Real-world Train Question

[thegrindre]

Yup, in the days of steam, running backwards did have its issues but the engineer did look over his shoulder to see what was going on, at all times, even though it may have put a kink in his neck the next day.

Also, keep in mind that trains weren't as long as they are now-a-days.
Help me with this one, Gwizz, but a train of 25 cars would be a pretty good consist back in the 1800's. (Just an educated guess, here.)
I believe 5 to 15 cars would be more logical.

[WPandP]

Train length was generally a function of what a single steam engine could pull, because doubleheading steam is tricky, though it can be done. In the latter days of steam, though, those great black beasts were pulling massive trains! Still, once the diesel came along, it offered a way to "MU" (Multiple Unit lashup) engines with them all being controlled by one crew, and that gave the flexibility to let train length be whatever optimizes the schedule, and just tack on enough engines to get it moving.

Trains that had to run backwards for a significant portion of their route, though, would be shorter than normal. An N&W Class Y6b with 100 coal hoppers in tow would not have been running backwards... at least, not with the engine on the rear! They might have run the engine around to couple onto the caboose, though, and run with the engine reversed but the train still behind it.

[Gwizz]

There is a glass plate picture in one of my books of a B&O train pulling a mixture of more than 20 cars by a grasshopper. (0-4-0)
I don't remember the date. (Possible 1840s)
I don't think there was any standard train length. Someone was alway pushing the limit.

During the Civil War period ( 1860s) almost all locos were 4-4-0s. They were limited to what they could pull.
But, It was not unusual to have a coal train of 30 to 50 full coal cars pulled by 3 locomotives on a very slight grade.
The coal cars had no automatic brakes so it was harder to keep a long train from running away down hill, then getting it up the hill.
A train without vacuum or air brakes was normally split into sections. One section was eased down the hill at a time with brakemen riding the cars and tightening or loosening the hand brake wheels that controlled the manual brakes.

I believe it was in Baltimore where the South saved a number of their locos by using an 8 to 10% grade and a lot of sand (a Tolley track) up and over the big hill in the city.
I think the problem was not that the Union Army had cut the track: but, that there was too many different track gauges around that city.
Some of the South's locos with no cars and almost empty tenders, could not pull the grade and had to be abandoned and/or destroyed. None of their Singles, 4-2-0 locos could pull the grade.

But normally one 4-4-0 could pull about 15 to 20 cars on a near zero grade with dry track. Some 4-4-0 were larger than others and pulled more cars.
Locos with enough weight and small drivers can pull heavier loads. Large drivers mean more speed but less power to pull cars.
There were also a few 4-6-0 and 0-8-0 locomotive around that could pull more weight.

I remember reading about a couple of 0-10-0 locomotive that were used to pull 2 or 3 loaded cars for about 2 miles from a river boat landing on the Mississippi up the steep bank where longer trains were made up and used to move the cargo farther West.

I believe the longest train pulled by one locomotive was around 1950s with between 300 400 loaded coal cars on level ground.
The reason that a long train had locos in front, in the middle and pushing was to keep from braking a coupler.
A long train could travel 20 MPH at the front before the last car even started to move.
Doing this caused many broken couplers. Even today an engineer will gently stretch out a long train at a very slow speed until the last car is moving, before pulling back the throttle to pick up speed.

There are of course many exceptions to any norm or rule. My bad memory may also cause an exception here.

[ostlandr]

There's a person who sits in the last car and has a front view of the train as it goes backwards. I'm not sure how much control he has on the train, but his booth has some levers and buttons with lights.

A lot of these commuter trains have what are known as "cab control" cars- the engineer moves to the little cab in the last car and operates the train from there through standard Multiple Unit (MU) connections. Unfortunately, in the event of an accident, the cab-control cab doesn't offer nearly as much protection to either the crew or passengers, as happened in the horrible California crash where that homicidal maniac deliberately parked a SUV on the tracks.

I think Canadian National had an early version of this with their X10A class 4-6-2T engines, where the fireman stayed in the locomotive and the engineer could operate air-powered controls from the last car.

Amtrak, for safety reasons (and probably because they can't afford new cars with cab controls) used or uses former F40 locomotives with the guts removed at the end of the train. The original engine compartment is now a baggage car. They are known as cab-bagagge units, "cabbages" and "F40 BAGs"

[sbaros]

Push-pull steam trains were commonplace in major commuter services. I experienced the last ones in Hungary in 1983, on the Vámosgyörk - Gyöngyös shuttle, powered by class 424. The year after, it was electrified.