What is the ratio of fuel consumption between cruise and acceleration?

Question

I realized locomotives burn more fuel when accelerating than when they have the train up to speed and cruising.  But what is the ratio?
Granted there are a number of factors involved such as number of cars per locomotive, load weight, final velocity, incline and so forth.  I not trying to get too specific, just looking for an educated estimate.

Andy · Accepted Answer

A good estimate would be double the fuel burn for accelerating as compared to cruising.They like to see us wait at least 20 seconds between throttle notches.Starting a train and getting it up to speed burns a lot of fuel.A good train dispatcher will try to avoid making a train have to stop and start too often.Fuel conservation is a major concern for the railroads.So much so that the UP rewards it's top fuel saving engineers with cash rewards.They also have a rule in effect called FCS(fuel conservation speed).Unless the FCS is voided we are not supposed to go above notch 5 throttle when we are above 50 mph.They rarely void it unless a train is very late or needed somewhere in a hurry.Here is a chart that shows how much fuel a locomotive burns at each throttle notch.As you can see if you can run a train at notch 5 instead of wide open you will burn half the fuel.

MODEL        HP   N8   N7   N6    N5  N4  N3  N2  N1  
C44AC       4380 210  171  140  109  79  53  27  12  
SD70ACE  4000 187  164  133    86  64  47  23  12  
AC FLEET AVERAGE    201  169  138  100  74  53  25  13  
C44AC Notch HP 4380 3572 2560 2146 1499 894  481  150

Anonymous · Answer

Email "Andy" he's an railroad engineer.

http://answers.yahoo.com/activity?show=WsKUEgQraa

One of his answers appears here.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091119203705AA61Ac5

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What is the ratio of fuel consumption between cruise and acceleration?

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