I have to admit that I am confused! I had no idea that the ex-Caledonian L1011s had been converted into freighters whilst they were sitting in the desert in Abu Dhabi. If not, why are they featuring on the Freight Dogs page?
Certainly no L1011 freighter would ever be seriously replacing a DC-10 unless the operators were flat-broke. One of my F/E friends (from my DC-10 days) has been flying the L1011 freighter for some years and he tells me that it won't do more than 5 hours 30 minutes with a full load. In fact, he is of the opinion that compared to the DC-10-30, the L1011 "is an over-engineered dawg"!
I well remember my first LGW - LAX flight in a DC-10-30. With 345 passengers plus bags and 35,000 lbs of freight under the floor, we even managed a modest derate on take-off over Russ Hill on 26 from Gatwick.
Incidentally, can anyone out there tell me what the correct MTOW for an L1011 is nowadays? We operated our DC-10-30s to 580,000 lbs (583,000 lbs ramp).