What year were all of the F10 (1100's) retired from the T

AznSumtinSumtin wrote:They were built in 1946 and 47. So it would be safe to assume they were very old. The oldest ones were about 45 years old. They were originally F3's and F7's, but they were rebuilt to become FP10's in 1979. Retiring them 22 years after being rebuilt into FP10's sounds reasonable.

They were retired 12 years after rebuilding, not 22. I'm sure they were getting a little tired, but 12 years is not really a long time in the railroad industry, and Metro-North was able to get another decade out of their four F10's. The MBTA more likely wanted to get new 3000 h.p. F40's to replace the old 1500 h.p. F10's - it wouldn't be the first time that the T retired perfectly usuable equipment early because someone gave them money to buy new units.

JD

GP40MC1118 wrote:There was a group of FP10's stored behind the MBTA facility at Reading Jct near Assembly Square/Home Depot. The track was actually one of
the former mainlines to Salem that went over old Draw 7.

The storage yard you talk about next to the Orange Line is former
Yard 21. The T briefly stored derelict equipment and other stuff
for a short time after Guilford stopped using it as a yard.

Dave

I remember seing these back in late 97/ early 98 before i moved away from the area. Too bad they all were retired.

Well, they were too old, so that's why they went and got replaced with MKO's F40PH

Robert Paniagua wrote:Well, they were too old, so that's why they went and got replaced with MKO's F40PH

I also remember hearing that in the late 80's when the T aquired the mbb and bombardier cars, that the fp10's had a lot of compatability issues which may have reduced their overall reliability. I would be curious to know if this was also a determining factor as well.

Sort of. I recall riding (railfanning) a BON-FIB-BON train with an F10 leading and a few Budd RDCs and a Merchermittz Cab Car bringing up the read outbound, and it was the push pull cab inbound with the F10 engine. So there was no problems specifically with that ride I took back in Dec 1989.

railfan101 wrote:I also remember hearing that in the late 80's when the T aquired the mbb and bombardier cars, that the fp10's had a lot of compatability issues which may have reduced their overall reliability. I would be curious to know if this was also a determining factor as well.

Metro North has basically the same Bombardier cars as the MBTA, and I've never heard that they had any problems running their four F10's with them. They also leased the ex-MBTA Boise Budds from Virginia Railway Express back in the mid-1990's and ran the F10's with those cars as well, again without any apparent problems.

I've heard that one of the main issues with the F10's was the HEP unit. This could have been fixed, though. Metro North typically double-headed their F-units on mainline trains to get the necessary horsepower - I would guess that they MBTA liked running the 3,000 h.p. F40's and thus had an issue with the lower horsepower of the F10's as well.

If the MBTA had been short of money they would have been forced to find a way to keep the F10's on the road, the same way that Metro North kept their FL9's going. But they had the money to replace them with the M-K F40's, so naturally they dumped them.

JD

RailBus63 wrote:

railfan101 wrote:I also remember hearing that in the late 80's when the T aquired the mbb and bombardier cars, that the fp10's had a lot of compatability issues which may have reduced their overall reliability. I would be curious to know if this was also a determining factor as well.

Metro North has basically the same Bombardier cars as the MBTA, and I've never heard that they had any problems running their four F10's with them. They also leased the ex-MBTA Boise Budds from Virginia Railway Express back in the mid-1990's and ran the F10's with those cars as well, again without any apparent problems.

I've heard that one of the main issues with the F10's was the HEP unit. This could have been fixed, though. Metro North typically double-headed their F-units on mainline trains to get the necessary horsepower - I would guess that they MBTA liked running the 3,000 h.p. F40's and thus had an issue with the lower horsepower of the F10's as well.

If the MBTA had been short of money they would have been forced to find a way to keep the F10's on the road, the same way that Metro North kept their FL9's going. But they had the money to replace them with the M-K F40's, so naturally they dumped them.

JD

What were the problems with the HEP unit and was the hep unit needed when these locomotives were pulling/pushing the bud rdc's?

The HEP units were not required when the F10's pushed RDC cars.

As I understood it, the issue was that the GO Transit cars leased by the MBTA required a higher voltage than the typical U.S. commuter car, so the F10's were equipped by Paducah with HEP units that could supply two different voltages. I don't know what the specific issue was with the HEP, but the fact that it was a non-standard unit probably didn't help matters.

JD