MPGs and a real good question. We are being Played!

[satchelmcqueen]

I was talking to my dad the other day about how my old 1970 302 ford pickup gets 20mpg if driven right and how that almost 40 years later car companies brag about getting 22 - 25 out of their "new" cars. My how slow have we become?

So my dad worked for 13 years at a minning company here on the boarder of Tn and Ga. (Tennessee Chemical Company) before they shut down.

The point is, he worked around and on the trains all the time and knew how they worked. This is where it gets interesting...

He said that the trains car upfront (the engine) that pulled or pushed the many cars loaded with acid, chemicals and many other tons of whatever, was powered by a diesel engine and that over half of that same front car was basically a big battery.

He said they hardly ever turned the engines off because they were very hard to restart and it was cheaper to just keep them running...because...THEY GOT AROUND 250MPG!!!

He then got mad and stated that we are being lied to and screwed by the car and oil companies because if a train hauling hundreds of tons can get 250mpgs, then how on earth is it that a sub compact car can be bragged about like 40mpgs is all it can get?

He said one of the engines derailed one time on the job and turned over on its side. He said they just let it run to burn the fuel out. He said it took almost 4 days before the engine finally died.

So what gives? other than greed?


Just thought Ild share that story.

 

[RSLudlum]

There used to be cars that ran on propane also...flip a switch and you went from gasoline to natural gas.

 

[slacker921]

Trains get great fuel mileage partly because of low friction. They run on steel wheels on steel rails.

 

[Alaxsxaq]

Carefully look at the what the statistics are actually saying. When fuel consumption is talked about in locomotives, it is in terms of " ton miles per gallon" - or how much fuel it takes to move one ton one mile.

If you put it in car terms, for a locomotive in typical freight use, you are looking at more like 4 gallons of diesel fuel consumed for each mile of travel. Long distance freight locomotives typically carry around 4500 gallons of fuel.

The industry average for freight is somewhere around 400 ton miles per gallon.

I don't know what locomotives burn at idle, but they are burning around 150 gallons/hour pulling freight; roughly 30 hours to burn 4500 gallons.

My figures aren't exact, but in the ball park.

 

[acptulsa]

Carefully look at the what the statistics are actually saying. When fuel consumption is talked about in locomotives, it is in terms of " ton miles per gallon" - or how much fuel it takes to move one ton one mile.

If you put it in car terms, for a locomotive in typical freight use, you are looking at more like 4 gallons of diesel fuel consumed for each mile of travel. Long distance freight locomotives typically carry around 4500 gallons of fuel.

The industry average for freight is somewhere around 400 ton miles per gallon.

I don't know what locomotives burn at idle, but they are burning around 150 gallons/hour pulling freight; roughly 30 hours to burn 4500 gallons.

My figures aren't exact, but in the ball park.

Right! You get an e cookie. Locomotives wouldn't need fuel tanks of over 2500 gallons capacity if they could get 250 mpg out of engines of over nine thousand turbocharged cubic inches (upwards of 150 liters--and no, I didn't leave a decimal point off by accident).

Ton miles per gallon is the only measurement that means anything when you can run a train of two cars or can keep adding cars and locomotives until the train is literally miles long. Think of it this way. A motorcycle is liable to get 60 mpg with one rider. An economy car that only seats two could get 30 mpg. A stretch passenger van is liable to get 15 mpg. So, the motorcycle gets the best mileage. But is it the most efficient people mover?

With only the rider on board, the motorcycle gets 60 passenger miles per gallon as you have the 60 mpg and you multiply it by the one person in the saddle. The two seat economy car has two seats useable by adults, so it can get 60 passenger miles per gallon. If each person chipped in half the gas, they'd each buy the same gas as the motorcycle rider.

The fat, three ton, V-8 passenger van, with a dozen adults on board, gets one hundred eighty passenger miles per gallon. A Greyhound bus, which probably gets six or seven mpg, does even better on the passenger mile per gallon scale--say 250 or so.

So, yeah, steel wheels on rail works. But what really works is mass transit. What really works is punching one single hole in the atmosphere and driving four thousand tons of freight through that one hole. This is efficiency.

So, diesel electric locomotives (which only have enough batteries to crank the starter on the nine thousand plus cubic inch engine, which is admittedly a lot of batteries) may only get three gallons to the mile, but when they put their shoulder to thousands of tons they are the most efficient motive force on earth. And that is why they calculate ton miles per gallon.

 

[IRO-bot]

^^ Wow!!!

 

[acptulsa]

By the way, some of those old vehicles get better mileage than new ones the same size because new vehicles have to have air bags, side door guard beams, antilock brakes, five mph energy absorbing bumpers so you can wander around parking lots at jogging speed running into things without hurting your vehicle, catalytic converters, sensors and computers to keep them clean, and that's before you realize that people used to be able to crank their own windows...

The government doesn't want us to have efficient vehicles. They don't think we can survive trying to drive them. They think it's much better that we never really learn to drive, but survive our many wrecks. The insurance lobby likes it this way.

IMO that's how we're being played.

 

[slacker921]

^ yes. The smog reduction really hurts the power and efficiency. We're just now getting back to the power and efficiency levels that we had prior to adding all of those restrictions.

 

[UnReconstructed]

I have a little VW Golf diesel that gets 48mpg. It seems to not matter how I drive it either. I've tried to break 50mpg by babying it and got 49. I normally drive 70 to 80mph and still get 49mpg.

 

[satchelmcqueen]

Carefully look at the what the statistics are actually saying. When fuel consumption is talked about in locomotives, it is in terms of " ton miles per gallon" - or how much fuel it takes to move one ton one mile.

If you put it in car terms, for a locomotive in typical freight use, you are looking at more like 4 gallons of diesel fuel consumed for each mile of travel. Long distance freight locomotives typically carry around 4500 gallons of fuel.

The industry average for freight is somewhere around 400 ton miles per gallon.

I don't know what locomotives burn at idle, but they are burning around 150 gallons/hour pulling freight; roughly 30 hours to burn 4500 gallons.

My figures aren't exact, but in the ball park.

thanks, ill mention that to him.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Carefully look at the what the statistics are actually saying. When fuel consumption is talked about in locomotives, it is in terms of " ton miles per gallon" - or how much fuel it takes to move one ton one mile.

If you put it in car terms, for a locomotive in typical freight use, you are looking at more like 4 gallons of diesel fuel consumed for each mile of travel. Long distance freight locomotives typically carry around 4500 gallons of fuel.

The industry average for freight is somewhere around 400 ton miles per gallon.

I don't know what locomotives burn at idle, but they are burning around 150 gallons/hour pulling freight; roughly 30 hours to burn 4500 gallons.

My figures aren't exact, but in the ball park.

Exactly right.

I've used 16 cylinder EMD (Electro Motive Diesel) engines in marine applications, and the fuel burn at roughly 90% power, about 875 rpm or so is about 150 gallons an hour.

Gas engines are less efficient now for the reasons already mentioned in prior posts.

I recently swapped an electronic 302 CID v-8 in my ford truck for a carbed 300 inline six. Not only do I have more low end torque in a virtually indestructible gas engine, (last one I had ran over 360,000 miles and was till running when I parked it, I used it for core parts) but I've also increased fuel economy by 3-4 mpg.