What Are The Four Forces Of Train Power

Trains are one of the oldest and essential source of transportation. One big machine produces massive power to pull the mass 8 or 10 times of its mass on steel tracks and transports it to thousands of mile between the cities. Steam engines power the trains in its initial stages. Now, Diesel Engines and Electric power trains are used.
There are four forces acts on a train. One of them is its weight which balanced by the typical reaction of the tracks. The third one is the thrust force produced by the locomotives which move the train forward, and the fourth one is the combination of air resistance and the rolling friction between wheels and the railway tracks. There is another force called Centrifugal force act on a train when it takes turns. This force tends the train to run straight, but this force is overcome by the Centripetal force which is applied to the track on the train wheels. Also, this force is avoided by making slow turns. Another force is the inertial force which tends to move the train when there is no thrust force …show more content…
The working of steam engines was very simple. These steam engines are called external combustion engines, in which High-pressure steam is used to drive the piston which produced by boiling the water using burning coal. But this method of operating the locomotives was very inefficient as compared to the diesel and gasoline engines, which works on the concept of Internal Combustion. The combustion of gasoline or the diesel inside the cylinder produces more pressure to push the piston as compared to the Steam engines in which combustion takes place very far from the piston and the energy from the burning coal has to travel to the boiler from the combustion chambers than to the cylinders. Each locomotive has minimum two piston-cylinder arrangement which fires at different times on each other (means one will take power stroke when the other one is making intake