10 auto-rack/ multi-level cars - first empty, then loaded with 42 F-150s.
It’s late for me tonight, so I’ll leave it to someone else to work out the math for the rolling resistance of those cars, the tractive effort of the truck that would be needed, and what the factor of adhesion might be for the truck. Assume the track is level.
Reminds me of the ad when the four women pulled the Timken roller-bearing equipped “Four Aces” Northern steam locomotive - see the photo about halfway down this page:
Betting big on Ford. Typically when a member of the Ford Family becomes directly involved in a project such as the Electric Program and the Michigan Central Station rehab…good things happen with the company. I think they are going to out compete GM with their electric trucks.
There’s publicity of women pulling a Niagara, too. (I suspect the piston rings and packing were not in full contact)
A Ford commercial from the late '60s or early '70s had a station wagon pulling three hi-cube boxcars, without particular problem. This is really not that surprising, especially at low speed. Cue the Toyota stunt pulling the Space Shuttle.
I’d think the only major issue with starting the 10 cars, empty or loaded, would be ensuring traction, either with weight in the bed or some Trackmobile-style leverage down on the hitch as the pull is started. (Also perhaps some curling-style attention to railhead cleanliness and, perhaps, some careful use of TOR lubricant…)
I would not be concerned with starting or pulling the train cars, but once at the finish line, I think I’d get out of the truck as quick as a bunny before the 10 auto-carriers crushed it!
Edsel Ford began the modernization of the Ford Motor Company in time for the production demands of WW2. Unfortunately, he died in 1941 before he could see the completion of his work.
He obviously had nothing to do with his namesake car, which was primarily a marketing disaster.
I’ve heard it said that you can move a fairly large train on level track with a five horsepower Briggs and Stratton. You can’t move it very fast, but you can move it.
As mentioned, all you need is sufficient traction, plus proper gear reduction.
I once watched a 600 HP SW-1 move 84 loads of cement from the Clark Avenue Yard in Cleveland to a customers location known as Willow - about 5 miles from the yard - took the crew 4 hours to get there though.
It’s the acceleration that’s the critical part – very important to maintain it at just the constant rate, perhaps an inch per second per second or less, that keeps traction maximized without slipping. As previously noted, there is a corollary for braking that most people forget… and conventional antilock-brake systems are the wrong answer.
If I’m not mistaken, 4 knots in the carrier Intrepid is 250hp, what a good bass-boat engine will produce. Of course you’d need a comparatively large (and infinitely variable-pitch) prop to get the ship up to that ‘balancing speed’ without a calendar…
I don’t think that would happen with friction bearings,
Ye Olde roadmasters 3/4 ton pick-em-up-truck towed cars frequently at derailment sites or areas around a switch so we could fix track. No big deal, but somebody was manning the railcar brakes.
I would want to have a good handle on the transmission and how it is engagable to the power plant. Imagine the heat produced by a typical automotive clutch trying to lift a train of rolling stock. I would think a 20 hp power plant (electric or gas/diesel) would have no trouble getting one or two ore cars underway, but the clutching mechanism would have to be quite robust.
In general – there might not be a clutch at all; the ‘first best’ salable option in a truck would be a good torque converter setup with VERY good and positive heat exchangers (probably equipped with separate electric fans as found in good diesel pushers or diesel light trucks equipped for heavy trailering.)
These implicitly have TCCs, in the case of some Allisons on all forward speeds, but these only engage when there is no detected mutual slip (and can more importantly be held out of engagement as desired). Presumably the converter(s) would have a stall speed matched to desired engine hp and torque curves, and the clutches would be under some computer/genetic-algorithmic control.
An alternative might be a multiplate wet clutch, but as noted these throw away a great deal of engine output that a TC multiplies into torque. I’d be more inclined to use a magnetorheological clutch (which is fluid-modulated as quickly as needed via either electromagnets or a ‘magnetic chuck’ kind of arrangement) backed up with an arrangement like a TCC that locks direct drive when shaft-speed match and engine torque curve permit.
There is also the approach taken in the Bowes drive, which becomes attractive if you have, as Ford does here, a substantially parallel-electric-hybrid or BEV. This has the signal advantage of involving no friction media whatsoever, in fact no need for ‘shiftable-under-load’ metal-to-metal contact over a wide range of output speed, and can benefit from many of the improvements made in traction-motor construction and control over the past couple of decades.
I suspect that what Ford actually has is an inverter-fed three-phase traction motor, with no formal ‘clutch’ require
And yeah, I’d sure as hell ensure the slack was as bunched as I could get it before starting the cameras rolling. Starting one car at a time, perhaps with progressive gain in momentum, HAS to be much easier than trying to yank a large percentage of the string at one time. Give me one of those ‘new’ trucks with 1000 nominal hp and 35,000lb towing capacity and I’d bet I could indeed start 'em with plain bearings, getting each one up on the lube-film wedges by the time the next one needs to be hydrodynamically levitated…