Question about Big Boys

[mrennie]

Well after a few long days of speed trials and changing values by 1-tenth at a time, I think I've gotten somewhere tonight: took my test consist of 3181t. (as close as I could get without getting over 3250t.) from Cheyenne to Hermosa at an average speed of 41mph. Cutoff ranged anywhere from 10%-22%. Speed coming out of Cheyenne was 55mph, speed never dropped below 35mph on the way to Buford sometimes getting in the lower 40s in between filling the boiler. I tried to keep my steam production up without the safety valve going off. If I got close to the safety valves lifting I'd increase the cutoff a bit more. When the injectors were on I'd lower cutoff to try and preserve steam which didn't impact my speed too much. I'm calling it a night - tomorrow I'll take a 5800t. consist from Laramie to Buford and see how that goes.

Those sound (to me anyway) like good results. Well done!

[dtrainBNSF1]

After one more speed trial to make sure everything was okay I took a train of 5697t. from Laramie to Buford at an average speed of 40mph. Max speed from Laramie to Hermosa was 45mph. with the loco developing 10938.24hp according to the math. I'm satisfied to say that if my train was the full 5800t. that I would have made it easy because the Big Boy wasn't even working at full power with 11% cutoff and relatively low throttle settings with the test train.