5500-ton Russian iron ore train departing from Vartius

5500-ton Russian iron ore train departing from Vartius border station, pulled with 3 Finnish Sr2-locomotives, towards Kontiomäki. Iron ore is pelletized in Russia, and it is transported with these Vok-wagons to Kokkola via Kontiomäki and Oulu. This is heaviest train in Finland, nowadays.
The three Sr2-locomotives are pulling this train with total power of 15 MW. (15000 kW) Their power is limited to 5MW (5000 kW) per locomotive, because of warranty. Unlimited power is 6000 kW per locomotive.
Those wagons leak that ore pellet a little bit, so there is ore pellets on track from Vartius via Oulu to Kokkola. :P You can see those pellets clearly on the track, especially at winter. There is 56 russian Vok-wagons on this train, one wagon weights 90 to 98 tons.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• T5251
• Iron
• ore
• train
• 5500
• tonnes
• heavy
• Sr2
• Vartius
• Finland
• border
• russia

[tmechatronik]

3:54 where is the train end signal?

[Kyosuke1989]

@tmechatronik Unfortunately no such things anymore here. Last were taken out of use on 2005.

[MrZkr123]

just give them 2 Dash-9's from the US and they could pull that easily

[Kyosuke1989]

@MrZkr123 But with more emissions and noise, with electric locomotives there is just pure electric power running that train. When accelerating, these 3 Sr2's use 15 megawatts of power to 12 axles, and that is more than your 12 axle 2 Dash 9 with some 6,5 megawatts :P

[Zsebenyi]

59 x 70 tons = 4130 tons, it seems you included the 3 engines and the weight of the waggons...

[Kyosuke1989]

@Zsebenyi Wrong, locomotives are 84 ton each, making total weight of locomotives 252 tons, and then the wagons about 5250 tons, there are 56 wagons, each wagon's weight is about 90-98 tons.

[randknu]

They look like the swizz Re460

[grtws563563]

nice clean video...... keep it up man

[fater52]

I think the rails are curves at 2:25.

[Skoda130]

@tupsumato Well, the electricity part of the coal plant might be efficiënt, but steampower in itself isn't efficient at all. Hydroplants are. :-) But you're definetely right about regenerative braking. In America they have experimental "hybrid" loco's, that have large accumulators as well. Electrodynamic braking can be an option on those.

[tupsumato]

@Skoda130, I think the losses in the grid are negligible in comparison to the higher efficiency of the centralized power (and heat) production in large power plant. I'd guess the difference in efficiency between a large coal plant and a diesel engine in locomotive scale could be around 20 %.

There are other issues as well. Trains in Finland run mainly on hydropower and use regenerative braking, i.e. feed electricity back to the grid when braking. I doubt a diesel locomotive can do that...

[Skoda130]

@tupsumato I doubt that. There might be a difference, but the further electricity is transported, the more energy goes to waste, due to the resistance of the infrastructure.

[tupsumato]

@Skoda130, yes, but it's probably far more efficient than the small engines in the locomotives.

[paperkiller25]

@Kyosuke1989 But where does that electricity come from? Coal Nuke Hydroelectric.. a couple monkeys rubbing balloons on their heads holding a wall socket? How much more efficient was it to raise all those electrical poles the entire route than just running a few diesels for the train?

[Skoda130]

@Kyosuke1989 For electric power, there's a smokestack somewhere else.