HARRY TRUMAN, YOGI BERRA, AND FRENCH LINEN. A recent issue of The Pennsylvania Railroad Technical and Historical Society's magazine, The Keystone, has some fun with Eurostar's winter difficulties, noting, in addition to the troubles the GG1s encountered, and their fixes, that perhaps Eurostar's designers might have studied the much-maligned Metroliners.

The Metroliners were built with cooling air intakes between the belt rail and side sill. This location proved to be problematic for two reasons. First, their proximity to the slipstream of air, bearing road dirt, developed at high speed, caused failures from ingested contaminants that found their way to numerous sensitive electrical components. Second, and perhaps more important, that stream of cooling air was not really cool, having come from under the cars, where it had been heated by the same equipment (main transformers, brake grids, traction motors, ignitrons, thyristors and blower motors), that it was destined to cool. This resulted in over-temperature failures and thermal degradation of the entire propulsion system. Because of this condition a major upgrade was undertaken, and 34 of the Metroliners were fitted with cooling air intakes on the roof (among other modifications), where cooler and cleaner ambient conditions prevailed. Having apparently learned an important lesson, nearly all [electric multiple units] built since that time for [Northeast Corridor rail transit authority] service have had their air intakes on the roof.

The Eurostar difficulties of the winter of 2009 seem to be of a similar nature, but with asynchronous motors (no commutators) and modern insulation the failures wer more likely due to melted snow water in the stream of cooling air ingested by the solid state power and control electronic devices.

See Robert B. Watson, "The Eurostar and GG1 Winter Failures," The Keystone, 43, 1 (Spring 2010): 13-15. The article includes a photo of a Eurostar locomotive, which devotes more of its side to intake louvers than an Erie-built does, and a sidebar illustrating Tornado pulling a relief commuter train when an ice storm took the Southern Electric's third-rail lines out of service.