Equiptment gets brittle at those low temps. I see desiels running 24/7 with heated fuel, shut off the engine and your life may be at risk if you cannot get it started again.
I have had excursions to about -65 below (Not including windchill) and I gotta say that properly dressed I can endure it for about 30 minutes at a time with a steady 50 mph wind and higher gusts. After that, I dont think the body is able to withstand it.
Another impact of cold weather is the massive calorie burn. I ate around 2500 calories or less a day depending on how good the truckstops were, but in winter I easily tripled that amount choosing carefully where to stop for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Expensive yes but that bag of potato chips and some name brand water does not cut it in that man killing cold.
I think it was Western Omlette in the morning with potatoes, butter and sour cream backed by bread and ham or bacon. In the lunch time it was spagetti or similar in large amounts. And dinner would be grade A steak, potatoes, greens and salad backed by more bread. (Either beer or sliced bread) And large amounts of water, coffee and other fluids to fight dehydration.
Water is one item that will save you by maintaining your systems in that kind of cold. =) It regulates your metabolism and allows you to function.
Ive always considered steam engines cozy in the winter and hell in the summertime.
joseph2 wrote:John in Jakarta,Here are some numbers on how a steam locomotives tonnage rating dropped with the temperature. The loco is an Erie USRA 2-10-2 with 83,000 lbs of tractive force,the place Avoca to Rock Junction and Wimmers,New Jersey; 2,500 tons good weather, 2,250 tons temperature between 33 and 22 degrees F, 2,213 tons from 23 to13 degrees F, 2,107 tons from13 to 3 degrees F,and 2,000 tons when the temperature is 3 degrees above zero. Some Canadian and northern USA watertanks had the base enclosed with wood and a stove to keep the pipes from freezing. Joe
It would be interesting to know what happened to performance below zero F (minus 13 C), particularly when temperatures dropped to minus 25 F (minus 30 C), or even minus 40 (F and C), as they frequently do in some parts of southern Canada during the winter.
At those low temperatures lubricants become sticky, heat losses greatly increase, seals distort etc. At minus 40 F/C, equipment, as well as people, becomes reluctant to perform, particularly when those temperatures are sustained.. As a boy living on the Canadian prairies in the 1940's I recall nights when the temperature was minus 25 F to minus 40 F/C, when the hiss of steam from locomotives standing in the roundhouse area or moving in the yards could be heard for miles. Steam locomotive crews were a tough breed.
Isambard
Grizzly Northern history, Tales from the Grizzly and news on line at isambard5935.blogspot.com
Thanks Joe,
Interesting numbers. One does not think of these things when one lives in a place that varies between 25 degrees Celsius at night to 32 degrees Celcius in the middle of the day, and it is the same for 365 days (366 in a leap year). Even at home in Australia we do not see those extremes of tempertaure.
selector wrote:I have read that many locomotives used steam to heat the oil in their tenders prior to atomization in the fire-box. If so, it is conceivable that either the warmed oil or a dedicated steam heating line would keep the water from freezing in the tender.
In the days when steam was king, oil fired locomotives were mainly fueled with "Bunker C", a thick goo with the consistency of unheated road tar at normal temperatures. Bunker C storage tanks were heated, as were the locomotive tender fuel tanks so that the stuff would flow through to the steam powered atomizing nozzle in the firebox. A tender oil temperature gauge was located in the cab, which the fireman monitored, adjusting the steam supplied to the tender oil heater accordingly. Too much heat could boil the oil, as noted by another contributor, with unfortunate results.
Tender water freezing was usually not a problem with locomotives in active use as the water supplied from water towers (heated in Canada certainly) was consumed fast enough between fills as not to freeze. Presumably locomotives and tenders were drained before being stored in unheated winter conditions. It would be interesting to know what maintenance crews did when water tanks and lines accidentally froze throughout, as must have occured some times, particularly in the early days of railways in Canada.
Hello Luck,
There does not seem to be a letter for it. Just call it 12". That is short for 12"=1'.
Yes ours has that system, (there is a warning in the opperators manual not to boil your oil <G>) but the back of the tender is too far away for the steam heat to affect it, and the water they were worring about is sitting on top of a steel plate sealing the top of the tender... (our tender is more than 50 feet long...) the drains were to adress a safety concern for crew walking on top of the tender.
BTW what scale letter is used for one to one modling? P scale? (for protoype??)
Luck Gunns
Our tender has special drains on the tender to pull off water from the top of the tender. It seems that standing water on the top of the tank would freze up from wind chill going over Raton pass. as for pulling power the 2900s had a listed rate of 66,000 lb (actually low as it didn't account for the roller bearings) and it's pulling power regularly exceded the length of the sidings avalible. (a 2900 could pull 159 loaded friegt cars or 30 heavey wieght pullmans on the flat)
Kevin
Here in Minnesota (especially up by the Canadian border) 38 deg. Farenheit is a heatwave in winter!! I think the state record low is -56F, not unusual in the winter to go a couple of days without the temp going above zero F. If I remember right one winter we went something like 60+ days without it getting above freezing (32F).
To be honest I'm not sure about tender water, but since steam could be piped back from the engine to heat the passenger cars, I would assume pipes could run thru/around the interior of the tender to keep it from freezing?? BTW that is another factor - a passenger train in extreme cold would have to work not just to pull the train, but to provide steam heat for the cars too.
p.s. Supposedly a century ago a German railroader got the idea of running the engine's steam pipes back thru the fire to try to keep them hotter in the cold weather...and found the engine performance improved significantly !! Without intending to, he had discovered superheating. Simply by changing the piping to change the engine from saturated steam to superheated steam, the engine became much more powerful with no increase in coal usage.
While we know it's not true, theoretically, all locomotives of the same class have the same tonnage rating. No matter if they are brand new, or two steps from the scrapper.
No railroader worth his salt is going to willfully pass a stop signal. That's an automatic 30 or 60 day suspenion plus a major rules violation, which continues to count against you for at least three years. And running a stop signal isn't like running a red light. If you pass a stop without permission - EVERYBODY knows it in about 2 seconds. Sometimes it's unavoidable - signals occationally do drop to red in your face.
It often comes as a great shock to non-railroaders how big a part weather and other outside factors play in train tonnages. Remember, the wheel - rail contact surface is only about the size of a quarter. The rail head is slick to begin with. Any contaminate that makes it slicker, (wet leaves, rain, snow, ice, etc) significatily impacts tonnage ratings. I said it before, wet leaves are the worst. They're like sliding on a sheet of wet, polished ice.
Non-railroaders also tend to vastly underestimate how the engineer's train handling skills effect tonnage. I know several engineers that can a train 500 tons overweight with power from the dead line and walk right up and over the ruling grade. I also know an engineer that, with a train 500 tons to the good and factory fresh power, will always stall on the same grade.
The greatest skill a railroad line supervisor (yardmaster, trainmaster, or dispatcher) needs is the ability to tailor the train's length/tonnage to prevailing conditions, power avalable and crew capablities.
I frequently cheat on the tonnage, if I know I have a good crew and the weather is perfect. Of course, my chestnuts are on the block if the train hangs up somewhere, but I look like a hero when it works right.
I've also been known to hold cars back, if I have a bad crew, or the weather is sketchy. In this case, I may get tagged for the left behind cars' extra dwell time, but won't have to explain why the train stalled on the hill.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
Dave, You need not worry about what truck I was. That particular unit was sold off to another company roughly 14 years ago, I had long since progressed to winter driving in the Rocky Mountains with all the associated joys chains and all.
Dont worry about some of the scarey stuff I describe here. One item I recall doing for fun is killing every light on the rig and running dark in the moonlight in the mountains passing cars who did not know I was coming on them in nuetral and quiet. You wont see me doing that stuff in my old age and would not expect others to do that either.
I understand about the Red means absolute stop. There are many good reasons for it. Expensive reasons and also life and death kind of reasons. But what gets me is a bad timing or otherwise issued signal that potentially finished the whole railroad for the day. Management sometimes is famous for such things.
I think that everyone wants to run overweight and be done with it.
I dont know too much about the steam days but one item I recall is that they pile on what the steam engine can handle and not one car more. Then it was up to the train crew to get it over the trip safely, not necessarily without a scare or two now and again.
Safety valve...
That's scarey!
I should explain that our signals are Absolute. Red means STOP... no exceptions.
A "SPAD" (Signal Past at Danger) is an off-the-job-instantly, Drugs and Alcohol Test, all tickets pulled, immediate inquiry and no work at all until resolved with a high probability of going out the door.
That's now... back in the steam days when that driver got stuck you still never past a red unless there was absolutely no way you could avoid not stopping.
I've had two trains unable to stop when I've had to put back in front of them (during my signalling days) and I can assure you that the drivers blew like crazy and gave it everything they had to stop without sliding. When they came back to the box they were white, sweating and shaking.
To some extent we have different, more intensive, conditions.
What did you say your present truck looks like? If I get over there in bad weather I want to know which truck to look out for...
On the issue of RR putting the correct power on... the point of interest I was hoping to make for modellers is that sometimes an extra car or two might be tacked on, other times even a light load may cause a struggle for various reasons.
A lot of us model various older periods. Both when traffic was heavy during wartime or at peak periods and when RR were struggling financially all sorts of things could and did happen.
Peak traffic would shift all the big and really good locos to the urgent work dragging the less good stuff into the routine "Not-so-urgent" work. Sometimes locos as well as stock was pulled off the dead line. When the rush was on getting that extra couple of cars out of the way could make a big difference. When a couple extra on a few trains could keep a yard clear and running freely the yardmaster had decisions to make which he based on his knowledge of the locos, the road and the crews available combined with a weather eye. When he got it right he didn't necessarily even get a "thankyou"... if he got it wrong he could get fired.
As railroads lost out to trucks and maintenance got "defered" just having enough locos that could be relied on to get through could be a headache. If you could you might tack on an extra loco. If things were really bad you might haul it dead but have it there for the crew to cut in if they needed it. I don't know but I'd guess that a lot of subtle moves were made to keep things staggering along.
In my first Box we had two lengths of ruling grade. These meant that certain trains were restricted to 22 loaded hoppers behind one (Class 33) loco eastbound. Most of the time traffic meant that they ran with 20. Occassionally there would be a build up. Over 22 meant an extra loco for one or two hoppers or an extra train (and crew)... so... sure enough... they would start to run long. If the weather was right and there was a good crew on they would creep over the tops ( no-one measured what this did to the life of the locos). Then we would get an "unsuitable " day... and a failure... then we had to explain why the whole service got backed up...
Would you believe... the management actually used to demand to know why we could haul 22+ some days but not others... when their rules told us no more than 22... and they were the ones pushing the yard to put the trains out overweight...
I guess that some good things have come with privatisation... now you often wonder why there is so much power on the head end.
Maybe I should add that "doubling the grade" has always been extremely rare in the UK. One reason being that any wrong direction movement is subject to a whole bunch of extra rules. (Although in normal working on double track any one train is isolated within the section it is working in it is only allowed to move in the correct direction except in exceptional circumstances and after the extra rules have been applied). In all my years I have only once known a train be allowed to set back so that he could get a run at a short steep bank... he got up and over... about 20 miles on more leaves caused him to run several train lengths beyond the platforms he was supposed to stop at... in that case we didn't back him up and the passengers had to catch another train back from the next stop.
In trucking we have situations where you just dont stop.
Ive had stop signs on top of a perfect 30% grade (Exaggeration I know but bear with me) you stop there you aint gonna get started again. Just blow thru and bull your way past the 4 wheelers and pray that no one makes contact.
Another situation was south of Allentown one winter day. Pure Ice shining like a perfectly glossy wet surface on a dead downtown street going straight up hill. Me with a empty feuhauf 48' flatbed on a 350 Big cam 4 87' Freight cabover and belive me, you DONT stop or will slide backwards into the traffic around you. I blew 5 traffic lights all the way up that hill. The citations was so worth it. I did not hit anyone or stall.
What I am trying to suggest here is that the train crew sometimes should understand that red signal in a very bad situation being set by a dispatcher sitting 2000 miles away will endanger the days mission. There has to be some oversight as to considering the local conditions that will affect all traffic should that signal be set to red or other restrictive aspect.
We should not be hooking big tonnage onto aging pool power and hope it all makes it, railroads should buy strong power and keep it on thier district and KNOW that train WILL have the nuts to make it from A to B. None of that rental power or foreign power bullcrap.
But we all know it's cheaper to borrow someone else's engine that is run into the ground and write off the rental fees in a blizzard of paperwork designed to bamboozle uncle sam into thinking that everyone got the fees and taxes that they should.
The situation can only get worse when the days of the one man crew or robot trains arrive.
Safety Valve...
Railroad practice is supposed to be to send trains out with motive power that can make the run with the tonnage...
But my points are that what is a theoretically good power to weight ratio doesn't necessarily tie in with what locos, crews and the weather - among other things - will allow on the day. ... and that's without any faults developing while out on the track.
There are crews that will manage to get a train through when they've lost a loco completely despite the fact that they started out on the edge of their load limit for the full power they had. There are others that will barely get the thing rolling with masses of power to spare... and you'll probably hear more whining from them than from the motors.
One example that came to mind after my original post was a train that got signal checked on a bad curve and grade in the wet at night.The driver ran dead slow to keep his drawgear tight and everything moving (just) but then lost traction and got stopped when he got the road. The driver could have called it a failed train and asked for assistance but he was annoyed with himself and only just short of the top of the grade. So he sent his fireman back to tell the guard (conductor) to screw his brakevan down hard (put the hand brake on solid on the caboose) to give the driver something to shove against. Once this was done he pushed back compressing all the buffers and slacking the draw gear right back through the train. As instructed the guard waited until he heard wagons near him being jolted forward and wound his brake off fast. At the same time the driver went ahead as hard as he could. The slack in the system allowed him to get the loco rolling and jolt the train forward. I think he did this three or four times before he got to where he could just keep crawling and then get properly under way. When he looked at his watch he'd taken nearly an hour and he thought he's be in real trouble. As it turned out he was praised because the train behind him had conked out completely and there wasn't suitable power available to come from the head end for ages. So... the point is... if you know what you are doing you can get a train under way in almost impossible conditions.
Then again... stopping a train is a whole different issue...
Im gonna proclaim my ignorance for all the world. here goes:
Railroad practice is to send a train out with tonnage which the motive power can get over any grade on that run. The ruling grade determines what power to use in the conditions expected.
Different trains like coal trains get the minimum power HP to TON needed to keep moving no matter what. High Horse to Ton ratio is for fast scheduled trains.
Weather is just one small area to consider.
joseph2 wrote:Has it been mentioned that during cold weather a steam locomotives power decreases ? I have an old Erie chart which shows an engine will pull 30% less at 0 Fahrenheit then at 38 degrees.Also back in the old days car axles used oil bath friction bearings now days roller bearings are used ,less friction easier to get rolling. Joe
Joe,
You had me stumped for a few minutes. I was thinking the loco should be more thermally efficient at cooler temperature. Then the penny dropped. You were writing about 0 degrees Fahrenheit. Mate that is cold!! It's 30 odd below freezing. I hate to think of all the effects at that sort of temperature.
I have lived in the tropics for too long to even imagine. 38 deg F is very cold in my books.
How did they keep water in the tender (not ice)?
The oil and or grease would be getting to a stage of ineffectiveness, at least before the train got running and friction built up some temperature.
Did they by any chance have a graph showing the relative pulling power from say 90 degrees F down to that 0 degree F you mentioned?
I HATE wet leaf season! Wet leaves are worst then rain or snow.
Of course, I NEVER send a train out over tonnage. That would be bad.
And I never cring or cheer when I see certain engineers.
Not wishing to go OT on T stages Mikado thread I wanted to add some ideas.
People list several variables regarding how much any loco can pull. From experience I would stress that the weather can mess up the best theory. Sudden rain, high wind, snow, sleet and even bugs, leaves or toads can bring a train to a grinding halt.
Something else that "never" officially happens is that where there are one or two cars over or on the edge of the load limit they may be tacked onto a train if it looks like there is a good chance of getting away with it. This will depend on the weather forecast, variables in the loading (dry open loads are lighter than wet ones regardless of what the car weighed in at at the start of the run) and the yard master's knowledge of both the loco(s) available and the crew(s)
It is an unquantifiable fact that locos of the same class that came out of the works next to each other will have different properties when operating in the real world. At the extreme one might be superb and the next a real junker. train crews can be seen to physically slump and audibly groan when they see particular loco numbers in their consist list. Equally they can be seen to smile and bounce happily off to collect their train.
The same applies even less quantifiably with train crews. There are simply crews that will pull a heavy load through with the worst scrapyard candidates while others couldn't pull the skin off a banana with the latest super power fresh out of the shops. Someone will rapidly ask "So how come they keep their jobs"? A lot of train crews and other RR staff frequently ask the same question!