6 ms·

This is a really cool tunnel! It's a single tunnel 57km long and the trains are all-electric. There was a nice comment thread a couple months ago: https://news.

by miander 11y ago

This is a really cool tunnel! It's a single tunnel 57km long and the trains are all-electric. There was a nice comment thread a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10465597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10465597

herbst 11y ago
I wonder, what else would the train be other than electric?
- rmoriz 11y ago
  In the US most railway lines are not electrified.
  - herbst 11y ago
    That not exactly answers my question and is no surprise ether. I never heard anyone praising the public transportation system of the U.S. also everyone and their childs appear to have 2 cars. This is simply not the case in Switzerland. Most people take the train/tram if it is not reachable by bike.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - smackfu 11y ago
      Most rail lines in the US are used for freight. Is electric a good option in that case?
      - thallian 11y ago
        SBB Cargo uses electric trains except for the shunters. I can't comment if it's a good idea though.
        rmoriz 11y ago
        It is a good idea. SBB started to electify very early (1920s) because they never had a reliable access to oil (especially not in the war times) but lots of hydroelectric power. Also there is a lot higher traffic densitiy in main lines in Europe which also justifies the cost for building and keeping the infrastructure.
      - jcranmer 11y ago
        Diesel locomotives are closer to electric cars than they are to diesel cars or trucks--the actual traction motors are electric, and the diesel itself is just a diesel generator for power. This means that the main disadvantages of diesel over electric are sourcing fuel, more moving parts to maintain, and some exhaust issues. However, the US railroad network was essentially built out in the steam era, and steam locomotives have much more severe requirements for all of these problems. Going to diesel from steam was already a win. The problems with electric trains is needing to supply and maintain catenaries, needing to source enough power, and needing to cope with highly variable electric demand (trains use much more power when they hit a steep incline). In the early 20th century, when railroads were replacing their steam locomotives, the rural electrification projects in the US just didn't exist yet, which made electrification of mainline railroad track quite expensive. The few railroads that tried ended up bankrupting themselves in the process. Another drawback of electrification that's only obvious in hindsight is that installing catenaries makes enlarging the load gauge that much more costly--if the US had mostly electrified its freight track, it likely would have never developed double-stacked container trains (absent in much of Europe since the electrical catenaries provide insufficient clearance), a development which did much to revitalize the railroad industry.
    - msandford 11y ago
      > I never heard anyone praising the public transportation system of the U.S. also everyone and their childs appear to have 2 cars. The US has pretty good public transit in the places that have merited it prior to the widespread adoption of the automobile. If the city was large relative to its size today (geographically) in the early 1900s odds are good it's got acceptable to good transit. The places which have mostly grown after the 1940s tend to have poorer transit as cars came to dominate. Comparing what works in Switzerland with what works in the US doesn't make that much sense, though. There are plenty of stretches of railway in the western US that might be hundreds of miles between places big enough to warrant a substantial power station. Which means that you're going to have to pull hundreds of miles of high voltage lines (which aren't free) in order to have a stationary power plant power the all-electric locomotive. Or you can just drag around your own power plant, sans wires everywhere; a diesel.
      - jandrese 11y ago
        To go beyond that, cities that grew after the 1940s often have relatively poor transit access to the "new" sections. For example, the DC Metro system is only halfway through finally opening up service to the enormous northern North Virginia area and utterly failed to even provide halfassed streetcar service to Alexandria. New York City's subway system doesn't attempt to cross over into Jersey or even to the eastern half of Queens.
        warfangle 11y ago
        > New York City's subway system doesn't attempt to cross over into Jersey or even to the eastern half of Queens. There are other systems that do, though: PATH (for points immediately across the Hudson), NJTransit (commuter rail to a lot of NJ), LIRR (commuter rail to Long Island & Queens) and MetroNorth (commuter rail to points north in NY and CT). Given how long it takes to ride the subway to the farther reaches of Queens (e.g., Jamaica), I can't imagine how long it would take to commute to Manhattan via subway from, say, Bayside Queens (which is served by LIRR).
- djcapelis 11y ago
  Diesel trains are still very common in many parts of the world.
  - bontoJR 11y ago
    Yeah, in Switzerland they are pretty uncommon for civil transportation, but very common for transportation of goods, considering that a lot of big companies have private rails connecting warehouses to the national network that, ofc these rails are w/o electric wires.
    - rasur 11y ago
      I beg to differ, I see and sometimes use diesel trains on a daily basis in .ch But that's not to take away from Switzerland having a very high percentage of trains being electric only.
      - herbst 11y ago
        Which one? I use SBB and BLS regulary and i never noticed anything else than electric. (Really just wondering as i have no idea)
        bontoJR 11y ago
        me too, I travel regularly from Basel to Lugano, daily in the Bern - Zürich, also using regional trains and never saw a diesel machine for passengers transportation, except for some rare unexpected cases. I traveled some times from Zürich to Munich and saw that in the German side, rails have no electricity and then the SBB are forced to use a diesel powered machine, but except for that, I still have to find a connection where the diesel machine is necessary every time, I am curious!
        ccozan 11y ago
        Actually, due to increasing traffing from Switzerland to Munich, Deutsch Bahn decided last year to upgrade and electrify the connection from Lindau up to ( I think ) Geltendorf.
- ianpurton 11y ago
  Steam.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - herbst 11y ago
    I am pretty sure you cant do that near any modern city because of the smog. Or sure you could, but not if you care about a nice city image.
    - needusername 11y ago
      http://www.brienz-rothorn-bahn.ch/en/experience/railway.html http://www.brienz-rothorn-bahn.ch/en/experience/railway.html
      - herbst 11y ago
        This kind of proofs my point. This thing is a mountain train, there are not cities that could be considered big on the way at all. Its also a nice experience :)
- samcheng 11y ago
  Switzerland is awesomely-electrified, but there are still branch lines that don't have overhead wires. Diesel locomotives (actually, the Diesel generators generate electricity that then powers the traction motors) are still in common use all over the world.
- noipv4 11y ago
  Swiss innovate a lot in locomotive tech. (ABB and Stadler are 2 big companies that do a lot of electric loco R&D) The TILO (Ticino Lombardia) Swiss trains (S10, Stadler FLIRT) can run on both 15kv AC (Swiss) or 3kv DC (Italy) power systems when they cross the borders. No de-boarding and re-boarding to a different train is required. http://www.tilo.ch/en/Azienda/Treni.html http://www.tilo.ch/en/Azienda/Treni.html
- ucaetano 11y ago
  The cascade tunnel, longest rail tunnel in the US with 12.5km isn't electrified and has only diesel trains running through it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Tunnel

by miander 11y ago

herbst 11y ago

I wonder, what else would the train be other than electric?

rmoriz 11y ago
In the US most railway lines are not electrified.
- herbst 11y ago
  That not exactly answers my question and is no surprise ether. I never heard anyone praising the public transportation system of the U.S. also everyone and their childs appear to have 2 cars. This is simply not the case in Switzerland. Most people take the train/tram if it is not reachable by bike.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - smackfu 11y ago
    Most rail lines in the US are used for freight. Is electric a good option in that case?
    - thallian 11y ago
      SBB Cargo uses electric trains except for the shunters. I can't comment if it's a good idea though.
      - rmoriz 11y ago
        It is a good idea. SBB started to electify very early (1920s) because they never had a reliable access to oil (especially not in the war times) but lots of hydroelectric power. Also there is a lot higher traffic densitiy in main lines in Europe which also justifies the cost for building and keeping the infrastructure.
    - jcranmer 11y ago
      Diesel locomotives are closer to electric cars than they are to diesel cars or trucks--the actual traction motors are electric, and the diesel itself is just a diesel generator for power. This means that the main disadvantages of diesel over electric are sourcing fuel, more moving parts to maintain, and some exhaust issues. However, the US railroad network was essentially built out in the steam era, and steam locomotives have much more severe requirements for all of these problems. Going to diesel from steam was already a win. The problems with electric trains is needing to supply and maintain catenaries, needing to source enough power, and needing to cope with highly variable electric demand (trains use much more power when they hit a steep incline). In the early 20th century, when railroads were replacing their steam locomotives, the rural electrification projects in the US just didn't exist yet, which made electrification of mainline railroad track quite expensive. The few railroads that tried ended up bankrupting themselves in the process. Another drawback of electrification that's only obvious in hindsight is that installing catenaries makes enlarging the load gauge that much more costly--if the US had mostly electrified its freight track, it likely would have never developed double-stacked container trains (absent in much of Europe since the electrical catenaries provide insufficient clearance), a development which did much to revitalize the railroad industry.
  - msandford 11y ago
    > I never heard anyone praising the public transportation system of the U.S. also everyone and their childs appear to have 2 cars. The US has pretty good public transit in the places that have merited it prior to the widespread adoption of the automobile. If the city was large relative to its size today (geographically) in the early 1900s odds are good it's got acceptable to good transit. The places which have mostly grown after the 1940s tend to have poorer transit as cars came to dominate. Comparing what works in Switzerland with what works in the US doesn't make that much sense, though. There are plenty of stretches of railway in the western US that might be hundreds of miles between places big enough to warrant a substantial power station. Which means that you're going to have to pull hundreds of miles of high voltage lines (which aren't free) in order to have a stationary power plant power the all-electric locomotive. Or you can just drag around your own power plant, sans wires everywhere; a diesel.
    - jandrese 11y ago
      To go beyond that, cities that grew after the 1940s often have relatively poor transit access to the "new" sections. For example, the DC Metro system is only halfway through finally opening up service to the enormous northern North Virginia area and utterly failed to even provide halfassed streetcar service to Alexandria. New York City's subway system doesn't attempt to cross over into Jersey or even to the eastern half of Queens.
      - warfangle 11y ago
        > New York City's subway system doesn't attempt to cross over into Jersey or even to the eastern half of Queens. There are other systems that do, though: PATH (for points immediately across the Hudson), NJTransit (commuter rail to a lot of NJ), LIRR (commuter rail to Long Island & Queens) and MetroNorth (commuter rail to points north in NY and CT). Given how long it takes to ride the subway to the farther reaches of Queens (e.g., Jamaica), I can't imagine how long it would take to commute to Manhattan via subway from, say, Bayside Queens (which is served by LIRR).
djcapelis 11y ago
Diesel trains are still very common in many parts of the world.
- bontoJR 11y ago
  Yeah, in Switzerland they are pretty uncommon for civil transportation, but very common for transportation of goods, considering that a lot of big companies have private rails connecting warehouses to the national network that, ofc these rails are w/o electric wires.
  - rasur 11y ago
    I beg to differ, I see and sometimes use diesel trains on a daily basis in .ch But that's not to take away from Switzerland having a very high percentage of trains being electric only.
    - herbst 11y ago
      Which one? I use SBB and BLS regulary and i never noticed anything else than electric. (Really just wondering as i have no idea)
      - bontoJR 11y ago
        me too, I travel regularly from Basel to Lugano, daily in the Bern - Zürich, also using regional trains and never saw a diesel machine for passengers transportation, except for some rare unexpected cases. I traveled some times from Zürich to Munich and saw that in the German side, rails have no electricity and then the SBB are forced to use a diesel powered machine, but except for that, I still have to find a connection where the diesel machine is necessary every time, I am curious!
        ccozan 11y ago
        Actually, due to increasing traffing from Switzerland to Munich, Deutsch Bahn decided last year to upgrade and electrify the connection from Lindau up to ( I think ) Geltendorf.
ianpurton 11y ago
Steam.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- herbst 11y ago
  I am pretty sure you cant do that near any modern city because of the smog. Or sure you could, but not if you care about a nice city image.
  - needusername 11y ago
    http://www.brienz-rothorn-bahn.ch/en/experience/railway.html http://www.brienz-rothorn-bahn.ch/en/experience/railway.html
    - herbst 11y ago
      This kind of proofs my point. This thing is a mountain train, there are not cities that could be considered big on the way at all. Its also a nice experience :)
samcheng 11y ago
Switzerland is awesomely-electrified, but there are still branch lines that don't have overhead wires. Diesel locomotives (actually, the Diesel generators generate electricity that then powers the traction motors) are still in common use all over the world.
noipv4 11y ago
Swiss innovate a lot in locomotive tech. (ABB and Stadler are 2 big companies that do a lot of electric loco R&D) The TILO (Ticino Lombardia) Swiss trains (S10, Stadler FLIRT) can run on both 15kv AC (Swiss) or 3kv DC (Italy) power systems when they cross the borders. No de-boarding and re-boarding to a different train is required. http://www.tilo.ch/en/Azienda/Treni.html http://www.tilo.ch/en/Azienda/Treni.html
ucaetano 11y ago
The cascade tunnel, longest rail tunnel in the US with 12.5km isn't electrified and has only diesel trains running through it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Tunnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Tunnel