How's this for a diesel engine piston?

What you're looking at is a power assembly for an EMD 8-567-B, V-8 diesel engine in a locomotive. EMD Sw8 to be exact...making 800 h.p. Which means as far as lokies go, this one is relatively small. At least by today's standards.

This engine is a V-8 engine, but each cylinder is contained in a neat little power pack that can be removed and overhauled without removing the block. Each cylinder has 567 cubic inches of displacement! So in the case of this particular engine, that's a total displacement of 4536 cubic inches!

What you're seeing here is the mechanic for the Oregon Pacific Railroad, removing and resealing one of the power assemblies on the locomotive, that was leaking.

If these power assemblies needed to be overhauled, they could simply be pulled and swapped out for overhauled units or overhauled and reinstalled, fairly easily. I wish car engines were this handy.

If you want to see some more pictures of this job, check this page out...

http://www.oregonpacificrr.com/Repairing801.html

The owner of this railroad is a friend of mine and has been kind enough to let me play lokie engineer in my spare time for the last few years and I also run a website for them.