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Trains Magazine 1965 March This train can save railroading
Trains Magazine 1965 March
March 1965Volume 25 Number 5
NEWS - - - - -3
RAILROAD NEWS PHOTOS - 10
STEAM NEWS PHOTOS - - 14
THE PRINCIPLE'S THE SAME -18
HOW TO REDUCE M/W RATIO 20
19TH CENTURY FLOATS ON - 24
RERAILING ON THE RUN28
WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT?33
TRACTION CLASSICS-34
PHOTO SECTION-38
Railway post office 50Second section 55
Of books and trains 54Running extra 56
Interchange 57
COVER: Artist John Swatsley's impression of Theodore J. Kauffeld firm's new integral train.
A TRAIN FOR SURVIVAL
THE true train of tomorrow is not a low-center-of-gravity lightweight with bus bodies or guided axles. Nor is it one of the containerized merchandisers that will complement Japan's 100 mph-plus streamliners on the new standard gauge to Osaka. The genuine advance in train technology in 1965 exists not in metal or even in a formal blueprint but rather in the minds and patents of its creators. The man to ask is John G. Kneiling, Professional Engineer. But don't look for him in Who's Who in Railroading or on the payroll of any railroad or carbuilder. He works for Theodore J. Kauffeld's firm of consulting engineers in New York, owns a sharp pencil, travels incessantly, always talks to the point and on the record. You can't miss John Kneiling, for he's a tall, big, bespectacled man in a rumpled black suit, and he paints a picture of the damnedest thing you ever imagined coming at you on high iron.
First and fundamentally, the integral train John Kneiling outlines is just that: a train of inseparable components, not "pieces of a train" (i.e., locomotive units, cars, a caboose) assembled by yardmaster whim on the basis of a given day's car-loadings or track capacity or power supply or any other like variable. It is a huge train, as wide and high as mainline clearances permit and longer than any conventional passing track. It is a fast train, rolling 60 mph or better and overhauling anything in its path but the Broadway Limited ("And that, too, if she lingers too long in Fort Wayne," says Kneiling). It is a high-capacity train, carrying a net payload of any bulk commodity (e.g., coal, ore, limestone, phosphate, even oil - but not grain*) of up to 70,000 tons, or more than double the lading of today's typical big barge tow. Finally, it is, for shipper and operator, an exceptionally remunerative train, earning a profit on a bulk freight rate level of not more than 317(2 mills per ton-mile on short and/or difficult runs and as low as 2 mills on long hauls (i.e., a maximum ton-mile charge of less than % cent vs. today's average rate on soft coal of 1.10 cents per ton-mile).
Is the concept too sophisticated?
"Engineering is the smallest part of it," says Kneiling of this first-generation integral train proposed by the Kauffeld firm. The roadblocks are mental, not technical. To discover why, let us reexamine conventional train technology in terms of the causes of high tare weight and low reliability. Item: So long as
'Grain does not respond to economic stimuli in terms of transportation, says Kneiling, but rather its movement is politically motivated (by the Department of Agriculture). Hence, as a commodity, grain eludes a truly economic application of the integral train.
railroading insists upon the "pieces of a train" concept, each individual car must needs be a maid-of-all-work, a lowest common denominator. It must be able to move from any siding to any siding, mate with heavier or lighter or newer or older cars en route, and stand drawbar pulls of up to 200,000 pounds if coupled next to the locomotive, to say nothing of slack action. Consequently the typical car must be overbuilt, adding to its tare weight; yet because the typical car rolls less than 50 miles a day nobody wants to invest much money in it to improve its reliability or even usefulness in terms of better brakes, couplers, unloading doors, and so forth.
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