Fuel consumption/Distance between refueling points

[NormHart]

Hey Curtis,

I've been googling about trying to understand what the fuel consumption rate for wood burning steam locomotives would be. Not much luck ATM but it dawned on me that the reason I wanted this information was to establish what the normal/prototype distance between water stops and wood ricks might be for a route. Do you have such info?



Edit; BTW the most useful data I've found to date;

http://himedo.net/TheHopkinThomasProjec ... ngines.htm

"Report upon the Use of Anthracite Coal in Locomotive Engines on the Reading Railroad, made to the President of the Reading Railroad Company", by GEORGE W. Whistler, Jr., April 20, 1849.

Mr. Whistler (An appropriate name don't you think?) compares wood consumption vs coal consumption on 95 miles of track. Unfortunately his figures are all based, so far as I can tell, on round trip consumption so trying to come up with a pounds of wood consumed per ton of consist per mile is not going to be easy. (not impossible but it's going to take some head scratching)

Edit again btw a Cord of wood weighs between 3800 - 4500 pounds Dry weight. A "standard" rick holds one cord, 4' X 4' X 8'.

[NormHart]

Another tidbit as I examine the tenders;

2-4-0 - Bowker, James
Wood - 4681
Water - 6624

4-4-0 - Reno, Genoa, Inyo
Wood - 4681
Water - 5677

4-4-0 - General, Yonoh, Texas
Wood - 4681
Water - 6624

4-4-0 - Jupiter
Wood - 4681
Water - 7569

2-6-0 - V&T# 5, 4 as built
Wood - 6000
Water - 2200

2-6-0 - V&T# 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14
Wood - 4681
Water - 5657

I suspect that the recurring number 4681 equals one cord which is reasonable for wood with varying drying times. However, I have to question whether all these tenders would have the same capacity as they are visually of very different size. The "as built" tenders are rather scary, that little water would be a huge handicap in areas where there was little water.

Edit; I've left out the General Museum and the two repaints of the Bowker as they are not informative.

[Pencil]

According to my notes, 4681 should roughly equate to 2.5 - 3 cords of wood, and 5657 should equate to ~1500 gallons of water.
According to http://museums.nevadaculture.org/dmdocu ... er2008.pdf, the average loco on the V&T got about 20.6 miles / cord in 1880. I can't find the source right now, but I seem to remember the V&T loco's would also go about 20 miles on a tender full of water. I'll do some digging again...
Of course, the enginespecs in Trainz probably aren't accurate as to fuel / water consumption yet - it's difficult enough getting the tings to run half-way decently

The 6000 wood reference in some of my tenders is probably left over from some attempts to get reasonable fuel consumption in units of % of tender capacity instead of hard numbers, and shouldn't be relied too much on.

Curtis

[NormHart]

Hum, is 4681 mass in pounds? If so then according to to this chart http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/hom ... ewood.html that might be around 3 cords of dry Western Cedar, which is the lightest wood listed, for dry Live Oak,which is the heaviest listed, it would be less than a cord. For green wood the weights are much, much heavier.

If 5657 is mass in pounds then that equals 678 gallons (1 gal = 8.345404 pounds).

Hum... are we talking kilograms?

Let me do some calculations...

The reason I'm getting into this is that Terry said that he was working on getting the fuel dialed in on his engines.

[NormHart]

Just to see where we stand I decided to do a very rough estimate of current fuel/water consumption. (how rough you ask, well it was in DCC, enough said)

Jupiter (top speed 33mph)
Water range = 70 miles or about 108 units of water per mile
Wood range = 580 miles or about 8 units of wood per mile

Texas (top speed 56mph)
Water range = 145 miles or about 45 units of water per mile
Wood range = 195 miles or about 24 units of wood per mile

Washoe (top speed 56mph)
Water range = 90 miles or about 63 units of water per mile
Wood range = 195 miles or about 24 units of wood per mile

Calculations based on testing at 30mph

Rather than fool with the engine files, about which I know nothing, it dawned on me that I could simply limit the capacity of the tenders to give us something like the range Curtis suggested above. To give a little fudge factor I am going to go for a range of 25 miles for both wood and water. It will be interesting to see if this works.

Revised tender capacity:

Jupiter
Wood - 200
Water - 2700

Texas
Wood - 600
Water - 1125

Washoe
wood - 600
water - 1575

[NormHart]

Huh, well that worked... sort of. My calculations need to be sharpened up, two of the three locomotives made the 25 miles, one just barely made 20 miles, all had way to much water and ran out of wood.

As far as I can tell this may be a better way of setting up fuel consumption rather than mucking about with the engine files. JMO. Drawbacks might be the loss of mass in the consist if the fuel/water mass is included in the mass the engine has to move. The other drawback might be the lowered fuel/water use could impact storage use which, if you are restocking the wood from a forestry/lumber source, would have to be adjusted. I guess that it would all depend on how easily and accurately you can adjust the fuel/water consumption of the locomotive.

I think I'll follow up by learning cab driving well enough to re-calibrate this.

[Pencil]

The numbers listed are volume (liters).
Yes, my plan is to adjust the quantity of the tenders to give relatively prototypical ranges (someday - right now, I'm happy enough that they run at all in cab mode). Note that a locomotive would typically run out of water long before wood - and running out of water could be catastrophic... That's why on the V&T, you have stations with water but no fuel (like Franktown and Scales.)

Curtis

[NormHart]

Right then, good to know I was on the right track. I'll polish up my driving skills and see what comes of it all.

[NormHart]

Well...

That was... um... educational.

I wondered why Curtis said, "right now, I'm happy enough that they run at all in cab mode", now I know, I think.

Where I tested - Mad River Railroad Extended 1.a Route - no particular reason except it was long enough and relatively flat. What I tested - In addition to the three engines listed above I added the Genoa and the I. E. James. Each engine had a consist of one baggage car and three coaches. How I tested - Cab mode but, after stumbling around in the Cab View trying to find the controls for each engine, I focused on using the Hud controls only (regulator and injector (water)). I didn't keep notes on these tests as I had intended them to be familiarization runs but the results were... interesting.

The results of all this was that only two engines were able to exceed 15 miles, Terry's Texas and James. One engine didn't make it past 5 miles, the Washoe. So far as I could tell there was little relationship between the Water and Coal Level shown in the Hud and the amount aboard the tender. While most engines ran out of coal (as displayed in the Hud not what was in the tender) a couple did run out of water (one as displayed on the Hud and one from the tender). The only engine that actually drew any substantial amount of anything from the tender was the Jupiter (I think, might have been the Genoa) which ran the tender dry of water although the Hud still had 100% displayed. All very confusing to say the least.

Some conculsions, Terry's new engines seem to have the most intuitive operations, operated from the Hud. His engines both were able to go 33 miles before running out of coal (in the Hud, both tenders were still full). It appeared as though the all the engines initially drew a little fuel and water from the tenders but ran on on-board supplies from then on (possibly water was drawn from the tender in fractional amounts). The fireman was active on all engines except the Jupiter, I'll need to examine that engine's settings I guess. For the James the fireman controlled the blower as well as the injector and appeared to do a better job than any of the other engines.

Some things I am going to look at next; Auto fireman settings for all engines, running the engines with the tenders empty, running Terry's engines with a heavy consist (there are a couple of 1.5% grades on the route, should be interesting to see if that affects the fuel consumption.)

[Pencil]

Were you shoveling wood ('coal') via the space bar? The levels in the HUD show what is on the grate (wood/coal) or in the boiler (water), not what is in the tender. Some locomotives may have an automatic fireman, but mine do not.

Curtis

[NormHart]

What? You mean that in addition to being a dispatcher, switch-man, and engineer I have to be a fireman too?

That explains some of the nebulous results I've been seeing. I have all sorts of numbers relating to how the tender and engine interact but I won't go into them now other than to note that all the engines appear to receive some volume of fuel/water at start up from the tenders and that, if the tenders are empty at start up, the engines still have some volume of fuel/water. Most are capable of going about 4 miles on an empty tender. I also verified that, according to the engine info, the auto fireman is set to false on all engines and I found that there are two different info displays, probably relating to different Trainz builds.

Sorting all that out is rather boring so, for fun, I tried hauling some full ore cars. I started out with the Texas and there is no doubt that the mass of the consist was affecting the "mileage" although not as much as I expected. A word about the route, about a mile from the starting point a mile long 1.5% grade begins followed by 14 miles of flat land followed by another grade which reaches, briefly, 2%. This is followed by down slope that hits -3% and, after a short flat span passes through the twenty mile mark. I started out with 20 full ore cars and was only able to get about 1.2 miles or, in other words, about two tenths of a mile up the grade. Several retries with decreasing numbers of cars eventually resulted in the Texas finally making the grade with 13 cars at about 5mph. Once I got to the flat the speed topped out at 25mph and remained at there for some 8 miles or so. Then, for no apparent reason, the top speed dropped to 16mph. It appeared that there might have been enough fuel/water to make the 20 mile marker but the engine hit the second grade and just could not pull the string over it. I did note that during this entire time the boiler and steam box pressures were steadily dropping, do you suppose the Texas was able to go 33 miles without me pitching a single shovel full of fuel?

All very confusing but I'm going to continue fooling around collecting data and I'm looking forward to using the various engines to haul the ore up the grade. I expect great things from Curtis' Mogul as it was the only engine able to accelerate the coach consist on the grade.

[Pencil]

Yes, both the locomotive and the tenders have independent starting values of fuel and water; and the locomotives are generally set to start out at full pressure. The steam pressure is what you want to keep an eye on - around 100 psi is a good starting point. That will determine how much power you have to play with.
You're going to make me dust these engines off and take a look again, aren't you?
It might be worth it anyway; I suspect there have been subtle tweaks to the steam simulation since the last time I played with them. Maybe once the TS12 service pack comes out....

By the way, post 2 in this thread (http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthre ... ustral-Bay gives a good overview to driving in cab mode. It's a bit challenging, but worth it once you figure it out.

Curtis

[NormHart]

OK, I'll study up on all that before I delve further into the fuel consumption issue. Waiting until after the service pack seems like a good idea, I noticed that Auran dumped about 200mb of TS12 textures on the DLS this last week.

I didn't mean to distract you from what ever you are working on now. I just wondered about the fuel cycle for wood-burners, not only the mileage but also things like harvesting, processing, ash disposal etc. (turns out potash was a valuable resource). With coal it is pretty straight forward coal mine - coal car - coal tipple. With wood it is a bit more complicated it appears.

But... I've been scanning through the V&T photo collection you have links to and I discovered that the V&T had quite a few wooden ore cars according to their rolling stock inventory. I have not found any good pictures of them but these

appear to be a close match.

I also found some shots of some badly damaged V&T MoW cars, specifically a derrick car and a steam shovel (?) that look much like Ben Dorsey's models...

I also have noted that the McKeen Motor Car #22 is a closeish match to whitepass' McKeen 72' car...

I've also been comparing your Reno yard buildings to the photos, very nice Curtis!

[Pencil]

Thanks, Norm!
The majority of the wooden cars were 4-wheeled side dump cars, along with some larger, 8-wheeled cars. This thread over at PacificNG has quite a bit of information on the side dump cars: http://www.pacificng.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=37. I believe Narrowgauge did a 36" version of a similar car, but we don't have one yet for standard gauge.

Wood was generally logged and milled in the mountains around Lake Tahoe, then flumed to various points along the V&T or CP. It was then stocked at various points along the line for use by the railroad itself, or hauled to customers such as the mines and mills along the line.
No idea yet about ash disposal; I haven't seen any specific facilities mentioned on the V&T.

I don't think the V&T ever owned a steam shovel, but they might have borrowed one or contracted to the highway department if they needed one for anything.

Curtis

[NormHart]

Wow, that was a detailed breakdown of the wooden ore cars. I was impressed that they caught that there were two series of wooden ore cars. I was basing my guess on this photo



from the Comstock Carshops modelers photo gallery.
I've been digging through the Western Nevada Historic Photo Collection and noticed the large piles of very rough cut logs in the Reno yard and wondered if they had been brought down the Truckee River. http://wnhpc.com/details/ssl0001 If you look at the detail/background of many of the mine and city shots you will find many very large piles of these kinds of logs, some stacked two stories high.

Yes, you're right about the steam shovel, I mis-remembered the caption. It was a blacksmith's car that was identified, although I do not see that in the rolling stock inventory either. The forge flue looked rather like a steam engine which is where I got confused. I also mis-remembered Ben's crane car, not a derrick car at all.

Norm