Var så god och visa oss det AEM-7!

 Richard Schauer took the time and effort to give us a virtual tour of the AEM-7, as a contrast to the much older GG1.

All images are copyright by the photographer and may not be reproduced without permission.

(Just to remind you what it looks like from the outside, here's one of my photos:)

01. We start in the Rear cab.  Wide shot of the engineer's position.

 

02. Engineer's position, tighter shot.

 

03. Engineer's position straight ahead, showing console.

 

04. Fireman's position.

 

05. Console right side.  Brake handles are red for automatic brake, black for independent.

 

06. Console left side.  Controller at bottom.

 07. Switches and fault display above engineer.

 

08. Fault display is backlit with each message in a little light-blocking box.  Very hard to illuminate more than a few for photo, but you get the idea.  Note misspelled "auxilery" in a few places, those Swedes!

 

09. Cab signal aspect display unit.

 

10. Traction motor ammeters and catenary voltmeter.

11. Engineer's back corner.

 

12. Controller at position 0.  This controller only has a detent at 0, the coasting position.  The quadrants are stepless in both power and brake.

13. Controller at full power, position +10. 

14. Controller at full brake, position -6. 

15. What passes for a builder's plate. 

16. Entering the machinery room.  Left side, facing front end.  Width clearance through the doorway is 19 inches. 

17. Just past door.  Air compressor on right, S7 cubicle with breakers and cutouts ahead.  This and all following photos except 22 in the machine room are taken from my chest height. 

18. S7 cubicle detail.  These are mostly breakers for auxiliary functions.

 

19. Turning around and facing down.  Air compressor behind commode.  Still a full roll of paper on the holder! 

20. Air compressor, although most of what you see is just the receiver tank.  #2 traction motor blower partially in view at left.

21. View from commode. 

22. View of corridor from about 6-foot level.  There is no place within the machinery room corridors where I can stand without stooping.  General clearance is about 6 feet, with shorter sections here and there.

23. Motor cutouts and battery charging controls.  Standing directly in front of this panel with your back against the wall (stooping), you have about 10 inches clearance to the panel.  Far-sighted people need not apply.

 24. Down the corridor.  Transformer is behind grille at right.

25. Label for the Y1.1 propulsion converter.  The traction motors are 900-volt machines and have separately excited fields at much lower current than the armatures; maximum armature current is 2250 amps.  This locomotive is rated for 7000 continuous horsepower.

 

26. Looking back toward rear cab.

 

27. #1 traction motor blower, but the little piece of East Coast life someone left us is more interesting.

 

28. Front cab, engineer's position.

29. Fireman's position.  The seat is out of position at the moment from cleaning up the cab after its en-route vandalism.

30. Back of cab.  The front cab has this large box containing the ACSES cab signal controls rack.

31. Entering right side corridor, looking toward rear end.  HEP plant is at right.

 

32. Controls for HEP plant.  Rated 500 kW, it was a bit weak for longer trains.  Although propulsion power could be MU'd, HEP could not and was only supplied by the lead locomotive.  AEM-7's that were gutted and converted to AC propulsion got 1000 kW HEP plants.

 

33. What's behind those doors, typical shot.  This is inside the HEP converter.  Lots of capacitors in front.

34. The actual thyristors and diodes are packed behind stuff and hard to see; this diode is probably the easiest.  It's the gray ridged hockey-puck in the middle of the frame.  All of the power semiconductors in this locomotive are oil-cooled.

 35. Just to drive home the tight clearances.  I should have taken a picture with me in it to give some scale.  Your face is practically in this box when you stand in front of it.

 

36. Another photo of the guts.  Note short white tubes with nuts at the ends on left side, running between round objects.  The tubes are oil lines, and there are thyristors packed in behind the clamps.  Large white cubes top and bottom are fast-acting fuses.

 

37. (omitted)

38. Hand brake in front of transformer tank.

39. Diagnostic panel.  The meter can read various voltages and currents in the propulsion system.

 40. The brains.  This locomotive is controlled in a completely analog manner.  There is no CPU or microprocessor or the like.  Set a reference level based on the controller position and a million other criteria, and compare it to actual conditions to see if you need more power or less.  Repeat continuously.

41. Well, there are *some* digital controls retrofitted on the engine. Here's the Ethernet switch for...

42. ...the event recorder and data radio.

43. Air compressor.  Rotary screw compressors are very small for their air output, and most of what you see is the auxiliary stuff supporting it.

44. Air brake equipment rack.

45. Out to the rear cab.  Fireman's position ahead.

46-48. (omitted)

49. This is tucked away above the brain box.  I don't know when it was installed (suspecting it wasn't original), so I couldn't say how long it took to burn through almost 2.2 gigawatt-hours of electricity.  That's about $250,000 at ComEd residential rates.

50. There's no good way to see anything of the transformer except the lower part of the tank.  But way deep behind and above the cubicles you can see the big insulator bushing. This has to handle 25 kilovolts from the pantograph.