In my earlier post about the changes in railroads since I got into the railfan hobby, I noted the continued dominance of GE over EMD.
I decided the check the numbers. Using these two (very handy) Wikipedia pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GE_locomotives
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GM-EMD_locomotives
Let’s compare just “modern” locomotives. Let’s define that to mean SD60 or newer for EMD, and Dash 8 or newer for GE. Note that this definition takes in the last thirty years. Let’s also limit it to six-axle locomotives, as 4-axle models are largely irrelevant in the modern marketplace. This also neatly rules out passenger locomotives, since all modern ones are B-B.
So, by that criteria, GE has sold 13,047 to EMD’s 5,811. That is a ratio of 2.2 to 1. So yes, GE has sold twice the engines that EMD has over the past 30 years.
If you limit to 1990s and newer models by throwing out the SD60s and Dash 8s, you get 11,250 to 4,664, a ratio of 2.4 to 1.
If you look only at models that are still in current production (according to these article), it is 4507 to 1047 or an astounding 4.3 to 1.
That is, GE’s lead established in the 1990s has increased over time.
Also notable, no single model designation by either builder in the past 30 years has come anywhere close to the SD40-2 at 3,982. But this is likely to be due to regulatory shenanigans. Had EPA Tier 2 regulations not kicked in in 2005, its hard to predict how many more C44-9W and AC4400CW would have been made. DC Dash 9 sales would probably have fallen off, but the AC could have broken the record easily. (The combined total of AC4400CW and ES44AC sales is 4,972)
Pictured: CSX 451 is an AC4400CW.