loco size question


OK, I'm gonna take a couple of guesses here. HO scale?? Athearn??

An Athearn SD40-2 snoot is 67 scale feet long from front anti climber to rear anti climber.

An Athearn C44-9W is 72 scale feet long from front anti climber to rear anti climber.

So it's only 5 scale feet longer. I hope this helps.
 
Yep,those measurements check with my information. Boy, those C44's sure look a lot longer though, don't they?
 
Seems like a lot of wasted space with the long porches on the 40-2. I'm sure EMD had a reason for it, but darned if I know what it is!!! LOL
 
The porches on the sd40-2 were to make room for the larger trucks. The hoods are virtually identical but the frame is longer to make room, hence the porches.

I always thought AC44s looked small. They are shorter then the SD70, 80 and 90 series engines.
 
Fred,

I see what your talking about. I just laid a SD40-2 shell next to a GP60 shell. The long hoods are the exactly the same length. The blower housing area is a bit longer on the 40-2, but not much. So by making the 40-2 a 6 axle they had to make the entire engine longer, hence the porches?? Am I correct on this?
 
wheeler1963 said:
Fred,

I see what your talking about. I just laid a SD40-2 shell next to a GP60 shell. The long hoods are the exactly the same length. The blower housing area is a bit longer on the 40-2, but not much. So by making the 40-2 a 6 axle they had to make the entire engine longer, hence the porches?? Am I correct on this?
Click to expand...

The GP60 has a similar hood but it's not the same. The hoods on the SD40 and the SD40-2 are basically the same and are the same length. The trucks are different. The SD40-2's trucks are longer then the SD40's, so the frame was lengthened to make room for the longer trucks and keep the large fuel tank. The long hood was not lengthened so the end result is the porches.
 
On the prototype, the frame on the SD40-2 is the same frame EMD used for the SD45, which accounts for the length. SInce the SD40-2 long hood is shorter, and the engine block as well, the entire upper superstructure is more centered on the frame. Hence, the porches.

The snoots, with the 116" short hood length, makes it look a bit better, at least on the front end.

Kennedy
 
Little off Kennedy, the SD38/39/40/45 used the same length, and the SD38-2/39-2/40-2/45-2 used the same.
 
It was my understanding that the SD-40-2 and the SD-45 rode on the same frame. As the SD-45 had a 20 cylinder engine and the SD-40-2 had a 16 cylinder engine, the SD-45 had a longer hood to cover the larger engine and the SD-40-2 had the "porches" or "Snoots"
 
wheeler1963 said:
Seems like a lot of wasted space with the long porches on the 40-2. I'm sure EMD had a reason for it, but darned if I know what it is!!! LOL
Click to expand...

EMD standardized on the frame length with the SD38, SD39, SD40, and SD45 and made the frame long enough to accommodate the largest - the 20 cylinder SD45. The others have porches because they have only 16 cylinder prime movers, but the prime mover is still roughly centered on the frame. Rather than fill out the space with empty sheet metal, they only made the hood as long as it needed to be and left the platforms. These porches probably afforded some extra collision protection just from the distance aspect, but that's not what their original purpose was. The reason to put them all on the same frame is to make room for the fuel tank. It's possible to cram an SD40 onto an SD35 length frame (the first SD40X model did this) but you have a maximum fuel capacity of about 2600 gallons that way. The full length frame has room for 4000 gallons in a standard profile tank.

The dash 2 line continued the same idea, but an extra 3 feet (approx) was necessary to make room for the longer HT-C trucks and still have the same fuel capacity. The SD45-2 fills the entire frame, and the extra length allowed for the radiators to be longer so the external flare was eliminated. The SD40-2 and SD38-2 for some reason were NOT centered on the frame, keeping the same front porch length (or very close to it) as their non dash-2 counterparts. There is a slight difference in the long hood length but that's almost invisible... the bulk of the extra length all ends up in the long hood/rear porch, thus the famous look of the SD40-2.

The first time I saw one, I said it looked like a cross between a GP40 and a transfer caboose.

Andy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.



Back
Top