Moving a Driving Wheel

CSX Railroad had a commercial that illustrated the fuel efficiency of railroading. The tag line was that a train could move 2,000 pounds of freight, about 500 miles using only a gallon of fuel. You have to admit that is pretty impressive. So why is that? It boils down to friction. The wheel of a locomotive or freight touches the rail in an area of about the size of a quarter. That is not very much interface between the surface of the rail and the surface of the wheel, hence very little friction. During the day, if a crew needed to move a railroad car and a locomotive was not available, they would use a car mover. A car mover is essentially a long lever with a shoe on the end of it. The railroader would jam the end of the car mover between the wheel and the rail and then push down. This lever action would start the car moving. It could be down by one individual. We still have car movers here and we do use them every once in a while. This video demonstrates how easy it is to move lots of weigh by train. The wheel set in the video is from Locomotive 81. It weighs about 14,000 pounds. As the video shows, it is very easy to move. The audio is so-so. We are working on improving the audio in future videos. If you like what you see here, be sure to LIKE our page. For more information on the Nevada Northern Railway visit our website www.nnry.com.