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Class 20 - remote control.

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GRALISTAIR

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On long distance routes in the USA, trains with DPUs (Distributed Power Units, i.e. remote-controlled locos) are the norm. Trains are routinely two to three miles long, and need locos at mid-train and/or the rear, to reduce the force in the couplers.

A typical layout of a long freight would be four locos at the head, two mid-train, and two on the rear. All are controlled from the leading loco.
I will take a video this week and post it here.
 
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DelW

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This month's Railway Magazine has a report that DB Cargo is running Distributed Power trials in Germany, using Bombardier Traxx locos. The test trains have one loco leading, one mid-train and one at the rear, using what's described as a telecomms system to control the latter two from the lead loco.
 

ac6000cw

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This month's Railway Magazine has a report that DB Cargo is running Distributed Power trials in Germany, using Bombardier Traxx locos. The test trains have one loco leading, one mid-train and one at the rear, using what's described as a telecomms system to control the latter two from the lead loco.
I haven't seen the magazine, but I wonder if this is associated with or derived from the EU 'Marathon' train control project - https://www.marathon2operation.eu/web/#project - which has been mentioned a few times on this forum. That project seemed like an attempt to re-invent the 'Locotrol' system that GE/Wabtec have developed over many years and which is used all over the world for loco remote control.

I will take a video this week and post it here.
Here's a few of mine...

The mountainous CP mainline between Calgary and Vancouver uses DPU operation for virtually all trains, right down to a 1+1 (front-mid) configuration on trains of empties. As well as better train handling and allowing longer trains, they have found it reduces rail wear in curves due to reduced lateral forces.

From that route in 2017 (locos and radio control equipment are the same as is used in the US):

Two trains climbing out of Revelstoke, BC - an eastbound double-stack and a westbound coal train, both with a 2+1+1 loco setup (front-mid-rear):


A potash train climbing past Lake Louise, BC - this is the whole train in real time (i.e. all 8+ minutes it took to go past!):


Someone added a comment last year, saying that the those potash trains are now 200 freight cars long with an additional mid-train loco (so a 2+2+1 setup instead of the 2+1+1 in my video).


From the US, starting at 9:42 in this video is a very long BNSF double-stack thundering through Fullerton, CA at night in 2015, with seven locos in a 3+2+2 configuration (about 31,000 hp in total!):


(the video quality isn't that good due to the darkness, but you can enjoy the noise :)
 
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ac6000cw

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Fantastic videos thanks for posting
Thanks :)

BTW, for anyone wanting a UK-North American sense of scale for the CP potash train above - it's probably around 20,000 tonnes and around 1.5 - 1.8 miles long, and the four GE AC4400CW locos will be generating a total tractive effort (to lift the train up the 1% gradient) equivalent to about 9 or 10 class 66 locos.

Oh, and those are 8500+ foot mountains in the background, with the train heading for the 5339 foot summit of Kicking Horse Pass (about 6 miles away) before descending slowly down the 2.2% gradient on the west side into Field, B.C. and a doubtless welcome crew change. This is heavy-duty mountain railroading...
 

43096

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Thanks :)

BTW, for anyone wanting a UK-North American sense of scale for the CP potash train above - it's probably around 20,000 tonnes and around 1.5 - 1.8 miles long, and the four GE AC4400CW locos will be generating a total tractive effort (to lift the train up the 1% gradient) equivalent to about 9 or 10 class 66 locos.

Oh, and those are 8500+ foot mountains in the background, with the train heading for the 5339 foot summit of Kicking Horse Pass (about 6 miles away) before descending slowly down the 2.2% gradient on the west side into Field, B.C. and a doubtless welcome crew change. This is heavy-duty mountain railroading...
Thanks for posting those videos - great stuff. Always enjoy the sound of a 7FDL engine working hard. :D

Have to agree with what you say about the scale of it: it prompted me to go back looking at photos from a couple of days staying in Banff back in 2007. I escaped to the station a couple of times and managed this shot of two freights passing - on the left three AC4400CWs re-start an eastbound and on the right an AC4400CW and ES44AC pair. Both had AC4400CWs on the back as helpers. I can still remember the ground shaking from the beat of the engines - proper freight locos!
1618175607492.png
 

ac6000cw

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I can still remember the ground shaking from the beat of the engines - proper freight locos!
Yep... and thanks for the photo, it captures the railroad 'theatre' very nicely - the exhaust blasting up from the departing train (with the driver giving a wave to the other crew) and the imposing scale of the locos.

I had a memorable 'ground shaking' moment on Tehachapi Pass (in Southern California) with an SD70M+ES44AC+AC4400CW trio, restarting a train on the 2% upgrade out of the loop at Bealville. I'd driven up the steep hill from Caliente, saw the train, managed to get across the level crossing in front of it, pulled off the road in a cloud of dust and grabbed the camera. Standing leaning back against my car, I noticed that my feet were being vibrated in sympathy with the diesel engine beats - from about 30m away !!
 

Taunton

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The North American remote radio control ("Distributed Power") was pioneered by an Ohio company called Locotrol about 50 years ago, whose success led to them being progressively bought out by larger companies, it's currently with Wabtec and factory-fitted to many mainline diesels there. The first receivers were in a separate, unpowered, former streamlined F-unit, often known as a Robot Car, with locos mu'd behind it using normal connections, and placed about two-thirds down the train. There was a lot of experimentation, different positioning, and broken couplers at first until they got it figured out. Keeping the communication going, through tunnels etc, is key. You only need one loco of each mid-train set to be fitted, it can then mu the others. It still seems to be developed, the latest approach seems to be to have two at the front, a single unit halfway down the train, and one on the rear. It is of course a separate nuisance to have to break apart a train to insert locos in the middle of it. All the issues of radio crosstalk with other trains, transmitting signals back to the front (eg fire warnings), etc have been long worked out.

With locos applying power from multiple points there are some wagons/couplers which are pulling, and others which are pushing, with a neutral point where the forces meet. This was a key issue, the neutral point would move up and down the train, particularly on undulating routes, and it was important that it did not pass behind the assisting mid-train loco. Not as easy as it sounds, and the source of a number of those broken couplers, which in any event are by no means unknown on conventional freight trains there. If I am not mistaken the mid-train locos have strain gauges on the couplers which participate in the logic of how the power is applied. Locotrol fitted units commonly have branding and a lightning-flash logo on the cabside indicating this.
 

DelW

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I haven't seen the magazine, but I wonder if this is associated with or derived from the EU 'Marathon' train control project - https://www.marathon2operation.eu/web/#project - which has been mentioned a few times on this forum. That project seemed like an attempt to re-invent the 'Locotrol' system that GE/Wabtec have developed over many years and which is used all over the world for loco remote control.
There's no mention of that in the RM report. The only details I omitted are that the comms system is called "Long-Term Evolution", and that the trials are on the Probstzella to Lichtenfels line in central Germany.
 

ac6000cw

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Ha! Thanks, you learn something new every day. I never knew what that stood for, though I'd only come across it occasionally in mobile phone spec's, never in a railway / industrial context, hence not making the association when I read it here :oops:
This isn't the first time DB has tried out radio-controlled distributed power - this is a research paper from over 20 years ago, using Locotrol-equipped class 232 diesels - http://www.railway-research.org/IMG/pdf/098.pdf

As the current trial is using LTE comms, I wonder if this using the public 4G phone network as the carrier, or some sort of private network?


Just to complete the 'sense of scale' series, the photo below is a frame grab from video I shot at Banff station in 2012, looking in the opposite direction to 43096's photo above. The person on the left standing in front of the parked vehicles is about 5 feet tall.

20+ foot tall double-stacks can be quite intimidating close up...

Banff_station_westbound_double_stack.jpg
 
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