desperate for the extra business).

Only Canadian National seems to have eschewed rebuilding of road power from this era so far to the best of my knowledge for the big 6. Not aware of an initiative there to start a major rebuilding program for their big fleet of Dash 9's and their SD70I's and SD75I's.

But everyone else is for the big Class 1's (and the possible exception of much smaller KCS). Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific in particular have embraced it in a big way with large scale programs. And CSX and CPR seem to be in the early stages of doing similar, such as CPR's SD70ACU and AC4400CW programs and the pilot programs for an AC4400CW and SD70MAC rebuild program at CSX (25 of each model are to be rebuilt in the next year and evaluated).

And BNSF has also gotten their feet wet and hasn't ordered a Tier 4 six motored unit yet. While it's speculation, I believe we'll see many more SD70MAC and Dash 9 rebuilds from BNSF (joining the modest numbers already rebuilt over the past few years) as the average age of their mainline C-C fleet grows.

The MK5000c was another blow to the original Morrison Knudson. It was supposed to be the next big thing, but flopped hard. The six surviving units were remotored and are now MK50-3's that were famous for coal service on the Utah Railway, and now are on the Kyle. To preserve a MK50-3 is the pipe dream of many Utah railfans.

As for MPI closing now... it will be interesting to see if the brand is still is use once it all moves over to Erie. With how strong the unions and strikes are out in Pennsylvania, and Idaho and the rest of the American west's general disdain for unions; a part of me is surprised Wabtec is moving it all to Erie. You'd think having Boise still running would be a good ace in the hole for the next Erie strike, to threaten to move all production out west to Boise. Wabtec must have a lot of confidence in Erie and its capabilities to trust it taking over the MPI line now, maybe even viewing as a gesture of faith to prevent a future Erie strike.

I remember when the MK5000C units came out, the comment was "those will slip coming out of the sandhouse". MK knew that DC was behind the curve at that point but couldn't create their own competing AC controls.

Oh the Utah Railway guys have a lot of stories at the throttle trying to use the MK5000's and later MK50-3's on the hill. The trucks used weird offset traction motors from Canada that are hard to acquire parts for, so it was common for Utah to run trains with one or two traction motors burned out on each MK50-3. Now imagine running those trains downhill on the Rio Grande's grades.

The MPI units were much better than their MK5000c predecessors from what I gathered.

Anyone have any insight what the point was with the MK50-3's?

To clarify, it seems to me that it would've been more economical to just rebuild the donor ex-Union Pacific SD50's in-kind rather than strip them of their major mechanical and electrical components (And long hood) for transplanting onto the MK5000C's.

Seems a roundabout way of doing things to me, which not only would seem to have cost them more for what at the end of the day essentially still was a SD50, but also created new issues with their non-standard trucks and traction motors that the above poster says were hard to source replacement components for.

The TMs were 752 clones, as I recall, and GE used the same Dofasco trucks on C40-8s in Canada - it's a pretty good HiAd design.
The biggest issue with the MK5000 was the Cat 3612 engine spinning at 'Alco/GE' 1050 RPM, at least one unit broke a crankshaft prior to delivery. The 3600 series engine (now C280) was available in 900 RPM 'EMD' and 1050 RPM 'Alco/GE' ratings, the engine was marketed as a high-efficiency replacement for Alco, EMD, and GE applications but was only marginally successful in practice. It features a cast block (like a GE) that proved inadequate at the higher RPM rating, the only users getting longevity are using the lower RPM rating.
The Cat 3612 engine was already in use, experimentally, in some repowerings; at least one SD-45 received one rated at 3600 HP and 900 RPM. CP Rail repowered a lone M636 with a 3000 HP Cat 3608 'Straight-8' engine, it's still around on the Minnesota Commercial; I believe it's a 1050 RPM variant but has held up - likely because the inline design.
Cat/EMD resurrected the failed EMD 265H-series 4-stroke, renamed the 1010 (265 is the bore in mm, 1010 is the CI/cylinder) instead of using the 3600/C280 engine.
ETA: The failed engines may have been 1000 RPM, not 1050 - but it is known the engines preferred 900 RPM.

CD

Interestingly, I was reading Kalmbach's 2019 Locomotives special issue earlier today and it notes how 2018 was the first year here in North America where the locomotive builders themselves rebuilt more locomotives than they built new.

I suspect when the final analysis is in for 2019, it will swing even further towards rebuildings over new with more programs in place and Norfolk Southern keeping busy with their rebuild programs of late model EMD and GE's.

The wait is over. CN is preparing to launch a rebuild program on 20 of its SD75Is.

Any idea if they'll be converted to AC traction?

Not to try and further derail this thread, but I should pour some cold water on this CN rebuild story.

So far the only sources I have seen with information on this are Wikipedia (SD70 series article, without a citation) and Canadian Railway Observations, which has a reputation for presenting railfan gossip as fact.

I work for CN, and have not heard anything about any rebuild program from internal sources.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this happen, our SD70I's and SD75I's are good locomotives that are getting long in the tooth. But I am going to wait until I hear something official before spreading this story around.