"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
12/20/2016 at 15:55 • Filed to: Trainlopnik
7
23|
"Cé hé sin" (michael-m-mouse)
12/20/2016 at 15:55 • Filed to: Trainlopnik | 7
| 23 |
Funny the things you discover when looking for something else.
Meet, for example, a General Electric diesel electric locomotive.
They’re sold in big numbers to North American railways and sent further afield as well, like this one. It’s a Class 70 as used in the UK and with more conventional (to my eyes) design with double ends and cab doors on the sides.
One of them had to be sent back. See why:
Specs vary, but generally you get a really big engine with about 4,500 bhp (if emissions worry you) and about 6,000 (if they don’t). More importantly to users, it’ll pull things really hard, with a tractive effort of nearly 900 kN.
GE and EMD locos are the only items of US stock that you’re ever likely to see on European rails, diesel being a bit of a niche on this side of the pond which local makers don’t necessarily trouble themselves with.
Meet, on the other hand, a Siemens Vectron, intended for the Central and Northern European markets.
Advanced readers will already know why it’s sitting on yellow frames, but as a clue it’s made in Munich and being taken to Finland. There’s something unusual about the rails in Finland.
Vectrons are almost all electric. Siemens offer a diesel but it took until last month for anybody to order one. Electric traction has many advantages, but one is that you can fit very powerful motors as the limiting factor is now the available current, not the size of engine you can fit in. The more powerful variant has 6.4 MW or about 8,600 bhp so allowing for power losses between engine and motors it’s about twice as powerful as the clean GE unit. So, it must have a simply enormous tractive effort, right? Nope, it’s about 300 kN.
So, there you have it. The fancy, complicated (actually simpler, but never mind) Yoorpean has all this power and can’t do anything with it. ‘Murica! Freedom! Trump!
Except none of that’s true.
Each loco is designed for different conditions. In North America (and Australia, South Africa and other places) long distance railways are used mainly for freight. A GE loco and a few of its friends are used to haul enormously long and heavy trains a long way and as they don’t have to worry over much about holding up passenger services they don’t have to go very fast.
In Europe freight is a much smaller proportion of rail traffic and becoming even less so, partially because of the demise of coal power which was usually supplied by rail. Freight traffic therefore has to keep up or passenger operators won’t be happy. Freight trains are also shorter and lighter because destinations are likely to be nearer and you don’t want to go marshalling an enormous train too often You therefore don’t want tractive effort to the same extent, but you do want speed and to get that you need power.
Let’s look at the specs. The GE loco has three axle bogies (railway people talk about Co Co), the Siemens has two axle ( Bo Bo, and yes single axle would be Ao Ao). Twelve rather than eight wheel drive then, and the GE has a max weight of about 190 tonnes compared to about 90 so each of those wheels has a lot of weight on them. Then there’s gearing. GE gear their unit for 75 mph/120 kmh weight permitting while Siemens offer 160 or 200 kmh and intend their machine do those speeds with a heavy load.
So now we understand. Haul a long train slowly or a short one quickly.
diplodicus
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 16:09 |
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So what are the yellow things?
Chariotoflove
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 16:09 |
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Passenger trains really do take a back seat here in the U.S. Freight gets priority use of the railways, and Amtrak trains are always so behind. Still, I love the romantic idea of train travel so much that I looked seriously into it for one of my interstate trips. Sad to say, all I found was the opportunity to sit in cramped conditions for two days for the same price of a plane ticket that would get me there in three hours.
bwp240
> diplodicus
12/20/2016 at 16:20 |
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I think rails in Finland are a different gauge (width), so in order to haul it to Finland they put the yellow things underneath so it fits the track.
Chasaboo
> diplodicus
12/20/2016 at 16:23 |
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Gauge difference.
Mondial goes to 11
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 16:39 |
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European locomotives are also restricted in tractive effort due do chain and buffer couplers being much weaker than American knuckle couplers. As an American, those double ended Class 70s are freaking me out and looks like a Photoshop.
RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 16:50 |
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On a thoroughly related note, I assume you’ve seen the film
Runaway Train
?
EngineerWithTools
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 17:04 |
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This is a great article. Thank you!
Tangentially related question: Is the volume of truck / over road freight going up in Europe as the rail freight goes down? If so, I assume that trucking is competitive, price wise, and easier / faster, and wonder what is driving that.
Pickup_man
> Chariotoflove
12/20/2016 at 17:04 |
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I took the Amtrak from Omaha to Denver once and actually enjoyed it quite a bit. It had a ton more room than an airplane, was much cheaper, and ran over night so I slept for most of the ride. When I got up I could walk around, check out the viewing car, and order breakfast. If you’re not in a hurry to get where you’re going I think it’s a good idea. Also, basically no security to go through which was nice.
PotbellyJoe and 42 others
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 17:05 |
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Also, in Europe, it is uncommon for freight to have to go across 1000 miles of relatively flat and sparsely populated territories. In America, we call that Ohio to Wyoming.
Those really long freight trains aren’t going that slowly through Iowa, they just needed all of Illinois to accelerate.
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Cé hé sin
> diplodicus
12/20/2016 at 17:07 |
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They’re what are called “
loco buggies
” and allow you to tow a loco whose gauge doesn’t equal that of the line it’s travelling on. In this case the line is standard gauge but the loco is Finnish gauge.
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Chariotoflove
> Pickup_man
12/20/2016 at 17:09 |
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See, that’s the kind of trip I was looking for. I wasn’t in a hurry, really. I just couldn’t get the experience I wanted for where I was going. Glad you got to live the dream.
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Cé hé sin
> Mondial goes to 11
12/20/2016 at 17:25 |
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Not everyone uses those these days - you have Scharfenberg couplers and all manner of automatic and semi automatic systems. They’re designed for the kind of trains being used which, at least in Western Europe, isn’t going to be something two miles long.
So far as I know all locos here are double ended (except for shunting type ones with central cabs and the likes of TGV trainsets which have a matching loco at each end).
Usually you only have one loco so unless you want to have a turntable double ended is how you go.
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Cé hé sin
> EngineerWithTools
12/20/2016 at 17:30 |
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Anecdotally, yes. As roads have improved and allowable truck weights increased road haulage becomes attractive.
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Cé hé sin
> RamblinRover Luxury-Yacht
12/20/2016 at 17:48 |
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Sadly, no!
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Mondial goes to 11
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 17:49 |
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Does the Scharfenberg get any freight use or just passenger? Something similar (or the same) gets used on American urban transit.
I really like your posts since I know so little about non-US rail transit.
Stephenson Valve Gear
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 17:54 |
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Very good article!
Ah, the perils of shipping large locomotives overseas...
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Cé hé sin
> Chariotoflove
12/20/2016 at 18:00 |
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Passenger rail traffic is increasing here, but only on commuter type routes. If you want to go further afield, nothing beats low cost airlines.
There was a time when sleeper services were a thing but sadly they’re now almost not a thing anymore. Mind you, you can still go on a sleeper service between London and Scotland and I’m told that if you want to go from city centre to city centre it’s actually faster than flying if you take into account that you’re travelling while in bed. You’ll pay for the convenience though.
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Cé hé sin
> Mondial goes to 11
12/20/2016 at 18:04 |
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I believe it’s passenger only. Wiki knows about it
here
. including its surprising age.
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Chariotoflove
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 18:05 |
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That sounds really appealing.
Yeah, I read that Europe has refined the art of the low-cost air carrier. Romantic it’s not, but I can’t fault people who need to prioritize the destination over the journey.
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Cé hé sin
> Chariotoflove
12/20/2016 at 18:14 |
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If you can choose your dates air travel can be almost for nothing - you can sometimes travel between Ireland and the UK for €9.99 one way if you don’t have checked luggage (plus about 40c of debit card charges). The train or bus from the airport to town costs more!
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Cé hé sin
> Stephenson Valve Gear
12/20/2016 at 18:15 |
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Yes, it does seem to be quite a thing!
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EngineerWithTools
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 18:57 |
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Very interesting. Both the total collapse of coal and the spike in intermodal seem like they should have been predictable, but rail lines have been caught un- or under-prepared.
Sounds familiar, across many industries and countries.
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Chariotoflove
> Cé hé sin
12/20/2016 at 18:58 |
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Wow, that’s insane! I usually figure I’ve gotten a great price if I can get a round trip for under $350 US. Carrier consolidation and capacity reduction has helped up the prices here.