Hauling Steel with 1/87th scale Sir Neal

Greetings All,

Today we'll catch up with 1/87th scale Senior Engineer Sir Neal at the throttle of a steel products freight train running from Selkirk to Empire City's Terminal Yard and do a fun 1/87th scale horsepower to tonnage ratio comparison. 

In P.C.C.M. 43C 1/87th scale Senior Engineer Sir Neal commented that he thought the power to tonnage ratio was light for Freight Train LI-1. N.Y.C.T.L. management promptly looked into it's power to tonnage practices and compared them to others in the industry. The power to tonnage ratio also reared it's head in P.C.C.M. 43I when one of Ralph's big Alco RSD12's needed an assist to get it's train up the hill to Marion NY. 

Was LI-1 under powered? Was it not? Let's take a look.
  
                                      LI-1 from P.C.C.M. 43C
ENGINES: GP38 #7692, GP38-2 8038, GP35 #2327, GP38-2 8024

Total HP 8,500

Freight Cars: 23 weighing 1,295 tons.

HP to Tonnage ratio: 6.56:1

Here is LI-1 idling at Terminal Yard prior to departure.

Now let's take a look at today's train;

Extra 2228 South

ENGINES: GP 30 #2228, GP30 #2204, GP30 #2218, F7A #9651,                       F7A #9656 and GP35 #2500. Total HP 12,250
Freight Cars: 29 cars weighing a combined 2,355 Tons
HP to Tonnage ratio: 5.20:1 

With the math out of the way let's enjoy the action;

The Steel products train left Selkirk as Extra 2228 South with Senior Engineer Sir Neal at the throttle and 1/87th scale AT JOE as conductor. Extra 2228 South was routed thru the lower level of Empire City and is stopped waiting for the commuter train on the bridge to head in and out of Empire City Station which is right around the curve. Sir Neal and AT JOE take the time to stretch  their legs and greet their buddies.

Extra 2228 South is now on the move and we see the third, fourth and fifth engines in the consist. 1:1 PRR F7A 9651 will eventually become PC 1447.

 Engine 5 and 6 roll by. 1:1 PRR F7A 9656A will become PC 1900

Extra 2228 South's freight consist is 29 cars loaded to their max weight with steel scrap and steel products from Shapeless Steel and Kings Port Steel. 

The six engine lash up is very impressive. Four engines are actually powered. All engines are from Bachmann Spectrum or Plus.

 Steel and more steel as makes it's way thru Empire City Station.

 Covered steel coil cars follow the steel slabs.

Open gondolas with steel coils followed by breadbox trough cars with more steel coils. The good looking coils were made by 1:1 PC Ralph.

More open steel coils and breadbox trough cars The breadbox trough car was built by Evans and introduced in 1965.

And finally an N5 caboose in PRR Focal Orange. Looking closely the caboose is fitted with a track cleaning pad.

So how did I come up with the weights and horsepower ratings? Pretty easy. HP ratings for the engines used are available on the web and in some books in my library. Freight car weights were gathered from the cars LD LMT data. I used the max number and rounded it off to tons. Close enough for today.

In the 1:1 world I read that the Union Pacific used a 1:1 HP tonnage ratio on most trains and Conrail used a 1.75:1 on most of it's trains. Variations of this would include condition of locomotives used, grades, curves and speed. A hot T.O.F.C or intermodal train may have a HP to tonnage rating of 4:1 or more to keep the train at max speed. A RR like the bankrupt PC and early CR would often dispatch twice as many engines as needed hoping that enough would stay online to keep a hot main open.

On the N.Y.C.T.L. keeping the mainlines open and the trains on time is one of our operating goals. With that in mind we'll take 1/87th scale Senor Engineer Sir Neal's sage advice and make sure we have an abundance of available horsepower to meet our needs. Now the question to be asked is. Do we need more engines in the fleet to meet these requirements? Of course we do!
  

Thanks for reading!