GE partnered up with manufacturer American Locomotive Company, or Alco, and in 1948 the companies put a beast into testing. Union Pacific, seeing the potential for lower running costs, wanted in. General Electric Develops A Gas Turbine-Electric EngineĪround this time in the latter part of 1940s, General Electric used what it learned in aviation and restarted development on gas turbines for locomotives. In addition, those diesels required expensive maintenance. Here’s an example of what this looks like:Īccording to Diesel Power Magazine, Union Pacific closely watched fuel prices and wasn’t fond of the price of diesel. To get diesels to near or equal the amount of power as a steamer, locomotives were lashed up with power units and the whole thing was controlled from the cab. But there was a problem: a Big Boy could produce about 7,000 horsepower at 70 mph, yet a typical diesel of the day like an EMD F3 or an Alco FA produced about 1,500 horsepower. UP, like other railroads, began looking into how it could adapt diesel for freight. Instead, the railroad saw success in running its Big Boy steamers in freight use.
In 1946, it had 154 diesel-electric locomotives on hand, but none of them were in freight service. Right around this time, the railroad entered its now famous Big Boy steam locomotives into service, and it wouldn’t even be a decade before Union Pacific would flirt with different technologies for locomotives again.Īs Utah Rails writes, Union Pacific was still hungry for power. UP kept the collaboration going for another two years before deciding to stop chasing the technology. The turbine-electrics never entered regular service and were returned to GE in June 1939. Ultimately, the steam turbine-electric locomotives proved to be unreliable, sometimes encountering failures that required other kinds of locomotives to finish the journey. The locomotives looked on the outside like the diesels of the day. That turbine was paired with a generator, and tractive effort was achieved through electric motors. The steam turbine-electric locomotive used an oil-fired boiler to produce steam to turn a turbine. At the time, train history site Utah Rails notes, Union Pacific was looking for a replacement for steam and something more advanced than the diesels of the day. The railroad started experimenting with turbines back in the late 1930s in April and May 1939, the railroad tested a pair of steam turbine-electric locomotives that were produced in a collaboration with General Electric. A Quest For PowerĪs the Illinois Railway Museum notes in its history of the Union Pacific’s Gas Turbine Locomotive, the trains came out of the Union Pacific Railroad’s quest for more power. The locomotive is not only the most powerful built in the United States, but the turbines behind that power produced a deafening roar and heat that cooked birds and bridges. Through all of my visits, one locomotive has caught my curiosity more than any other thanks to its sheer size, power, and insanity: Union Pacific’s Gas Turbine-Electric Locomotive, or GTEL. I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting the largest railroad museum in America, the Illinois Railway Museum.
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