Union Pacific FEF-3 4-8-4 Northern type steam locomotive, by Smokebox

[mrennie]

A call for help!

It's about those armour yellow / gray lightweight passenger cars. Does anyone know the correct weight in US short tons?

I did come across this:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,1292502

According to that, the UP ACF 1953 44-seat Chair Car unloaded weight is 136,000 lbs, which equals 68 short tons, or 60 Imperial tons.

But I've also read that an FEF-3 reached 100mph hauling a train of 1000 tons, 25 cars. That suggests that each car weighed about 40 US short tons.

I've also read that the lightweights weighed anywhere between 37.5 and 51 tons.

So which is right?

Thanks in advance,

Mike

[buzz456]

About fifty tons give or take depending on equipment A/C and so forth.

[mrennie]

About fifty tons give or take depending on equipment A/C and so forth.

Thanks for the quick reply Buzz

50 US short tons, I assume. That would be 100,000 lbs.

I'm still unsure because of the time period and the builder. It seems that the "lightweights" got heavier as the years went by. There's one excerpt from a book, that I found on Google books, that talks about an early Budd lightweight that weighed only 68,900lbs, but I've just been sent a diagram for a 1951 AC&F chair car that gives the weight as 146,700 lbs (that's 73.35 US short tons, or 65.5 Imperial tons ... even more than the 56 Imperial tons I've got at the moment in the "mass" entry in the blueprints).

[buzz456]

All cars were not created equal.

[buzz456]

The only thing I know for sure is that the trucks appear to weigh 36,000 for the pair.

[philmoberg]

All cars were not created equal.

To amplify on Buzz' accurate observation, unless you're looking at a car diagram with really complete data, a builder's specification or some other really primary source, you'll find you run into inconsistencies such as whether the dry weight or fully serviced weight are being quoted. In one or two cases I can recall, the figure given assumed a 60% passenger load at 150 lbs./passenger. The figure quoted for the early Budd-built car sound on bit on the light side to me, even though some of their earlier cars were built to a shorter-than-standard (85ft. over the pulling faces during the lightweight era). The other builders - principally Pullman and ACF by that late date - were still using carbon steel for their structural members and tended to produce heavier cars. The 68 ton figure for the ACF car is not unreasonable: the New haven's 8600 class coaches (built by Pullman subsidiary Osgood Bradley) were about the same weight, for example.

I'm a bit skeptical about the FEF-3s hauling 25-car trains of 1000 tons, unless this was a test run with 100 refrigerator cars. I would not have wanted to be in the caboose for that excursion. I have to believe a 25 car passenger train would have been closer to 10,000 tons, at least in the heavyweight era, and around 7,000 to 8,000 tons in the lightweight era (prior to the end of steam), depending on how many rebuilt heavyweights were in the consist (and UP, among others, had quite a few). The notion of an FEF-3 hauling a 10,000 ton passenger train at close to 100mph is thoroughly plausible, IMO, as long as she wasn't having to cope with significant grades and/or speed restricted curves. For all the talk of high speed rail these days, it's a largely forgotten fact that this continent had a network of passenger trains routinely running in the 90-100mph range from coast to coast into the middle of the last century. Most of it was originally hauled by steam power. My dad rode them as a kid; and I rode want was left of them as a kid.

I can dig around a bit on some source material I have handy for similar equipment operating on one of the Eastern roads and give you a range, at least for passenger carrying cars. My data for head end cars (RPO, baggage and express) is more limited, but there may be some other sources I can tap.

[evafan002]

As a thought if anyone here has any access to anyone in UPs steam program could you not just ask how much the normal excursion consist for 844 weighs?
also and this is possibly not relevent but a BR MK1 coach weighs around 35 to 40 Tons loaded so assuming that an american lightweight passenger coach weighs 40 or 50 percent more per coach would give something like 60 tons by my reckoning

[mrennie]

To amplify on Buzz' accurate observation, unless you're looking at a car diagram with really complete data, a builder's specification or some other really primary source, you'll find you run into inconsistencies such as whether the dry weight or fully serviced weight are being quoted. In one or two cases I can recall, the figure given assumed a 60% passenger load at 150 lbs./passenger. The figure quoted for the early Budd-built car sound on bit on the light side to me, even though some of their earlier cars were built to a shorter-than-standard (85ft. over the pulling faces during the lightweight era). The other builders - principally Pullman and ACF by that late date - were still using carbon steel for their structural members and tended to produce heavier cars. The 68 ton figure for the ACF car is not unreasonable: the New haven's 8600 class coaches (built by Pullman subsidiary Osgood Bradley) were about the same weight, for example.

I'm a bit skeptical about the FEF-3s hauling 25-car trains of 1000 tons, unless this was a test run with 100 refrigerator cars. I would not have wanted to be in the caboose for that excursion. I have to believe a 25 car passenger train would have been closer to 10,000 tons, at least in the heavyweight era, and around 7,000 to 8,000 tons in the lightweight era (prior to the end of steam), depending on how many rebuilt heavyweights were in the consist (and UP, among others, had quite a few). The notion of an FEF-3 hauling a 10,000 ton passenger train at close to 100mph is thoroughly plausible, IMO, as long as she wasn't having to cope with significant grades and/or speed restricted curves. For all the talk of high speed rail these days, it's a largely forgotten fact that this continent had a network of passenger trains routinely running in the 90-100mph range from coast to coast into the middle of the last century. Most of it was originally hauled by steam power. My dad rode them as a kid; and I rode want was left of them as a kid.

I can dig around a bit on some source material I have handy for similar equipment operating on one of the Eastern roads and give you a range, at least for passenger carrying cars. My data for head end cars (RPO, baggage and express) is more limited, but there may be some other sources I can tap.

That's great information, thanks! It does fit with what I've been finding out myself. That 25-car, 1000 ton train, might have been freight cars, but I haven't found any more details.

Here's the diagram I got from Gary Dolzall:

coacha.jpg

I assumed that the weight given there is the dry, unloaded weight.

[mrennie]

As a thought if anyone here has any access to anyone in UPs steam program could you not just ask how much the normal excursion consist for 844 weighs?
also and this is possibly not relevent but a BR MK1 coach weighs around 35 to 40 Tons loaded so assuming that an american lightweight passenger coach weighs 40 or 50 percent more per coach would give something like 60 tons by my reckoning

Yes, that sounds about right.

The train hauled by Mallard on its record-breaking run weighed 240 Imperial tons and had seven coaches (including the dynamometer car), so that averages out at around 34-35 tons each.

[philmoberg]

... I assumed that the weight given there is the dry, unloaded weight.

Since this is a railroad company diagram, my guess is that the weight probably includes the 250 gallons of water, but no passengers, crew or baggage. In that case, the difference is really marginal anyway: IIRC 250 gallons is only a bit more than 2,000 pounds. My assumption is based on the diagrams being the source data for the calculation of train weight. BTW, we were still assuming 150 pounds/passenger, exclusive of baggage, into the early-'80s, based on my direct experience. I don't know whether Railworks adjusts the train weight for virtual passengers virtually boarding or alighting at each station, but would be the logical place to put such adjustments, as opposed to the vehicle blueprints. If Gary doesn't have other material related specifically to UP equipment, I'll be happy to dig up what I can for similar stock. Designs for coaches were at least broadly standardized by this time: C&NW, SP and GN (to name three) had long distance, legrest coaches built to essentially the same floor plan as the IHH/Kuju default coach, and some of the SP cars were in service to the end of Amtrak's operation of Heritage fleet coaches. Dining and sleeping cars were quite standardized by this time, so almost any railroad's data for any given floor plan would do. Feel free to PM me if you have need of this: I'll be happy to share what I have.

(edit) It just occurred to me that I have a really excellent source of units of measurement and their various conversions. This website has been invaluable to me for almost a couple of decades, and is well worth a bookmark: http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/

[FourEightFour]

Something to consider: the 25 car train probably had express cars on the head end. These are lightweight box cars and reefers. This could throw off your "weight average" by a significant amount.

[mrennie]

Something to consider: the 25 car train probably had express cars on the head end. These are lightweight box cars and reefers. This could throw off your "weight average" by a significant amount.

Yes, that would explain a lot!

I'm going to test with 16 (instead of 25) of the 56 (Imperial) ton cars and tune down the performance to get 100mph with that 1003.5 (US short) ton train.

[buzz456]

You keep talking about 25 cars. I road a lot of passenger trains back in the day and sure watched a lot of them go by and I don't remember them being anywhere that long. More like 12 or 14 max.

[bpetit]

Buzz, in testing by UP.

[Ericmopar]

What Buzz said, plus a 25 car passenger train wouldn't be 10,000 tons...

Someones numbers are very wrong.