I found this shot and included it in this weeks update to my website: The train on the left ('in the hole') was an all GE lashup with 8 or more units. The early morning sun made for a difficult shot. Harold
Here's the same train, just having left the yard, almost to Downtown Greesnboro. Look at those diesels stretching back as far as the eye can see! Harold
As usual Harold these are great pic's. I love the second one and you are right they go on and on and on and on
Harold, those photos have the look of awesome, heavy duty railroading! If the train with all the locomotives is in the hole, why is the second unit making so much smoke? Just because it is black, doesn't mean it has to act like a steam engine
Maybe they got the MU cables crossed and it is trying to run in reverse? There was a cartoon back in the 40's where the roundhouse crew were all scratching their heads looking at an articulated. They had mounted the front set of drivers in backwards, and it stretched the boiler about 40 feet! The boiler had sagged down onto the rails between the front and rear set of drivers!
You guys are pretty funny! I think the train ended up with 12 units on the point.... someone told me that by FRA law, only a certain number of axles can be powered on the point if a train. I don't know remember what it was Anyone else know? Harold
Rule281 could tell you. We didn't have this problem with steam, multiple "units" of steam all had to be powered unless a new dead engine was being delivered. It is probably because some of the dead engines were being transferred back to other locations. Also, if you had a long heavy string, and came down into a sag, up over a hill then had those engines going down hill on the other side, it is sure to snap knuckles from all that tractive effort available.
Try again...(posted 3-20-00).... Chessie, According to N.S. Book Rule L-207 "Powered axels allowed as determined by the rule book." Might be a later version by now...) (1) Except on designated trains, no more than the equivalent of 24 conventional (non-high adhesion) axels may be operated under power on the head end of a train. (2) High adhesion axels are equivalent to 1 and 1/3 conventional (non-high adhesion) axels. (3) Alternating Current (AC) traction motor-equipped axels are equivalent to 1 and 1/2 conventional (non-high adhesion) axels. (4) When using the maximum number of powered axels, the throttle should be increased gradually to avoid the development of excessive tractive effort at low speed. Extreme care must be excercised while starting to prevent train separation and derailment. (5) Loaded grain trains not exceeding 100 cars and loaded coal trains not exceeding 130 cars are authorized to use four high adhesion six axel units (32 powered axels) on line. I was told the tonnage doesn't have much to do with it, but what kind of diesel units you have does. All the Dash 8s, 9s, SD70s, etc. are considered high adhesion, while older units like SD40s or Geeps are counted as conventional axels and AC units are different again. It must make for some interesting pencil chewing when you're trying to figure out how much power you can legally use. The dynamic brake rules are different and you have to do a separate calculation for axels of braking. One hogger says he is usually happy to have only two engines: he can't screw it up too bad that way! Didn't have all this with steam, life was simpler back then. We pulled a caboose that solved all the math problems, and a "high-adhesion" was when we dumped sand on the rails! I guess today Lionel makes magnetic wheels so you can really grip the rails for high-adhesion???
Wayne, you just reminded me that back in my early British 'OO' gauge days, Triang (later Hornby) steam locomotives had steel wheel rims, and a magnet was inserted in the frames with the edges very close to the wheels, and as the track had steel rails, the locomotive was given much more pulling power due to the magnetic attraction. This did at least remove the need for any traction tyres. They dubbed it "magnadhesion"
I wondered how that worked Alan, but I didn't know Hornby had it. Lionel advertized it over here, but I have never seen one work with it. Maybe someone came up with something similar for real railroads. I wish I was a cartoonist! Several years ago I saw a cartoon where a couple of guys were looking at an engine's wheel. There was a rail wrapped up around the wheel like a piece of string. Caption under the cartoon said: " Now I know what they mean by "HIGH ADHESION"!
Maybe one of our NS engineer friends can help us out here. Watash is in the right area about rules regarding tractive power applied to a train. In addition, I have heard from a NS employee that NS has special train handleing rules when more than eight locos (on line or not) are in a consist. It's been a while since I was told about this so I don't remember much about it, only that it sounded like it would be a real pain for the engineer.
