I was looking at a 44ton locomotive a few mins ago and I had a thought.
How many real or model railroads use 3 locomotives: first, middle, and rear? Was this as a common practice?
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking?? If you mean, how common is it to have three locomotives pulling a train, the answer would be that it’s pretty common. If you’re asking how often a long train will run with an engine up front, a helper at the rear, and another helper in the middle, I would say that happens but less frequently.
If you’re asking something else, maybe you need to rephrase your question??
I rephase and I meant to say how many railroads had two helpers in different locations on a long freight train. Sorry for the confusion.
I’ve seen the KCS run several locos up front, a helper in the middle of the train and another helper or two at the rear.
The loco in the middle was / is especially common on very heavy trains, such as coal or ore hauls. I recall it as being pretty common on the IC coal drags thru southern and central Illinois.
My thought is that the middle loco took a lot of drawbar strain off the forward cars…
I’ve seen some IC&E trains that have IC&E equipment leading (usually 3 SD40-2s) & as it seemed overly long there were 2 KCS AC4400’s on the end pushing. I have a feeling that they may joined them togeter, rather than running an extra. If they ever had a mid unit helper/distributed power unit, I have not personally seen it. Anything is possible though!
This is called distributed power. 44 ton locomotives are not used this way.
Out here BNSF trains run 2 in front and one on the rear, all controlled from the engineer in the front locomotive. This gives better handling on curves and hills, and takes some of the stress off of the couplers and draw bars.
Experimentation with three mile long trains would put locomotives every mile on the train. These may become more common in the future, but for the moment there are no three mile long sidings, or at least not enough of them to run trains in both directions across any significant section of railroad.
They have tried running 3 mile westbounds, making all of the eastbounds take the sidings. But this has no advantage to them. They toyed with the idea of running eastbounds on the old NP main while sending the westbounds across the old MIL route through Aberdeen. But the are not doing that yet either. It really is just as easy to run three trains in a row as it is to run one long train. But you need more crews. They are closer to eliminating crews entirely than they are at running 3 mile long trains.
ROAR
Well, there you are. The most common is to have a few locos up front to pull/haul the load.
the second variation is to have a middle “helper” loco, and/or a follow-up lcoo on the rear as a "helper’. The mid loco is kinda stuck with the train, but a rear helper can lob off anytime the extra help is no longer needed.
Anywhere there is grades the loco must pull, the more likely it is to have a helper {s}.
Now, in MRRIng, the real trick is to have the “helpers” run in conjunction with the lead loco!! Matching CV values and speed on DCC systems can help. DC speed matching is a little trickier.
Good luck. also remember that while there are indeed 3% and 4% grades in real life, that in MRRIng THAT can be a real hassle and drag on your locos. I learned the hard way by tearing down two layouts, one with 3% and one with 4% grades and now only stick to 2% grade or less.
[2c]
[8-|]
In mountains its is relatively common. In steam days there could be 5 or 6 (or more) engines on the head end, mid trains and on the rear. I have seen pix of WM coal trains with one on the point, 3 in the middle and 4 on the rear.
What was the most common configuration. I’m guessing the 2-8-0?
On the SP, it was very common, especially in steam days and it was only slightly less common in diesel days before the advent of distributed power. You could find multiple helper sets on Donner, Tehachapi, the Siskiyou line and on Beaumont Hill with the Kaiser Ore Train.
Andre
On steam trains, and on older diesels, say up until the 1990s they were “helpers” and they had crews to operate them.
Today it is “Distributed Power” and the entire consist is controlled by one engineer up front. There are no crew members on the remote locomotives.
Tomorrow there will be no crew members up front either, the trains will be operated via global positioning from the central office in Ft. Worth (or is it in Bangalore… I cannot remember.)
ROAR
Andre’s right on the money about the SP in steam days. I’ve always joked that the reason SP had 195 locomotives of the same wheel arrangement (AC Cab-forward 4-8-8-2’s) is because they needed so many on just a single train eastbound over Donner Pass. Sometimes it was one AC at the head, another in the middle, and then another cut in a few cars ahead of the caboose between Roseville and Norden, at the top of 'The Hill" (Sierra Nevada’s). And if the train were particularly heavy, or needed to keep an exact schedule, like the many east-bound refrigerator extras that ran during the Summer and early Fall, a 2-8-0 helper would be cut in ahead of the first AC midway up the grade at Colfax. Helpers would usually be cut off and turned at Norden as it was all downhill for the next 40-odd miles to Sparks, NV, the locomotive change point.
Train watching back then was one Heck of a lot of fun!
Tom [:D]
2-8-0 locomotives, also called “Consolidations”, are light freight engines. I believe the IC had huge ones, but they were the exception if I recall correctly. After about 1915 or so, Consolidations would have hauled local and mixed freights and done industrial work on lighter track due to their eight drivers spreading their weight over a greater rail length. By the end of the first world war, heavier freight engines were hauling the heavier drags, and these would have been the larger 2-8-2 Mikados, and the ten-coupled variants such as the 2-10-0 and 2-10-2.
Between the Mikado and Consolidation, those two comprised probably 30-40% of the entire production of locomotives in the early 1900’s, so there were plenty, and they surely were doubled when it made sense to do that. So, it depends on the railroad and its needs for any one train. But, by the end of WW I, you would have seen the longer heavier freights on most roads pulled and shoved by larger engines than Consolidations much more frequently.
Would a 4-8-4 be used around this time since the government created the URSA and had strict limitations on what model would be manufactured and used?
Illinois central fan and modeler when I can find some decent prices or might get a loco repainted into one.
The history of the USRA 1917-19 could be (and has been!) the subject of a book all by itself. The USRA limited production of new locomotives to several standard designs: Light and Heavy Switchers (0-6-0 and 0-8-0 respectively), Light and Heavy Mallets (2-6-6-2 and 2-8-8-2), and Light and Heavy versions of Mikados (2-8-2), Pacifics (4-6-2), Mountains (4-8-2) and Santa Fes (2-10-2).
“Superpower” engines with four wheel trailing trucks didn’t appear until the mid-late twenties. The first 4-8-4 Northern was built for the Northern Pacific in 1926 IIRC. It was a dual-service engine which could haul freight or passenger trains, but in the twenties thru forties was primarily a passenger engine. Most had large drivers (69" to 80" diameter) so were well suited for passenger and fast freight service (like reefer trains) but weren’t so good at slow-speed “drag freights”.
In the twenties-thirties a freight would be more likely to have a 2-8-2 or 2-10-2 or some type of Mallet on it than a Northern, Pacific or Mountain.
p.s. Remember that with a steam engine, every engine had to have a fireman and engineer. With diesels one engineer can run several diesels simultaneously when they’re “m.u.'ed” (Multiple Unit) together in a consist. The engineer can run the engines from the cab of one engine (usually the lead one). So in the steam days if you had long and heavy trains where it took multiple steam engines to get over the grade, you’d probably look at getting a really big steam engine that could haul the train, like a big Yellowstone or Big Boy engine. Yes the big engine cost a lot more but the operating expense of only using one crew usually made it worthwhile. (However sometimes that wasn’t enough, I know Norfolk and Western sometimes had to use several Mallets toge
The most common freight locomotive was the 2-8-0 even into the late steam era. Something like 23,000 were built for domestic use. That being said, railroads generally used their most modern locomotives for mainline use unless the situation dictated otherwise. I’ve seen pics of SP freight trains in the early 20th century with six 2-8-0’s entrained in various places (usually 2 on the point, 2 more or less mid train and 2 cut in ahead of the caboose), the train length being 65 cars.
With the SP, the advent of Mallets cut down on the number of helpers as the early MC 2-8-8-2’s were the equivalent of two 2-8-0’s. Even so, it was quite common for there to be an MC on the point, another cut in about 2/3 back in the train and another cut in ahead of the caboose.
Andre
Speaking now of 2-8-0s:
- Back about 1895, PRR would attack the horseshoe with 5 or 6 2-8-0s on the head end and four more for helpers (saw this in a book of PRR photos about 55 years ago.)
- While most 2-8-0s (especially those built for light-rail roads) were light, some were downright huge. IIRC, one class of RDG consolidations was rebuilt - into 4-8-4s! And the D&H high-pressure experimentals had as much tractive effort as the road’s later Challengers (but nowhere near the speed.)
- WM would come off a lightly built branch with as many as seven (count 'em) 2-8-0s distributed along a train, with a dozen or so hoppers between locomotives.
My own prototype, JNR, built one class of 2-8-0 - over 600 of them! I settled for three, kitbashed from Spectrum 2-8-0s (which had the correct frame and wheel geometry but otherwise didn’t bear the least resemblance to the rail-borne pit bulls I photographed a long time ago.)
The big thing in present-day motive power is to put as much horsepower in as few units as are necessary to move the train, all under the control of a single throttle jockey. Lightweights like the 44 tonner don’t lend themselves to this philosophy.
The only 44 tonner I ever encountered personally was a plant switcher. Granted, the plant was Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and the loco was painted strato blue…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with diesels that don’t MU)
Distributed power. Union Pacific just did it, was it 3 mile long train?
Reported length 18,000 feet. 2.97 nautical miles, 3.41 statute miles, 5.49 kilometers.
Long enough to get some California politicians and media types running in circles, screaming and shouting…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)