#fuel consumption

This book has driven me insane. Who are the characters? I can't tell you. What is the plot? I haven't the faintest? Is the book badly written? No. Absolutely not. But all of this has taken a secondary concern with my all-encompassing obsession with fuel consumption.

Let me explain.

So the backstory of the book is that some sort of incident made Siberia uninhabitable and China and Russia walled it off. Then for reasons known only to them the British built a railroad through the Wasteland. All of this setting for the plot and irrelevant, but my obsession will not let me stop talking about trains. God moves through me.

So let's be generous with the walls and assume the distance that has to be covered WITHOUT REFUELING is the 3,375 km distance between Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg. So let's see what sort of locomotive is pulling this thing.

Oh my god. What is that? What is that wheel arrangement? What is that boiler? WHAT IS THAT WHEEL ARRANGEMENT?

Okay, so from this we can conclude the train has two tenders, one for coal, one for water. Reasonable for a long-distance trip. Let's assume that these tenders have UP Big Boy capacity which means between the two a total of 56 tons of coal and 50,000 gallons of water. That may sound like a lot, but at full steam a Big Boy would eat through that supply in a matter of hours. Steam engines have hearty appetites. But! That gives us numbers to work with.

So let's assume the locomotive is extremely efficient. We'll go with the most fuel efficient locomotive ever built, the Red Devil. The Red Devil's fuel capacity was less than Big Boy's, but let's just be generous and give it two Big Boy tenders. Now we know the Red Devil could go 230 km on 12,600 gallons, which means 50,000 gallons gives us...920 km.

Okay, okay, they do stop to replenish water once in the book, and watering on the fly was a key technology. So let's just operate on the assumption that water isn't the limiting factor, coal is.

So looking at the Red Devil's efficiency again, we know its 20 ton load of coal lasted for 700 km. So if we give it 56 tons that takes us to...1960 km.

Out of 3,375 km.

Without refueling.

Can I tell you anything else about this book? No. My brain has been broken by logistics.

"But Kalpar, the train is secondary to the story. It's part of a literary metaphor. Is it really important to get bogged down in the minutiae?"

Yes

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