The GE Dash 9-40CW is a diesel-electric locomotive built by GE Transportation Systems of

Erie, Pennsylvania Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 ...

, between January 1996 and December 2004. 1,090 were built for

Norfolk Southern Railway The Norfolk Southern Railway is a Class I freight railroad in the United States formed in 1982 with the merger of Norfolk and Western Railway and Southern Railway. With headquarters in Atlanta, the company operates 19,420 route miles (31 ...

, as road numbers 8889 to 9978. 53 GE Dash 8-44CWs built to Dash 9 specifications were also built for

CSX Transportation CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

, carrying road numbers 9000 to 9052. Part of GE's "Dash 9" series of locomotives, the Dash 9-40CW shares its frame, HiAd trucks, 16-cylinder 7FDL engine, and 752AH-31 traction motors with the GE Dash 9-44CW. But while the more common 9-44CW offers , software in the 9-40CW's engine-governing unit restricts its power output to , although the

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...

can override this restriction when desired. The Dash 9-40CW was basically an extension of the previous order for the standard cab GE Dash 9-40C, built under the same premise that a lower power rating would prolong the life of the engine and use less fuel. Early production units built for CSX were designed with carbodies externally identical to the predecessor Dash 8-40CW with the first three units of the series also being built on Dash 8-40CW frames, and were designated C44-8W originally, as they were built as 4400 horsepower units before being downrated to 4000 horsepower. The CSX units were equipped with GSC ''Floating Bolster'' 3 Trucks instead of the standard Hi-ad trucks commonly found on later models. In 2005, GE replaced the C40-9W in its locomotive catalog with the Evolution Series model, the

ES40DC The Evolution Series is a line of diesel locomotives built by GE Transportation Systems (now owned by Wabtec), initially designed to meet the U.S. EPA's Tier 2 locomotive emissions standards that took effect in 2005. The first pre-production u ...

. Like the Dash 9-40CWs, Norfolk Southern's ES40DC locomotives are rated at to conserve fuel. The change in output is accomplished electronically; mechanically, the two models are essentially the same.

BB40-9W

GE also produced a narrow-gauge version of the Dash 9-40CW, known as the BB40-9W. All 141 examples of this locomotive are owned by the EFVM railroad in Brazil. They are equipped with four type B trucks, two at each end replacing the conventional type C trucks. This is necessary because EFVM tracks are

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structu ...

. Unlike the North American axle load limit of 71,500 lb (32.4 tonnes) on standard gauge railways, the narrow gauge railway over which the units operate allows only 51190 lb (25 tonnes). The units are numbered 1113 to 1253.

References

* {{GE diesels Dash 9-40CW C-C locomotives Diesel-electric locomotives of the United States Freight locomotives Norfolk Southern Railway locomotives Standard gauge locomotives of the United States Railway locomotives introduced in 1996 ja:GE Dash 9シリーズ