Where are you getting this information, because I don’t think it’s correct. Ten loaded iron ore hoppers weigh 2.1 million pounds (1050 tons). That’s a lot of weight for any engine to lug up a 2% grade, and FAR too much for just about any 0-6-0 ever made.
As a comparison, a USRA 0-6-0 has a TE of 38,350 pounds. A typical USRA light Mike has a TE of 54,700. A USRA light Mike could haul about TEN loaded boxcars up a 2% grade (as proven by 4501 in the 1960s). Loaded boxcars don’t weigh as much as loaded ore cars.
An 0-8-0 hauling 30 loaded ore cars? That’s 6.3 million pounds. It took the N&W THREE Y-3a’s to move 5.5 million pounds up a 1.5% grade, so you may want to check your sources.
Steam switchers almost NEVER moved more than eight cars at a time in yards. Why? Simple: this is the days before radios and before (believe it or not) everyone wore glasses (I’m talking the 1950s here folks). Train crews physically couldn’t SEE each other past eight cars or so, so they couldn’t communicate with each other effectively (hand signals only).
The idea that a switcher, especially a steam switcher, should be able to grab an entire train and wrestle it around to switch them as one long cut is model railroader fantasy, as are steam-era yards with long drill tracks. Ask steam-era yard crews how they REALLY did things, and look for long yard lead tracks on 1930s/1940s era yard diagrams, and you’ll get a MUCH more realistic picture of how things were done in the good old days.
My second ever purchase of a steam engine model was of the P2K Heritage 0-6-0. No matter how you slice it, it is a wonderful little engine. The detail set the standard at the time for all but brass engines. It still ranks right up there for non-brass RTR steamers.
I was initially disappointed in its pulling power, but what did I know? My second engine, perhaps three months into the hobby, and I had nothing with which to compare it. Now I know that I expected too much from that widdo beastie. Then, one day, I decided to see what it could do on level track. I hooked up three Walthers heavyweights to it and an IHC smooth side Budd car, plus a head-end reefer from Walthers. It had no difficulty at all on the level, but as soon as the second car had been shoved onto the transition into my grade, it began to spin.
I suspect that a small 0-6-0 in the 1920’s, non-superheated, would have generated near 20-25K lbs of tractive effort. Larger ones superheated probably rivalled large Consolidations at the time, and were closer to 30-35K lbs of tractive effort. I don’t profess to know, but I would not be surprised to see such engines in a level yard switching 15-25 boxcars at a time. I haven’t tried yet, but on my level yard tracks I would not be surprised to see my 0-6-0 jerk 10-15 around without too much difficulty. And yet, with this tiny engine, adding even 0.5% of a grade into the effort and you will have trouble with 6-8 boxcars.
As an engineer on a class 1 you would be hard pressed to have a modern road switcher [GP 40-2] pull more than 15-20 loaded cars [coal,steel,grain,ore] up a significant grade. I can’t compare or contrast what an old steam switcher would be able to pull but I don’t think an 0-6-0 would come close to the adhesive traction of the newer diesels. One of the yards I worked had a signifcant grade and we would not switch cuts greater than 12-14 cars not only because that was the upper limit of pulling ability, but because of safety concerns; In railroading it is more important to stop on a downhill than it is to be able to pull up a hill!!! As for the P2K 0-6-0, I think the’re a nifty little engine switching 6-8 cars at a time. Mine runs like a swiss watch at super slow speeds and I’ve never had issues with it [soundtraxx TSU-750 w/2 1.1" speakers crammed in the tender]
Huh. Wonder what it means then when my 17 year old pontiac had most of those things until the fan assembly gave out. Still built like a tank, runs great, and I get good mileage. Good sound system, I think a speaker’s about to go out though.
Ray, I don’t have the books in front of me, but my sources would be “One Man’s Locomotives” by Vernon Smith, a railroader who started as a Mesabi Range iron ore co. fireman/engineer in the 1920’s and retired as head of motive power for the Belt Ry. of Chicago, and “Lake Superior Iron Ore Railroads” by Patrick Dorin. I guess you could throw in “Locomotives of the Duluth Missabe and Iron Range” by Frank King, who retired as a executive of the DMIR and was the son of a DMIR engineer.
The Dorin book shows a GN 0-8-0 in the 1930’s pushing (IIRC) 28 loaded ore cars out onto the ore dock at Allouez. Keep in mind your weights (210000 lbs per car) are a little high, I believe a loaded WW2-era ore car weighed 70 tons, earlier steel ones (which were still in use into the fifties) were I think 50 tons…so a 30 car cut wouldn’t be as much as you estimate.
I regeared and remotored to a can mine, used it on the club layout yard 20 cars at a time. Its all metal. I like the fact my PCM Y6b is all metal also it should crawl long strings of hoppers up grades.
I have also noticed that the newer locos don’t pull like the old ones do. Now when I was a kid a had an old GP 9 that I still have that was purchased in the very early 80’s and even now that thing will pull like nobody’s business. Even after thoroughly cleaning the wheels and contacts it will not run smooth.
The new Athearn locos that I have are A) much more detailed B) are not affected by dirt on the wheels and contatcs like the old ones and C) generally run smoother but lack the traction to pull as many cars.
Now I run a layout that has tight turn (space constraints) and about 20 to 25 cars. So when one loco starts slipping no worries I just put another loco in front and away we go.
I’ve got film of SP 0-8-0’s wrangling LONG cuts of cars in the Roseville yards, certainly FAR more than 8-10. Roseville was where trains coming in off the Valley lines were broken up and put back together for either the Shasta or Donner Pass routes. Especially during the produce season when long strings of reefers were iced and then made up into extras for the busy Donner Pass/Overland line. Those SP 0-8-0’s more than earned their keep.
Certainly something that today’s model 0-8-0 can hardly do on a layout, even with traction tires, at least as far as I’ve found. My 0-8-0 looks pretty good on the shelf, but that’s not why I spent all that money. [xx(] I’m still using my little old all-metal Roundhouse 0-6-0 for yard work and it’s still grinding away happily.
Basically it’s a directive in Europe that imports will be free of “hazardous materials” such as lead, mercury etc. Of course if the USA did this, the rest of the world would cry protectionism, but that is an unrelated topic. So in Germany your politicians are looking out for you, in spite of yourself. [swg]
A USRA 0-8-0 is rated 4,040 tons train weight on level, and 900 tons on 2%, in terms of starting a train and keeping it going under 8 MPH. This from the original USRA data reprinted in a Trainshed Cyclopedia (No. 9, p.909).
Under the same conditions, a USRA 0-6-0 is rated 3,090 tons (level) and 700 tons (2%).
Basic assumptions are 4 lbs of car resistance per ton of car weight.
If we have loads and empties, and an average weight of a freight car at, say, 50 tons (a 25 ton car half-loaded with 25 tons), we see the 0-8-0 moving 80 cars on level, and 18 cars up the 2%. The 0-6-0 would do 61 cars (level) and 14 cars (2%)
Understandably, the 0-8-0 was suited for hump yard shoving.
An old Rivarossi 0-8-0 did OK with long cuts of car on my former layout (grades up to ~ 1.5%) , after I replaced the plastic traction tire with a steel tire made on the lathe. I don’t even remember what it did with the plastic tire intact. The plastic tire broke and I wanted to make a steel tire on the lathe for fun; it was amazing how much traction that one steel driver could deliver. The rest of the drivers were plated bright, about like the current RTR engines. This engine was also re-geared to a lower ratio. Eventually the engine stripped its gears, hit the floor when knocked off the RIP track, and finally the layout came down. Such is mortality.
Aaahhh, the power of a (steam) locomotive. In the real world, that depended on a lot of things:
General boiler/locomotive design - efficiency in converting a given amount of energy into steam, the steam pressure the locomotive could safely handle, cylinders properly sized to effectively consume steam, weight on drivers, resistance of locomotive and tender, etc.
Quality of the fuel - different grades of fuels contained different energy levels.
Size of firebox - how much fuel could be effectively consumed in a given time.
Effective fueling rate - the ability to supply fuel as fast as consumed.
Maximum velocity at which full cut-off can be maintained - the ability to provide steam for the full travel of the piston. The faster a locomotive goes above the maximum full cut-off speed, the less power.
Thus, one reason why switchers seemed to be able to move so many cars, even though their steam production capacity was smaller than road locomotives, was that switchers usually didn’t travel at speed or need to provide maximum power for an uninterrupted time. They also usually operated in areas of little if any grades as compared to road engines and had no pilot or trailing trucks taking locomotive weight from the drivers.
Pulling power of railroad locomotives (prototype or model) is equal to the weight on drivers times the coefficient of friction. All things being equal, the heavier locomotive will pull more. The old cast Zamac steamers were a good deal heavier than the modern plastic steam. So they pull more. Coefficient of friction for metal wheels on metal track is about 0.25. With rubber traction tires it jumps up to better than 0.5.
The plastic steamers are lighter and there doesn’t seem to be much room inside them to add weight. So they don’t pull as much as we would wish.
If they could only do 2-4 cars at a time, I guess 0-4-0’s like the Pennsy had (or some Minnesota mining companies) were just to move guys around the yard, since they couldn’t pull any cars?? [;)]
Anyway as far as “sources”:
“Uncle Sam’s Locomotives: The USRA and the Nation’s Railroads” notes on page 65 that the USRA 0-6-0 seemed to be based in part on C&NW “transfer” 0-6-0’s - which it notes, should not be confused with the lighter “switching” 0-6-0’s the railroad had. They were used to transfer cars from Proviso yards to 40th Ave yard and back, a distance of nine miles. It quotes Railroad Review as saying “they have handled 3,000 tons over grades of 0.92 and 0.8 percent.”
In “One Man’s Locomotives”, engineer Vernon Smith recalls on page 30 being assigned Evergreen Mining No. 102, a 1913 0-6-0 which had Stephenson valve gear. He described it as “rather small for some of her assignments” yet notes that a typical mine run (down into the pit for loading and back) was “15 or 20” Soo Line 50 ton ore cars (perhaps with a few new 75 tonners mixed in). He noted that in the pre-war years, 0-6-0’s were the most common engines used by ore mining companies.
Of course, the 0-8-0’s were much more powerful. For example, Shrenk and Frey in “Northern Pacific: Classic Steam Era” note that the NP’s G-1 class 0-8-0’s tractive effort of 51,200 was “almost 20% greater than that of the Y class 2-8-0 engines and exceeded the tractive effort of the L-10 class 0-6-0s by more than 60 percent.” (Page 246.)
The DMIR’s biggest 0-8-0’s weighed 216,000 lbs and had a tractive effort of 53,575. They served in iron ore sorting at Proctor and the ore docks until the 1950’s.
Couldn’t agree more. The current crop of shiny-tire RTR steam locos do the prototypes a disservice by under-repreresenting their tractive effort.
Today, we have excellent (and ever-more complex and detailed) sound and DCC control for our lovely new model steam locos, as well as detail and proportion that is as good as many brass locos that sold for higher prices a while ago, taking inflation into account. We also have reasonably accurate scale top speed. The tie-crawlers can also rejoice (although real locos never do that stunt).
But bear in mind, boyz and girlz, there is no stopping evolution. I look to a brighter future when model steam locos will be expected, and will deliver, scale calibrated tractive effort. The proto-data is out there, and when the model loco designers start working on it with a higher degree of dedication that that which they have demonstrated, we will be seeing scale performance at yard and drag-freight starting speed, mid range “hooked up” cruising, and top end full cry steaming with good coal and a clean fire. It can and will be done. Forums like this get the word out, and the good folks who make these toys (or cause them to be made in China) do listen. They don’t always acceded to requests immediately, but competition between makers does raise the performance bar (as well as the detail, finish, cost, etc. bars).
BLI for one has increased drawbar pull by providing heavier locos than, say, whomever was responsible for those slippery-fish K4s’s. The days when we must turn to lumpen diecast 0-6-0’s to move our cars will be over, in the fullness of time. Let us pray we live long enuff.
Currently, model loco designers are struggling to include digital circuit boards and speakers inside the models, consuming valuable space that should be occupied by weight (if not lead, then whatever is legal and heavy). When they finally change the tire plating to a more grippy alloy, we should be seeing tractive
Very true and why a discussion such as this can have such a wide range of possible answers, especially in a day and age when relatively few individuals are left to offer any actual firsthand observations of a broad range of steamers of different designs and from different roads.
Perhaps MR should re-print the MR editorial written by (I believe) Linn Westcott about 50 years ago, citing reasonably appropriate motivepower for handling various common train-length/weights arranged in order of wheel arrangements and assignments. Certainly, as I recall them, the figures were typical quite a bit more modest than some of the claims made here and certainly more in line with the sizes and types of railroads depicted by most of our layouts.
I don’t recall the Linn Westcott editorial, but I would ask, was he advocating an exact 1:1 correspondence of train length in reality and in scale, or was he basing his recommendations on shortened consists, such as a typical freight train being 12 to 24 cars, but handled by a big road engine? On most model railroads, there isn’t enough space to handle prototypical train lengths, given the major-size engines we have at our disposal. The “selective compression” concept would justify limited pulling power as OK for big engines.