Skip to main content

Reply to "How's Precision Schedule Railroad (PSR) working for you?"

Forest posted:

My thoughts about all the hot air about wind resistance is just that, Hot Air. Its been a long time since my Engineers Training but the train handling and operation book they issued to all the trainees had a chapter on fuel economy. With the new locomotives being used today some of what was taught might not apply today but back then a locomotive operating in the 8th notch used exponentially an extremely much higher rate of fuel then operating in notch 6. Back when still working running 150+ car trains required long periods of running in the 8th Notch and never getting up to speed except when the entire train is running down hill. I have a hard time seeing the efficiency of running long trains in the 8th notch from one terminal to the next.

That's not the way it works as I've always seen it described.  Each of the eight notches has a fixed rate of fuel flow to the engine.  The power output of the engine is a linear function of the amount of fuel burned.  I think it likely that the exponential relationship you mention is that the increments of fuel fed to the engine don't have a linear relationship to the number of notches.  But that doesn't affect the efficiency of fuel usage by the diesel engine.

The notion of exponential wind resistance is not hot air.  It is a well proven fact that is the result of thousands of measurements on real trains.

OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

×
×
×
×
×