All electric F150 pulls a million pound train

[Shannow]

Originally Posted by eljefino
When you think about it train engines don't have a marvelous amount of traction with their steel-on-steel wheels on rails.

The slop in the connections between cars helps the whole mess get rolling. That way they're only accelerating one car at a time from a dead stop.


only half the time...the other half, they are dragging the whole show...unless it's downhill both ways

 

[DriveHard]

It's not all that hard to get a train moving...

https://penneyvanderbilt.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/harmonpull01.jpg

https://penneyvanderbilt.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/harmonpull02.jpg

Timken had female models pulling trains back in the 1930's.

https://www.trainboard.com/highball...111-trials-on-the-nyc-circa-1930.121136/

 

[javacontour]

From what I understand, this is absolutely true. It's called slack action. If a train gets fully stretched out, with all the slack taken up, it may not be able to start from a full stop.

The engine(s) pull the first car, and then each following car starts moving as the slack in the coupling is taken up.

There has to be slack so the train can go around curves in the track as well.

Some railroad guys I know say it's not uncommon for a rail yard worker to be able to push a car by hand in the yard. So the truck pulling them isn't all that impressive to the guys who've worked in rail yards.

Originally Posted by Chris142
Originally Posted by eljefino


The slop in the connections between cars helps the whole mess get rolling. That way they're only accelerating one car at a time from a dead stop.

That's an interesting thought.

 

[javacontour]

Once they get it going, inertia helps a great deal. I've heard about cases where if the train is too short, it cannot get up a hill because the engines are actually pulling the entire train up the hill. A longer train might have some cars on a level or even downhill section while the engine and the other cars are climbing. The inertia of the flat or downhill cars helps the portion of the train going uphill until that section crests the hill...

I may not have all the terms right, but I can imagine you can picture this. A mile long train encounters a 0.5 mile uphill only has, at most, half of the train on the uphill portion of the hill at a time. The remainder has either not yet reached the hill or has already passed over and is on a flat or a downhill depending on the terrain.

The bottom line is a train can be too short to climb a hill.

I don't know how true this puzzler is, but this what I had heard that lead me to suggest a train can be too short to climb a section of hill.

https://www.cartalk.com/radio/puzzler/all-aboard

However, I cannot find any real examples cited, so perhaps this is just urban legend.

Originally Posted by Shannow
Originally Posted by eljefino
When you think about it train engines don't have a marvelous amount of traction with their steel-on-steel wheels on rails.

The slop in the connections between cars helps the whole mess get rolling. That way they're only accelerating one car at a time from a dead stop.


only half the time...the other half, they are dragging the whole show...unless it's downhill both ways

 

[another Todd]

One of the oil companies used to advertise that a gallon of their fuel and a 3 hp Briggs and Stratton engine could lift the empire state building. A true statement, technically. It's all in the gearing.

 

[kschachn]

And in this case how far you would be lifting it since they're using only 1 gallon of gasoline