Why is North American rolling stock so much larger…i.e. 100 ton boxcars verses the small 4 wheel Eurpoean boxcar?
Most modern Euro stock is just as large as US cars and bogie trucked just like US cars today.
If your talking about older cars, probably many reasons IMHO. In reality theres never been any real reason why the Brits or the Euros held onto the 2 axle goods van for so long, they could have switched to larger double axle boxcars long ago, afterall their coaches were everybit as large as their US counterparts. Car sizes were fairly comperable until the early 20th century, then US frieght cars started growing in size while their Euro counterparts sizes stayed relatively the same
I suspect it has more to do with just being traditionally used to working with over such a long period of time they simply saw no reasons to change. In the early 19th century Euro and Brit goods vans started as basicly road wagons on flanged wheels. The van builders were used to building road wagons so they simply carried on the same traditional building technics and sizes. Same for very early passenger coachs, as time went on even though the vans got a little larger and more durable, the same traditional size and type of vans held firm right into the 20th century. Distances traveled were much shorter than the US, loads and quantities involved were likely also lesser overall, so using smaller vans, say equivelent to delivery trucks here as opposed to semi trailers makes a certain amount of sense. Plus all people involved were used to the smaller vans, long time honored traditions die hard.
In the US, they found the more you could carry in a single car, the less it cost to ship over the greater distances in this country and was more effiecient overall, so market forces drove the car sizes larger. Plus as railroads evolved, tracks improved, ROWs were adjusted to be more efficient and faster allowing longer and faster trains, the smaller cars got unstable at high speed, so theres alot more incentive to build larger more stable cars for these faster freight trains, so as locomotives
Its all about the loading guage, simply put America has the largest loading guage of any country in the world, thus the large rolling stock and loco’s. In many other countries the loading guage is smaller, thus smaller rolling stock.
Mitch, care to define “loading gauge” and what determines it? for those of us who might be less technically savy? [;)]
Loading gauge is synonymous with the clearance diagram. Loading gauge and track gauge are not always related.
Part of the answer is loading gauge (clearances) and part of the answer is how they operate the railway. Their trains tend to be lighter, and they operate more frequently. They don’t handle as heavy axle-loadings as we do, since passenger operations are so important. Heavy axle loading means high maintenance costs on passenger routes.
Here are two modern European Boxcars
2 axle hbbillns SBB Cargo has just finish receiving 1000 brand new cars of this type
4 axle habbilln
SBB Cargo has received nearly 400 of these cars in the last few years
The first car is used for light bulky items Breakfast Cereal etc. The second for Paper Rolls etc.
The two halves of the car side wall slide for ease of loading and unloading.
One other question to ask is how much traffic does not use the railroads because they don’t need to move 100+ tons at a time.
Not quite true. The former Soviet Union has a larger loading gauge than North America. The C30-7s that are being sold to Estonia and some of the other former Soviet countries look very short in height and smaller overall compared to the Soviet locomotives.
Europe has very light axle loading limits. In North America we operate cars and locomotives over weighing over 30 tons per axle. Europe is operating at between 20 and 22 METRIC tons per axle (22 to 24 US tons.)
This is due to perceptions on the limits of track structure, tie spacing and bridge limitations. While their cars may look large, the tonnage is limited per the above.
Short trains in Europe are usually necessary due to the following:
passing siding lengths (short by US standards)
coupler strength (dinky little things)
air brake systems (not as quick reacting as North American systems, which evolved with train length increases)
As for Estonia, Rail World was told that the main reason higher axle loads would not be allowable was due to the limits of the bridges on the railroads. US experts inspected the bridges and found them to be built strong enough to carry the GE units and more. In fact, these bridges were designed to allow the application of heavy planking on the decks to allow soviet tanks to pass over them. And these have a little higher weight per square inch level than any locomotive or car.
TNT
One of the big reasons for the high clearances here in the US and Canada pertains to when the railroads were built. In the 1800s (even east of the Mississippi) there were still a lot of wide open spaces. As such railroads could have much more generous curves and find the flattest possible routes. I challenge anyone to build a 4 track mainline like the Pennsy’s Broadway (NYC-Chicago) from Paris to Berlin (or for that matter London to Liverpool) for the cost same cost.
Along with the clearances comes train length. Here in North America we have engines like the AC6000CW which has 6250hp compaired with the most powerful British diesel, the Class 60 at 3,100hp per unit. That’s just over a 2:1 horsepower difference. With these massive diesels can come very very long trains. It’s far cheaper in North America to haul fewer trains that are longer and heavier over the vast distances we have here than to have shorter trains more often.
Cheers!
~METRO
European Railways have some pretty powerful locomotives, too. 10 000 hp / six-axles, or most recently 7000-8000 hp / 4 axles. Electrics, because most mainline is under catenary. New electric locomotives
A significant number of traditional British freight cars weren’t even fitted with power brakes, which further limits train lengths.
The US advantage in couplers and brakes was a result of safety laws passed in the late 1800’s. While the railroads weren’t happy about the costs of complying with the laws, the laws did enable operation of longer trains than what was possible with manual brakes and link & pin couplers.
AFAIK, British freight-trains had a brake-van at the end, like a caboose. I don’t know how its crew communicated with the engineer, I guess, via whistle-signals.
Some US roads have tryed to use 2 axle cars. TTX had some piggy-back flats, the advantage of a 2 axle car is when you want to haul comodities that don’t weigh very much. In the US these 2 axle cars ride badly on north America’s inferior track. Long two axle cars need good track, they are also a simpler car to build. So in Europe 2, 4 and even 6 axle cars are commun based on the density of the comodity transported. I’ve even seen 5 axle cars with a 2axle and a 3 axle truck under coal hoppers, and the 3 axle articulated auto racks. I think Europe is able to choose a bigger variety in equipement because of superior smooth track.
But in Britan it was different, 2 axle cars were very short and able to negotiate bad track and sharp curves but were very simple and light and usualy had no air brakes. That has pretty much all changed and 25.5 tonne(28 ton US) is now used in UK and with knuckle cuoplers.
Loading gage alone is not what determines it, some countries allow 12 foot wide passenger and freight cars like Sweden. And Australia has heavier axle loads and trains then in the US. The US railroads are big but usualy not the biggest in any one catagory.
WRONG, if you planned to do some research instead of pretending to know (lots of people here have done this) you would know that Australia’s highest mainline axle load (not including the Hunter Valley Coal network and Pilbara Iron Lines) is roughly 22t. Compare that to the land of the free which is roughly 34t in most places. The Pilbara ore lines are built to roughly 35t axle load and the HV can handle 30t tops. 
See on that map that really small network above the W on Western Australia, its the Pilbara Network. Its one of the most isolated areas in the WHOLE COUNTRY. The HV network is a small area near Sydney and Newcastle, probably smaller the the Pilbara.
So for all those that think we run massive trains of iron ore across the country look at that map and headbutt a wall because if you post saying thats what Australia is like you are WRONG.
When purely viewing at locomotive HP, here’s short list of common loco’s on mainland Europe:
-
BR189 (electric): 5600 ~ 8500 BHP (depending on line voltage)
-
BR101 (electric)****: 8500 BHP
- NMBS reeks 11 / 12 (HLE11 & HLE12) (diesel): 4200 BHP
- ÖBB 1044 / 1144 (electric): 7000 BHP
- Vossloh G2000 (diesel): 3600 BHP
When considering EU vs US railroads, you really have to take two critical points into account:
1: EU railroads are primarily used for passenger transport.
2: EU populated areas are much closer together, with lots of small stations in between.
This means - among other things - that EU block lengths are much shorter to accommodate a higher train density. Shorter block lengths dictate shorter trains, which in turn means lighter trains and less BHP needed. As my short list above indicates however, there are a number of powerfull locomotives - most in use for freight trains - across Europe.
As to why we don’t have as much large cars: as indicated by others, the loading gauge is smaller. But also, since the distances are smaller, less cargo is transported by train. A 80 foot Hi-cube boxcar wouldn’t do much good if 90% of the time it was only filled to 50% of its capacity. This is a very important factor that must not be underestimated: more freight moves by road and water than by rail.
Maybe the BHP Iron ore trains are not in Australia then, no point in looking it up because it doesn’t realy matter what country it is outside of the US, but the BHP somewhere in the bottum half of the world runs bigger trains with heavier axle loads then in the US.
BHPBIO operates in the Pilbara, as shown on the map above. They are only a small system and not nation wide.