It seems impossible that something as insanely heavy as a locomotive could ever break traction on dry tracks but this video proves that these things make such immense torque through their diesel electric drive systems that even with their mass, it is still pretty easy to “roast the tires”. Of course in this case the tires are massive steel wheels that are clawing and effectively grinding their way to traction on the steel tracks.
There are actually two engines pulling this train up the grade that it is on but the one up front is kind of running away, especially when the wheels break free. Maybe we’re just simpletons but it is pretty awesome to see this thing throw sparks and angrily grind its way up the relatively gentle grade. There are machines that are designed to grind on the tracks to true them up and this is not one of them but we’re guessing that it may have performed that function while working up a head of steam in this video.
We’ve never seen a locomotive perform the equivalent of a burnout but it sure looks like one in this video!
I understand there is a “wheel slip indicator” light in the cab, we’ll assume the engineer knew what he was doing. We can see the sander nozzles in front of the wheels doing their job.