While you can reduce crews with longer trains, you still need a certain amount of horsepower to pull a certain tonnage over the mountain. I’m guessing that this reflects reduced tonnage.
“While you can reduce crews with longer trains”
With Conductor Ed Harris?
Had a wild thought that this is promo for Snowpiercer on May 17.
My guess is that there are economies of scale in running fewer trains that are longer. Replacing 3 trains x 3 locomotives each with 2 trains x 4 locomotives each reduces the fleet requirement by 1 locomotive.
“While you can reduce crews with longer trains, you still need a certain amount of horsepower to pull a certain tonnage over the mountain.”
I live at 5,180’ just below a big pass with lots of train traffic.
There are ALWAYS two helper engines on each side of the pass to help the various trains make it ‘over.’
Can’t say it’s like this everywhere, but this is a hard pass and these helper engines have been doing this work for decades.