trains

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daredevil, w California takes first step in acquiring trains for High-Speed Rail

I feel like I've heard attempts at this from over a decade ago... doubting I'll see this within my lifetime at this point.

Rentlar,

I can understand your skepticism, but you may be slightly misinformed. High speed rail corridors don’t pop up overnight, and they take longer if you want it to be built as economically, safe, and well-thought out as possible. For this project we are about 15 years after voters approved the idea 2008, so that part is true as you say. So planning is done to get the most efficient and effective path which takes years, consulting the public takes years, building it takes more years, then testing and commissioning is the cherry on top. The American idea of “I can do this all by myself without any European/Asian help” is certainly slowing things down and making it expensive as well. Due to inflation the costs also will rise but so will the cost of any alternative be it maintaining highway systems, managing traffic and pollution.

See the progress of the project for yourself at their website. Or a detailed summary on the Wikipedia page.

https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2021-06-30-Hero-Images2.jpg

These must be golf pegs for Godzilla! :)

zabadoh, w Locomotive EF6418 in Ekimae Jinroku Park, Yamanishi, Japan
zabadoh, w Locomotive EF6418 in Ekimae Jinroku Park, Yamanishi, Japan

As featured in anime TV series Yuru Camp S3, episode 10

https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/d0b3060e-711d-436d-8056-ff915d13e445.png

Martineski,
@Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The train looks so out of place. Haha

safesyrup,

I can see why, but I kinda like it :D

wtypstanaccount04, w Abt System Train on the Oigawa Railway, Japan
@wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net avatar

Ironically the abt system isn’t in the main photo

zabadoh,

You mean the special toothed tracks? Yeah, I couldn’t find a good photo with both the train and the tracks.

allen, w Abt System Train on the Oigawa Railway, Japan
@allen@rail.chat avatar

@zabadoh

This one is interesting. The Abt system is only between two stations on a steep grade and a separate locomotive shunts with the train, not shown here.

The picture is of the beautiful and unique station that is located on top of the bridge.

I've ridden this one, and I would recommend earplugs if you have sensitive ears.

wtypstanaccount04, w Seibu 2000 series serving the Seibu Ikebukuro line as an express train
@wtypstanaccount04@hexbear.net avatar

This is a fun series, but has been getting increasingly bizarre, even by its own standards.

I kinda wish they put a little bit more effort into the anime (overhead wires, signals, correct tracks, etc.) but the fact that it all takes place after the 7G event makes these issues handwaveable.

zabadoh, w Abt System Train on the Oigawa Railway, Japan
Jumuta, w Seibu 2000 series serving the Seibu Ikebukuro line as an express train

very drippy ngl

zabadoh, w Seibu 2000 series serving the Seibu Ikebukuro line as an express train
Wooster, w Inside America’s First High Speed Rail
@Wooster@startrek.website avatar

A lot of good first steps, but this shouldn’t be owned by a private company.

Novi,

That’s how things are done in the USA.

Wooster,
@Wooster@startrek.website avatar

Doesn’t mean we should shrug it off as acceptable.

yokonzo,

Still shouldn’t be

Taleya,

It should also be high speed. That speed is honestly laughable

Alexstarfire,

I’m not watching the video, what type of speed are we talking about?

Xavienth,

It says 200 mph in the description, or 320 kph. That’s respectable.

Rentlar, w Ancora Accelerates NS [Norfolk Southern] Takeover Attempt - Railway Age

As much as the praising of Precision Scheduled Railroading is annoying to me and reads like a pacifier for money-hungry shareholders, the promise of putting safety back to the top of the priority list and putting more rail and transportation experience into management seems good.

XeroxCool,

They’re full of shit. It’s a short-term boost to stock price via slashed operational costs. They’ll bail as soon as the momentum starts to derail. Improving safety doesn’t start with reducing maintenance resources. Precision railroading is a scam that investors buy into because it sounds good on paper, but keeps proving to be a disaster when all the minor shortcomings stack up into a collapse of performance - every sick day, every repair delay will cause a larger ripple than before. Safety isn’t lucrative in the short timeline of a pump and dump.

Rentlar,

Safety is not a complicated issue, but this takeover is…

BLET (in February) initially opposed the takeover

BLET recently (At the end of April) changed positions and are now supporting Ancora’s takeover.

So I don’t really know who to side with on this issue tbh.

NS says they are going to do less PSR, but PSR is merely a buzzword and promises from current mamagement ring just as hollow as those from Ancora.

Beaver, w Freight railroads must keep 2-person crews, according to new federal rule first proposed under Obama
@Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

Democrats are learning from East Palestine.

Rentlar,

Yep. Biden and administration has been improving stuff for both freight rail and passenger rail, possibly after letting them getting away with being too lax on safety. If he gets another term I really hope they can bring back Conrail which would bring back NS in good hands.

Immersive_Matthew, w Question: what would infrastructure for caustic soda locomotives look like if they had seen mainstream use?

Wow. This is something I have never heard of before but it conceptually makes sense albeit I am a have no idea how long a tank would run a train for. Would love to learn more too, so please link is to whatever it is your are creating. Hoping a video on the topic.

JacobCoffinWrites,
@JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net avatar

Thanks! So far that site seems to be the best source of information I’ve been able to find (the Wikipedia article seems to mostly be a restated, trimmed down version of it) but there are a few other articles online I’m trying to vet for accuracy.

I’m especially interested in this quote:

“A fireless soda engine, together with evaporating apparatus, has been at work on the Aix la Chapelle-Burtscheid tramway for the last half year. In order to test the working capacity of this locomotive engine, and the consumption of fuel on a certain day, the Honigmann locomotive engine was put to work this day from 8:45 o’clock am till 8 o’clock pm, with a pause of three-quarters of an hour for the second quantity of soda lye. The engine was, therefore, at work for fully 10� hours, viz, 5� hours with the first quantity, and five with the second. The distance between Heinrichsalle and Wilhelmstrasse, where the engine performed the regular service, is 1 km, […] This distance was traversed sixty-four times, the total distance, including the journeys to the station, being 66 km.”

So it sounds like it ran for about five hours and traveled 33km on its load of caustic soda (I’m not sure at a glance which flavor chemical) and only took 45 minutes to refuel and come back up to temp.

And these were early designs, basically prototypes (though granted, the folks in that time making them probably knew a ton about steam locomotives). I imagine they could have been improved with time to study and refine the designs.

I’m not sure how well the boilers stood up to containing hot caustic stuff, but perhaps materials science has developed enough to help protect against that.

I’m writing and making visual art in the solarpunk genre, which tends to heavily emphasize trains and other public transit. But I want to broaden our options a bit beyond just electric trains. When I first heard about these, I felt like they’d mix super well with another invention of that time period, the mirrored solar concentrators used to run steam generators (some of the earliest solar power).

After all, one of the biggest disadvantages of the caustic soda locomotives was that it took more coal to dry the soda than to produce an equivalent amount steam directly with coal. But you don’t have to use coal. These 1800s mirrored dishes only require mirrors or polished metal and math to make (plus some simple motors and electronics to get them to follow the sun) and they could dry the soda for free. A lot of my focus is on less utopian, rebuilding societies, so trains and solar concentrators built with 1800s technology seems like a good place to start.

I’m going to start with a picture of a stop along the tracks for replenishing the soda in this style

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/58f2b27937c581308536f214/1518132239245-NKIAUNHZT4PXEVBV66Q0/Surfliner+SLO.jpg

using a layout something like this:

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/84c1b3ae-d18c-4fa9-8751-b86f307fe115.webp

plus a description. And I’m hoping to work them into a fiction story and a tabletop campaign.

As for the technical side, I’m not sure on whether they’ll be draining the diluted caustic soda and pouring in fresh, whether they’ll be drying it inside the locomotive’s boiler using superheated steam generated with a solar boiler besides the tracks, perhaps swapping locomotives to avoid delays, or even swapping boilers as someone on reddit suggested. If I go with swapping the soda, probably the boiler tank won’t actually be inside the dish, but nearby, with the steam from the dish heating it.

I hope that helps, I’m very new to this technology and am already trying to mix it with other stuff so we’ll see how it goes.

cedarmesa,
@cedarmesa@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

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  • JacobCoffinWrites,
    @JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net avatar

    Sure thing! There were a bunch, (and there are tons of solar cooker and solar concentrator designs!)

    I’ll admit I’d mostly been thinking of this guy but there were a bunch of other inventors doing similar things around the same time

    Considering that most of the descriptions I’ve seen of drying the caustic soda mention pumping superheated steam through it, and that almost any of these systems, or something like these modern ones could produce that, there’s probably lots of ways to match these trains to analog solar power.

    This thread had some really cool info on how these went together and the ages of the various components: www.reddit.com/r/solarpunk/comments/…/ktmjpst/?ut…

    Immersive_Matthew,

    Oh wow. What a great reply and a super cool project you are working on. You have inspired me too as one of the attractions in my VR Theme Park I am Imagineering is about trains and I would love to add a foot note about these. Thanks so much.

    JacobCoffinWrites,
    @JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net avatar

    That’s awesome! Best of luck!

    Rentlar, w How much does it cost to build a shortline railroad?

    You know, if I had millions lying around I’d want to build or buy a small <10km line in rural buttfuck Saskatchewan and ride train cars around, just for myself and letting people that made it here use it for fun. I haven’t tried estimating how much that would cost.

    Have a look at the West Coast Express, opened in 1995 from Vancouver BC to 43 miles out at an estimated cost of 40 to 80 million Canadian dollars, equivalent to 53.4 to 106.8 million of today’s USD. There were musings of it as far back as 1971, but it sounds like design started sometime after 1981 and construction started in 1994, finishing late 1995.

    The price tag would include 5 engines and 5 sets of bilevel railcars, leasing tracks for CP and BNSF, building a handful of turnouts and sidings to hold the trains when out of service, build or contracting wash and maintenance facilities, maybe some small track and signalling upgrades along the route, and station facilities in 7 places.

    Another example is the Rail Runner Express in New Mexico that runs 96.5 miles from Santa Fe to Albuquerque. The NM Governor Richardson announced it in August 2003. Construction began in October 2005. The first portion of service began in July 2006 and the full line went into service by December 2008. The cost to build the line was about 285 million USD total equivalent to about 438 million USD today. A operational deficit of 10 to 20 million USD annually was reported and criticized, but roads and bridges of that length cost as much to maintain anyway.

    scrubbles,
    !deleted6348 avatar

    Very neat, 20-40mil is what I expected, makes sense. Thanks for the detailed reply! When I win the lottery maybe I try it…

    safesyrup, w How much does it cost to build a shortline railroad?

    This hugely depends on many factors. What quality should the rail be? Do you transport freight at 30km/h or pasenger rail at 200 km/h? Is there electification involved? How is the soil along the tracks? How many trains of what type do you need? Do you want electric train protection and signaling? How nice do you want the train stops to be? Does it cross property of private individuals that you need to aquire?

    I just want to say that this is not really a question that has an answer since it depends on so many factors. You also have to think about regulations for rail traffic. Building a rail line in your backyard isn‘t neary as expensive as one you use commercially because of safety standards you have to comply with, which is a good thing.

    Oh and even if you could specify a project, i still would have no clue since i‘m not a project manager nor civil engineer, just interested in rail and trains :D

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