In order to meet the ever-increasing freight capacity demand, operation of heavy-haul freight trains with a 50,000 t capacity has been widely studied for a decade in China. A typical heavy-haul train with a large capacity employs multiple locomotives that are evenly distributed along the train, and each locomotive, or two or more locomotives, hauls a certain amount of freight cars. The synchronicity among locomotives is of great importance to safety. A 50,000-t train developed in China will be pulled by 10 locomotives, and the uneven distribution of traction or brake force, caused by the asynchronous command execution of different locomotives, could eventually lead to severe accidents such as decoupling. This article focuses on how to apply the existing wireless-based multi-locomotive synchronous control system to the trains with the capacity of 50,000 t. The modular functionality of the control system is introduced, and some methods aiming to enhance the reliability of wireless communication are discussed. Then four experiments conducted on real trains or in laboratory are described. Test results show that the wireless synchronous control system can meet the technical requirements of 50,000-t trains and its operation is feasible.

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