HO ES44AC Locomotive, CPR #8781 Overview
Canadian Pacific placed eight orders for ES44AC locomotives spanning a decade of production. Early production units featured a distinct cab and nose profile as well as radiator, intake, and hood door variations. These features changed in later productions. The CP units in this offering represents features from the mid- production. While the cab, nose, and radiator intakes are the same as early units, the long hood doors and other features have evolved into what is found on late production units. Athearn has created new tooling to accurately produce these particular units.
Canadian Pacific repainted one of its locomotives in the colors of a customer for the first time in its 140-year history. This extraordinary gesture is to honor Hapag-Lloyd as its most important container service customer and to commemorate the joint efforts to launch the service in Port Saint John, New Brunswick, in Eastern Canada.
In 2002, GE released the first of a new series of locomotives that would replace the popular Dash-9 series. The ES44DC and ES44AC, commonly called GEVOs for General Electric Evolution series, were designed to meet the stricter diesel locomotive emissions standards imposed by the EPA Tier II regulations. To meet the new standards, GE developed the 12-cylinder GEVO 12 engine. Both the bore and stroke were increased to produce the same 4400 horsepower as the older 7FDL16 16-cylinder engine. The new engine drives an alternator producing AC current that is rectified to DC current. On the ES44DC, this powers the traction motors. On the ES44AC, the DC current is âchoppedâ back into AC to power the traction motors. The two models share a common 73' 2â frame and external appearance.