Coyote wrote:
You mean seperate passenger and freight lines? Wow-- a doubling of rails. We're probably not going to see the financial willingness for that anytime soon...
No, I mean grade separated.
I.e., no level crossings, all underpasses or overpasses.
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Coyote wrote:The French TGV used, I was told, concrete ties-- is that still the case? At first thought it seems to be a good idea, but then it seems like once a concrete tie begins to crumble, it deteriorates quickly (for train purposes, at least).
Thing is whole bunch of concrete ties, tens of thousands, laid by US railways over the last 10 years have proved to be defective because of poorly mixed cement and are having to be replaced very early.. This cannot be making railroads too keen on the things, even if the low quality suppliers have been identified.
Actually, Amtrak is going to be replacing a bunch of such defective concrete ties on the NEC beginning next month, at the expense of horrendous delays for NJ Transit, including pretty severely reduced service. What a great thing to have happen when gas is going to be four bucks a gallon.
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The Duchess of Zeon wrote:I should probably get around to posting part two in my proposed Amtrak expansion series.
That and/or some more Global Peak . Anyway the Balt-Wash corridor is certainly a great testbed for expanding lines as the MTA is paticularly keen on getting traffic through Baltimore to actually work (consider that just about all of CSX's freight on the East coast was held up because of the damn Howard Street tunnel fire). The currnet plans are for the CSX line from around Relay down to just north of Washington to be triple tracked and the NEC from Newark to New Carrollton to be quad tracked (including an entirely new tunnel through Baltimore for Amtrak's through trains (MTA woudl continue to use the B&P). All of this is set to be completed by 2035 with the State sinking about 2-3 billion (not counting the tunnel which would be funded by Amtrak in their plan and which estimates I've seen put at around 700mil-1bil). I would like to see how that can affect things in paticular traffic through Washington going south because concurrent with all of this are some planned expansions of the Virginia Ave tunnel that might open up a hell of a lot more southbound traffic and maybe extend the NEC all the way down to Richmond.
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CaptainChewbacca wrote:That's how I was defining high-speed.
No TGV or ICE then, or Maglev? The entire point is to race the airplanes, every mph counts.
It's funny, years ago I worked on developing a feature for Carolco, intended as a Sylvester Stallone/Kim Basinger action movie set on a futuristic intercontinental supersonic train.
It didn't fire, but Dean Devlin still owns it. Maybe it will become relevant enough, for him to actually make it.
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CaptainChewbacca wrote:That's how I was defining high-speed.
No TGV or ICE then, or Maglev? The entire point is to race the airplanes, every mph counts.
It's funny, years ago I worked on developing a feature for Carolco, intended as a Sylvester Stallone/Kim Basinger action movie set on a futuristic intercontinental supersonic train.
It didn't fire, but Dean Devlin still owns it. Maybe it will become relevant enough, for him to actually make it.
If a train was ACTUALLY supersonic, it would have to be in a tunnel or else it would absolutely devastate everything near the track.
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Highly elevated track with some kind of upward blast deflecting barrier setup might work, at least for more remote stretches of track. A tunnel would be nice though, we could suck out most of the air, some must remain for cooling air, to vastly reduce the drag of the train. That reduction might actually be enough place supersonic speed within the realistic realm of a maglev train in the future, at least so long as China feels a need to have a whole new level of prestige project.
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CaptainChewbacca wrote:
If a train was ACTUALLY supersonic, it would have to be in a tunnel or else it would absolutely devastate everything near the track.
Oh, I had some interesting...discussions...regarding what happens when a supersonic train running on open track, enters a tunnel...
...the science and engineering were all total conceptual shit, of course. I mean, come on, it was Roland Emmerich and Sylvester Stallone, fer Pete's sake!
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What has been done to the railways in the UK is pretty shit as well.
Prime example of poor planning is the Glasgow Central line that goes through Kilmarnock. After Barrhead the track becomes a single line. Now originally about the late 60's the line was double all the way, but instead god knows how much money was spent lifting the track and realinging the new track.
Now the situation is that the line is too busy and will need doubled again.
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The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
Tribun wrote:Wow. The US, the most automobile-friendly nation of the world slowly realising that the railroads actually do have a use? (sarcasm) Serious, I wonder how the hell did the railway traffic break down in the first place in America? Even though we did the same excassive road-building, car-friendly-city etc. shit in Europe, you can still reach every city above 10,000 inhabitants with the rail in reasonable time.
So what the hell had happened that it came so far?
Well, for starters, it probably had something to do with most of Europe having rail lines between hundred year old cities/towns/villages before most of America east of the Mississippi had much in the way of settling done. And then, they invented cars and, welp, next thing you know cities/towns are springing up in the relative ass end of nowhere simply because they can and then they went and paved thousands of miles of roads across the continent, and since everyone had two cars by then...and passenger aircraft that could beat everyone in 10x the time, and gas stations every few miles and what's this railroad thing again?
Not counting whatever government fuckups helped along the way, that's how I figure it happened.
Now in the days of having to drive 30+ miles twice every day with high gas prices and physically fight traffic just to go to work, people are starting to notice all those rail lines and freight trains that sometimes literally go right through whatever town they're living in.
There seems to be a movement in the UK for a lot of freight traffic, especially those used by the big chains like M&S, Morrisons, Tesco, Asda etc to shift more of their traffic onto freight.
The problem seems to be that at lot of the freight lines are dismantled or lying in near disuse in varying states of disrepair. The British loading gauge has also been a big limiter on freight, as well as the fact that the US style of freight with double stacked containers just wouldn't catch on here as a lot of the lines run through towns where sometimes it was hard enough getting space to run an electric pantograph, never mind making sure there's enough bridge clearance. At one time there were more marshalling yards which isn't the case and the containerisation of freight never really seemed to catch on here.
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The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
Containerization of rail freight is a hell of a lot less important in the UK then the US given the difference in distances, in the rare cases when the distance would justify it you could also probably just move the container via sea in a smaller ship then whatever behemoth brought it in from Asia. In the US at least short haul shipping is making a comeback in stride with the railroads, many ports around the world were simply never upgraded (or could not be upgraded) to handle big container ships and so container traffic is now concentrated around handfuls of huge hubs. Now smaller container ships are being built which need only tiny crews and have self unloading cranes, so they can now bring containers into all those currently underutilized old ports which have only shallow piers and no container cranes.
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We wouldn't even need old ports for that, in Scotland the former British Steel works at Hunterston had a deep water port that could be used. I know Wiki isn't too reliable for debates, but this is just as a reference
It's even got its own rail connection which is pretty ideal.
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The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.
I found this interesting because of what happens in my own city right now.
You must know, for decades politicians in Germany thought that transportation with the truck is the holy grail. This showed in my home city where the rail infrastructure was REALLY bad. And now in the time of three years they have replaced most of the track, electricified all lines, totally renewed the rail station and enlarged the tracks at the harbour, stating they expect 150 freight trains a day in two years.
Conrail recently double/triple tracked one of their freight lines that's a mile or so from my apartment. They obviously think it's worthwhile to be able to bring that much more rail traffic to and from the port of Elizabeth, so good on 'em. Of course, I don't think anyone's going to be electrifying their freight lines anytime soon.
And NJ Transit is going beserk with capital projects, as always. They're extending the light rail, pondering reopening the Lackawanna Cutoff, making another two track tunnel into Manhattan, among others.
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There is a clause in Amtrak's contract, placed there back in the 1970s: As long as Amtrak is receiving Government Susidities, they are obliged to keep the Cardinal Line (DC-St Louis, via West Virginia) open and running.
I understand Sen. Byrd still prefers trains to planes.
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SirNitram wrote:I prefer the Cardinal to most highways. Heck, I love travel by train, and I get stuck in the cheap seats.
You or Tev should write to Senator Byrd and ask him if he can't fund the operation of the train on a daily instead of thrice-weekly basis. That would be a nice start for West Virginia.
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With regards to Amtrak, I highly recommend the Acela between New York and Boston. Not only is it way quicker than driving (or even flying!), but even though Connecticut is hideously slow, there are some fantastic views of the ocean through it. I'm sure if they lay new track to speed up the Acela, it'll blast through rural Connecticut many miles inland, but there is a certain charm to enjoying a beer or glass of wine, watching the rolling seas, and letting the mind wander.
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"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain." - Schiller, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, III vi.
Alferd Packer wrote:With regards to Amtrak, I highly recommend the Acela between New York and Boston. Not only is it way quicker than driving (or even flying!), but even though Connecticut is hideously slow, there are some fantastic views of the ocean through it. I'm sure if they lay new track to speed up the Acela, it'll blast through rural Connecticut many miles inland, but there is a certain charm to enjoying a beer or glass of wine, watching the rolling seas, and letting the mind wander.
No, the plan is to retain the same route but upgrade the cantenary and widen the spacing between the tracks to accommodate higher speed at the turns.
Though, if I am recommending a train, the Empire Builder between Chicago and Seattle is the best out there. 44 hours of pure luxury.
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LadyTevar wrote:There is a clause in Amtrak's contract, placed there back in the 1970s: As long as Amtrak is receiving Government Susidities, they are obliged to keep the Cardinal Line (DC-St Louis, via West Virginia) open and running.
And see, this is why railroads nearly went bankrupt in the 60s and 70s - they couldn't dump those unprofitable lines thanks to government regulations limiting their ability to dump clearly unprofitable lines.
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Alferd Packer wrote:With regards to Amtrak, I highly recommend the Acela between New York and Boston. Not only is it way quicker than driving (or even flying!), but even though Connecticut is hideously slow, there are some fantastic views of the ocean through it. I'm sure if they lay new track to speed up the Acela, it'll blast through rural Connecticut many miles inland, but there is a certain charm to enjoying a beer or glass of wine, watching the rolling seas, and letting the mind wander.
I took the regional from Boston to get down here to DC, and even that was all right. Quite a lot of sitting, but I was more than happy to look out the window and watch the sights roll by; it didn't start to get exasperating until the sun had gone down and I desperately needed a few hours of sleep but couldn't get them. That was somewhere shortly before hitting New York.
Conrail recently double/triple tracked one of their freight lines that's a mile or so from my apartment.
Wait, I thought Conrail didn't exist anymore?
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LadyTevar wrote:There is a clause in Amtrak's contract, placed there back in the 1970s: As long as Amtrak is receiving Government Susidities, they are obliged to keep the Cardinal Line (DC-St Louis, via West Virginia) open and running.
And see, this is why railroads nearly went bankrupt in the 60s and 70s - they couldn't dump those unprofitable lines thanks to government regulations limiting their ability to dump clearly unprofitable lines.
And the free market kept roads perfectly paved and running!
....
Wait, no, privately owned roads tend to be in horrible condition, and most are still subsidized.
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. Anyway the Balt-Wash corridor is certainly a great testbed for expanding lines as the MTA is paticularly keen on getting traffic through Baltimore to actually work (consider that just about all of CSX's freight on the East coast was held up because of the damn Howard Street tunnel fire). The currnet plans are for the CSX line from around Relay down to just north of Washington to be triple tracked and the NEC from Newark to New Carrollton to be quad tracked (including an entirely new tunnel through Baltimore for Amtrak's through trains (MTA woudl continue to use the B&P). All of this is set to be completed by 2035 with the State sinking about 2-3 billion (not counting the tunnel which would be funded by Amtrak in their plan and which estimates I've seen put at around 700mil-1bil). I would like to see how that can affect things in paticular traffic through Washington going south because concurrent with all of this are some planned expansions of the Virginia Ave tunnel that might open up a hell of a lot more southbound traffic and maybe extend the NEC all the way down to Richmond.
