Re: (erielack) EL GEs vs EMD/ALCOs

[Mike Spinelli <sms158_@_uakron.edu>]

I was told this while working in the W&LE shops. They were going to 
lease some older GE's but could not find any parts distributers. We had 
a whole carload of GE manuals that just sat there collecting dust. I've 
alsoi heard the same thing from a big shot at the Ohio Central, which 
runs a few of them.

A lot of car companies do the same thing. I know what you're saying 
about consumer electronics, I was an electronic tech when everything 
went to "replace the whole unit".

Mike Spinelli

Quoting Paul Brezicki <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>:

> I find this hard to believe. I would think one of the quickest ways to kill
> your business would be to broadcast to existing and potential customers that
> you're not going to provide replacement parts. That approach might work for
> consumer electronics but it ain't gonna fly in the locomotive biz. The more
> likely reason is that, like many locomotives of the 60's and 70's, the GE's
> were prone to mechanical and/or electrical failure. GE acknowledged this
> deficiency in the mid-70's when they appended the "XR" or Extra-Reliability
> suffix to their locomotive line, but the evidence suggests it was more
> marketing than reality. GE didn't achieve a satisfactory level of locomotive
> dependability until the Dash-8's in the 1980's. Simultaneously, EMD
> evidently suffered a breakdown in corporate leadership as evidenced by the
> release of the highly-flawed 50-series, and GE achieved dominance of the new
> locomotive market.



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