Ways to improve the fuel and energy efficiency of special and shunting rolling stock during snow removal

Introduced on the Russian Railways network monitoring system download the snow train has allowed to identify cases of export volume of the snow mass is much less possible when cleaning railway tracks from snow, which leads to the underutilization of capacity of the snow trains and shunting locomotives and irrational use of fuel and energy resources for operation of rolling stock. The purpose of the work is to consider the fuel and energy efficiency of snow-removal trains and shunting locomotives carrying out their movement and to determine ways to reduce the consumption of fuel and energy resources for the performance of works on cleaning the tracks from snow (in economic traffic). To achieve this goal, one of the structural divisions of JSC "Russian Railways" estimated the volume of snow removal by snow-removal trains, calculated the values of mechanical work performed by locomotives to move snow-removal equipment and fuel consumption by snow-removal trains and locomotives to perform work on clearing snow from the tracks. On the basis of the comparative analysis the conclusion is made on the available reserves of increase of fuel and energy performance of the rolling stock while clearing paths of snow and the technique allowing to estimate the total fuel consumption for snow removal snow plow trains and traction units (locomotives), and ways to improve the power efficiency of snow-removing trains and working with them traction means, such as the use of rolling stock with a rational value of mass and power depending on weather conditions.