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Why do freight trains sometimes have locomotives at the back?
Why do freight trains sometimes have locomotives at the back? Over the past couple of days I saw a bunch of freight trains that had a few locomotives in the front and also a couple in the back. What's the point?
Answer: as stated above they reduce strain on the couplers
this is also beneficial to the rail structure, you can imagine the tremendous stress on the inside rail of a curve with 10,000 or more horespower all pulling as hard as they can to get up a grade.
Putting some of tha power on the rear not only reduces wear and tear on the rail, (which is VERY expensive to replace) it reduces flange friction between the wheels and the rail which makes the train easier rolling.
I remember an old story, about a train exactly the same size and number of cars leaving a mine each day, they put two locomotives on the point and went up out of the mine at 12 miles an hour, one day they tried putting the same two locomotive one on the point and the other one on the rear and went 2 MPH faster because of reduced flange friction. In mountain grade railroading that is pretty significant, especially when you consider it was the same tonnage and same horsepower.
Sometimes manned helpers will shove on the rear of a train instead of "cutting in" to the middle to help a train over a grade, this is much faster than breaking the train apart twice, once to cut in and then again to cut the helpers back out.
