The modern and angular looking Voith Maxima 40 CC has a power rating of 3,600 kilowatts, or almost 5,000 horsepower. It uses an automatic hydraulic transmission for coupling the engine to the drive wheels, unlike competing diesel locomotives offered by EMD; Bombardier, Siemens and Alstom, which employ a traction generator coupled to AC asynchronous drive motors via an electronic propulsion control unit."Modern and angular looking translates as "butt-ugly." (View picture.)
Those "competing diesel-[electric] locomotives" currently max out at 4400 horsepower with a single prime mover. Let's not forget the 6000 horsepower SD90MAC from Electro-Motive and AC6000CW (and a double-ender for China) from General Electric (with a German prime mover) that proved to be unwieldy even for large North American trains. Those are still the record-holders for most powerful single-engine diesels.
It's not the first time people have gotten carried away with diesel-hydraulics. The Germans have relied on them for years. The Western Region of British Railways was so impressed as to adapt several German designs for their purposes. The Southern Pacific was sufficiently intrigued by the idea of 4000 horsepower with one prime mover to purchase a total of 18 Krauss-Maffei ML-4000 diesels that didn't last very long.
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