GG1 question

[lexon]

Someone asked if the GG! ever used the third rail pickup shoe. I doubt they ever did while with PRR but wondering about later when the GG1's were sold to a couple other roads that used third rail someplace's. I spent about an hour searching out photos and links but did not find anything. Thanks.

Rich

[CarterB]

IIRC the DD1's had 3rd rail pickups to shuttle trains through the North River tunnels to Manhattan Transfer. Don't think the GG1s ever did or needed to, as by that time the PRR was electrified in the NorthEast.

[ExCon90]

The GG1's all had AC motors and were only intended to operate under wire.

[Allen Hazen]

Basic answer is the one ExCon90 gave. The GG-1 was designed and built for use under AC overhead. It would have taken major modifications to allow them to operate off third rail (or from a DC overhead), and none, so far as I know, were ever modified in that way.

Railroads other than the PRR who operated GG-1 were Penn Central, Conrail and Amtrak, who inherited them by merger or under the complicated arrangements of setting up Amtrak. They used them on the ex-PRR lines and ex-New Haven Railroad lines with AC overhead power compatible with their design.

Possible confusion: The New Haven's EP-3 and EP-4 electric locomotives (built by GE, with running gear similar to a GG-1's but very different carbodies) WERE capable of running either under AC overhead wire (north or New York and on the Hell Gate Bridge line into Penn Station) or on third-rail DC power: so there were locomotives similar to a GG-1 that did have this dual ability.

[chuchubob]

...
Railroads other than the PRR who operated GG-1 were Penn Central, Conrail and Amtrak, who inherited them by merger or under the complicated arrangements of setting up Amtrak. They used them on the ex-PRR lines and ex-New Haven Railroad lines with AC overhead power compatible with their design.
..

Don't forget NJDOT.

[timz]

It would have taken major modifications to allow them to operate off third rail (or from a DC overhead)

"Major" meaning the same mods as NH passenger electrics? Or would the GG1 need more than that?

[Allen Hazen]

In the basics, a New Haven EP-4 and a Pennsylvania GG-1 are similar: the electric motor design is one that can be run on either DC or AC or (as the New Haven units showed) both at different times. The details of the lectrical system, however, are very different. The GG-1 is controlled by varying the way the transformer is tapped: something only possible with AC. The New Haven locomotive needed a totally different control system for operating on DC, and this DC control system would have to be installed in a GG-1 if it were to operate on DC. This would be a big project: if nothing else, it might be hard to find space in the carbody to fit the new equipment into!

[Allen Hazen]

I should probably just shut up: I don't know enough about electrical engineering to give a detailed explanation. The fact that (as the New Haven showed) the basic motor design used on the GG-1 and the New Haven's electric locomotives of the 1930s and 1940s could operate on either DC or (low frequency: PRR and NH overhead was 25 hz, and apparently this type of motor doesn't work as well with higher frequency AC) AC inspired a fantasy: maybe it would be possible to operate a preserved GG-1 from the DC overhead at an electric railway museum. I asked about this, several years ago, on this or some other internet railroad-interest discussion forum: people who knew more about electricals than I did replied that my fantasy was unrealistic, that the modifications needed to allow a GG-1 to operate on DC were too extensive to be feasible.

[Statkowski]

You didn't get the answer you wanted, but you did learn a little. Better to learn a little of the right stuff than a whole bunch of the wrong stuff.

[ex Budd man]

My MTH GG1 has both third raul pick ups and pans! LOL. I always run with the pans locked down.