why did they last so long when everyone else preferred low hood? same question about running long hood forward??
Usually it's a question of collision protection. CN ran their hood units long hood forward until they got their low-nose units. To improve collision protection, the wide-nose was created.
Some railroads like Southern and N&W preferred to run their road units long hood forward to provide more protection for the crew in a collision. Kind of like an old steam locomotive. The roads that ran short hood forward found that they could provide better visibility for the crew if they chopped the hoods down and put wind shields all across. This became sort of an industry standard and the builders started selling them that way. On the long hood forward you had to have two people looking at all times, one on each side, to get the most visibility. The high short hood did provide better access to the toilet facilities. With the newer wide nose safety cabs (the cab is no wider than before) the high short hood was no longer built.
N&W ordered units with dual controls (two control stands) so the the unit could be run in either direction. One of the rationales for the high short hood was crew safety in a grade crossing accident. N&W stopped ordering high hoses in 1973. Southern stopped with the NS merger in 1982. Some NS locos delivered after the merger continued to be ordered with the long hood as front. Somewhere I have a nice little write-up on this by Tom Dressler, who was both an N&W modeler and an engineer on the N&W. Mark
thanks everyone this came back to me after watching some of my 611 tapes. there i noticed a few trains with high hoods and the occasional long hood foward. so back to the high hood, theres really nothing in there that had to be relocated? just chop it down and add windshields? the mkt rebuilt some of their gp 7's, and other roads as well, with the low hood. i think the SP may have ordered some gp 7's, or gp 9's with low hood new.
In the early days of dieselization, builders were numerous and happy to make whatever modifications customers wanted. Eventually, only N&W and Southern continued to want the high short hood... the rest of the RR's converted to short, low hoods early on. I believe on the N&W, the last EMD units with high short hoods were the SD40's / GP40's. On the Southern, they continued with high short hoods through the SD40-2's. EMD orders (SOU.) as late as SD60's designated the long hood forward, even though they had low, short hoods. A lot of railroads had rebuilding programs for early Geeps to cut down the high short hoods. Southern did the opposite: they acquired the original Norfolk Southern and the GP18's and GP38's that had low short hoods were rebuilt with high short hoods to match the rest of the Southern fleet! Harold
I liked the high hood SD40's... too bad many of them were rebuilt into slugs... the long hoods & engine assemblies were reused on many GP38/38AC conversions to GP40-2 slug "mothers" . Harold
