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| Re: American Railcar gone (1005712) | |||
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Re: American Railcar gone |
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Posted by WillD on Sun Nov 21 23:45:45 2010, in response to Re: American Railcar gone, posted by Chris R16/R2730 on Sun Nov 21 12:08:23 2010. Yes, and that's exactly the point I was making. The CRC DMUs use two Detroit Diesel DD60 engines producing 600hp apiece and achieving about 4mpg individually (so one DMU consumes 2mpg and produces 1200hp). Conversely an MP40PH will likely do about 2 gallons per mile from it's EMD 16V-710G prime mover producing 4000hp. That means that when the DMU train reaches 4 cars long it will consume the same fuel while producing 800hp more than a diesel locomotive hauled train. Consequently performance may be slightly better with the DMUs, but clearly if you're going down this path in lieu of electrification then performance is secondary to economy.As a result of this, there is little or no point to adopting a DMU design which is optimized for anything more than 4 cars, particularly on systems with established diesel push pull operations. Thus there is nothing lost by having a DMU without a walk-through capability because you'd be unlikely to ever operate DMU trains long enough for that to matter. You could order every DMU as something similar to the CRC DMUs or Siemens' FRA compliant DMU concept with a gangway located at the rear end and only encounter the rarest of operational difficulties. And those operational difficulties would come as a natural expense of making the DMU safer by placing the engineer in the center of the cab and putting crash energy absorbing elements between him and whatever may cross his or her path. |
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