 |
Re: Ah "Megatrains", the last step before total meltdown?
Author: BOB2
Date: 09-30-2014 - 17:32
I have run a 150+ car 13,000+ footers, and if my experience, and the research on optimal train sizes are anything to go by, this is truly the last refuge of fools, before meltdown. Worse, most evidence would suggest that resorting to "mega-trains" can actually fuel and facilitate meltdown.
These beasts tie up miles of railroad, take forever to start, often have train line issues, are invariably slow, causing havoc on single track with too few extremely long sidings, and on double track without enough crossovers to get traffic around these turkey's.
For these "mega-trains" trains, evidence and experience show that you need to take a switch to switch run time and double it. So a normal six or eight hour run doubled, suddenly becomes a monster train tied up after twelve hours, dead on the law, and doing little but to make crew shortages even worse.
Now, tie up a couple of these "mega-trains" down on the mainline, because you have no sidings or yard capacity to get them out of the way, and you have what happened in Sou Cal back after the UP-SP merger: system meldown.
As to Rich's earlier comment about fleet size, I am a big believer in HPT (horse-power-per-ton). More and properly distributed HPT can do a lot to maintain or improve velocity and improve fluidity. In turn, this would potentially improve crew availability the old fashioned way, by getting more miles covered per crew hour....
Most of these mega-trains, are often (inevitably?) underpowered, and have more drag to contend with due to more more LOV resistance from shear length, which really ties up the railroad, especially where you have grades and curves. They are also a @#$%& (or "female dog"?) to handle, too much power and you can easily suck a draw bar (and tie up the RR), or even string-line (and tie up the RR), too much slack action, due to length, ditto (and you tie up the RR).
In ten years this crew problem will be solved, there will be no more engineer---the automated "google" train, will be here along with the "google" driverless car and truck. The stupidity of the "mega-train" will probably survive, however, as another generation of trainmasters will find the simplistic appeal, too enticing. But, at least we won't get run over in the cross walk by dufus's texting...
These beasts tie up miles of railroad, take forever to start, often have train line issues, are invariably slow, causing havoc on single track with too few extremely long sidings, and on double track without enough crossovers to get traffic around these turkey's.
For these "mega-trains" trains, evidence and experience show that you need to take a switch to switch run time and double it. So a normal six or eight hour run doubled, suddenly becomes a monster train tied up after twelve hours, dead on the law, and doing little but to make crew shortages even worse.
Now, tie up a couple of these "mega-trains" down on the mainline, because you have no sidings or yard capacity to get them out of the way, and you have what happened in Sou Cal back after the UP-SP merger: system meldown.
As to Rich's earlier comment about fleet size, I am a big believer in HPT (horse-power-per-ton). More and properly distributed HPT can do a lot to maintain or improve velocity and improve fluidity. In turn, this would potentially improve crew availability the old fashioned way, by getting more miles covered per crew hour....
Most of these mega-trains, are often (inevitably?) underpowered, and have more drag to contend with due to more more LOV resistance from shear length, which really ties up the railroad, especially where you have grades and curves. They are also a @#$%& (or "female dog"?) to handle, too much power and you can easily suck a draw bar (and tie up the RR), or even string-line (and tie up the RR), too much slack action, due to length, ditto (and you tie up the RR).
In ten years this crew problem will be solved, there will be no more engineer---the automated "google" train, will be here along with the "google" driverless car and truck. The stupidity of the "mega-train" will probably survive, however, as another generation of trainmasters will find the simplistic appeal, too enticing. But, at least we won't get run over in the cross walk by dufus's texting...
