Mike's Railroad Crossing Forum

illinoistrains wrote:I say 20. I dont think they can have all 20 locomotives online at once, that would mean that the train has 120 powered axles. i bet only the first 2 or 3 were on.

I don't know how many were actually putting power down, but most were at least idling. I understand that it can be a pretty detailed and expensive proceedure to restart a locomotive; so they tend to idle unless they won't be needed for quite a while.

A shop foreman told me a few years back that a mid-sized road engine will have a crankcase oil capacity of about 175 gallons. Just getting that pressure up, and oil circulating into all the engine nooks and crannys before even trying to stabilize fuel pressure on the injector rails, and THEN trying to light the damn thing off can be a real headache. An expensive one if you mess one up.

The overall concensus indicates that there are 20 locomotives. I guess that's correct, because I don't know. My able assistant and lovely wife was having an insulin reaction (low blood sugar) and was munching a King Size KitKat bar when that monster rolled by.

...and nobody asked for a copy of the full-sized image.

20 it is!