Diesel Hydraulic Locomotives

Prime586 said:

Brush wasn't the first UK company to outsource production to Romania due to lack of capacity -

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Lack of capacity at Brush, or no loco building capability left? It’s not like they were building Brush Type 2s and Type 4s at the time.

43096 said:

Lack of capacity at Brush, or no loco building capability left? It’s not like they were building Brush Type 2s and Type 4s at the time.

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Did I read somewhere that the frames for the Type 2s came from Beyer Peacock?

43096 said:

Lack of capacity at Brush, or no loco building capability left? It’s not like they were building Brush Type 2s and Type 4s at the time.

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'Capacity' as in Brush no longer had the capacity to build locomotives.

Prime586 said:

'Capacity' as in Brush no longer had the capacity to build locomotives.

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Thanks. That what was what I had thought. It makes you wonder why they bid for the assembly work (as opposed to component supply) at all!

43096 said:

Thanks. That what was what I had thought. It makes you wonder why they bid for the assembly work (as opposed to component supply) at all!

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They had an erecting shop standing empty and wanted to get back into the business. And by then there wasn't much of an alternative available anyway. EE & BRCW were out of the game. Were the BR workshops still capable of building diesel locos by then? They hadn't assembled anything significant since the class 47 and 25 builds

Acathater said:

They had an erecting shop standing empty and wanted to get back into the business. And by then there wasn't much of an alternative available anyway. EE & BRMC were out of the game. Were the BR workshops still capable of building diesel locos by then? They hadn't assembled anything significant since the class 47 and 25 builds

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HST power cars were built by BREL, so clearly there was the capability.

Taunton said:

It wasn't just the UK, others were doing so. I recall in the mid-1980s encountering a delay on the M2 motorway from Dover to London. This was caused by two Romanian heavy trucks running in tandem at maximum fuel economy speed of around 30mph on the road. They were branded ROMAN but were clearly based on the German MAN truck of the era, and looking this up I found there was a substantial joint venture between MAN and the Romanians, facilitated by the West German government, at a factory in Brasov.

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To be fair, as I suspect you know, the Germans had strong cultural ties with both Saxon and Schwabian Germans who had emigrated to Transylvania after the Mongol hordes (if not Mongol, some other hordes) had laid waste the lands in the 13th C.

These settlers had guaranteed nationality rights to maintain their language and religion(s) as part of the deal to get them to uproot and head 1,000 km to the east. Indeed, Brasov was one of the seven German cities of Siebernburgen (Kronstadt), so Germany had far greater reason to trade and deal with Romania than the UK.

When things got awfully tight financially in 1980s Romania, Ceausescu took to selling his ethnic German citizens to their ancient homeland, of course. The empty, well-kept Saxon villages were sadly no longer well kept by their incoming owners in most cases.

70014IronDuke said:

as I suspect you know, the Germans ... had laid waste the lands in the 13th C.

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Only from 1st year school Latin - Romani agrum vastaverunt - The Romans laid waste the farmland. We only had four nouns and three verbs to play with at first, so some nonsense combination sentences - which I somehow still recall. But Laid Waste was apparently seen as a key one. Later, in German class, came Das Rattenfanger von Hameln, Pied Piper of Hamelin where they all ended up, indeed, in Transylvania

. Sorry, back to hydraulic transmissions.

Acathater said:

They had an erecting shop standing empty and wanted to get back into the business. And by then there wasn't much of an alternative available anyway. EE & BRMC were out of the game. Were the BR workshops still capable of building diesel locos by then? They hadn't assembled anything significant since the class 47 and 25 builds

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HST power cars were built by BR workshops. But overall build capacity for new traction units was not great. A gradual move to MU work was already well underway.

Acathater said:

Were the BR workshops still capable of building diesel locos by then? They hadn't assembled anything significant since the class 47 and 25 builds

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BREL Doncaster started building Class 56s while the deliveries from Romania were underway (as mentioned previously, the first Doncaster-built unit went into service 4 months before the last Romanian unit was delivered). Sub-assemblies were constructed in other BREL workshops round the country and delivered to Doncaster for final assembly, with Brush supplying the electrical equipment and GEC/Rushton-Paxman supplying the engines. When Doncaster switched over to building Class 58s, the final assembly of the last batch of Class 56s was transferred to BREL Crewe.

Part of the reason Brush did subcontracting deal with Electroputere was that it was hoped that they would be able to sell Class 56s for export into the Eastern Bloc and aligned countries through them, opening up an export market for Brush and GEC/Ruston-Paxman. After the deal was terminated, Electroputere carried on building their Swiss- derived locomotove designs, with licence-built ALCo R251-series engines from UCM Reșița (the Americans were courting Ceaușescu too - the ALCo licence production deal was signed in 1974, replacing UCM Reșița's licenced production of Sulzer engines).

Prime586 said:

Part of the reason Brush did subcontracting deal with Electroputere was that it was hoped that they would be able to sell Class 56s for export into the Eastern Bloc and aligned countries through them, opening up an export market for Brush and GEC/Ruston-Paxman. After the deal was terminated, Electroputere carried on building their Swiss- derived locomotove designs, with licence-built ALCo R251-series engines from UCM Reșița (the Americans were courting Ceaușescu too - the ALCo licence production deal was signed in 1974, replacing UCM Reșița's licenced production of Sulzer engines).

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Strange, as Alco in the USA had given up loco production in the USA in 1968. Their 251 engine, which they used until then, dated from the mid-1950s, Alco never got the fuel racks and the turbocharger completely synchronised, hence it was renowned for producing periodic black smoke, sometimes rivalling steam locos. Their Canadian licence builder, Montreal Locomotive Works, took over what worldwide support remained, but it was a business long running down.

Back on subject, but Alco did have a shot at building diesel hydraulics for the USA market. They only sold three, to Southern Pacific, in 1964, twin engined, 2 x 2,150hp, with Voith transmissions, they lasted just 10 years. Rather contemporary with the Westerns then. The only other mainstream hydraulics in the US were a small group imported from Germany at the same time.

Taunton said:

Strange, as Alco in the USA had given up loco production in the USA in 1968. Their 251 engine, which they used until then, dated from the mid-1950s, Alco never got the fuel racks and the turbocharger completely synchronised, hence it was renowned for producing periodic black smoke, sometimes rivalling steam locos. Their Canadian licence builder, Montreal Locomotive Works, took over what worldwide support remained, but it was a business long running down.

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Montreal Locomotive Works purchased the rights to ALCo's locomotive designs in 1968, but not the diesel engines (Dominion Engineering Works, a subsidiary of GE Canada, had been building ALCo engines under licence at their Lachine plant for MLW from 1961).

ALCo's parent company, Worthington Corp., sold the diesel engine business to White Motors in 1970, where it became White Industrial Power Inc.. In 1977 White sold the business to GEC (UK) and it became GEC-ALCo Power, and in 1994 GEC sold the ALCo Power business to Fairbanks-Morse (who still list the 251 engine family as current products)

When it comes to licencing deals with developing nations, it was usually the case that it was for something that was already a generation old and basically a 'dead duck' in it's home market. You never used to give away your latest technology, though that all ended with China.