Playing with my passenger train tonight and was wondering how long apx should it take a doubled head 11 car train to go from zero to say 60 MPH? I know it depends on how many passengers are on board, how fat they are, baggage and engine type.
I am running either A and B Eries or E-6’s or F7’s.
Cuda Ken
best i can remember it would take a couple of minutes. depending upon the gear ratios, with HP and trailing weight being equal, geeps could usually get a passenger train out of town faster than E units. not all railroads opted for the high speed gearing. i think the IC geeps were set up for about 85 mph and i know for a fact their E units were geared for 117 MPH. that is why they were failures in intermodal service and burned out too many traction motors.
grizlump
Do you have access to a video called “Santa Fe Odyssey Volume 1”? There is a clip (chapter 5) of a non-named mail passenger train stopping in Lamar Colorado. It blasts out of the station and looks to be going about 40 mph by the time the end of the train passes. There is a blip in the video so it isn’t a continuous time block but it gives a pretty good idea that the train would easily be going 60 mph in another 30 seconds or so.
I have no specifics or stories, but I have read an account of riding behind a Pennsy GG1 and the acceleration was brutish.
A single Northern type pulling a good line of heavyweights would probably take the better part of 3 minutes to get up to 60 mph, depending on the trailing tonnage and the grade, if any. As they passed 40 mph, though, they’d really come into their sweet range and accelerate more quickly, soon producing much more horsepower than diesels would.
Here is an older video of UP 844 leaving Greeley. It takes essentially 3 minutes to get to 60-65.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8BXipiLfwA
-Crandell
Oh, no!!..Let’s not give Ken any ideas about speed. May be running those E units like one of his Mopars (a 426cid E unit)…Sorry Ken, couldn’t resist.
Oh, no!!..Let’s not give Ken any ideas about speed. May be running those E units like one of his Mopars (a 426cid E unit)…Sorry Ken, couldn’t resist.
A Mopar 426 is puny in comparison. Each cylinder in an E unit displaced 567 cubic inches. There were 12 cylinders in each engine and 2 engines in each unit. Total displacement in an E unit was 13,608 cubic inches.
OTOH, you’re only getting about about 0.15 hp/cubic inch in the EMD 567 engine. The top rated 426 was producing right at 1 hp/cubic inch. Thirty-two 426’s are roughly the equivalent displacement of 2 V-12 EMD 567 engines. At max rated horsepower (425), thirty-two 426’s would be kicking out 13,600 HP.
Of course, those 426’s would be sucking gas faster than it could be refined.
Interestingly enough, the displacement or (more correctly in this context) the cylinder swept volume of a an SP GS-4 was 16,107 cubic inches and it produces a maximum continuous horsepower of about 5500 or just about 1/3 hp/cubic inch.
By now you should be well into REM sleep.
Andre
Just to give you an idea of what can be done with modern electric locos - the class 189 electric of German Railway, rated at 10,000 hp, accelerates a 2.000 mt freight train from 0 to 65 mph in less than 20 seconds. 50 years ago, that was the acceleration of a Porsche!
The beast looks like this:
I have a video of a later years Union Pacific passenger train leaving East Los Angeles station with three E8s pulling 30 passenger cars. They were up to full track speed of 70 MPH within 5 miles.
Not quite as much get up and go as a Barracuda. You certainly wouldn’t think of entering them in a drag race.
Diesels have much more starting torque than a steam engine, though. In the days of steam this would have required a double-header and it would probably have taken 10 miles to get up to track speed.
VIA and GO Transit passenger trains get up to speed very quickly. I would guess it’s less then a couple minutes and I would also guess they could get up to speed quicker if they wanted to. I think passenger comfort plays a part in it, nobody wants coffee dumped all over them because the engineer thinks he is John Force.
Thank you for some, well interesting answers. I have all most finished the track for the passenger station. It will be on a passing siding of the B line. It will have to start and run a round the B line one time then it will go on to the A line. Tricky part will be I will have a local freight running on the B and a fast freight on the A line at the same time.
As of now I have CV 3 sat at 102, has a good slow start and seems to be at top speed (speed sat at 50) in around 20 feet give or take.
On the 425 HP rating of the Hemi, that was for the bean counters at the insurances company’s. With a proper tune most street Hemis could make around 480 HP. At around 10,000 miles there HP fell of badly. There valve springs had a high seat pressure and they wore down the cam lops fast.
Cuda Ken
GG1 acceleration – quoting Alvin Staufer’s 1962 “Pennsy Power” on page 279…
“Consider for a moment the testing of locomotive 4899 (now 4800) at Claymont, Delaware, back in 1934. Pulling one car of test equipment, this original GG1 was repeatedly accelerated under full power from stop to 100 MPH in just 64.5 seconds. This performance required a peak output of 9300 horsepower at the rail, equivalent to 11,000 diesel locomotive horsepower.”
…makes you wonder how many “Gs” the GG1 was pulling!
A lot of steam locomotives had booster engines for their trailing truck (under the firebox) to increase acceleration from a start.
Good acceleration was a trait of a locomotive suitable for commuter service because of the many starts.
Mark
I gotta disagree with you on this one. E units had 2 - 567 engines in them. They also had the same number of traction motors as a GP. CB&Q consistently used E units in commuter service out of Chicago. They never used F Units or GP units, only Es. They rotated their E units between commuter service and regular passenger service. The demands of acceleration in commuter service would speak to their ability to ‘get out of town’ quickly.
I recall some information about the Jersey Central Atlantic 4-4-0 steam locos in commuter service from about 100 years ago. They were supposed to have averaged 50 or 60MPH including stops with 2 or 3 heavyweight coaches behind.
Fantastic video! And a nice study of the very gradual acceleration rate at first.
Dean
I once had 500 horses and about 1600 feet pound torque to apply against a 40 ton weight (Minus engine accessories, drive train friction, available traction etc) and it would take a minute and change to pass 70 and another 4 minutes to get to about 105 mph and stay there. At 105 everything is in balance and there is no more “Hammer” left.
Keep in mind that the rate of acceleration will fall off because there is a point at the top of the horsepower curve where it fall off steeply. The sweet spot is somewhere between torque and high horse.
Pax trains are also lighter than freight. They are also more powerful per ton of weight than freight to meet tight schedules.
There is a sign in Milwaukee that said for Pax to slow to 90 on a curve. That was back in the days of steam.
It amazes me, as a current Chem student especially, that what is making those drivers turn, is essentially water and serving tray sized discs.
Diesels have much more starting torque than a steam engine, though. In the days of steam this would have required a double-header and it would probably have taken 10 miles to get up to track speed.
I wouldn’t put money that bet if I were you. A diesel might out-accelerate a steam locomotive from a standing start up to about 20 mph, but after that all bets are off as a steam locomotive is just starting to crank out the horses at that speed.
Some years ago, UP replaced 3 dash 8-40C’s on an eastbound 143 car double stack train with Challenger #3985. It topped Archer Hill at 35 mph. From what I remember reading at the time, the train was still accelerating. There’s a YouTube video showing some of the climb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhgHrDbN4EU
Twelve drivers vs 36. If the Challenger can do it as a single unit, why are 3 diesel units necessary? A single GS-4 could handle the “Coast Daylight” (sometimes reaching lengths of 22 cars) between LA and SF except for the climb from San Luis Obispo to Santa Margarita where a helper was required. It took at least 3 diesel units for the same train and the schedule was never shortened.
One thing a lot of people forget is that HP at the rail decreases as speed increases with diesel. With steam, HP at the rail increases until the steam locomotive reaches the top of its horsepower curve. With the Challenger, HP tops at around 45 mph.
Andre
The “sweet spot” is were the horsepower line and the torque line cross each other. Torque is what makes you move, horsepower is just a number. You want to make as much torque as possible in the upper end of your RPM range. You can make a ton of horsepower but if your torque numbers are low then its really useless.