What’s the biggest horsepower loco avail to buy today? Just curious…I mean if I was a billionare and wanted to pull the moon closer to Earth what would be the biggest horsepower loco I could get today?
Does this come close?
https://www.getransportation.com/general/freight_rail/models/ac6000.asp
Actually it would probably be and electric the HHP is 8000 hp and i do not know about the other electrics.
Shine on, crazy diamond.
Electric locos are the most powerful out there, beating diesels since the beginning of time.
Do they sill make the AC6000? It doesn’t meet US environmental laws, but it can still be sold to other places like BHP in Australia, right? it is one of the most powerful single motor diesels ever, rivaled only by the SD90MAC-H
Well its not publicly available but we have a bi-polar which I imagine has a number of horses.
as far as dielses go, I think the AC6000 is has the most horespower. Only locomotive to reach 6000hp and sell a bunch (unlike the 6000 hp 90macs in which case not many were sold)
Buuuuuuuuuut, the DD40 has I think 6600 hp, and the last of the turbines did even better!!!
I copied this off a web site:
Freight locomotive
The General Electric model AC6000 is the world leader for freight locomotives. Its model 7HDL engine is a 15.7-liter 16-cylinder twin-turbocharged 6,250-hp diesel, generating the AC power to turn its electric traction motors. In 2001, eight AC6000s (that would be 50,000 hp) pulled the world’s longest and heaviest freight train 171 miles in just 5 hours in western Australia: 682 cars loaded with iron ore, stretching 4.6 miles. Cost: $2.5 million to $4 million.
Passenger train
Amtrak’s high-powered people-mover on the Boston-Washington corridor is the Bombardier/Alstom HHP-8, an electric locomotive that develops a steady 8,000 hp. Rich Del Bono, a 28-year veteran engineer, describes driving the HHP-8: “I set (the speed control) for 125 miles per hour and just increase the throttle 'til I’m there.” Cost: $8 million.
682 cars!!! WOW!! How in the heck do you not break the knuckles??
Distributed Power, the modern form of Locotrol.
Distributed power.
Does that mean you have the locos spread troughout the train, or maybe half pulling, and half pushing?
Of the coal trains that come through here on the BNSF it is 2 units pulling and 2 units pushing, on the UP it is 2 units pulling and 1 unit pushing. When the BNSF returns it’s all four units up front and the UP keeps the 1 unit on the rear for the return trip.
Railpower has been trying to market a 10,000 HP compressed natural gas fueled turbine electric since the company started with no takers…
Both Electromotive and GE have orders for 6,000 HP locos for China…
There are some Eurpoean electrics with a 10,000 hp rating…
There was the GM10B EMD electric here, for a while, too.
The Australian train ran with 4 pairs of locomotives to keep coupler loads reasonable, 2 locomotives on the headend and 3 remote sets spread evenly thoughout the train. With a single exception, North American railroads only use one set of remote locomotives because of the time needed to insert and remove the remote locomotives. The single exception is that the UP uses 2 remote sets on coal trains out of Colorado’s Axial Basin, due to there being 2, widely separated, severe adverse grades against the loads. With reference to the previous poster noting that UP tends to leave the DPUs in the empty train while BNSF puts all the power on the headend for the empty return. All the power on the headend indicates that the train was interchanged to another railroad that doesn’t have crews trained in DPU operation and the DPUs are removed from the loaded trains in Chicago. BNSF runs more trains that are interchanged than UP.
Every loco has a span of tractive efforts from maximum continuous to zero, HP actually moves a certain tractive effort value higher on the speed scale.
So a lower HP locomotive will produce say 100 000 lbs at certain speed, and a higher HP loco will produce that same force at higher speed.
Also, higher HP leaves more room on the left side of the tractive effort line, which gives it more tractive effort for the same traction motor limitations.
So I think for raw pulling power, tractive effort is more important than HP.
You can have good pulling force with less HP, but you can’t have good power (fast long trains) if you can’t start a long train.
If the traction motors are limited to a higher speed only, the it takes a lot more HP to get a good continuous tractive effort than if you had good traction motors that allow slow speeds.
So you can get much more pulling force with lower HP and AC motors, or good DC motors, than you would with high HP and bad motors. Traction motors are gatekeepers, what good does say 10 000 HP do if you can only use it at say 20mph or more. By the time the train gets to 20mph it loses lots of tractive effort.
I think that’s why we see less atempts at huge HP than in the past, because now traction motors are as efficient as they have never been.
A modern 4400hp SD70ACe will pull more than an old 8500hp turbine did, simply because the old motors on the turbine did not alow it to use its full potential.
I can only imagine the kind of pulling force that would result from a combination of a 8500hp turbine prime mover and modern AC engines.
They have more HP, but they are not stronger. All they can do is pull a certain load fast, but they can’t pull much of that load.
For example, an acela express train with two powercars (which results in 12300hp) makes little over 90 000 lbs of tractive effort
Acela hhp-8 makes about 70 000 lbs tractive effort
I don’t know much about european electrics (exept those from my own country), but we can say at least for american electrics that they are by far not more powerfull than diesels and even last generation steamers, unless in the literal meaning of the word “power”, which in physics does correspond to hp.
So what’s the problem, well everything from gears to traction motors and weight of the locomotives. They are just not built to be strong, they are made to be fast.
A simple sd40-2 (with continuous effort of over 80 000lbs ) can pull more cars than HHP-8
Its just that if you gave both of these locomotives the same number of cars (the number that they both CAN pull) , HHP8 would accelerate with those cars to speeds that SD40-2 never could dream of.
It all depends on what your idea of power is:
is it
a) a light passanger train pulled at 120mph
or
b) an endless heavy freight train pulled by a locomotive at 25mph
Is “tractive effort” what an automotive engineer calls “torque”??
(I didn’t have physics in high school.)
allen
Yes although the motors produce a small amount more torque than the locomotive produces tractive effort, because a small amount of the power is used to move the locomotive itself. Properly Torque is a rotating force while Tractive Effort is a straight line force.
I want a 20,000 ton train to do 200mph with. With one unit. I guess I gotta develope some new engine.
I would think technologicaly it would be possible to do if someone needed it.
There is a relationship between Power and Tractive Effort.
Tractive effort is simply the amount of force that a locomotive can pull on the train. If you put a tension meter between a train and the loco when it’s tractive effort is 50,000 lbs, then the it will read 50,000 lbs.
Power is a force pulled over a distance. 1 HP is 33,000 ft-lbs per minute. Multiply the tractive effort over the distance pulled in a minute and you get ft-lbs:
All of the following are 1 HP
1 pound over 33,000 feet in 1 minute
10 pounds over 3,300 feet in 1 minute
100 pounds over 330 feet in 1 minute
1000 pounds over 33 feet in 1 minute
Say a 100,000 lb tractive effort loco with 6,000 HP takes off at full effort.
6,000 * 33,000 = 198 million ft-lbs. per minute.
Now divide the 100,000 lbs of tractive effort.
That leaves 1,980 feet per minute max speed at full tractive effort.
Convert to MPH and you get 22.5. This is the critical point where tractive effort and HP are both at their peaks. Trying to get too much HP at a slow speed and the wheels slip. There is no way to get any more tractive effort than HP will allow.
The locomotive will then pull 100,000 ft-lbs from 0 to 22.5 MPH then the tractive effort will decay as speed increases.
The formula for finding tractive effort at speeds greater than the critical point. At speeds less than the critical point, the wheels would slip.
(HP* 33,000)/((Speed in MPH)* 88ft/min per MPH )= Tractive Effort. Plug in the HP in question and the speed at which the tractive effort is desired.
(600033,000)/(22.588) = 100,000 lbs of tractive effort
This thoerietical loco would have this much tractive effort at these speeds.
0MPH = 100,000 lbs
10MPH = 100,000 lbs
20MPH = 100,000 lbs
30MPH = 75,000 lbs
40MPH = 56,250 lbs
50MPH = 45,000 lbs
60MPH = 37,500 lbs
70MPH = 32,143 lbs
80MPH = 28,125 lbs
90
but the tractive effort in reality is limited by much more things than just hp.
Its limited by minimum speed that motors can tolerate, and by the weight of the locomotive.
That’s why a “powerfull” locomotive like HHP8 has such a weak pulling force