GE Locomotive Horsepower Comparison
General Electric was founded in 1892, 30 years before the Electro-Motive Engineering Corporation (or EMC). The very first GE locomotive was, of course, a straight-electric built approximately one year after the company’s birth. It had four wheels, weighed 30 tons, and featured a steeple-cab design. While GE continued to construct electrics for almost a century, it eventually became an extremely successful diesel locomotive builder and displaced Electro-Motive as number one in 1983. GE started its experience with internal combustion engines for railroad use in 1904. Like EMC, it began with a passenger railcar (commonly known as a “doodlebug”) propelled by a gasoline engine, which was connected to the GE electrical equipment for the traction motors. The Barney & Smith Company originally sold the combine-baggage-coach for the Delaware & Hudson Railway, and the six-cylinder automobile engine was manufactured by Wolseley (a British company). Rated at 140 horsepower and numbered D&H 1000, the GE doodlebug was experimented on the same railroad that bought the coach.
In 1905, General Electric was involved in the development of the very first practical diesel locomotive in the United States. The International Power Company supervised this project and required three different manufacturers to supply the major components. GE provided the electrical equipment, the American Locomotive Co. (ALCO) assembled a boxcab body, and the Corliss Steam Engine Co. manufactured a pair of four-cylinder diesel engines. The Southern Pacific Railroad was the first American customer of any diesel-electric locomotive. After being in the gasoline engine business for several years, GE designed its first diesel with the help from its engineer Henri Chatain in 1917. Designated as GM-50, the engine had only two cylinders but could produce up to 200 hp. It was used for another one of GE’s railcars, number 4.
The 1920’s turned out to be a successful decade for diesel development. A three-builder consortium was created to achieve this goal. Although ALCO and GE supplied the same locomotive components as what they did for the very first diesel mentioned earlier, the engines were manufactured by Ingersoll-Rand. In late 1923, before ALCO joined the partnership, GE and IR assembled a unique boxcab #8835 with a round-shaped cab that resembled a boat’s bow; it was propelled by a 300-hp, six-cylinder diesel. Within the next couple of years, all three companies constructed five production boxcab switchers, the first of which was sold to the Central Railroad of New Jersey as #1000. It would become the first diesel-electric locomotive with an excellent amount of performance, spending a total of 32 years in switching service. According to Jeff Wilson’s Guide to North American Diesel Locomotives, the 300-hp boxcabs built by the consortium are listed as ALCO products, but let’s keep focusing on GE locomotives.
While continuing to provide electrical components for multiple diesel builders, General Electric began building its own switchers intended for industrial work and other small duties in 1929. Since Ingersoll-Rand phased itself out of the locomotive market eight years later, GE had used engines from various manufacturers such as Busch-Sulzer, Caterpillar, Cummins, and Cooper-Bessemer. The latter was responsible for designing what was known to be the predecessor to the modern 7FDL diesel. Between 1940 and 1953, GE partnered with ALCO again to produce and market mainline locomotives that would compete against the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors, but that’s another story. About a year after the partnership dissolved, GE introduced its own road diesels and the first was a Cooper-Bessemer-powered, four-unit, streamlined set that was numbered 750 and painted in the colors of the Erie Railroad. In 1956, the GE Universal Line was created to offer locomotives for overseas export, but soon became available for the domestic market in three years. A pair of hood-unit prototypes were constructed with 16-cylinder engines inspired by Cooper-Bessemer’s early designs. The 2,400-hp locomotives were named XP24 as if they were intended to be exported. However, these were the prelude to what became the 2,500-hp U25B, GE’s first production mainline diesels in the U.S.
Since 1961, the 7FDL-16 engine has successfully increased its horsepower output from 2,500 to 4,400 during the next three decades. The new Evolution Series GEVO engine can also produce up to 4,400 hp but with only 12 bigger cylinders for greater fuel efficiency. With all the important history points explained, here’s a look at another locomotive horsepower comparison chart that includes all the different GE models from the Universal, Dash-7, DASH 8, DASH 9, AC traction, GENESIS, and Evolution product lines; plus a few early diesels built prior to the 1960’s. If you recall from the EMD locomotive chart, you will see some model names with suffixes in parentheses, indicating one or more variants that are mechanically identical to the primary model. For example, “DASH 8-40C (W/M)” means that this type includes the standard-cab DASH 8, the wide-cab DASH 8-40CW, and the Canadian cowl-bodied DASH 8-40CM, all of which are powered by the 16-cylinder FDL diesel engine rated at 4,000 hp. You should also keep in mind that some GE locomotives have more than just a single engine. For that reason, you’ll notice an extra number followed by an asterisk in some table cells of the “Number of Cylinders” and “Total Horsepower” columns. This indicates the multiplication of cylinders and horsepower in each individual engine.
See if you can find the most powerful diesel-electric locomotive built by GE. Just follow along the horsepower ratings from the top to the bottom of the chart. Here are the screenshots snipped from this document, but you can also download a PDF copy of it for a full view. Click below to download the GE Horsepower Comparison chart. Good luck!
