horse-drawn rail car

[Adm.Lee]

I suspect an answer lies somewhere in this forum, but I'm not finding it easily.

Assume a standard pre-war railroad car, preferably a passenger coach or sleeper. I am presuming horses could be hitched to one, to pull it along. Any estimates on how many would be needed? Two, four?

I'm thinking about an encounter with a Soviet ambulance train, using a coach (or two?) to carry wounded from a front-line area to a rear-area hospital. Rail travel might be more smooth & comfortable than an unsprung wagon on a potholed road. We're not looking for speed, but smoothness.

I found that a European-style coach might weigh 50 tons, 75 fully loaded.

Isn't there something said about rail wheels being 7x more frictionless than road wheels?

Worst case, I'm going to say 4 horses, and my players probably won't call me on it.

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by Adm.Lee

I suspect an answer lies somewhere in this forum, but I'm not finding it easily.

Assume a standard pre-war railroad car, preferably a passenger coach or sleeper. I am presuming horses could be hitched to one, to pull it along. Any estimates on how many would be needed? Two, four?

I'm thinking about an encounter with a Soviet ambulance train, using a coach (or two?) to carry wounded from a front-line area to a rear-area hospital. Rail travel might be more smooth & comfortable than an unsprung wagon on a potholed road. We're not looking for speed, but smoothness.

I found that a European-style coach might weigh 50 tons, 75 fully loaded.

Isn't there something said about rail wheels being 7x more frictionless than road wheels?

Worst case, I'm going to say 4 horses, and my players probably won't call me on it.

A typical Percheron or Clydesdale can pull 4k kilograms. A Belgium can pull 3k kilos and a large Morgan or Courser (Amish cart horse) can pull 2k with only average effort.

[swaghauler]

The largest single driver controlled rig I have ever seen was a 12 bottom plow pulled by 16 horses.

[swaghauler]

Wheeled vehicles can cut their weight by a factor of 10... which is why you can push a passenger car weighing 3k pounds by yourself.

[Vespers War]

The general rules of thumb I've run across for hauling by horses for actual work and not tractor-pull style demonstrations:

1/10 of body weight in dead weight (like a plow or log)
1.5x body weight on wheels on road
5x body weight on rails

So a 75 ton loaded rail car will need at least 15 tons of horse to pull. Figure around 10 draft horses or so.

That's also assuming level track and a relatively low speed (circa 8km/h or 5mph). Hills will need a "booster" team to help haul, and teams will probably need to be swapped every 3-4 hours (let's say 4 just to make it equal to a travel period).

[ChalkLine]

Generally a draisine horse-drawn vehicle was very lightweight, you'd probably need a specialist car. This is good as you can make one up yourself. It would have two axles and probably a canvas bows cover taken from trucks. You'd simply pull more of them if you needed more capacity.

If you need a standard car you can use an alcohol engine dragging one car. Remember it needs a big pneumatic system to slow the car