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  • Cost benefit of Crandall cabs

  • Discussion relating to The Chicago & North Western, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road), including mergers, acquisitions, and abandonments.
It is currently Fri May 03, 2024 3:06 am

Cost benefit of Crandall cabs

Discussion relating to The Chicago & North Western, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (Milwaukee Road), including mergers, acquisitions, and abandonments.

Moderator: Komachi

  by Tadman
 
Slowfreight and DCM, you guys are correct about the factory build status and CS branch of the rocket. However in later years the boxcab E6's were relegated to the Joliet run. What always surprised me was how CNW waisted the money to cut a "nose" into their crandall cab units. Why not just cut four windows into the end of the E, making a homemade version of RI's factory-build box cabs. Hell the original EMC passenger units on ATSF and B&O were also boxcabs.

  by SlowFreight
 
As I stated earlier, one thing that helped was the availability of cab components from scrapped E7's - I assume throttle, brake, electrical, etc., components came from those or similar units, along with the door assemblies.

But consider what had to be installed to make a working cab: pilot, floor at the proper height (engine room floor is not), bulkhead and engine room doors, electrical cabinet, FRA-compliant windshields and collision posts (ca. 1973, anyway), aforementioned controls plus piping and wiring.

Even though it was dead air space at the B-end of a B unit, it was probably still cheaper to torch the carbody back to where the bulkhead and salvaged electrical panel could be installed and start over - especially because the B end was likely not collision-compliant (I'm inferring here, as I don't know the standards of the day). Plus, fabricating straight pieces of sheet metal would have been fairly fast and inexpensive.

The main thing, though, is that it wasn't possible to cut four windows in the B end and plop a control stand in - too much additional equipment to be added.

Clear as mud? :-)

  by CNW5022-A519
 
I say not one was saved and IRM should have gotten one, They might have been ugly but they had great brakes and did the job that they were kit bashed to do, Pull and Push Passenger trains. I did see them when I was a kid I have talked with Engeneers that had run them. Plus they did spice up the train watching on the CNW.

Re: Cost benefit of Crandall cabs

  by NRGeep
 
Any photos out there of these fine units? :wink:
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