Talk:EMD SD40

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See http://users.inna.net/~jaydeet/sd40.htm for an SD40 roster. --SSW9389 21:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Southern #3186-3200 were built in January 1972, and the last SD40s Detroit Edison #013-017 were built in July 1972 after SD40-2 production had started in January 1972. Data from Andre Kristopans GM Serial Number homepage. --SSW9389 21:20, 3 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Throttling

This discussion of the throttle operation which was just added (Special:Diff/773523436) feels a little arcane for a summary article on a locomotive. Also, it's ultimately sourced to an article/blog post from Excelsior Statistics and Optimization. This appears to be a self-published source, and we normally only accept those if the author is a recognized expert in the field. Mackensen (talk) 23:55, 2 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

No complaint here if you feel it needs scaled back or moved to a different section. I do think of Al Krug as "an expert in the field" though - his were the best articles about railroad forces, about signal systems worked, etc., that I ever saw on the web. TaigaBridge (talk) 16:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I know Krug has a considerable reputation in railfanning circles, but has he published anywhere? Anyway, the analysis is cited not to Krug, but to Gordon Bower. Krug's site just has the raw numbers. I've only just started poking around my reference books (Pinkepank, McDonnell) but so far I haven't run across any similar criticism/critique of either the SD40 or the EMD 645 prime mover. There's no source for the claim that "Engineers were asked by fuel-conscious management to avoid prolonged operation in Run 7." That's also a sentence that probably makes no sense to a general reader. Mackensen (talk) 21:50, 3 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"There's no source for the claim..." Yeah. That drove me crazy. It's SOMEwhere in one of the Tales from the Krug, a long rant about new trainees staying in notch 7 forever, and the company and the union butting heads about how to teach engineers how to not waste fuel, which came down to the trainees being preferentially paired with the least wasteful experienced engineers. But the first hour I sank into rereading them didn't turn it up, and I know I'll do nothing else for the next 3 weeks if I read all of his stories again trying to find it! Watch it be in one of his old Usenet posts instead, before he started putting them all on the web. TaigaBridge (talk) 02:46, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]