ES44CM-T4
ES44CM-T4
Georgia Road found the AC6000W only incrementally more reliable in service than the EMD 90 series, prone to engine vibration damage and turbocharger failures. GE support kept the units viable for years as it was still committed to the new design 7HDL 6000hp powerplant and wanted field service data to address permanent fixes to the platform. GE technicians actually maintained a presence at the Georgia Road shop location in Birmingham, working to iron out bugs and modify the locomotive to address various operating issues and failures. In addition, GE continued to offset maintenance and repair costs well into the 2000s in exchange for real world data. A decade after delivery in 1995, the reliability of the AC6000W was drastically improved, but still fell short of the ES44AC units that became standard in the early 2000s. With the Evolution Series now the premiere GE platform, GE decided to end the extra support for its 7HDL primemover design in 2012, offering new ES44AC units with proven GEVO-16 powerplants to Georgia Road. The new ES44AC units met current EPA emissions standards and were proven designs built off the highly successful AC4000W design.
Georgia Road agreed to release GE from continued liability for the AC6000W design and purchased new ES44AC units with liberal financing and support from GE, thus allowing GE to finally close the books on the AC6000W 7HDL platform. The twenty AC6000W units were operated until a traffic downturn sidelined them, in 2014. The service life consisted mostly in cross-border MexXpress Service by Georgia Road subsidiary Rio Pacific and its US counterpart, the Texas Eastern (TXE). RIO assumed heavy maintenance due to lower costs at its Mexican shops in Guadalajara, MX in hopes of offsetting the higher operating costs of the AC6000W units. All twenty of the 6000-6019 series were downrated to 4600hp at the time in an effort to increase reliability by reducing strain on the powerplant. While an improvement was noted, availability numbers still fell short of expectations. The downrated AC6000W was listed as model AC6000WMD in some maintenance specifications, but the designation was never official. These units retained their 6001-6020 series numbers and spent their time crossing the border with manifests and grain moves for Rio Pacifico (RIO) and Texas Eastern (TXE) into 2015.
The twenty downrated units were mostly stored on the TXE by late 2015 due to their reputation as high maintenance “hanger queens” and a downturn in traffic demand. The AC6000W fleet outlook seemed bleak and general thinking was the whole series would fall to the scrapper’s torch as Georgia Road was once again buying new locomotives. With a reputation of conserving resources, Georgia Road co-opted with Stephens Railcar Services to create a rebuild program to match performance characteristics of new Georgia Road ES44AC units being delivered to Georgia Road in 2014-2015. The decision was made to replace the carbody and 7HDL with a ET44AC Evolution 4400hp primemover, electrical cabinet and cooling system using OEM kits from GE-WABTEC. The result was the creation of a remanufactured version ET44AC on the AC6000W frame. The model designation for these remanufactured units was listed as ES44ACM-T4 and the completed units were renumbered into the 6980-6999 series above the most recent Georgia Road ET44AC units in the 6500-6800 number series.
Fifteen units would ultimately become graduates of the program and be placed in service alongside the new ET44ACs being delivered to Georgia Road in 2018. The COVID-19 pandemic stalled the program in 2020, with five units remaining out of the original 20 units scheduled to be remanufactured at Stephens Railcar. These five cores would remain in the deadline at Stephens Railcar through 2022, with new EMD and GE power being preferred over unneeded additional rebuilds. In 2023, the five remaining AC6000W units were pulled from years of storage, repaired and repainted into the current “winged” scheme in their original 6000hp configuration. Meanwhile, the fifteen ES44ACM-T4 remanufactured units mixed freely with OEM Evolution Series ES44AC and ET44AC units in system wide priority manifest and unit train service. The ES44ACM-T4 program was considered a success, but no plans were made to convert the last five AC6000W units.
Georgia Road Transportation 