11,000 HP behemoth "Ural"

[jis]

Railway Gazette International recently published a short article announcing the testing of this behemoth 2ES10 (Ural) 2(Bo-Bo) unit to drag heavy freight across the Urals.

Here is an article on it from Rustourismnews.

There is also a Wikipedia entry on it, which has its technical capabilities listed.

 

[railiner]

While it is powerful, I am more impressed by the GM10C prototype that Electro-Motive produced, what, 30 years or so ago?

It produced 10,000 HP in a SINGLE unit.....

 

[jis]

While it is powerful, I am more impressed by the GM10C prototype that Electro-Motive produced, what, 30 years or so ago?

It produced 10,000 HP in a SINGLE unit.....

This one has 2 units I believe mainly to spread out the tractive effort across multiple Bo trucks to be more kind to the tracks on sharp curves. Or so I am told. This is not a prototype either. So far RZD has placed an order for 221 units.

What caught my attention was the 11,000 HP equivalent regenerative brakes! While descending the Urals it will be supplying more than half the power needed to pull another train up the slope on the other side! And the blessed catenary will have to be able to handle close to 3kA of current at 3kV! And it is an asynchronous AC drive to boot thus capable of bringing the entire tractive effort to bear at close to zero speed.

 

[railiner]

While it is powerful, I am more impressed by the GM10C prototype that Electro-Motive produced, what, 30 years or so ago?

It produced 10,000 HP in a SINGLE unit.....

This one has 2 units I believe mainly to spread out the tractive effort across multiple Bo trucks to be more kind to the tracks on sharp curves. Or so I am told. This is not a prototype either. So far RZD has placed an order for 221 units.

What caught my attention was the 11,000 HP equivalent regenerative brakes! While descending the Urals it will be supplying more than half the power needed to pull another train up the slope on the other side! And the blessed catenary will have to be able to handle close to 3kA of current at 3kV! And it is an asynchronous AC drive to boot thus capable of bringing the entire tractive effort to bear at close to zero speed.

Thats a lot of 'grunt'. Too bad the N&W abandoned the 'juice' when it acquired the Virginian back then. Imagine this kind of power on coal drags in the mountains of WVa.....