Mountain Goats Train Thread.

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Sounds like my life… lolz work in progress ……. It was brilliant compressed air railroad… seems that idea should have spread around .

Loved the whistling pig….. it was fun just to hear it run..(HUGE AIRTANK) omg ..

You know those gaffes you make, well, other people make during operating sessions?
Yeah, there's a prototype for that ...

Powerful locos those Westerns as hydraulic transmissions meant they could get more power to the wheels than a diesel electric.
I was once told that a Hymek (Diesel hydraulic), though being a much smaller loco could easily outpull a typical class 47 when it came to long passenger trains as class 47's would drop time if pulling any kore than a ten coach express whilst a Hymek could manage 16 coaches and keep to time from what a driver told me who used to work them both. I could not believe my ears when I heard that but it was true. The only reason why British Rail scrapped the hydraulics (A small number were rescued and preserved) even though they were only ten years old or less was that BR decided to have a diesel electric policy as diesel electrics could spend a little longer time out on the rails between servicing, and though the difference was only around a couple of hundred hours at the most, they were looking at economy and not how much the locos could pull.
In the past we had experimental locos of 4000hp which were more powerful but the extra fuel a more powerful loco would need compared to how often it would need to be used made the railways not consider them. After all, if one needed to pull a "One off" heavyweight train, one could always have two locos pulling instead as it was cheaper in the long run then have to keep a more powerful loco in service.
The USA has very long frieght trains to pull so needs more powerful locos.
Our eaviest freight was the iron ore trains going to the steel works in Port Talbot in Wales (South Wales) and they were usually pulled by two class 56's, and if no pairs of class 56's were available, they used three class 37's instead which was quite a sight to see. The idea in Britain at the time was to have most of the locos to be jack of all trades so if there was a sudden need, be it a passenger or a freight train that needed to be pulled instead of waiting for a specific loco to get there to pull it, they would take the nearest available loco and there was some sense in this as it meant less delays. .

Interesting.