HEP questions

How much Head End Power can an average locomotive provide? How much power dose a stranded passenger car use? Can more than one locomotive be providing the HEP?

The EMD F-59PHI and PH will deliver 1000 hp to the HEP requirements for the train. Metrolink will add a second engine for trains over seven cars long.

Early commuter locomotives had only 450 to 550 Kw HEP sets, enough for about 10 single level cars.
Todays commuter locomotives like Genesis, PL42ac, MP36 and MP42 are equipped with 800Kw HEP supply.
The ALP 46 on NJT is even bigger at 1000 Kw or one Mega watt of HEP.

No only one locomotive can supply HEP to a train in USA, in Canada its set up different with a left and right trainline were one locomotive can supply left and other locomotive can supply right.
The Canadian cars have a selector switch to chose between the A (left) and B (right) trainline.

Thanks,
How much power dose a bi-level or multiple level car use? If a railroad needed to run longer trains could they use the Canadian system? What about the Amtrak Auto Train which has a large number of cars?

DutchRailnut wrote:Early commuter locomotives had only 450 to 550 Kw HEP sets, enough for about 10 single level cars.
Todays commuter locomotives like Genesis, PL42ac, MP36 and MP42 are equipped with 800Kw HEP supply.
The ALP 46 on NJT is even bigger at 1000 Kw or one Mega watt of HEP.

No only one locomotive can supply HEP to a train in USA, in Canada its set up different with a left and right trainline were one locomotive can supply left and other locomotive can supply right.
The Canadian cars have a selector switch to chose between the A (left) and B (right) trainline.

GE P30CH's were set up to provide HEP from more than one unit in a mu'ed consist and Amtrak AEM7 series 947-953 also
had HEP converters that could run in multiple (but has since been disabled.)

On Metra's ex-C&NW lines, a single F40 carving out 700hp for HEP could power 11 bilevels and still have 2500hp for traction. Since the E8's only had 2250 and still pulled 11 cars, this was actually a step up in performance. But during the F7/E8 era in Chicago, it was universal to use separate HEP gensets and leave the prime movers for traction power only.