That time a train powered a town - CN 3502
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- Опубліковано 7 жов 2024
- In this video, we take a look at Canadian National locomotive 3502, the engine that helped power an entire town
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There is no way a locomotive can drive itself along a road. It's wheels are too sharp and would simply carve thick grooves into the tarmac. The locomotive, however, does not care what humans think, and drives on the road anyway
Because locomotives don't care what humans think is impossible.
polar express looking at the CN diesel: *im so proud of you*
Tell that to Toby in one of the Railway Series books
That and the road and underlying ground being solidly frozen helped.
Reminds me of a quote from the first Airport movie when they powered a 707 out that had been stuck.
"The instruction book said that was impossible."
"Well there is one good thing about the 707... It can do anything but read."
I sure wish that someone would have been there to film it running down the road. That would be a very popular video
I saw photos at the time. . .
You can see it driving down the road in this news report from the time
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Don´t worry buddy, someone in the past got your back.
ua-cam.com/video/iFF4Yd06bcg/v-deo.html
If video memes were around at the time, I can imagine someone captioning 'choo choo, madafaka' onto the clip.
ua-cam.com/video/iFF4Yd06bcg/v-deo.html
"Where I'm going, I don't need rails. MY COUNTRY NEEDS ME!"
- CN 3502
Yes dc brown
Nice quote, I wonder how many will get it. I’m going back to my future now. Greetings from Cornwall.
@@exb.r.buckeyeman845 Hello from Ohio, nice to see you traveller. I hope I see you again!
@@_RandomPerson_ I’m sure our paths will cross again. Peace to you all.
on the way back, the train took a sharp turn into the sticks and chased ryan harrison several miles into the woods.
American truck drivers: we drive the biggest vehicles on the roads
Canadian train Engineers: hold my maple syrup
Lol
This is a robbery give me all your maple syrup please eh?
@@cooperthehunter3781 That's funny
@@cooperthehunter3781 Super sorry to do this to ya by the way bud, but my moose is thirsty eh.
@@cooperthehunter3781 fun fact the biggest robbery in Canadian history was in fact 18 Million dollars worth of maple syrup.
Not sure what I'm more impressed by. The fact a diesel can power a town. Or the fact a diesel can DRIVE ON THE DAMN ROAD.
Well...we've seen The Inception. :-D
tokyo driffting
Both can be surprising.
The distance that was driven on road is about 150 meters.
@@simonpoudrette going where no diesel locomotive has gone before
As someone who who works for my states department of transportation, as soon you mentioned the locomotive being driven down the road, I winced inside knowing what a vehicle weighing that much was doing to the road surface and the repairs to the roadway that it would entail. 18 wheelers are already hard enough on road surfaces. A full blown diesel locomotive? I can hear the pavement crying
Drainage grooves!😂
As an engineer, I don't care about the tarmac - but oh, those poor wheels !
;)
Especially since all the pressure is applied by a steel wheel flange, rather than 2 large tires.
Crying? More like dying. 😲
Several million in damage to the train and the road. Of course, they likely just poured some tar in the hole and called it a day.
I'm honestly blow away they were able to drive it down the road. I would think that without the tracks to guide it the trucks would rotate uncontrollably, but I guess not.
Makes sense. He did say the engines were heavy enough to make grooves in the road, effectively making makeshift tracks. The forward wheels might swivel a bit but the rest of them will just follow the grooves.
I guess once they start carving grooves into the road, they will keep going straight as the wheels sink neatly into the tracks they are making.
Have you never seen The Titfield Thunderbolt? :-D
They may have chained the trucks to the frame to prevent them from rotating.
@@PowerTrain611 Assuming they put the thing down with the trucks pointing in the right direction I doubt they could have rotated once they had dug into the road even if they'd wanted them to. It would have gone in a straight line like it was on rails... Which is quite ironic.
That storm wasn just in Boucherville, most people in Quebec did experienced this storm. 15 to 30 days without electricity. People with fireplace invited family members to there home to avoid freezing death. All the high voltage lines failed like a a house of cards with the ice storm. The train idea was great and I was also speechless to see it moving on the road. Since then the Hydro power have been improved (even if this kind of storm would still do damages) with redundancy power lines
Unsurprisingly, the ice storm of 1998 covered more than just Boucherville.
Worst affected were those in the black triangle formed of Saint-Hyacinthe, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Granby
Most of Ontario, New Brunswick, Quebec... We lived south of Ottawa when The Ice Storm of '98 hit, we were out for 16 days. The forests of all affected areas were decimated from the ice load, snapped like twigs every 30 seconds or so (at its peak).
Some places were out for weeks longer than us. I remember hearing that it took over a year afterwards to get all the rural connections back up.
Get your own grid. Few solar panels, a small windmill, buncha batteries and a solid inverter... you're set.
Miles of the main power pylons were collapsed by the ice. Not your average blackout. Worse in many ways (for the areas affected) than the 2003 grid failure.
Prepare for that to happen again. Thank the world economic forum and trudeau
I'm just impressed they were able to drive a locomotive! On a road! With no rails!
This just makes me think of that scene on the lake in the polar express more than anything else
Makes me think of Simpsons hit and run, can drive a monorail about on the road
@@trentr9762 or literally any exploded car. Those wheels looked more like train wheels than actual car rims
I thought about the train from Inception plowing through traffic
Wrongfully Accused when Leslie Neilsen was chased through the woods lol
@@trentr9762 that car commercial where they let Ray Charles drive around Bonneville salt flats
USS Lexington (CV-2) was used to supply power to Tacoma, Washington, in 1929. Bigger generators, but they weren't able to sail her down the road...
not with that attitude
*drives it down the road anyway*
I seem to recall reading somewhere that US Navy ships, especially nuclear powered ships including submarines, are explicitly designed with the capability to be used as temporary power plants in case of emergency.
The Lexington, with its massive steam-electric system, clearly set a precedent
"...but they weren't able to sail her down the road..."
That's Classified.
@@WesternOhioInterurbanHistory That's my man. XD
*proceeds to throw the starboard(?) anker to make a right hand turn*
@@Vespuchian basically all modern warships are designed with this feature in mind for when they are assigned to disaster recovery efforts. They can pull into ports and basically act as a floating power station. Even a small destroyer has a large enough powerplant aboard to power nearly 1000 homes, or more importantly, a full sized hospital.
Every day since childhood I just kept finding more and more reasons to love trains.
AAAAAND NOW THERES ANOTHER REASON.
Love the choice of music you always use btw. Great stuff.
Are you that guy from "I like trains" song?
@@igninis .... y e s
2 more reasons infact
@@TheOnePhun211 I bet you're subscribed to Adam Something, too.
I retired from a local electric company and we had many "peaking" units that were GM diesel power plants. basically a train with no wheels. Even said on cowling GM diesel locomotive.
Formerly built in London, Ontario in the sprawling GM diesel complex.
After the GMD/GDLS split in 2003, the train plant (now called electromotive) was still open for several years. I worked at the GDLS plant for a time just before the electromotive plant closed, and it was absolutely astounding to see how big those locomotives were up close, and seeing them in various stages of completion (mostly just needing paint or the odd panel here or there) when they finally made it outside. Their finished product lines were visible from one of the designated smoking areas in our plant. Even after I quit smoking, I still used to find myself outside just looking at the locomotives like I was a 5 year old again. Lol.
There are still a number of folks I know and work with that were welders/mechanical assemblers/maintenance guys in the electromotive plant, and they have some really neat stories.
@@HerculesRockefellerESQ I commissioned a couple SD70's out of London at the end. There where so many problems. I'm 23 years locomotive electrician. Done a lot of ZTR work that's also out of London.
im working in a company that turns ship engines into powerplants that burn trash gas or pyrolysis fuel made from old tyres, those machines make enough power to run a city
@@theodorethompson9032 as a "regular" electrician, I'm curious how they were able to obtain the right voltage to power the grid, what voltage do these locomotives operate at?
@@JamesSimmons They operate on a variable range starting at high current low voltage and ramping up to high voltage low current as the engine works harder and accelerates the train. 1200 volts would be the typical upper voltage limit, and several thousand amps would be the typical current upper limit. The A/C frequency would vary as well since they use a variable frequency drive system to run the electric traction motors.
Because of all of this, I would expect it would be relatively simple for a locomotive maintenance person / mechanic to configure a desired power output profile that matches normal grid power and and have the engine regulate / maintain that level. Since you'd be hard limiting voltage to a lower 120/240 volts, your output would just be limited by amperage.
In the brutal winter of 1978, a Ford plant in Michigan (I don’t remember which one) leased two Union Pacific U50’s from GE & powered the entire plant w/them. They’d been traded to GE on new power, & had two 2500 HP engines each. The story was in Extra 2200 South Magazine in the Spring 1979 issue.
Never knew that. Cool article 😁
I also remembered reading about this.
That winter was pretty epic! We had a few in the mid/late 70’s.
This often happened in the 70's in the US as well, various manufacturing plants would borrow a locomotive or two from the railroad that served them to provide power when there were issues with the power grid due to storms or whatnot. The railroads who were almost always in (or bordering on) bankruptcy at the time were happy to make some quick cash.
This actually happened in Sri Lanka during the Civil war. Class M2 engine number 570 "Alberta" was trapped in Jaffna and was used by the terrorists to power their camps in the region. However, it was later saved by the armed forces and is still being used today. It happened in the 90s.
Whaddya know, an engine named after a Canadian province does the same thing as these Canadian engines. Coincidence?
@@thestarlightalchemist7333 Maybe a coincidence. Maybe not :P. This class of locomotives were given to Sri Lanka under a so called "The Colombo Plan". So to show appreciation, the CGR (Ceylon Government Railway) named 12 out of 14 locomotives with states of Canada. Fun fact (not so fun), one of the locomotives got caught in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. But it was later reconstructed and returned to the same place and time, hauling the same train 5 years later. 13 are still working, even after almost 70 years in service. 1 was destroyed due to a landmine during the war.
@@grundalwalfe4463 I heard about that. The engine didn’t only provide power to the LTT camps, a few buildings in the local village were powered too, not just the ones under Tamil tiger control.
@@MFKR696 one I know their called LTTE but my parents always called it LTT, not sure why but I call it that by a force of habit. Two the Tamil Tiger thing was my bad, accidentally spelled wrong. And my source isn’t google. It my parents and their family. They lived in Jaffna during the war and had first hand experience. They told me stories of what happened and that how I know what I know. The LTTE weren’t saints but neither was the government, when Tamil Eelam and the LTT abandoned Jaffna the Train was still used for sometime by nearby villager to power part of a decimated village, until reconstruction was started.
@@MFKR696 just to be clear I am not touting my self as a “expert” I just repeating a story that was told to me. It could be wrong so don’t take what I say as fact, but I trust my parents’ family members saw what they saw.
That town is a well-oiled machine all working together in a pinch. You got the locomotive guys, the crane operator geniuses and all the electrical whizzes to plug the damn thing in All working together to make it happen.
I was there...in 1998 the 3 ice storms dropped 6" of ice over everything. I watched as thousand's of trees and power poles came crashing down. We had no power for 4 weeks in the dead of a Canadian winter. Roads were impassible ..food was scarce in grocery stores. No water in our home. It was the worst thing I ever went through. And it's pronounced BOO-SHER-VILL not butcherville.
Spelled Boucherville?
@@andyharman3022 Yes, spelled that way. It is a French name. In English, Bouchertown😁
jeez they really butchered that.
Mike Mitchell I remember that Storm We went up North to Camp to open up a Road connecting to the other Camps . 100 man hours for 2.5 miles of cutting our way thru . We were not hit as hard as you were . We ran into convoys of trucks from power Companies headed North to fix the lines . A truck with a Generator from the National Guard would go from Farm to Farm so they could run the Milk House for 2 hours . You Lived it and I only Saw it . It was Brutal any way that you spell it . Set dub Terrible ?
Just to clarify, the ice storms in 1998 affected alot more than 1000's. The mpacted persons were will into the millions including no small number in the U.S.. While some areas of Quebec arguably took the brunt of it, my area of Ottawa was without power for over a week. Total mess.
I was in Boucherville in 1998. That idea save the municipal office from darkness.
The grooves in the road remain for many years after that.
The city have a plate to commemorate that event on this street corner.
A couple of reminders, eh?
Hey Simon, that's the street name? I kind of want to go see that now!
@@elises.1588 Corner Rivière-aux-pins and Montarville
Back in the 1970's I worked at a power station where one of our Alternator exciters broke down rendering the 100MW machine un serviceable. We borrowed a diesel loco from British Rail and parked it on the station loading bay, still on the tracks to run as an emergency exciter.
Where was this?
@@martinhow121 Aberthaw Power Station late 60's
Same thing happened at West Thurrock on the Thames but the loco (a class47) had its bogies removed and sat on wooden blocks
I think somebody made a video about this and it can be found here on youtube.
I think I remember seeing a picture of a Class 47 being used to provide excitation for an alternator. Guess it was Aberthaw. I assumed it generated DC for traction motors so could provide DC to excite an alternator set. Where I worked we normally used smaller alternators and a rectifier bank to provide excitation.
"Doc there isn't any rails"
"Rails? Where we are going...we won't need rails"
Long as the loco dose not need to turn.... Rails are not needed... The train wheels are in a shape of a r... Most of the weight pressing down would be top of the r and the lower half of the r is so they can push on the inside of the track, and as the track bends that pivots the wheel carriage to fallow along the rail....
3:11 The winter of 1998 was an exceptional circumstance for Quebec, the power grid here is among the best in the world and yet it could absolutely not cope with literal mountains of ice building up on high-voltage powerlines, leading to catastrophic damage. These lines span thousands of kilometers to the massive hydro dams in the north, it's hard to overstate how severe the damage was. The fact that they managed to fix it in just a few weeks is astounding, but it is a remainder that this might very well happen again
I just wanna point out how clever using "Flying BATTERY" throughout this video was.
Ahh that's the one!
OOOOOH I just got that.
I belive some Norfolk Southern units are equipped with proper electrics to actually be used as a stationary generator in bad weather.
Mostly the proper Southern locomotives are. It done that way because of the whole every year we have a set of natural disasters roll throughout the southeast. The railroads are normally the first ones in after the fact along with the various linemen for the power companies.
Any of the newer AC locomotives would be easier to hook up to the grid than the DC driven units with alternators... With the AC traction you can run the prime mover at full power and set the variable frequency drive to output 60 Hz at a specific voltage and plug that into a transformer to get the power into the grid.
On the older DC drives, you'd have to match the engine speed to get 60Hz out of the alternator like a conventional generator set... at least on EMD locomotives they were usually set to 900 RPM at full power so it would produce 60Hz like an 8 pole generator would. I say usually because some of the bigger later units maxed out at 950 or even 1050 RPM, but I think they had AC traction drives, so it wouldn't matter as much. I'd really have to look to see which ones would be capable of what.
@@kleetus92 kleetus, your comment is awesome, my dad was a truck, big rig lover and I was a hoghead with 40 years of service and he always told me about how railroad engines dont work hard because they dont produce the rpm’s and last forever and I would tell him how I just hauled a 200 trailers on a 100 car train and your truckers run around tired and sleeping along the highway just pulling one trailer, we use to laugh~~~>>>ms~~~
@@kleetus92 When I saw the comments about derating to 375 kW, my immeditate thought was "Modern frequency conversion electronics should have allowed that thing to go to full power with a good enough inverter". You reminded me that the motor controllers are exactly that...
@@Entropy512 375kW is only 500 HP... so I'm not sure where they're getting that power number... that locomotive itself should be 4400 HP, or roughly 2.2 Megawatt...
It’s really crazy how the locomotive actually drove on the road & still successfully made it to the area where it needed to be plugged in to power the town. You’d think each of the bogies would often go in a different direction. So I bet they’d use a crane to help it straighten the bogies and help make it turn when it had to.
Yes
technically only the lead would ever need to be adjusted if that was the case. because as the wheels of the lead truck carved into the ground, the trailing truck would just follow because the carved grooves wouldve acted as makeshift rails.
@@MasterOfTruck Ah, makes sense.
@@1_railfan hi Railfan#1
@@MasterOfTruck even then there are no external forces trying to turn the locomotive. The rear wheels of the lead truck would also hold the front wheels straight
I live there (Boucherville), and today in 2021 we can still see the marks the wheels made in the road!!
Btw, they did not “power” a neighborhood, but only the town hall, that was used as an emergency response center
Yeah, the Ivory towers always make sure they get taken care of first. The peasants? Let them eat cake!
@@randydicotti3975 how do you expect the authorities to do anything without power? lol
@@TheKnobCalledTone. Pen, pencil, flag signals, but maybe they should not get in the way of citizens that try to deal with s*it that happened in part due to long term interference of authorities and mismanagement from their part.
@@MrToradragon Ah yes, use a pen to organize medical help for the citizens, what are you gonna write on citizens to keep 'em warm?... Imagine hating the government so much that when they try to help you still try to turn it into something bad xD
The Alaska Railroad literally has a siding next to their HQ buildings specifically to roll a locomotive onto to run the facility if the power goes out. Some of their locomotives have equipment installed specifically to make this connection safe and easy to make.
they’re passenger locomotives so it’s part of their job to provide power for electricity…
Back in the 1980s (can’t remember exactly what year), they did this after a winter ice storm took down all the powerlines supplying our very small Montana town. The railroad offered the use of one of their locomotives which kept the town going for a couple days until the lines were fixed. But they didn’t drive it on the road, the tracks were close enough to where they need to tie in to the grid. The engine just sat there more or less idling and it worked great.
Crazy how they can power a whole neighborhood and it doesn't even push them past high idle
This more common than you might think. In the UK Class 47 47 155 was taken by road to West Thurrock powervstation in Essex. The CEGB asked BR if it could provide a temporary stationary generator set while a serious fault on one of their auxiliary generators was fixed. Stratford depot duly obliged. 47 155, with buffers and bogies removed was transported on a Pickfords low-loader on the night of 8th/9th January 1976. Whilst in use at the power station the route code was set to '1240' indicating (presumably) the hp output from the locomotives main generator. It remained there until April 1976 powering the power station. This locomotive, which entered service with BR on 1st July 1964, is still in use on the mainline network as 47 815 with the Rail Operations Group.
I live near a CN yard and this got me thinking. There's a rail that goes right behind a small hospital nearby. So, I suppose in case of a major power outage, they could do the same thing without damaging the ground or the train. That's quite cool!
Most all hospitals have dedicated diesel powered back up plants… larger hospitals use EMD locomotive type engines, or GE, or caterpillar, etc.
Amazingly in event of a power failure from city utilities, these diesels fire up and run at full throttle immediately, no chance for a real warm up minute… imagine start your car, cold, hit the highway floored with AC on, expecting full performance, in the first few seconds (many people do that anyway)
@@vwecco1 Large generators that would be found in places like hospitals, generally have block And sometimes coolant heaters that keep the engines warm at all times to ensure they start and accept the load within 10 seconds of power loss.
@@mtmmac1 Yes or sometimes they have indirect heating - by placing them indoors!
@@vwecco1 although they normally also have battery backup that steps in without even a millisecond of power losss.
One thing you all must remember, is we lost power for up to TWO MONTHS. 3/4 of the entire power grid powering Montreal, the south shore and Laval failed. Miles and miles of collapsed high-tension, long distance metal structures, the kind you see between cities on the side of highways that are hundreds of feet tall, all collapsed. I was 10 at the time, and still remember it vividly.
I imagine a generator in a hospital is not meant to run indefinitely..
So not only did the train power the town, it also drove down a road. Now that's just showing off.
bro could you imagine seeing that thing when you go out side and it starts drifting
2:00 the one and only offroad train. That is awesome and i wish there was video of it.
this happened in my town. i remember this well. CN was happy to do it and it was free publicity.
I'm far more amazed that they drove them down the road than I am about using them to power a town
I'm Canadian, and I remember seeing this on the news. Really interesting watching it drive down the street on TV.
0:30 The engines output horsepower is literally its output in watts divided by 746. Therefore a 2000 HP engine X 746 = 1,492,000 watts minus any inefficiencies.
On locomotive like those,
we use the calculation like this :
Hp x 700W.
That's a way To expect the Power output, considering the energy loose into the air compressor driving, the Auxiliary Power for control, and the cooling fan etc.
I remember the ice storm of 1998, and seeing a picture of this locomotive in a magazine with a story about this storm. There were some smart, resourceful people who thought of doing that. The idea of running it on the road is also interesting. Up until now I thought it was towed there.
I read that magazine story and literally dismissed it as a cleverly inserted April Fool's joke. It was 20 years before I looked it up and realized it was true!
I was hired by the Canadian army to haul a Caterpillar containerized generator (30 tons)to Montreal from the cat dealer in Vancouver 3 days non stop for the same ice storm
@@bradjames6748 Thank you. My best friend was living in Montreal during the ice storm. You helped save lives for sure.
@@bradjames6748 That is nuts! Hope ya were rewarded with a nice, cozy bed afterward. Three days of driving is brutal, and I doubt the treacherous road conditions were any help.
Using the Flying Battery Zone theme from Sonic & Knuckles in the outro was just genius!
I watching and hearing the music qnd was like i heard it before and got a flashback of myself sitting down super close to the tv playing sega.
IIRC there are also Cases where (old) Electric Locomotives have been used as improvised Substations, as they are "glorified Transformers on Wheels", at least in AC Systems. Most AC Railways use either 15 or 25 kV, while the Traction Motors usually run on only a few hundred Volts, so you can get a useful Voltage from it. 15 kV might produce "interesting Results" in some Applications though, as 15 kV Systems have a very low Frequency of only 16 2/3 Hz.
And I said "Old Locomotives", because they control the Traction Motor Speed by adjusting the Voltage fed to them. Modern Locomotives have Synchronous Motors instead of Series Motors, so they are controlled by adjusting the Frequency fed to them. They also run on higher Voltage than your typical 110/220/380/440 V Systems.
Transformers can run at higher frequency with negligible issues, they just get a bit less efficient typically due to higher lossees from inducing current in the thicker laminate of the lower-frequency core.
Also, many locomotives these days here in Europe are designed to handle the different grids which include typically everything from 15.7 Hz 15 kV to 50 Hz 25 kV.
Thank you! I was scanning through the comments to see how on earth they were arriving at a voltage where they could tap into an existing transformer.
Brings back memories. I lived in Boucherville in the early 60s and working for CN in the 90s I was sent to the via main station to repair a steam generator car that was being used to heat the entire station as it's system was down. I was successful.
Hey! I remember that! It’s was quite crazy. The entire electrical grid in this region had collapse under more than 4 inches of freezing rain. It wasn’t only Boucherville but around 3 millions people who were affected to different level. I don’t think that anybody is more prepared today than at that time. It was such an exceptional situation that required exceptional measures.
"...Most places have upgraded their connections to the power grids..." Texas: Lemme stop you right there...
To be fair, most of Texas isn't expecting a *blizzard.* Like, people didn't even know how to insulate their outdoor water spigots. Many of the affected homes had pipes bursting *in the walls* because the insulation wasn't suited for below freezing conditions. Few people who've lived in Texas their whole lives even know what winterizing a house entails. And all that is just about the water grid. Power infrastructure also requires some element protection. That on top of the fact that running a power grid is a delicate balancing act in general. Texas isn't suited for blizzards, neither the people nor the objects.
Texas had followed the green movement and has more wind power than any other state. The majority of these windmills failed during the deep freeze. The other side to it is that Texas spent the last 30 years transitioning almost all new construction to electrical heat from gas furnaces.
When the temperatures dropped so drastically, the heat was mostly electric and the wind power supply failed, the grid was over taxed and failed as well.
People are just not given the little details when these things happen because it’s not in the interest of the prevalent political message.
The problem is that ideology and physics don’t always agree. Physics wins every time.
Texas has always been connected to the rest of the national power grid. It shares/sells/buys electricity all the time. During the deep freeze, nobody had surplus so there was none to get. The connections exist. The supply was just not there.
@@blisterbill8477 I wanna be clear, I had no intention of making statements politically or otherwise (intentionally). Your comment is educational and did make me think a bit, which is always good. Thanks.
@@propermods2849
I laughed. It was funny.
Most people don’t realize that it wasn’t the grid. It was the supply change and the load change that caused the overall problem.
@@blisterbill8477 Are you sure about the wind turbines failing? Thought they only supplied about 10% of all electricity in state.
They saying "going off the rails" takes on a whole new meaning!!
This time their doing in intentionally
If I remember, it didn't power "the whole town" it simply powered the local hospital who's backup generator froze up, and maybe one or two local government buildings. They dont out out *that* much electricity, much less at the proper and consistent voltage.
Very true! They are not much different than the generators that they now package inside semi trailers. Possibly slightly larger.
375kw @ 60hz. At least that's what they said in the video.
During the ice storm of '98, much of Vermont's power grid was torn down by ice as well. I had heard a rumor that the folks up in Quebec had derailed an engine to power a hospital and I was impressed with the ingenuity. I couldn't find a generator anywhere, thankfully my natural gas heat didn't need power and I had gravity feed water. I bought a 5KW generator a year later and haven't been without one since.
I am blown away when a train can power a town, these videos are just mind-blowing, and so more amazing and educational, keep up the great work, you never fail to impress me
Its an “engine” by railroad operating rules a train is an engine with one or more cars displaying a marker on the rear…..take a deep breath and say “engine”, locomotive is its technical term…..railroaders will thank you….😉
myth.
"How much power...nobody really knows..." THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE LOCOMOTIVE KNOW. They are actually referred to as 'diesel-electric' for a reason.
Sir, did you watch the video? NO ONE KNOWS!
Imagine driving home from the grocery store, stop at a red light, and see a CN locomotive rolling across the intersection.
(Cue deep-fried Thomas the Tank Engine theme song)
What fantastic "out of the box" thinking. I hope that mayor got some sort of award.
2 stories spring to my mind, the first, during engine start on a Vulcan bomber aircraft the local area suffered a power cut. With 2 engines already running the aircraft actually started to supply the grid with power!
The second, during a power cut in the city of Hull, UK a nuclear sub was connected up to the grid and used its reactor to power the city.
That was a great story thanks for sharing! Back when times were much simpler, no facebook youtube twitter. Fun times!
In the 80s (I think), there was an occasion when a British CEGB power station used a diesel locomotive to stand in for a failed exciter on a large turbo-alternator. I have forgotten the details about which power station it was, but I think the loco may have been a "Peak". There were photos of it in "Power News"
I've done a quick Google search, but I cannot find anything so far to give more info. Perhaps another viewer may remember the event.
I remember it well! We were affected by the same storm in January, 1998. Hundreds of miles away from Boucherville.
That's a true story, I was there and the damage to the power grid was tremendous. Some areas were out of electricity for a month. One thing though, the vehicle used was a locomotive, not a train which is the stuff that comes behind it. Thanks for thanks memory.
My father worked for Canadian Pacific in eastern Ontario during that time. He worked the first week of the emergency before he got bumped due to lack of seniority even though he had between 25-30 years in at that point. I do remember CP doing this as well for certain communities as well. They showed some pictures of their engines powering communities with engines just off of crossings on the road in the company newsletter back then. Even though my father only worked in that sub for the first week he still got a glass cube from the railroad for working during the emergency.
This has also been done at least once in the UK. I can't remember the dates, but I believe late 70's, in South Wales? A loco was taken by rail as close to the rail served building as possible and hooked into the system. It was reported in BR's own news paper with photos. I was employed by BR at the time and remember the story.
Should of done that again for the last 3 storms....
Fascinating, I had no idea that a locomotive like that could even move if off the rails.
1:40 Now I'm reminded of poor Smudger.
A similar thing happened in Auckland, NZ when during a long drought all underground mains cables into the city centre failed and it took months to repair. They took one of the Cook Strait ferries into Auckland harbour and connected its massive generators to the grid in the CBD. One rail line was closed and a temporary power line contructed along the corridor.
This worked because the ferry was diesel-electric generating three phase 3.3kV (I think) 50Hz at nominal full speed and a suitable transformer to feed into the 11kV or 22kV network happened to be available. Even despite this, as well as the use of portable generators and installation of 'easy' interconnects, much of the CBD was without power for some weeks. It was a CBD problem only, the suburbs, the airport and the main hospital were not affected. The rail line was only closed while linemen were building the temporary line (two 110kV circuits on poles - fortunately there was sufficient materials in NZ to build the line at short notice). Fortunately too the line could also be built through a disused single track rail tunnel (with the ends fenced off). That tunnel ran parallel to a newer two track tunnel.
To me this idea is absolutely brilliant. I remember my father telling me how he calculated that the diesel engine in his car, being above 70KW of energy output, could be used as core of a power plant to generate heat and electricity for our street with relatively low cost.
Today, with modern heatpumps, this would be even more efficient, up to 6 times more compared to direct electric heating. The exhaust heat being captured will get you way over the ~25% efficiency the engine has from fuel to output shaft.
Reliable as diesel engines are, this setup could easily run for years, being way more effective than burning oil directly in central heating systems.
If shit hits the fan I'd certainly immediately propose something similar in my neighborhood. Biggest challenge is the piping and getting hands on a good electric generator. That's why these huge diesel electric motors in the US and Canada are practically designed to be repurposed. Only run water through them, wire them to the grid and your done.
Great video and I'm happy UA-cam recommended it.
You can buy an inverter for your car. It clips to the battery and produces 120 Volt 60 Hz power, obtaining its power from the alternator. Some make a sine wave of sufficient quality to power electronics. You can find them under camping supplies. The low-end ones start at $200.
It seems to me that with a little clever planning, any town with a railroad _through_ it could, potentially, build a siding or two at the point nearest critical emergency services that is nothing but a rump siding where a diesel-electric locomotive could be pulled-up to, have engineers fiddle with it to decouple the drive train and hook it up to the buildings, and be used as an emergency generator.
An even better idea, I think, would be to do exactly that, but instead of using a full-fat loco, you could just bring in a generator on a flatbed railcar preconfigured to act as a stationary emergency power supply with a "tender" containing diesel fuel, drop it off, and let it go until the emergency has passed and it can be collected again.
Or, each important building could just have its own backup generator.......
@@majorphysics3669 That's actually a worse idea by far.
See, the thing is, backup generators _aren't_ something you can buy once, stick in a shed along with a tank of fuel, and then forget about them until they're needed. They need _maintenance,_ they need to be run every now and then, fuel goes off if just left sitting for too long; _all of this adds up to a recurring maintenance cost._
It's also the _first_ cost that gets slated for "deferred maintenance" by beancounters because "why are we paying for upkeep on a generator we never need?" The result is that maintenance for the backup generators gets deferred and deferred and deferred until such time as either it finally gets looked at and _holy crap the expense_ of the _intensive repairs required_ to bring it up to spec just blows everyone away and the beancounters decide not to do it, or worse, they just scrap it.
Or, it becomes necessary, and someone tries to fire the backup generator up, and it doesn't work _or worse,_ because it hasn't been maintained in ten years.
Meanwhile, a railroad siding in a strategic place is _basically_ a one-and-done expense. Not _entirely,_ but it's a lot cheaper to maintain a siding and perhaps a shed over that siding, and a single/few track switches. Then when you need emergency power, you can just hire/rent/beg one in from the train company, who can back a generator (whether on a flatbed or just an actual locomotive) into your siding/shed, hook it up to your power grid, and let it run; not only letting it run, but should it need to stay in place for awhile, they can actually bring in a tank full of fuel for it by rail as well.
Flying Battery.... too perfect! Love your song choices.
Interrsting engaging and short. Lovely channel and pleasant topic's. Thank you!
O had a good spit take with my coffee when you said driven to the town hall. I love it!
I found this one in r/trains about a month ago, still can’t believe it!
I honestly never knew thats how trains worked.
Learn something new everyday 😊
*”They turned him into a generator he still there behind our shed he will never move again”*
I lived through the ice storm however I don't remember it. My parents said we had to stay at a hotel with a backup generator somewhere on the west island of Montreal which is just across the river from Boucherville. I remember hearing about the locomotive story whilst in High School. I also remember our 1995 Dodge Grand Caravan in that green color. Good nostalgia, nice video!
I work at a locomotive repair facility. We have the ability to power the shop off a locomotive too. Haven't seen it done since I been here but seen where you can hook one up at
It actually surprises me more that this is the first time i've heard of someone using a DE loco as a generator.
I thought it was so obvious that it would have been done countless times in the past.
And the fact they had to bring it off the rails too! If i were the mayor in that town, after that event, i would have made provisions to connect locomotives to the power grid from the tracks directly.
The comment that no one has tried to see how much electrical power a locomotive can make isn't exactly true. Matter of fact a large number of dedicated emergency generators are made using locomotive engines. The MLW M-420 uses an ALCO 251C power plant which has been implemented into multiple critical load application generators throughout the 70s. They are rated for 2000kw of power which is more than enough to run a small town. EMDs are also used for generators around the world varying power for each configuration.
The Sears Tower in Chicago has four EMD 16-645E3’s in the sub-basement.
I think you mean 2,000 horsepower, not 2,000 kilowatts. Kilowatts are a measure of electrical power from a generator (DC) or alternator (AC) while horsepower in the case of locomotives is a measurement of the prime mover's output - the cylinders turning the crankshaft and creating torque.
The MLW M420 is actually rated for 2,400 hp despite the 4 being absent from the locomotive model designation. They use a GE GTA17 generator to provide power to the traction motors, which under no natural circumstances will ever produce 2,000 kw.
@@burdizdawurd1516Official that's precisely what I mean. The application in question is electrical power output which is 2megawatt for an average 251c. Which ironically nearly matches the horse power. This isn't common however, the 251c is a 900rpm motor so it's driving an 8pole generator making a higher proportion of torque to HP.
From what I know, older diesel-electric locomotives have DC generators which are connected to DC motors in the bogies and their output voltage depends on rpm of the diesel. Modern diesel-electric locos have 3-phase AC generators with power electronics between them and asynchronous AC motors.
I think that an older loco with DC generator cannot be connected to 3-phase 60Hz grid without an inverter.
An AC generator can be connected to the grid through a transformer, but it requires very specific rpm of the diesel to have exactly 60Hz, otherwise an inverter is required too.
I was thinking the same - the theoretical power output of such an engine and generator is quite simple, every locomotive has a power rating. The question would be how much of that power could be delivered to a power grid? Probably only a portion, due to several factors, and these might be variable given circumstances, so the answer in the end would be "it depends." For one thing, the engine and generator system isn't designed to deliver power at the desired voltage and frequency, so to do so (and not completely destroy what it's trying to power) it might only be able to put out a portion of its rated power. For another, the connection they're using to the grid might not be able to handle the locomotive's full power capability. Neither of these are the case with the stationary generators you describe, where the engine, generator, and connection to the grid are all designed for that purpose, are compatible with each other.
Wow I just googled the weight of a locomotive engine.. 210-220 tons! Holy crap that’s heavy. Thing is a beast, amazing video thank you.
The heavier the loco, the more traction it has.
The event you referenced was the 1998 Ice Storm where 30cm of freezing rain (yes, centimetres) fell over the course of several days throughout much of eastern Ontario and southern Quebec. It was the most damaging weather event experienced in Canadian history.
Also, Boucherville is pronounced “boo-sher-ville
“boo-shay-veel” might get him even closer.
@@ericssmith2014 No, it's pronounced “boo-sher-ville", and the 'sher' is pronounced like Cher, as in Sonny and Cher. Of course in English, one could easily confuse it and pronounce it as Sonny and Chair.
Locomotives have been used many times in UK to provide the power excite the turbo alternators at power stations when the auxiliary alternator had failed . We had a class 56 to power out depo during power cuts in 1970s , we used power off Aux alternator as it was enough . We use to load bank locos ie disconnect traction motors and power a resister bank , first one was steam loco tender with steel plates hung in water then we got what was basically a massive fan heater (could absorb 4'000hp ) . As for driving loco on road would think good strong road would take it , we use to get derailments on coal loading pads and our locos often went quite far just rolling on coal . They left marks in coal that looked just like the rail , driver's often remarked they road quite well on the coal ,we use to drive them back to the rail , very little damage was done to loco
I wanna dive one of my loco's down the street! What a badass experience for that crew. That would have been equal parts hilarious and awesome.
I once had a dream where an EMP attack shut off the biggest power stations in the USA. Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX, CN, and Amtrak sent over as many diesels as possible to as many power plants as possible. They were plugged into the grid, set to notch 8 with all unnecessary breakers switched off, and that provided enough power to enough people for enough time to restart the stations.
Sounds like a plot out of Jericho!
The unfortunate truth of reality, however, is that large scale EMP attack wouldn't significantly affect the generating stations, but instead affect the lines themselves due to their length, and cause anything attached to them to blow or trip out. You'd end up in a situation where everything that can trip out has done so, and where some of the things that couldn't have failed into a short circuit. You'd end up with a black grid in only a few seconds.
@@user2C47 and a million fried transformers, large and small.
@@rearspeaker6364 Short pulses like that will rarely damage transformers. And the shorted loads will trip out the breakers, The initial job is to just shut off or unplug all the loads then reset the breakers to get power on.
Then have engineers and technicians go out and check all the millions of loads to see what will work OK. Incandescent light bulbs will either be burned out or they will be fine. They will not be shorted.
As for everything else, a simple protection rig made out of an incandescent light bulb and a toggle switch issued to each person checking things can be used to see which other loads can be safely connected. Where I worked we made such protection rigs on all our benches when firing up newly built amplifiers.
The bulb was put in series with the amp and would limit inrush current if there was something wrong by lighting up brightly. If it glowed tor a second and went dim, we bypassed the bulb with the toggle switch and carried on. If it stayed bright we would send the amp to a tech for diagnosis.
Man I was little but I remember that... The Icestorm(s) of January '98 froze Quebec & New England solid for weeks. Good on them for that idea.
It's literaly in the spec sheet of an engine how much energy they can produce. Given that it had an 2000hp engine that is 1490kW, give it an low ball estimate of 90% efficiency to electric power and it has 1341kW of electrical power output. So asking 375kW output isn't that hard for it to do, it's harder to get to 60Hz. That means the generator has to run at 3600RPM
Maybe they where somehow able to get 60hz from running the engine at 900rpm? (Full throttle?)
No way those engines can achieve that rpm without self destructing.
@@thegeforce6625 8-pole generator will give 60Hz at 900 rpm
The theoretical power output of such an engine and generator is quite simple, every locomotive has a power rating. The question would be how much of that power could be delivered to a power grid? Probably only a portion, due to several factors, and these might be variable given circumstances, so the answer in the end would be "it depends." For one thing, the engine and generator system isn't designed to deliver power at the desired voltage and frequency, so to do so (and not completely destroy what it's trying to power) it might only be able to put out a portion of its rated power. For another, the connection they're using to the grid might not be able to handle the locomotive's full power capability.
@@thegeforce6625 that generator design should get 60hertz at about 800 rpm.
Comment #1. I live in Maine. I remember those ice storms. Everyone lost power. My family was lucky. We only lost it for 4 days. I lived on a hill top with an FAA radio beacon and 2 cell phone towers on it, so on the 4th morning I woke up to the Maine Army National Guard clearing the roads so the power company could restore power. Most people in my area had no power for more like 7 to 10 days. The people who lived in really rural houses were out for over 2 weeks. This one family I knew who lived in a small island on in a local pond that you got to down a long road and a ford had no power for over a month.
We were living in Topsham when that storm hit. Lucky Brunswick has its' own hydro dam on the Androscoggin river. When the power went down, they disconnected from the grid & so had electricity. We ate dinner in the restaurants over there for a week.
I was working at a company that had a rail spur for tanker cars where the rails spread apart due to rotted ties and they brought in a side boom lift to pick up the cars enough to temp in the rail under them and roll them away and replace all the ties.
While talking to the owner of the Side boom (Think tracked bulldozer with no blade but a tilting lift crane on the side used primarily for pipeline work) told us that as soon as he left us he was driving to New Orleans. He and 3 other Side boom rigs were going to pick up an Engine and walk it 11 miles (I think, been a long time ago) to use as a power supply for a hospital after Hurricane Katrina.
That's what the guy said. Now as to if this actually happened I don't know but would make another interesting video along this idea if you could verify it.
11 miles? That's a long journey by this method! I've seen videos of transporting a locomotive in this manner (bringing an SD35 or something into the Colorado Railroad Museum if I remember right, a few blocks down the street from a nearby crossing), so I know what you're describing. But 11 miles? I'd think for that they'd load it onto a low-boy semi trailer or something.
@@quillmaurer6563 floodwaters remember? A tracked vehicle can go a lot of places.
@@sadwingsraging3044 Ah, true - damaged or flooded roads would add another element of challenge to that. Sounds like a quite interesting story actually, a desperate effort to keep people alive using whatever means necessary and whatever was available.
Yea, well guess what, the railroad operator are not responsible for the maintenance on customers sidings so guess who paid for that boom and the extra cost for those cars occupying their siding…..that was an expensive day for that industry….
@@mshum538 yup. My friend was in charge of buildings and grounds which the rails were a part of. He told them about the track deterioration that needed to be done _before_ the derailment.
You know how highly educated business people are so they obviously ignored him. He grinned as he laid the receipt for the Side Boom and work to temp in the track and move the cars off right beside the receipt for tearing it all apart again and replacing about 250 feet of track.
His smile was the average Joe twisting the _'Stupid Boomerang'_ he just happened to find lodged in the back side of the skull of the hyper educated business class elite he had to deal with.😂
Those engines produce so much juice it truly is amazing it can actually power probably a much larger town even some small cities
00:39 If only there was a way to tell how much power a locomotive was rated to produce. Some predetermined scale that could be used to describe the performance. Let's call it something unusual, I dunno, horsepower or megawatts. Then would could say this locomotive is rated at 2000 HP or 4.5MW. Wouldn't that be a spectacular idea. Then we'd have a pretty good undestanding of what would happen when we limit the govenor such that the alternator produces 60Hz (or 50Hz where appropriate) and tweak the field current to produce the desired voltage we'd know pretty much where the power production would be. It's not as if EMD actually does all this already with the stationary versions of their diesels that drive generators already ..... oh wait. They do.
The winter storm of 1997, I will never forget it. And anyone else who was living in Quebec at the time. It was something
#diesel green energy! Got to love the billows of smoke that poured out of that engine while putting out all that green energy!
This event is actually not uncommon in 3rd world countries. I've heard of it at least once or twice before. Great video!
I have a new bucket list item of driving a train... down a road! 🤣🤣🤣
Great vid thanks! 😃
You should do a video on 73050 being used in 1970 (I think) as a source of steam for the British sugar plant in Peterborough
Actually I recall seeing ads from EMD (?) about portable power units that were basically the generator and power unit of a locomotive. There was a power failure in a Quincy MA subway station. I thought it rather odd they had no way to tap the third rail power in an emergency. Trains were running on third rail power but the Station itself was dark.
You can blame Edison vs Tesla for that, the third rail is 750 volts DC but all the lights in the station are AC. London Underground actually did run some heavier equipment like elevators and drainage pumps off the third rail.
I lived through that ice storm in northern NY. We had intermittent power as they shut the power off during the day to work on lines and restored power at night so we could heat. Some areas were entirely without power day and night until their connections were restored. Work lasted for months. Cars were not allowed to drive over downed lines because they were fiber optic which can't be spliced, but if damaged the whole length of line would have to be replaced; so the road would be closed to traffic until the company could get the poles replaced and the line back up on it. Every street, every road had lines down and trees laying on lines bringing power to ground. There used to be a video on here from my own town that I can't find anymore, a great arc jumped off the line at one pole, dove into the ground and came up two poles down and jumped back into the wires! and guys joked about it like they saw it happen every day. Since then, the utility company had kept the trees trimmed away from wires and they've replaced all old power poles -they had to since most of them broke anyway. All the cause was the power poles were well passed their prime and should have been replaced long before, or the lines could have born the weight of the ice except where the trees bent and lay down on the lines also. We measured about 2 ft of ice accumulation on our roof and just a little more than that on the flat ground. Trees breaking off sounded like shotgun fire and the great branches of our black walnut speared into the frozen ground we removed in the spring had penetrated five inches deep after going through all that ice!
It's a shame we don't have any actual video of it driving down the road
Footage from that day.... ua-cam.com/video/iFF4Yd06bcg/v-deo.html
0:28 this one is one display at Nation museum Exporail in St-Constant. I'm French Canadian and went many time there
In the 1970’s I was studying logistics with US ARMY. There were field manual (FM) documents for using diesel locomotives to power emergency field hospitals. For small towns similar to the one mentioned in this UA-cam video it may make sense to add rail spurs into local power grid substations with emergency power connections between locomotives and grid.
3:25 “…the railway companies wouldn’t want them going off the rails any time soon.”
NS and CSX: Mind yer business.
I wonder if you could use the Head End Power unit on a diesel, to power something other than a coach?
You may need a transformer, but other than that, yes, you can. However, the alternator for the hotel function is nowhere as powerful as one for the traction motors though
@@theminer3746 depends on where you source the power from. The Alaska Railroad SD70MAC are only powering one truck while in HEP mode.
@@truckertj2109 and still have over 2500hp doing that. similar idea being used for metra chicago's sd70macs.
The town Mayor was a smart cookie to think of this solution 👍
That's impressive. Not as impressive as the USS Lexington powering the city of Tacoma, Washington in 1921.
but did it drive down the road
no
@@WesternOhioInterurbanHistory No.
Wasn't that in 1929?
I grew up in ontario and remember this well , so neat to see the story of how it actually happend as an adult . Thank you!
0:58 flyng battery zone music
I like the idea of a diesel traveling at notch 8 down the interstate
1:46 like smudger
hehehehehehe
I remember reading an article in TRAINS magazine about this years back. And it’s awesome that someone made a UA-cam video about it 🤠. Kudos
How about locomotives that are powered solely on air?
What
@@hansbdein They do exist. Locomotive powered by air. I have seen two of them on static display. They are often used in narrow gauge. Mostly found in mines.
@@hansbdein They are called fireless locomotives. They work like steam locomotives, but the steam is replaced with pressurized air.
@@ronal8824 _you're_ not "your" talking about