How many hours on a Diesel engine before a rebuild?

[nfotis]

BaltACD

It is easy to put high horsepower to the rail when the loads being hauled are light - like Europe and the NEC.  Applying that horsepower when hauling a maximum tonnage train is magnitudes more difficult.

 

 

Hmm, how about 5.000 metric tonnes? (that's 5.512 short tons for you), like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfVxkiYxcgw

Using 40+ years-old electric locomotives: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Class_151

 

Okay, not big enough.

What about 8.500 metric tonnes? (that is 9.500 tons for you):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6eCgNxO-nE&list=PLB6140C681EC6E487

(stiff grades, arctic conditions)

 

More details about that electric locomotive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iore

(which is the nearest thing to USA heavy haul, they even have AAR couplers if I remember correctly)

 

Still not satisfied?

Okay, how about the China (Daqin line), with regular 10.000 metric tonnes per train (11.000 tons) or double trains of 20.000 tonnes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91LJkrtYWw4&list=PLSdpxvzv4y8JAicjYPRHJCEc-lNwC26j6

(with 'just' 25 tonnes/axle in the locomotives)

This double-tracked coal line carries more than the Powder River basin lines (around 440 million metric tonnes in 2011).

 

N.F.

 

[D NICHOLS]

rvos1979

Ask the guys who run diesels in truck and tractor pulling, where some crazy horsepower numbers come out of stock size truck and tractor engines. Thing is, though, you can't maintain that level of power for very long before you risk melting down the engine. And when it goes wrong, it goes in spectacular fashion..........

 

I can do that one better. Take a Cummins 8.3L Diesel engine and see how long it will last at full load. Factory rated at about 195 HP Gross for 8 hours a day operation. Then run it at that for 24/7. Time between rebuilds, 2500 hours. The turbo and the exhaust manifold will be as red as the Enter Now Win a Drone sweepstakes button.

A vehicle engine drops by 1/2 the HP rating going from a vehicle to an industrial use.

A Detroit Diesel in the 71 Series was expected to last 7000 hours of operation in a truck. We got 14,000 hours out of ours because we ran them at a steady speed of between 1400 and 1800 RPM at 50%-75% load in industrial use.

[nfotis]

Forgot to put another document for your perusal:

http://www.stadlerrail.es/media/downloads/pdfs/flyer/EURO_DUAL-_EN_July_2012.pdf

Note the shift of the expected tractive effort to the right, thanks to the higher power (1 MW = 1341 hp), for 1 MW (diesel), 2.8 MW (diesel) and 5 MW (electric).

As you can see in the diagram, you can haul nearly the same tonnage at higher speeds (the critical speed, where the knee between the weight-limited tractive effort and the power-limited tractive effort, shifts to the right)

N.F.

[FlightPlan]

We had an older tier 2 Evo in the shop recently that shot a rod out the block. The engine was 11 years old and not even on the overhaul list yet. The only thing holding it back was the megawatt hours being only 25000 or so. Was told this was allow because the unit had a lot of out of service credit time. If it was a "hard" 10 years on replacement, this engine would have been replaced previously and probably prevented a large failure from taking place.