Hello all ;
Here's a brief video vignett depicting Vossloh/EMD Euro 4000 (basically an SD70M2 with a different 'face') in action.
Enjoy
watch?v= 2J 9zOeZsc
And some more ...
The first, with Dynamic braking being heard ...
watch?v=MiOYe6EDs6k
And then another with a long train (for european standards)
watch?v=778GQpME3vI
Amazed at how short all the trains are.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
That's the usual here. For technical reasons (namely siding and block legth, and rules) european trains, both freight and passenger, are limited to 750 meters in legth. Also trying to move a 'big mama' here wouldmn´t be a good idea, since some lines would literally be really blocked for a bunch of time, and passengers would not apreciate that too much.
The purpose of railroads in Europe and the US are different.
In Europe it is to move what freight you can within the windows alloted by Passenger operations.
In the US it is to move a few passengers within the narrow windows alloted by tonnage Freight operations. With the 'normal' freight train being about 2.7 Kilometers long and having a gross weight of 10000 or more tons.
US Carriers do not earn their living from passengers. The US Carriers are not state supported.
Nice videos. Thanks for sharing. They are going to have to figure out a way to run longer trains if the goal is to try to shift some highway traffic to rail.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
The trains shown in the videos are operated by a private company. But in terms of operational practices you're more or less right (it's basically a 'Lighter duty operation' here versus 'Heavy duty' in the US) a . The only exception is the 1st video shown, since those lines have plenty of capacity available (no more that 8 to 10 passenger trains per day), However, there aren't many industries in the vicinity of the line.
Ad to the equation the fact of this sort of operation (private) being a very recent situation in this part of europe (Iberian Peninsula). Curiously or not, such type of operation is developing fairly well despite all the difficulties, with new trains being added on a regular basis, denoting the existance of good market oportunities.
Mario:
Out here in South Central Kansas the terrain is relatively flat, grades are negligible. The BNSF Transcon is heavily double tracked, with some single tracked areas. Many of the trains run to excess of 10,000 ft in length. And many are equipped with two units on rear in DPU. Much head end power is 4,000hp per unit with at least two or three on head end.
The linked videos here ae filmed Northeast of me. (about 120 miles) They are a sample of some available on YouTube.com Search[ BNSF in Kansas]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNGetrRjfVE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USsq4YRglE8
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