Real-life Braking on the Pocohontas Route

[sidp]

There is an article in the March, 2009 IEEE Spectrum (magazine for electrical engineers) about electrically controlled air brakes for freight trains. The author went with the engine crew on a loaded Norfolk Southern train at Bluefield, on the Pocohontas route. The article includes an interesting description of the braking of the train using a combination of dynamic and air brakes on the grades.

The link is http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/trainbraking

Sid Penstone

[clashley]

There is an article in the March, 2009 IEEE Spectrum (magazine for electrical engineers) about electrically controlled air brakes for freight trains. The author went with the engine crew on a loaded Norfolk Southern train at Bluefield, on the Pocohontas route. The article includes an interesting description of the braking of the train using a combination of dynamic and air brakes on the grades.

The link is http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/mar09/trainbraking

Sid Penstone

That was a quite interesting article. I was a bit disappointed that it didn't include more detail about how the ECP actually works (description of the brake valve, etc.).

In the current U.S. economic climate, I'm not sure we're going to see wide-spread ECP adoption anytime soon. This sort of technology seems feasible for specific applications, such as unit trains, but prohibitively expensive to implement on a system wide scale. It wouldn't surprise me to see the FRA eventually require ECP implementation as an interchangability condition, but I doubt it will happen soon.

[plainsman]

http://www.nyab.com/products/ccb-ii.htm

[Conrail Tweety]

Interesting article. Somewhat misleading about operating on the NS Pocahontas Division. Most of the loaded operation on that division was uphill. Where he was observing the brakes in operation was actually on the NS Virginia Division.

Has anyone worked out the physics to run ECP trains within MSTS?

[bnsf5669]

There is a target date if i can remember it's like 2030 they want all US railcars equipped with ECP.