Things to Come

At General Electric Co.'s Erie works this week, railroad men will get their first good look at a new locomotive. It resembles a diesel on the outside, but is radically different on the inside. The engine, developed over a five-year period by G.E. and American Locomotive Co., is a gas turbine-electric locomotive, the first of its kind in the U.S. It was ready for test runs on the Union Pacific Railroad.

Although still in the development stage and costly to operate, the new locomotive puts out twice as much horsepower as a diesel of comparable size. G.E. and Alco hope to develop a gas turbine-electric unit that can run economically on coal, and will need overhauling only after 15,000 hours of operation (three times as long as present-day diesels). G.E. and Alco think that someday the gas turbine-electric engine may replace the diesel.

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