What was the most ugly?

And your point is..........?

Sounds reasonable. The structural carbody DOES have advantages in pure performance. In practice, however, it was a big maintenance headache. Here in the USA, where labor costs were always higher, the concept quickly became non-competitive.

And, while the cut down BL2's had structural problems, this was not much (if any) issue with the "F" units.

It's not basically a bad idea ... but it carries a price, and one that railroads in the USA decided not to pay. In retrospect, most things designed for pure performance are impractical.

Dan Mitchell ============

Sure, the Alco RS's came out earlier. Alco was ahead of the game here (but not in a lot of other issues).

GM was heavily involved in the 'not invented here' state of mind. While they were no doubt aware of the RS's, I think their GP7 owed more to their own NW5 and BL2 than the Alco products ... even though they were of the same type. Both showed that EMD was aware of the problems and issues of a road switcher design, and were working on it, but it took them a while to get their act together.

Dan Mitchell ============

I'm giving you some possibly interesting information, widening your knowledge base, broadening your horizons. The same reason I read this ng.

Regards, Greg.P.

The Europeans carried that cost.

In Europe, the requirement was to accelerate trains to operating speed reasonably quickly so as to move the maximum tonnage over a given stretch of track rather than to drag heavy trains at slow speeds. It was the reason the Germans and French developed their Diesel hydraulics (V200 class - 2700hp within 87 tonnes) They worked well in Europe where speed over short distances was required but failed in Britain where they wanted speed over long distances and in the US with heavy loads over long distances - the gearboxes just weren't up to the accumulation of heat under sustained heavy use. (plus all the other factors of oddball design far from home)

take a tour of some of these monsters:

or these (expand the links on the left hand side to select for the different categories): some more. Some are so ugly they are cute: more: