Tonage

[Anonymous]

One of the Members of my local club has books on John allen and just skimming through them and he used tonnages and the water copasity of his steam engines if the engine ran out of water it stopped plain and simple so i think that the question is in the right forum.

[lionelsoni]

Most American track is built for 33, or more recently 36, tons per axle. So the heaviest fully-loaded cars weight 132 to 144 tons. (These heaviest cars usually have 36-inch wheels.) About 1/4 that weight is the car itself; 3/4 is the load.

Locomotives can pull with a force that is about 1/4 the weight on the driving wheels, although some modern locomotives are claimed to pull around 1/3. The force needed to pull a train is its weight multiplied by the grade expressed as the rise as a percentage of the run, plus about 1/4 percent for friction. Before roller bearings came into use, considerable additional force was needed to get a train started. This was often accomplished by "bunching the slack" so that only one car needed to be started at a time.

Ordinary couplers can stand about 360000 pounds. Special couplers for large unit trains can stand 500000 pounds.

[ChiefEagles]

Interesting question. I am sure it can be found. Let us know if you do find it. If I understand you correctly, you are going to match the tonage of your freight with the engines to pull it. Good luck

[daan]

UP3593, I'm thinking if this could fit into an alien transporter from Lionel. In Toytrains we luckily don't calculate tonnages for our rolling stock. Even my Lionel F3 would have problems with that amount of load on the hook.
Guess you are in the wrong forum, sorry..

[Anonymous]

I'm going to incorparate a cars tons into how i use motive power and i was wondering if any one knows what the tonages are an example of a number of i already know is that a grain car loaded with barley is 97.4 tons and that same car loaded with corn weighs 114 tons so with that in mind does any one know any more tons ?