14 stalled on Cuestia grade

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Karl1459

Lead Service Attendant
Joined
Feb 15, 2010
Messages
469
Location
Oregon
One locomotive failed. Plan a is now to attempt the hill without hep. No PPC either.

Nu
 
Our southbound Coast Starlight had problems like that last year. However, all they had to do was to turn off the A/C for about 10-15 minutes. Next time, don't use charge your iPhone while the train is climbing the hill. Draws too much power, I hear. :giggle:
 
Our southbound Coast Starlight had problems like that last year. However, all they had to do was to turn off the A/C for about 10-15 minutes. Next time, don't use charge your iPhone while the train is climbing the hill. Draws too much power, I hear. :giggle:
We laugh, but it would be interesting to know how demands on HEP have changed in the past few years. LED lighting is much more efficient, but a train full of people charging their phones, tablets and such was certainly never contemplated when most of Amtrak's equipment was built. Anyone know how much power consumption has changed?
 
Any HEP separate car on a train just puts more load on the loco(s) traction system with the extra HEP car. + maintenance on the HEP car. They were not too reliable when used on the NEC during the transition to all HEP electric motors.. Better maintenance or the occasional shut down of loco's HEP better return.
 
The train had 2 P42's. The problem was the computer in the rear unit malfunctioned and was not allocating power to the traction motors. They were able to change the setup for HEP to come from the lead locomotive with the trailing unit traction only. This worked well enough to get into PDX 30 minutes early.
 
Our southbound Coast Starlight had problems like that last year. However, all they had to do was to turn off the A/C for about 10-15 minutes. Next time, don't use charge your iPhone while the train is climbing the hill. Draws too much power, I hear. :giggle:
We laugh, but it would be interesting to know how demands on HEP have changed in the past few years. LED lighting is much more efficient, but a train full of people charging their phones, tablets and such was certainly never contemplated when most of Amtrak's equipment was built. Anyone know how much power consumption has changed?
Your typical iPhone type charger draws around 30W.

Your typical incandescent light bulb was 25, 40 or 60W. The LED equivalent is less than 10W.

As there are easily more light bulns in a car than there are chargers in use at any time, I would guess the power drag is less than it was previously.

On the other hand the reactive power draw and phase drag caused by capacitors and things in charging bricks may be much higher, and can maybe cause the generator to overheat if the power is not filtered. I don't know what type of equipment Amtrak uses for that.
 
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The iPhone 7 draws 10 watts maximum when charging. If all 500 passengers were simultaneously charging their cell phones or tablets, it MIGHT create 5 kilowatts of electrical load on the headend power of a typical Amtrak locomotive, whose electical headend power supplier is rated at 800 kilowatts.

Bottom line: electrical usage by passenger media devices has a trival impact.

NOW, if every passenger was attempting to simultaneously blow-dry their hair, then I might get concerned... Except that the circuit breaker for the hotel power in each car would trip first.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum
 
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