How Much Strength Does It Take To Stop A Train?

The average freight train is about 1 to 11⁄4 miles in length (90 to 120 rail cars). When it’s moving at 55 miles an hour, it can take a mile or more to stop after the locomotive engineer fully applies the emergency brake. An 8-car passenger train moving at 80 miles an hour needs

about a mile

to stop.

How much force does a train exert?

Fully loaded trains are probably in the order of 3000 to 8000 tons, so lets say

5000 tons

.

Can anything stop a moving train?

Originally Answered: What is the mechanisim to stop the body of a moving train?

Air brakes

. Modern trains used a system of fail-safe pneumatic brakes in which each car has brakes capable of stopping its own mass. When activated together, the brakes on the whole train can bring it rapidly to a stop.

How much force does a moving train have?

First, a force of

2 to 5 pounds per ton of train weight

is required to move on straight level track. At very slow yard speeds only 2 to 3 pounds is needed while increasing to about 5 pounds at higher speeds. This force is required to overcome bearing friction, rail deflection, minor flange contact, etc.

Could a Spider web stop a train?

Spider-Man’s silk could have stopped a

moving train—if his silk resembled the stuff produced by the Darwin’s bark spider, which lives in Madagascar and builds enormous 80-foot wide webs. … After crunching the numbers, they found that Spider-Man could indeed have saved that train from plummeting off the track.

Why are trains so hard to stop?

The major problems with attempting to stop or decelerate trains quickly are: The

sliding friction between steel wheels and steel tracks is significantly lower than

that available between bituminous concrete roads and pneumatic rubber tyres of road vehicles.

Why does it take so much force to stop a moving train?

The distance it takes to halt a train in an emergency is based on multiple factors:

the speed when the brakes are applied

, the track’s incline, the number of cars hooked behind the locomotives and the loading of those cars, the “brake delay” inherent in the train’s hydraulic system, the friction-causing metallurgy of …

How much slack is on a train?

The slack comes from the

1/2 inch or so space in the coupler

, times a large number of cars. A hundred coal cars times 1/2 inch is like 5 feet of slack … So no need for springs you’ve got all the slack you can handle in the couplers.

How does a locomotive pull a train?

All train cars have roller bearings on their axles, these bearings reduce friction which makes roll easy. The locomotive

starts to move using sand if the wheels slip

and that gives them traction. (If you would take a piece of sandpaper and rub it on a piece of steel you could feel it.)

How do you stop a train?

If you don’t have a flag, stand next to the tracks and face the oncoming train.

Use your arm closest to the track to swing back

and forth at a right angle to the track to signal for the train to stop. Keep your opposite arm still at your side. Use only 1 arm to signal so the message is clear.

How hard is it to stop a moving train?

It takes more than a mile for most trains to stop – that’s

18 football fields

! If the red lights are flashing and the gates are down, a train is usually less than a minute away. If you’re on foot, you probably can’t run across the tracks fast enough to beat it.

How heavy is a train?

You can expect an average train weight to be

about 3,000 to 18,000 tons or more

depending on the load and number of cars in the train. Local trains designed for the transport of people or to carry less of a load may weigh anywhere from 1,500 to 6,000 tons or more.

Who is the boss on a train?

Despite the image of the eagle-eyed engineer with his hand on the throttle,

the conductor

is the boss of a train crew.

How much force does it take to move a car?

Depending on the mass of the car stopping it may take

500 lbs of force

. Each increase of the car’s speed increases the force to stop it geometrically. If the car is moving faster than the person can run then it would be very difficult to stop in fact a squatting person in front of the car would be an impact.

How much does a train car weigh?

A typical freight car weighs

30 tons empty

, and can carry another 100 tons loaded for 130 total tons per loaded car. So a typical over the road long haul freight train can weigh anywhere from 3,000 tons to 18,000 tons or more depending on the number of cars in the train.

How did Spider Man stop the train?

It’s one of the coolest scenes in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. Peter Parker/Spider-Man uses

his webs

to stop an out-of-control subway train before it careens out of control and kills everyone on board. … It’s the web toughness is where things get interesting.

Could a spider web stop a bullet?

Spider silk is highly flexible, extremely stretchable, surpasses steel in strength, and most importantly, can be formed into a

mesh

that would stop a bullet. … 22-caliber bullet using just four layers.

How long does it take a train going 50 mph to stop safely?

How strong is Spiderman to stop a train?

Spiderman’s strength is generally considered to max out

around 10 tons of force

. A “speeding train” implies thousands of tons of metal moving at least 40 mph or so. To decelerate that much mass to 0 mph pretty much instantly is way more force than Spidey can muster.

Is train quicker than car?

With high-speed rail,

train travel is always faster than driving

. In many cases, it’s even faster than flying, once you factor in the whole air travel song-and-dance. … A high-speed train would be three times faster than driving—2.5 hours vs. 7.5 hours.

How fast can trains go?

High-speed trains can generally reach 300–350 km/h

(190–220 mph)

. On mixed-use HSR lines, passenger train service can attain peak speeds of 200–250 km/h (120–160 mph).

Why is train slower than car?

Trains are slower than cars in America

because Americans are not serious about high speed rail

. For instance, the recent derailment and crash of an Amtrak train near Seattle occurred because the so called “high speed” train needed to slow from 80 mph to 30 mph for a curve, and didn’t.

Why do trains stop for so long?

The reason trains stop, according to Bellamy, is

because of a switch adjustment

. “They have to pass the switch and then a carman or a switch man has to hop off and physically throw the switch (Bellamy described this as a lever on the ground) so that it changes the direction of the track.

Why do train drivers bunch slack?

Loose coupling is

necessary to enable the train to bend around curves

and is an aid in starting heavy trains, since the application of the locomotive power to the train operates on each car in the train successively, and the power is thus utilized to start only one car at a time.

Why are train cars loosely coupled?

Railioad cars are loosely coupled so that

there is a noticeable time delay from the time the first car is moved until the last cars are moved from rest by the locomotive

. The time delay in moving cars helps in reducing the force required when compared to starting the entire train at once.

Do trains stretch?

The freight train is now on track to

stretch up to 3 miles long

, with 200 cars or more. … Long trains save on fuel and crews, reducing the cost of rail transportation.

Can a person push a train car?

One person can move a railroad car with it

. Now, it will only move about and inch or two, so it won’t go very far, and it won’t go very fast – but it will go. (Sometimes you need to move a car to line up a discharge pipe, or the railroad crew left it slightly too close to the door, and the door will hit it.)

How do you get Klaus to stop the train?

When he says something sarcastic about stopping a train,

go into the Switch Control Room and flip the Railway Switch

. Soon a fiery train will race up and Klaus will stop it.

How does a conductor stop a train?

The conductor, if on the head end of the freight train

only has an emergency brake valve to stop the train

. The engineer (driver in other foreign countries outside of the U.S.) has control of the train and can attempt to make a stop with all available braking power including emergency brake application.

Why do train wheels not slip?

For most cases the wheels don’t slip, rather roll. This is

due to friction

. Friction acts against the direction of motion and tends to oppose it – so the wheels instead of slipping, roll over. This is similar to if you tried sliding while standing up on an icy or wet surface or a smooth floor.

Why do trains pull and not push?

the primary reason for not using locomotive to push wagons rather than pulling them is

the visibility issue

. If the motorman is the rear it is just impossible for him to know whats about 300-400 m ahead of him, which is very important situation in case of track related emergencies.

When a train stops where does the energy go?

We find that the first train with 1 unit of stored energy goes

30 m

before it stops. The train stops because it has used up its stored energy in doing work against the FRICTIONAL FORCE that is trying to slow it down. This energy is converted to heat.

Do engineers sleep on trains?

“

Engineers and conductors sleep on trains

. Anyone who tells you different is not being straight with you,” said Diz D. … In a 1984 Wyoming crash, a Burlington Northern engineer had only 6 1/2 hours of sleep in the 48 hours before the accident; his conductor had five hours of sleep.

Why are US trains so slow?

Because most tracks are optimized for

heavy fright trains

which in America are more important, economically, than passenger transportation. Heavy trains displace tracks, sleepers and ballast so that it is impossible to let locomotives and passenger wagons run with higher speeds. And fright trains are slow.

How long does it take to become a train driver?

In general, becoming a London Underground train driver will require that you undergo

22 weeks of

training. However, if you opt to train outside of London Underground, you might have to sit through 48 weeks of training.

How long can trains be?

A train of 150 cars—the FRA’s unofficial definition of a long train—carrying iron ore would run about 3,500 feet long, but an intermodal train of the same number of cars might measure

33,000 feet

, according to John Gray, the AAR’s senior vice president of policy and economics.

How long does it take for a train to stop?

The average freight train is about 1 to 11⁄4 miles in length (90 to 120 rail cars). When it’s moving at 55 miles an hour, it can take a mile or more to stop after the locomotive engineer fully applies the emergency brake. An 8-car passenger train moving at 80 miles an hour needs

about a mile

to stop.

How much does a train knuckle weigh?

Conventionally, a knuckle weighs

approximately 78 to 88 pounds

.

How much does a bullet train weigh?