How American Trains Pull 20,000 Tons With No Driver in the Middle
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In the high desert east of Barstow, California, a two-mile freight train is grinding up a one-percent grade with more than twenty thousand tons behind it. Walk to the middle of that train and you'll find a six-thousand-horsepower locomotive running flat out, throttle wide open, with an empty cab and nobody at the controls.
So who is driving the engine in the middle? Nobody is. It's obeying a coded radio signal fired down the train from the lead cab two miles away, a system the railroads call distributed power. In this video we break down the brutal physics that forces American railroads to bury locomotives inside their trains: the humble steel knuckle that fails at around 350,000 pounds of pull, the 400,000-pound drag of gravity on a gentle mountain grade, and the deadly slack action that can snap a train clean in two. From the birth of Locotrol in the late 1960s to the three-mile monster trains of today, here is how just two people move the weight of 400 lorries over the Rocky Mountains.
✅ Why a single coupler can never pull 20,000 tons up a grade
✅ How the steel knuckle is designed to fail on purpose
✅ What buff, draft and 50 feet of slack really do to a two-mile train
✅ How Locotrol lets one driver command engines two miles apart
✅ Why the rear engines brake while the front engines pull
✅ The real reason America's trains keep getting longer, and who is fighting it
If you love the hidden engineering and forgotten history of America's railroads, subscribe, there's a new one every few days. Then tell me in the comments:
1. Have you ever been trapped at a level crossing by one of these giants, and how many minutes did it take to clear?
2. Should American railroads be allowed to run three-mile trains through your town, or has it gone too far?
3. What railway question do you want me to break down next?
Next week: why America ripped up more than 150,000 miles of railroad track, and where those ghost lines still run today.
#trains #railroad #freighttrains #distributedpower #americanrailroads #locomotives #railfan #engineering
How American Trains Pull 20,000 Tons With No Driver in the Middle
admin admin
792 views
In the high desert east of Barstow, California, a two-mile freight train is grinding up a one-percent grade with more than twenty thousand tons behind it. Walk to the middle of that train and you'll find a six-thousand-horsepower locomotive running flat out, throttle wide open, with an empty cab and nobody at the controls.
So who is driving the engine in the middle? Nobody is. It's obeying a coded radio signal fired down the train from the lead cab two miles away, a system the railroads call distributed power. In this video we break down the brutal physics that forces American railroads to bury locomotives inside their trains: the humble steel knuckle that fails at around 350,000 pounds of pull, the 400,000-pound drag of gravity on a gentle mountain grade, and the deadly slack action that can snap a train clean in two. From the birth of Locotrol in the late 1960s to the three-mile monster trains of today, here is how just two people move the weight of 400 lorries over the Rocky Mountains.
✅ Why a single coupler can never pull 20,000 tons up a grade
✅ How the steel knuckle is designed to fail on purpose
✅ What buff, draft and 50 feet of slack really do to a two-mile train
✅ How Locotrol lets one driver command engines two miles apart
✅ Why the rear engines brake while the front engines pull
✅ The real reason America's trains keep getting longer, and who is fighting it
If you love the hidden engineering and forgotten history of America's railroads, subscribe, there's a new one every few days. Then tell me in the comments:
1. Have you ever been trapped at a level crossing by one of these giants, and how many minutes did it take to clear?
2. Should American railroads be allowed to run three-mile trains through your town, or has it gone too far?
3. What railway question do you want me to break down next?
Next week: why America ripped up more than 150,000 miles of railroad track, and where those ghost lines still run today.
#trains #railroad #freighttrains #distributedpower #americanrailroads #locomotives #railfan #engineering