Just passed by a train with a hundred or so cargo crates. how do they start? I understand how they continue moving, but how do they overcome the inertia of starting it? It has to be like thousands of tons, and I can’t imagine a bunch of coal being able to start moving that. unless of course it can, in which ELI5
In: Engineering
The slack thing is a bit of a misconception, because stretching and bunch slack is an important factor in train handling, and if you have to slam the throttle and stretch each coupling to get the train moving you have way too little power and are probably going to get fired lmao.
To put it simply, modern road locomotives in North America weigh 400k lbs and have about 4000 (sometimes 4400) horsepower, so 3 of them running is 12k horsepower and weigh 1.2m pounds, so they’re really heavy and have a lot of grip.
(Side note tonnage ratios are different depending on territory, so 12k horsepower can sometimes take 12k tons of freight, sometimes the equivalent power can only take 8k)
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