Engine "Slippery-ness"

[NW Mailing List]

To add another observation to Dave's comments, in the recent articles in both the Keystone and Arrow re: the J's test on the Pennsylvania, Pennsy's official test reports stated that the J was not slippery. 

I don't know how the Pennsylvania and N&W's plant maintenance compared, but that a crew that was unfamiliar with  the J had no problems casts some doubt on the 4.0 rule of thumb. 

Matt Goodmam
Columbus, OH

On Sep 15, 2009, at 7:04 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

I may get zapped on this by those with first-hand experience, but IMO factor of adhesion is not the ruling factor in predicting a locomotive's propensity to slip.

N&W operated locomotives with FA's far less than the so-called magic number of 4.0 (which is an average number, not an absolute figure).  

<snip>

 On the next division (same train assignment), the same locomotive exhibited no deficiencies because of more skilled operation.


Dave Stephenson