Rusty Traque posted:Mike Caddell posted:Swafford,
I'm certainly no expert, but I think they, and the FP45, got a raw deal from Amtrak over supposed derailing issues.
I don't recall derailing issues with FP45's on either the Santa Fe or Milwaukee Road.
Rusty
Rusty is correct. The "derailment issues", on the BN and Family Lines, was eventually proven to be directly related to the poorly maintained, light weight baggage car coupled directly behind the DDP40F units. Especially on bag track! One site visited around Lincoln, Nebraska on the BN, after an Amtrak "derailment", we could reach down any pull any spike we wanted out of the ties, BY HAND! The BN folks sure didn't like THAT, when then saw what we were doing. At the time, the BN management overreacted at slapped a 50 MPH speed restriction on all the Amtrak trains with SDP40F units, yet the BN had over 200 or so SD40-2 units of the same design, with the same HT-C Trucks, and some units were even heavier than the SDP40F, and no speed restriction was placed on their own units. Naturally, the BN quickly became the laughing stock in the railroad industry, and very quietly removed the speed restriction, after some time.
