The U30B and the U23B ***LOOK*** very similar, and have the same length and below-frame arrangements. Are there internal structural differences? As in: is the frame significantly modified to accommodate the different engine size? Or in other words, could a U30B be converted into a U23B without too much difficulty?
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Comparable real-world conversions: Delaware and Hudson, converting Alco PA locomotives to use 12-251 engines. Even closer: General Electric, putting an FDL-12 in a Union Pacific U25B as a test for the power plant(s) of the U50C.
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Alternative history, fantasy: In the 1970s, a large railroad -- let's, just to emphasize that this is complete fiction, call it, say, the Northumberland and Westmoreland -- with a large fleet of U30B decides that its topography and traffic mix really make six-axle units more appropriate in the high-horsepower range. General Electric -- maybe somehow channeling its future, when it would sell re-engining "kits" to railways in the former Soviet Union, maybe as a deal-sweetener to persuade the N&W to buy U30C instead of some competitor's 3000 hp C-C (*) -- offers to sell an appropriate number of FDL-12 engines so the N&W can replace its first-generation road-switchers by rebuilding its U30B fleet to "U23BR" in its own workshops. How practicable a scenario would this have been?
(*) Since the whole thing is fiction, I hereby stipulate that the N&W, if it didn't buy U30C, would have bought... umm, let's try to think of a mid-1970s C-C in the appropriate power range... BREL/Brush Class 56 units.
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Comparable real-world conversions: Delaware and Hudson, converting Alco PA locomotives to use 12-251 engines. Even closer: General Electric, putting an FDL-12 in a Union Pacific U25B as a test for the power plant(s) of the U50C.
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Alternative history, fantasy: In the 1970s, a large railroad -- let's, just to emphasize that this is complete fiction, call it, say, the Northumberland and Westmoreland -- with a large fleet of U30B decides that its topography and traffic mix really make six-axle units more appropriate in the high-horsepower range. General Electric -- maybe somehow channeling its future, when it would sell re-engining "kits" to railways in the former Soviet Union, maybe as a deal-sweetener to persuade the N&W to buy U30C instead of some competitor's 3000 hp C-C (*) -- offers to sell an appropriate number of FDL-12 engines so the N&W can replace its first-generation road-switchers by rebuilding its U30B fleet to "U23BR" in its own workshops. How practicable a scenario would this have been?
(*) Since the whole thing is fiction, I hereby stipulate that the N&W, if it didn't buy U30C, would have bought... umm, let's try to think of a mid-1970s C-C in the appropriate power range... BREL/Brush Class 56 units.