FORTH WORTH, Texas -- Who doesn't love trains? Especially when they're being
manufactured?
As part of Road
Trip 2014, CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman visited General Electric
Transportation's massive facility here, a 1-million-square-foot factory where
the company makes locomotives.
GE says these locomotives are the world's most efficient -- measured by
generating the least emissions in the industry -- and are delivered to
customers and are often hauling cargo the same day.
Here, a locomotive is inside the paint shop. Currently, all locomotives made
in the Fort Worth factory are being sold to BNSF Railway, so this machine will soon
sport the orange and black livery of BNSF.
A completed locomotive weighs in at 440,000 pounds, and the platform it's built on alone weighs 120,000 pounds.
Here,
GE staffers work to assemble a locomotive. The platform has been
mounted on the trucks (wheels) and they've added the operator cab and
the auxiliary cab -- the section where all the electronics are
installed.
Two giant diesel engines sit on the floor in the Fort Worth assembly facility, ready to be being built into locomotives. The engines are built in Grove City, Pa., and weigh 34,000 pounds. A train pulled by a couple of locomotives can haul a ton of freight 500 miles on a single gallon of fuel.
Locomotive trucks sit on the factory floor in various stages of build-out. Some have already had sensors and other systems added, while others haven't yet.
