loco placement long consists.
- Thread starter Ghost42
- Start date
This has to do with the amount of tractive effort and pulling power needed to move the train. There are many factors playing into this including engine type, train length, type of cargo, grades, speeds, curves and so on. As you noted having not enough power on the lead end, can cause a pulled draw bar or a broken coupler due to the strain while pulling the wagons.
In my observations since I am no expert on this, I have seen four locomotives on the lead with distributed power units (DPUs) in the middle and on the end on some very, very long container trains moving across the Great Plains. These trains had up to 120-130 flat cars with double stacks. The terrain isn't flat as a dinner plate which many people think, but has rolling terrain . The lines across the Midwest are much straighter though than those in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast with speeds up to 70 mph across these parts.
Back east in New England where I live, we only have a few locomotives on the point end, rarely a DPU, and our trains are shorter, perhaps only 40-100 wagons at the most. Our speeds too are a lot slower, maybe 20-45 mph for freight and 65 for passenger in the commuter areas, this is outside of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Providence. The loading gauge is narrower - 3.5 to 4.5 meters instead of 5 meters or more found in the west, and there are more tunnels, cuts, and curves. Our lines are much, much older, with some dating back to the earliest days of railroading.
Socalweb has created a nice calculator that uses MS Excel (It may work in Open Office Calc as well), that you can use to figure this out.
https://socaltrains.weebly.com/
In my observations since I am no expert on this, I have seen four locomotives on the lead with distributed power units (DPUs) in the middle and on the end on some very, very long container trains moving across the Great Plains. These trains had up to 120-130 flat cars with double stacks. The terrain isn't flat as a dinner plate which many people think, but has rolling terrain . The lines across the Midwest are much straighter though than those in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast with speeds up to 70 mph across these parts.
Back east in New England where I live, we only have a few locomotives on the point end, rarely a DPU, and our trains are shorter, perhaps only 40-100 wagons at the most. Our speeds too are a lot slower, maybe 20-45 mph for freight and 65 for passenger in the commuter areas, this is outside of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Providence. The loading gauge is narrower - 3.5 to 4.5 meters instead of 5 meters or more found in the west, and there are more tunnels, cuts, and curves. Our lines are much, much older, with some dating back to the earliest days of railroading.
Socalweb has created a nice calculator that uses MS Excel (It may work in Open Office Calc as well), that you can use to figure this out.
https://socaltrains.weebly.com/
