While searching in Yahoo Maps, an ad showed up at the top of the page showing a NS train, with a link to its ad site, which has links to show how they get 410 mpg, as well as a video.
Here it is: http://www.nscorp.com/nscorphtml/nstoday/
It’s a little deceptive- the full headline reads “1 gallon of fuel to move one ton of freight 410 miles.” Railroads exist because they are more efficient at moving large items.
I wonder if a similar statistic for an oil fired steam locomotive is out there somewhere? It would be an interesting comparison between modern diesel-electrics and “modern steam”.
Erik
And what is classified as “modern steam”…?
Maybe it should be titled “410 Ton/miles per gallon.”
I second this motion, It seems to make things easier when it comes to fuel -weight- miles calculations.
I do wonder to the calculate MPG for the railroad like they do in automobiles - which in many ways is very much so unrealistic; they don not take into consideration various engine loads while calculating MPG.
Erik: you might want to include along with fuel consumption on a steam loco, the vast amount of water consumed in generating steam.
Such a claim is also misleading when you consider terminal consolidations and subsequent loss of branchline carload traffic. Terminal consolidation results in more unit train possibilities, great for the railroad’s bottom line but not so great for the originator of the traffic, who often has to truckload longer distances to achieve a railhead (or even HAS to truckload whereas before he could load boxcars etc directly at his plant).
Thus, the most critical measurement of fuel economy per commodity is the cumulative fuel use per/ton mile for the whole supply chain, from point of origin to destination.
For those who don’t know, the thermal efficiency of even a modern steam locomotive is significantly less than even a first-generation diesel – less of the heat produced actually is turned into work. One way to change this balance would be to find a way to reroute exhaust steam back into the tender sufficient to massively preheat the water, but that would require a fundamentally new design for the locomotive, since the “stack song” is what generates the draft needed to keep a modern steamer’s fire going.
In physics and engineering, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Incidentally, for those wondering how the loco can claim such great “mpg” figures, get ahold of a video showing Jack LaLane pulling a standard (40-50 foot) boxcar – barehanded. It only takes about 300 lbs of lateral force to move one of those things even though, unloaded, they weigh 46,000 lbs. – 23 tons!
No wonder railroads are efficient.
and he notes -
Unless my math is a little fuzzy, it takes 10,000 gallons of fuel to move a 10,000 ton train 410 miles. That works out to 24.39 gallons per mile.
I don’t know the fuel capacity of the locomotives used for the study, but an SD45 carries up to 4000 gallons so a three unit lashup would have enough fuel to make the run but one would assume a refueling stop along the way.
Of course other considerations would apply: grades, speed and weather would vary the number of units needed and more modern locomotives would yield greater fuel efficiency. Interesting …
Raleigh in Maine
Not being an engineer or familiar with the “thermal dynamics” of such things I’ll let that slide, however I am wondering how Jack LaLane would do pulling your standard boxcar over the continental divide or up one of those grades along the PRR lines? Then “assuming” he could do that, lets load it up and attach the rest of the “train” and see how he does. The question now is “How many Jack LaLanes would it take and for how long could they do it?”
That aside, 410 megaton miles/per gallon is still better than the 15 - 20 miles per gallon your one ton SUV gets hauling one or two individuals around town. Another way of looking at this might be to consider costs. The cost of the engine oposed to the cost of the vehicle. There life expectency/operating costs/cargo (tonage) hauled, distance traveled etc.
Maybe just reading too much into this, but it is interesting.
Well, I think my point was that railcars, despite their weight, are relatively easy to move, and not that SD-45s should be replaced by human “engines.”
Yes, but coal is much cheaper per a BTU than desiel…
Thermal efficiency of a modern diesel is almost double that of a steamer, and I doubt that, even today, the price of coal is that cheap. Furthermore, coal both pollutes the environment, damages equipment via “cinder cutting,” and requires expensive facilities for its dispensation.
It might be of interest to know that one of the last working steam engines in the Los Angeles area, a U.P. 0-6-0, was killed not by U.P.'s growing antipathy toward steam but by a county ordinance declaring the engine to be a pollution hazard. The engine was hauled off to the Travel Town museum, where it rests today, stuffed. Many communities would pass legislation prohibiting railroads from using coal within city limits, if roads went back to using it for steam power.
Your math is fine, but your memory may be a little fuzzy. You probably meant ONE thousand gallons of fuel. If trains required 3or 4 fuelings to go from St Paul to Seattle there would no longer be any trains.
In this thread, a more telling figure would be gallons per HOUR. And modern locomotives may burn around 150 gph in run-8 (An SD40-2 ~ 168ish). For the sake of example, at 60 mph for a full hour that translates to 2.5 gallons per mile multiplied by each unit in the consist. And in this case 8th notch for a full hour is unlikely.
The typical “fuel economy” measures for a railroad are, gross ton miles per gallon, trailing ton miles per gallon and net ton miles per gallon.
The first two are pretty similar and are useful in measuring locomotive performance. The latter is more product oriented. The typical range for gross ton miles per gallon for road freight trains is 300 to 1000. A short, fast intermodal train would be in the 300 range and a unit coal train toward the upper end of the range.
Generally, the higher the HP/ton and the hillier the route, the worse the fuel economy.
Conrail’s throttle notch duty cycle for road freight operation was:
14% N8
60% idle
3% dyn brk
the rest of the notches - 2-4%
Proves the point, rail is cheaper then road. So why dosen’t our goverment provide more to Amtrak and freight then Freeways? City to City and Suburban rail to city.
Usually World War 2 or later with 300 psi boilers and stokers along with other modern appliences. The N&W 611 or UP 844 are good examples of modern steam.
George
huh what the heck on 410 mpg ? i think this is making not sense i think should be 1,500 miles as good fuel saver i think some thing wrong with the train builders …
More like 8 times more efficient. The new GEVO’s have a systemic efficiency of over 40%–meaning they convert 40% of the BTU’s of a gallon of diesel into power at the rail.
The typical “modern” steamer from the 1940’s was 5% to 6% efficient on a good day. In very cold weather they would drop down to 3% to 4%.
It must be all down hill !!![:-^]