‘Advantage’ Wabtec: Relentless Innovation Drives Evolution Series Engines into the Future
New EVO Advantage continues to re-imagine the world’s leading heavy-haul locomotive engine platform for further fuel efficiency and performance
This year marks two landmark anniversaries in both the history of the rail industry and Wabtec::
- The 20-year anniversary of the Wabtec Evolution Series engine (also known as the “EVO”), which powers more than 10,000 locomotives in use today around the world and remains one of the industry’s biggest sellers.
- The 10-year anniversary of Wabtec’s EVO Tier-4 locomotive, which, Trains Magazine calls “far and away the dominant new road power on Class I railroads,” with nearly 1,200 units in operation today.
It’s not an exaggeration to say the Evolution Series is the engine that changed everything. It catapulted Wabtec into the lead of freight locomotive manufacturing in the mid-1990s, making it a top choice among North American Class I carriers and international carriers alike for its deft handling of tightening emissions standards, customer reliability demands, and cost-saving fuel efficiency.
But it also did something else: It revealed something about the character of the company, the way Wabtec “ticks.”
“We launched the Evolution Series engine in 2005 to help our customers meet the EPA’s Tier 2 emissions standards and better position them to evolve with future changes,” recalls Jim Gamble, Vice President, Engines and Power Solutions, Wabtec. “While other locomotive manufacturers made incremental fixes to ‘check off’ the new compliance requirement, we believed our customers would be best served by a more thorough reimagining of what’s possible. Our ‘fix’ was a brand new engine architecture, loaded with innovative performance features that would also provide enough flexibility to adapt to future needs.
“It was a bold move, not without risk, but one the market ultimately welcomed and rewarded us for – something it continues to do to this day.”
More than 10,000 locomotives later – and counting – Wabtec’s bet on the EVO engine platform has proven worth the risk. And that engine architecture is still the platform on which some of the industry’s biggest innovations are being made, from Tier 4 compliance advancements and duel-fuel/alternative-fuel use, to new engine upgrades like the EVO Advantage that feature breakthrough eTurbo technology to drive additional fuel efficiency.
So, while anniversaries duly commemorate the past, it is only fitting that Wabtec use the occasion of the EVO’s dual anniversaries to showcase this game-changing engine’s future.
Emission-driven innovation with a twist
Meeting the new EPA emissions regulations of the early 2000s posed a challenge to locomotive manufacturers. Most manufacturers viewed the solution through the lens of their current offerings and made adjustments such as added cooling to achieve an acceptable result. While this approach worked, reducing emissions appropriately, it came at the cost of declining fuel efficiency.
Wabtec took a different path, refusing to just check a box and “adjust” its way out of the problem. Instead, it looked at its FDL engine, developed back in the 1950s, and saw an opportunity for a complete refresh, a masterstroke of innovation that would solve for not only emissions reduction, but also drive performance improvement. Done right, Wabtec could develop a 21st century engine that would reduce emissions, adapt to changing compliance standards, deliver improved fuel efficiency, and serve as a foundation for future innovation.
The Evolutions Series engine was born.
“Our competitors viewed the solution to the new emissions regulations as an engine problem; they tinkered with their existing engines and detuned them to make them compliant,” says Alan Hamilton, VP of Engineering at Wabtec. “The problem was that it resulted in decreased fuel economy. Wabtec engineers took a completely different approach. They reimagined the engine as a ‘power plant’ for the locomotive and found ways to reduce emissions, while increasing fuel efficiency – a real breakthrough.”
This innovation introduced the EVO engine to the rail industry. Wabtec engineers tested new ways of delivering fuel to the engine, ultimately landing on a high-pressure common rail system that enabled fuel-injection to be more precisely controlled. Imaginative and practical improvements in overall engine design like this helped Wabtec not only meet its customers’ compliance needs but add value along the way in the form of newfound fuel efficiency, a major cost lever in rail.
And just as more stringent compliance standards didn’t stop, neither did the creativity of Wabtec’s engineers. When Tier 4 emissions standards surfaced, requiring significantly greater reductions in particulate matter and NOx, other locomotive manufacturers defaulted to an “aftertreatment” solution, introducing expensive, and clunky urea-based catalysts to their engine mix.
Not Wabtec. While its engineers did explore aftertreatment approaches, they pushed the envelope on their systems-engineering approach, innovating their way out of costly aftertreatment-reliance and into the hearts of Class 1 railroads with the Evolution Series Tier 4 Locomotive. For Wabtec’s engineers, Tier 4 compliance provided the nudge, but performance and value creation remained the goal.
The EVO Tier 4 engine successfully met, and continues to meet, the EPA’s prescribed 76% reduction in NOx emissions and 70% reduction in particulate matter emissions. That’s why today nearly 1,200 Wabtec Tier 4 locomotives are on the rails, while the nearest competitor has one tenth of that.
A new ‘advantage’ for Wabtec customers: EVO Advantage
While the success of Wabtec’s EVO Tier 3 and Tier 4 locomotives are excellent, one reason they remain so is because Wabtec knows the job is never done. Looking to deliver any advantage they can to their customers around the world, Wabtec engineers are always pushing ahead for more.
When your engines are already the industry’s cleanest, most fuel efficient, and reliable, what else can be done? Innovate some more, of course.
And that’s just what Wabtec has done – again – with EVO Advantage. Following in the footsteps of its successful forebear FDL Advantage, an engine modernization package that extended the life and performance of FDL engines around the world, the EVO Advantage package for EVO Series Tier 3 and Tier 4 locomotives does what some thought unthinkable: it delivers an additional fuel savings of up to 7%.
The heart of this efficiency boost resides in Wabtec’s eTurbo technology. While the configurations differ slightly for Tier 3 and Tier 4 locomotives, the concept is roughly the same: Wabtec has fully integrated a generator into an alternator that harvests waste energy from engine exhaust. The alternator uses that energy to power one of the locomotive’s six traction motors, taking load off the engine, thus increasing fuel efficiency.
And, in typical Wabtec fashion, this “drop-in” solution fits elegantly within the tight confines of the locomotive’s available space. It’s also chock full of breakthroughs at the component level.
For example, with space at a premium, Wabtec’s engineers designed a carbon fiber sleeve to retain rotor magnets within the turbocharger alternator. Other sleeve materials, such as titanium, are 5x thicker than carbon fiber and would have driven the design outside of the allowable packaging space. Ultimately, carbon fiber was used to enable the alternator to fit within the available space within the turbocharger.
For added perspective, if the carbon fiber strands (which themselves have a diameter 10x thinner than a human hair) within the eTurbo were laid end to end, the resulting strand would be 15 miles long.
Yet, these 15 miles of innovation is nothing compared to the fuel efficiency it helps advance. With up to 7% more fuel efficiency, an EVO locomotive could traverse an additional 70,000 miles for every million traveled. (Note: “As of July 2025, the Evolution Series Tier 4 locomotives in operation have collectively accumulated over 500 million miles and nearly 10,000 years of combined run time.” Source: Railway Age).
The Tier 3 and Tier 4 EVO Advantage Systems, which are undergoing extensive field testing, include the eTurbo and turbo alternator; system integration and packaging; locomotive software/engine control software; and power electronics hardware.
Innovating with purpose
As Wabtec celebrates 20 years of EVO Engine mastery and 10 years of EVO Tier 4 triumphs, it’s clear the company knows how to innovate with purpose.
“Building the best locomotives in heavy-haul freight, and continuously improving them, requires great skill and endless imagination,” concludes Gamble. “Customers appreciate the big revolutionary leap Wabtec made with the Evolution Series locomotive – and it is an anniversary truly worth celebrating – but we can’t rest on past accomplishments. Our destination, and that of our customers, lies ahead. And our innovations, large and small, are going to ensure we all get there more safely, efficiently, and reliably.”