Metra fuel usage stats

I'm wondering what Metra's fuel usage/passenger mile is. I took the 2:35PM back to Fox Lake today & from what I could tell, the lightly loaded train used 200-250 Gallons of diesel. Maybe its me but that seems like a lot for a 5 or 6 car train that's usually pretty empty.

MDNFan wrote:I'm wondering what Metra's fuel usage/passenger mile is. I took the 2:35PM back to Fox Lake today & from what I could tell, the lightly loaded train used 200-250 Gallons of diesel. Maybe its me but that seems like a lot for a 5 or 6 car train that's usually pretty empty.

it's roughly 60 miles to Fox Lake from Union Station. 200 gallons (how did you determine this?) would equate to 4 gallons/mile.

I don't know if this is accurate, however it seems about right based on some other numbers

A GP-40 will burn ~170 gallons/hour @ run 8, and 140 @ run 7. Assuming that the engine is burning 140 gallons/hour (run 7 for HEP) for the run to Fox Lake, then at I would expect it to consume around 210 gallons for the 90 minute trip to Fox Lake.

An MP36 should be significantly better, and the F40 may use less than 140 gallons per hour while generating HEP but not traction. I don't know

I thought Fox Lake was MP49.41? Anyway, the run yesterday was an MP36. I got the fuel usage by reading the fuel gauge at the start & end of trip.

MDNFan wrote:I thought Fox Lake was MP49.41? Anyway, the run yesterday was an MP36. I got the fuel usage by reading the fuel gauge at the start & end of trip.

Sorry, typeo - you are correct its roundly 50 miles, rather than 60. But it's not the mileage but the time

I would have expected the MP36 to be significantly better as it's not having to run in 7 all the time to generate HEP.

Get this: I took the 3:55PM out today (F40PH 114, "Tinley Park"). Same run, bigger load, used ~150gallons. Why is the F40 better? Would the extra 7000lb of fuel make that big a difference?

MDNFan wrote:Get this: I took the 3:55PM out today (F40PH 114, "Tinley Park"). Same run, bigger load, used ~150gallons. Why is the F40 better? Would the extra 7000lb of fuel make that big a difference?

Something doesn't add up. The MP36 should be 20-30% more efficient than the F40

perhaps you misread the MP36 fuel gauge? Or maybe it sprung a leak

Don't know about it springing a leak (seems like the engineer would notice 100 gallons of diesel dripping onto the tracks), but I got the same results for today's 3:55PM rush behind 413.

Needle pegged at start (2500 gallon capacity), then halfway to 2000 gallon Hash mark at end of trip. That should be ~250 gallons, right? Now today's run probably had 425 people all the way out to Libertyville, so that seems more realistic.

Any F40 or MP36 experts who could enlighten me as to the difference in fuel use?

MDNFan wrote:Don't know about it springing a leak (seems like the engineer would notice 100 gallons of diesel dripping onto the tracks)

Yea, I meant that tongue in cheek

MDNFan wrote: Needle pegged at start (2500 gallon capacity), then halfway to 2000 gallon Hash mark at end of trip. That should be ~250 gallons, right?

Well, I can think of several reasons that assumption may not be accurate - I too would appreciate someone like Bones giving us the info straight from the source.

However ,fuel tanks are not square, so it's not linear. Not sure about the shape of the MP36's fuel tanks, but it may be that the top of the tank is curved and therefor the top 1/4 holds only 1/8th of the fuel - if you take my meaning.

Therefor, it may be that the markings on the fuel tank are only accurate when the fuel level is actually at that level - In other words, 1/2 the distance between 2500 and 2000 on the sight glass may be only 100 or 150 gallons used as the tank is smaller in that range.

MDNFan wrote:[...] the lightly loaded train used 200-250 Gallons of diesel. [...] Same run, bigger load, used ~150gallons. [...]

I would guess that it makes little difference how full or empty the train is. Consider an eight-car train with roughly a 250,000-lb locomotive and eight 85,000-lb coaches. That's around 930,000 lbs.

A full passenger load in eight cars would be around 1000 people. At 150 lbs each, that's 150,000 lbs of passengers. That adds only 16% to the total mass of the train. (Even if I have somewhat over-estimated the locomotive and car masses, you can see my general point that the passenger mass is relatively trivial compared to the train itself.)

Even if the work the locomotive must do is proportional to the train's mass (which probably is not precisely the case; for instance, the locomotive comsumes the same amount of fuel at idle during station stops with or without passengers), that suggests that a run which would use 100 gallons of fuel running empty would use less than 116 gallons of fuel with a full passenger load.

That may come as some comfort to those troubled by seeing midday trains sometimes operating with only two or three of its cars in service. The added fuel that is used may actually cost less than the labor to uncouple those cars after the morning rush and perform an air test, then recouple them before evening rush. Particularly if the lights and heating/cooling units are shut off in the coaches not being used, thus decreasing the HEP load, the empty cars probably don't result in much additional fuel consumption.