D&RG Steam Helpers on Soldiers Summit

That photo has gotten around.... gives a picture of Rocky Mountain railroading in the days of steam.  Anybody modeled that train of locos?

notice , black smoke .

@Dave Koehler posted:

notice , black smoke .

Being all coal burning, would you expect otherwise?

Dkdkrd wrote:

Just posted a 17# oversize package from mid-Michigan to Washington state...@$90+.

I have 2 words for you - Pirateship (with apologies to Brandon)🤪

Seriously, though, how did they sync 5 steamers before radio and electronics?

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Seriously, though, how did they sync 5 steamers before radio and electronics?

Why do you think that steam locomotives have to be "synced"? The engine crews all know their territory (they run over the same territory day after day for many decades), and know what to do and where.

Fascinating, Scottie and thanks for posting this. The wife and I took Amtrak’s California Zephyr from Salt Lake City to Denver and back and the train still takes this route on the way to Helper in central Utah. Looks like the postmark shows Grand Junction, Colorado (RPO) which is two stops after Helper.

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Seriously, though, how did they sync 5 steamers before radio and electronics?

There is no “syncing” involved. This is a very common misconception.

You have to think of the throttle in a locomotive as a POWER control, not a SPEED control. Each of those engines is adding whatever POWER it is capable of to the total power applied the train. The SPEED that they will run at is determined by the load and the grade, not the position of the throttle(s).

I have had the throttle in NKP 765 wide open at walking speed. I’ve also had it half-way open at 70 mph. It is not a SPEED control.

Thanks to HW and Rich for replies. Just not an easy concept for me to grasp. My belief was “unsynced” locos would put unacceptable push/pull forces on the couplers, causing enough strain to break or uncouple at weak points or in turns.

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Thanks to HW and Rich for replies. Just not an easy concept for me to grasp. My belief was “unsynced” locos would put unacceptable push/pull forces on the couplers, causing enough strain to break or uncouple at weak points or in turns.

Nope.  Not even with diesels.

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

… My belief was “unsynced” locos would put unacceptable push/pull forces on the couplers, causing enough strain to break or uncouple at weak points or in turns.

The steam locomotives in the quadruple-header shown in the picture are not big locomotives. They can probably develop no more than about 40,000 pounds of tractive effort - pulling power. If all four of them were pulling at their maximum effort, that would be about 160,000 pounds of tractive effort on the first coupler in the train. The couplers of that era were rated to handle more than 200,000 pounds.

They could not “get a knuckle” (break a coupler) no matter what they did.