I need hard numbers on the practical power consumption of electric cars in museum service. I'm thinking of things like a Birney, traditional 4-motor streetcar, PCC car, interurban (CA&E or Sacramento Northern), or a suburban car (Lackawanna or NYC MU car), and I realize these will be quite different from each other. I'm interested in two types of information about their behavior in museum service on a 15-30 mph railroad.

- Instantaneous power consumption, i.e. peak KW as actually used in museums. For instance if you have a North Shore car, running in parallel is out of the question. I don't care what the car is capable of *on the original North Shore*; but rather how fast the museum's electric meter is actually spinning when you motor it.

- Energy usage in kilowatt-hours through a museum round-trip, to wit: "How large a battery would it need to make one trip?"

Has anyone collected that information? What I've found is classic BART trains draw 3.3 KWH per mile, about 20% of which is accessory loads such as HVAC, however that's traveling at speed on a practical transit system, and not museum service.

I do know from firsthand discussion that Rockhill has insufficient capacity to feed their Liberty Liner when starting 'normally' without a degree of brownout. You should direct this inquiry directly to them to get precise consumption numbers for their operation with a variety of physical car types; I suspect you may be able to get that organization to test for precise data if you actually need them.

Here is some information:

http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/st ... /2-030.pdf

PC

robertmacdowell,
That's an interesting request.
Can you tell us more.?

Personally, from what you are asking.
You can't go wrong contacting these people.

They run everything you are interested in.

Original Ontario ROW.
Original late 1800's equipment to very modern.
Just received a bunch of ex-TTC street cars.

Dog-bone full-catenary trolley loop.
Haul thousands of passengers every year.

An hour out of Toronto, Ontario.

The powerhouse is a fair size, fed from the local grid.
They run a bunch of units at the same time, from antique street cars, to heavy interurbans.
They would know exactly what you are looking for.

The joke I heard many years ago after the Liberty Liner showed up at Orby/Rockhill--at least I hope it was only a joke--was that the reason you weren't going to see it going out the branch much, or at all, was that it consumed SO much power moving that the lights all over Orby/Rockhill dimmed when it started up! I had to content myself with a positioning move and breakfast in the diner, still with the North Shore's menagerie of animals along the ceiling divider.

Another part to contact would be Illinois Railway Museum. I recall a story long ago in Railroad Model Craftsman (probably just before Railfan was started in late 1974) describing their acquisition of a proper substation for their electric demo line, and subsequently "racing" and thoroughly beating C&NW locals on the parallel branch with interurbans opened up as far as they dared...........

At the East Troy Electric Railroad there are currently 2 substations.
The voltage is nominally 600 volts DC, but the actual voltage is
more like 625 volts.

The small "barn" substation is capable of delivering about 400 amps
safely before blowing a fuse.

The much larger "main" substation can deliver 1000 amps.

Running (2) of the 2-car South Shore trains as they do in the busy
season, the peak load at the main substation gets up to just over
800 amps.

The smaller streetcars and trolleys draw considerably less
current than the heavy interurbans. I'd put a typical streetcar
at somewhere around 200 amps starting. That's a very rough estimate.

One very memorable "live" test I was involved in one time many
years ago back in the mid 1980s down at Mount Pleasant, Iowa
on the Midwest Electric there at the fair grounds was that the
chief electrician Dan Dougherty wanted to see how much the
C.A.&E. heavy interurban car 320 was loading the substation.

He had me pull car 320 up to the spot where the feeder wires
come out of the substation and connect to the trolley wire.
He had me set the brake and take a few points then quickly shut
off. Car 320 loaded the substation to 400 amps in point #2 with
the motors locked and unable to turn with brake set.

Back at East Troy, there have been some reports of main substation
loading up to 850 to 900 amps when the Christmas parade train
goes past being pulled by T.M.E.R.&L. locomotive L8, and with
South Shore car 13 pushing from the rear end.

Not much "hard data" there but at least maybe it gives some ballpark
numbers for you.

That is a great paper. Thanks for linking that.

I have read in the old Rail & Wire issues that the Illinois Railway Museum runs on a C,A & E Railroad sub station, which they claim to be the largest one at any one of the streetcar museums, like 1500 kw.

I believe that the one we use at the Western Railway Museum is from BART and is rated at 1000 kw for 600 volts.

The Northern Ohio Railway Museum has just built a sub-station; I would be interested to know what that one is rated as?

Ted Miles, WRM Member

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't one of the IRM Substations built out of a SD-40-2 diode prototype bridge rectifier? 3000 hp?

I know they did run the South Shore "Little Joe" a few years ago and at 600 VDC it was estimated to be about 2000 hp.

-Hudson

The current main substation at IRM has an EMD rectifier bank, but I believe it predates the Dash2 line from EMD by quite a few years. It's been in service for quite a while now.

As for '3000 Hp', that was the rating of the diesel loco, and is not directly relatable to the Hp output of the substation, as in a diesel, you would never have peak voltage and current at the same time, but in the substation, you'd be operating at peak voltage continuously, with current loads up to a high percentage of the rectifiers rating.

Jeff

1500KW sounds about right, but it is definitely NOT ex CA&E. IRM has 2 substations, one homebuilt out of former diesel & electric locomotive parts, with a commercial, computerized, control system. the other a large skid mounted "portable" substation.

Jeff

.

I found a couple of studies that I did last year at the Rockhill Trolley Museum.
JTC 311 is a double truck Birney with 4 - 35HP motors
Oporto 172 is a single truck semi-convertible with 2 - 50HP motors

Oops, the previous note missed attachments. I'm slowly learning how to use this site. 311 and 172 reports should be OK now.

I have another file for 311 that I started this Fall which will include the voltage at the car.
This will account for the voltage drop of the 4/0 overhead and rail. Not yet completed.

The power measurements are made using an Electro Industries Nexus 1250 meter on the Traction Power Supply. This meter permits data to be collected at 1 second intervals which I import into an Excel Spreadsheet.

I have a digital voltmeter that I use to collect voltage data on the car. The meter will log to a laptop computer. I'm still working to coordinate the two sets of data in order to measure the line loss resistance.

Fred Walter

Robert,
Please call 614-619-1459 12:00 noon to 4:00 PM EST.
Dennis Bockus

To hang a date on it, IRM's rectifier substation was just being completed and undergoing testing when I joined in 1970, which predates the EMD "dash 2" series by a couple years. As I recall, the facility was designed and installed by a gentleman named Bob Consbruk (sp?) who worked as an electrical designer for EMD. He was able to secure the donation of the rectifier banks that EMD had used for development work and designed the substation around them. I was always under the impression that he incorporated rectifiers from more than one locomotive, but I may be mistaken. The rectifiers are the only locomotive component used, the downstream overload and rate-of-rise (form JR) breakers are standard electric railway equipment.

Prior to the new substation going on-line, IRM's power supply was a six cylinder bus engine driving an elevator motor.