How many engines?

Ahoy!

(Do train guys say ahoy?) Bit of a novice, but Im wondering when creating a train, how to tell how many engines to put on the front? I know how to get my total weight, but unless Im missing something I have no idea how to tell the difference in pulling power for the various locomotives available.

Is there a rule for # of engines to weight? Is there a rule for when to put extra engines on the front or when top put them on the rear? Does it make a difference in game?

Do extra engines automatically help me out or are they dead weight unless "activated" somehow?

Any good online source (for newbs) that easily describes the difference in all the engines capabilities?

Thanks for any help

The answer to this question varies with each section of the railroad, because it depends upon the track profile of that stretch. The steeper the grade on a particular stretch, the less weight a particular locomotive can pull on that stretch uphill, and the less weight it can stop on that particular section going downhill. The real railroad knows for each locomotive type on each section of its route how much weight the locomotive can pull, and when they get ready to dispatch a train, the calculate the weight of the consist, and figure out how many units of which type they need to power the consist across the section. The result of the calculation is usually a figure expressed in "horsepower per ton" (in the US; metric units are used in the similar calculations in other jurisdictions).

As far as on the front, in the rear (and in some cases, in the middle), there is no particular rule. The drawbars (couplers and knuckles) on railroad cars have definite capacities: couple too much weight to the back of the coupler, and the drawbar will break in two (and yes, it happens sometimes on real railroads) when the ability of the drawbar to pull the weight coupled to the back of it gets too large. Many of the unit coal and grain trains are heavy enough that most of them would break in two if all of the power were on the front. The trains can be longer if one (and sometimes two) of the units are coupled to the rear instead of to the front, because the unit on the back pushes, and takes pressure off of the drawbar. In real life, trains with a total trailing weight of 7500 to 8000 Imperial tons in North American routes would likely have only two units on the front; heavier trains would likely have more power, usually as a distributed power unit (DPU).

In game, there may be units where the creators have taken the time to create an enginespec where it makes a taking these considerations into account, but most probably have not. Further, there are not many routes which are large enough to host a train long enough to really need distributed power.

There is one other consideration involved with how many units are found on a train. It is much safer to run a train when the locomotive is oriented short hood forward, than when it is oriented with the long hood forward, so many trains which would not need a second unit because of the weight of the trailing train, may have two for safety in operations.

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In TANE, you will find that if you have long trains, and steep grades, your train will completely stall on the grade, even if you have speed going up the grade, and even roll backwards, if you only have 1 engine.

If you START on a grade, you most definitely need more than 1 engine to even get the train going.

Really, if the train goes, and can ramp up fast to its speed limit , in an acceptable time to you, then you have enough engines.

Realizm, can only replicated if like mjolnir states, if the engines and trains you use have the proper specs to simulate things like drawbar breaking.

I find that most engines have specs that say if you have too many cars, the engine will accellerate very slowly, and never reach top speed due to too much weight.

Example in this video you can see that for the 3 steam engines with hundereds of cars in tow, to reach top speed (going up a mountain too) it takes a long time.
You can see me ADD 2 more engines live, due to this problem, initially the train starts going very very slow, but once the additional two engines are added, it accelerates at a rate that is acceptable.

But if you take that same engine, and run it alone, you will see that not only does it speed up fast, but it also reaches a faster maximum speed due to no load.

So even with 3 steam engines, my train cannot reach the engines top speed due to going up hill AND not having enough engines. (i could reach the engines top speed sooner, if i have even more engines than 3)

If i made the same recording with 6 engines, you would see the train reach its top speed 75mph very fast even with the long train in tow.

TANE does simulate loads and locomotive power, but how real it is depends on the creator of the object.

If you pay attention to the speed during the last 5 minutes of the video, you can see the maximum speed the train travels at, reaches around 67mph at the end of the video, but, it takes 5 minutes for the train to go from 59 mph to 67 mph due to going up hill and the weight in tow, even with 3 engines.
This train engine might never reach its 75mph max speed, at least while going up hill, unless I add a 4th engine.

I appreciate the replies.

I understand the theory behind needing extra engines....gravity and inertia to overcome.....but was just wondering at guidelines for how to tell ahead of time when to slap on extra locos.

You mentioned in real life two engines for trains up to 7500 tons is average. Do you find that TANE simulates this well? I realize that hp varies from engine to engine but again I'm a bit clueless on when loco A is better than loco B for a particular job.

Any websites with good side by side comparisons or data available other than looking up each one on wiki independently?


(Also why does short hood vs long hood make a difference like you mentioned?)

Another example to throw in: I had two GE units with 22 loads at 120,000lbs each (coal). I could only manage to get up to 23mph on a 0.3% grade. Once I got into a yard where I had surplus power about, I added two more units to the rear, and within seconds I was cruising at an easy 45mph on the same grade.

I think as a rule of thumb for this game you should have 1 hp for each ton that you're pulling. For example: a coal train of 2000 tons would need at least a loco with 2000 hp not considering grades and such. It's been a while since I'm remembering this so if I'm wrong some one please correct me.

hp per ton....that's very helpful thank you sir.


Wikipedia...here I come.

Seven is a good number, usually.






Specifications of the Nickel Plate Road (NKP) Berkshire Locomotives

Builder - Lima, Baldwin, and Alco (NKP Berkshires were built by Lima)
Fuel - 22 tons
Cyclinders(2) - 25" x 34"
Water - 22,000 Gallons
Weight - 802,500 Pounds
Diameter of Drivers - 69 Inches
Steam Pressure - 245 PSI
Tractive Effort - 64,100 Pounds

Here is an practical formula I found on here a long time ago.

Loco total HP * number of locos / consist tonnage = Horse Power per ton (Min is 2.8 - 3.0)

Check out this thread here:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...-Good-At-Math&highlight=Horsepower+calculator

There's some actual spreadsheets you can try which will calculate the engines you need.

You can also have an engine shut down, I know of one train back in the 1960's that left the yard with 4 locos witch all broke down, when the train go pulled back into the yard it left from it had 9 locos on it and only 1 running.

whitepass said:

You can also have an engine shut down, I know of one train back in the 1960's that left the yard with 4 locos witch all broke down, when the train go pulled back into the yard it left from it had 9 locos on it and only 1 running.

Click to expand...

Well the one issue with that is you can't shut down the majority of locos in Trainz. This is something I hate. We should make A LOT more locos with the shut down and startup script because it is simply a great feature to have on the majority of locos. It is also more prototypical.

in addition most diesel locomotives have a loadmeter that should not spend much time in the red zone when using cab mode. Some diesels get a hot motor indication warning on your screen and cuts out automatically if you don't drop a notch or two or if you are totally overweight.
Steam locomotives will battle to pull away and have wheelslip indication continuously even with sanding if overloaded.
I like to have fun and play around in Trainz and make up heavy loads on grades like Mojave , trial and error stuff , edit the sessions and put extra helper locomotives at strategic places on the grades to help push or pull . You can also play around with the settings in edit sessions and change values like sanding, speed, as you like...it's a game and that is the fun part for me. Don't have to stick to any rules if you don't feel like it.