Abstract
The author reviews the fundamentals of railroad aerodynamics and the work done by previous experimenters in this field. He then presents the results of wind-tunnel tests conducted jointly by the American Locomotive, American Car & Foundry, and J. G. Brill companies at New York University, but devotes the greater part of the paper to drag tests, the object of which was the evaluation of the resistance of air to the motion of locomotives, cars, and trains. After determining the air-resistance formulas for the models used in the tests, the author expands the coefficients of the formulas to apply to full-scale equipment, and further simplifies the formulas for application to the prototypes of the models. He compares air-resistance of full-scale equipment as obtained from the formulas derived from test results and the simplified formulas, presenting such data in tabular as well as graphical form. The author concludes his paper with a discussion of air-resistance tests of full-size equipment and savings in power effected by streamlining.