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[Jordan or Plymouth Mad]

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[ceejaydee]

Are they on the same bogies/trucks?

 

[Dog Star]

Without knowing how much power is available, why does the US motive power need to be so much bigger than the UK loco?

 

[Osgood]

I guess for the same reason their cars are (or at least were) so much bigger? Because they have so much more space! The same goes for refrigerators and washing machines.

Mind you I don't know what came first - the appetite or the big fridge. I nearly threw up when I saw my first 20 litre pail of 'No Brand' peanut butter

It is much more of a challenge designing the same power into a smaller loading gauge - so why make life difficult for yourself?

As a consequence they have the option to squeeze a lot more power in when they want to. There wouldn't be much point in us having locos twice the power as we couldn't make efficient use of their capacity.

 

[flexible_coupling]

It is much more of a challenge designing the same power into a smaller loading gauge - so why make life difficult for yourself?

As a consequence they have the option to squeeze a lot more power in when they want to. There wouldn't be much point in us having locos twice the power as we couldn't make efficient use of their capacity.

Welcome to Australia - bound by the tight British loading gauge, yet having legitimate need for longer, heavier, faster trains and high-horsepower locos. A duo or trio of 4,490hp locos are used on the major interstate and transcontinental services... They make a bit of a rumble!

 

[Overseer]

The loading gauge was pretty much standardised for standard and broad gauge railways in Australia during the 1920s at 14 feet maximum height and 10 feet wide, which was really just formalising the loading gauges used from the beginning in Victoria, NSW and South Australia. So a foot or so taller than the tallest loading gauge on any of the standard gauge pre-grouping UK railways. There have always been differences, e.g. South Australian 'modern' steam could not operate in Victoria as the cylinders would foul the platforms and Sydney suburban electric stock was/is a full 10' wide so required all the suburban platforms to be cut back to suit. The current minimum structure gauge for new work allows for 4.88m or 16' high trains, apart from the double stack container routes - Parkes (NSW) to Adelaide, Darwin and Perth which have 6.5m (21') clear.

 

[mickoo]

Yes, they are both EMD machines. I understand that squashing all/most of the SD40 into a Class 66 shell means that one cab is smaller than the other on a 66.

Re Australia, what about the broad gauge? Is the loading gauge still tight?

Your right, the cabs are a different size, however the reduced sized cab is the same as the SD40 cab, basically in EMD spartan cabs the rear wall is the electrical cubicle with circuit breakers and other sundries that the crew might need to access. On the class 66 that is also in one cab and access is down each side of it to the outer doors. On the SD40 there is no cab at the other end and thus no electrical cubicle, so when they added the rear cab on the 66 there was no electrical cubicle there so that space is now cab.

 

[mth]

Just to point out, it's a Foster Yeoman class 59 in the photo.

 

[Pugsley]

Without knowing how much power is available, why does the US motive power need to be so much bigger than the UK loco?

A lot of it is to with equipment location - for instance the fuel tank normally takes up the entire area between the bogies, due to the much larger distances involved. To that end, the batteries are underneath the cab, you've also normally got dynamic(rheostatic) brakes above the engine.

Also, they can, so why not