12 ms·

So ridiculous. Is private rail so dysfunctional that it actually makes sense to buy battery-electric locomotives in the US instead of installing overhead wires?

• mushufasa 5y ago
  maybe this is an incremental strategy plan: have battery power and future ability to also use wires, so that you can operate in situations where there is less than 100% coverage
• MisterTea 5y ago
  How does the overhead wire adjust height to compensate for varying car heights in the case of double stacked intermodal cars? An overhead cable is a limiting factor.
  • throwawayboise 5y ago
    It needs to be high enough to clear the tallest cars (plus enough distance to prevent arcing), and then the pantograph pickup on the locomotives needs to be tall enough to reach the overhead wires.
• foooobaba 5y ago
  UP is a freight railroad and has around 32k miles of track, and about 10k trains. Also, they need to operate 24/7 in harsh conditions all throughout the US, west of Mississippi river, so very hot and cold, mountains, desert ect.
• bluGill 5y ago
  Yes. Overhead wires make the value of the rail go up and so the taxes the railroads pay is more and thus it isn't worth it. For the busy routes it would still be worth it, but the is a lot of used just often enough to not abandon the tracks rail. Electric is all or nothing (not 100%,but close) in that if even a small line isn't electric you only run diesel engines so you can run trains one that one line. It is easier to load and unload without electric overhead. Still if the cost of diesel went to $15/gallon the us would put up those wires, but until then diesel is cheaper. Don't forget to adjust for inflation.
• jeffbee 5y ago
  This is for yard traffic. It makes sense to me. Which part doesn't make sense to you? For ports where they are double-stacking containers onto well cars, overhead wiring would be challenging, and you still need all-new locomotives.
  • gsnedders 5y ago
    > For ports where they are double-stacking containers onto well cars, overhead wiring would be challenging, and you still need all-new locomotives. That's not really a big challenge; this is something done globally on a daily basis. Typically you either have an entirely unelectrified siding and shunt in/out of it, or you have only the near end of the siding electrified and propel the cars into the siding.
    • jeffbee 5y ago
      No, double-stacked containers are unique to North America and nobody else does it.
      • gsnedders 5y ago
        India and China would both like to disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-stack_rail_transport#Outside_North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-stack_rail_transport#Ou...
• gok 5y ago
  There are around 300,000 km of active rail in the US, essentially none of which is electrified. Then there are 10s of thousands of diesel locomotives that would need to be all replaced. This would cost trillions of dollars, more than any reasonable estimate of rail revenue for the several decades. Then those overhead wires would need to be maintained, which is much more expensive than just keeping rails functional.
  • dylan604 5y ago
    Aren't they diesel-electric though? It's not like a diesel engine is turning the wheels. The diesel is just power the electric motor driving the wheels, or are these not the norm?
    • gok 5y ago
      Yes but the expensive part of the locomotive is either the diesel generator or the equipment to take power from overhead wires (on-board inverters and the pantographs). It's not generally practical to convert one to another.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • projektfu 5y ago
    There's almost certainly a power law applying to which tracks are getting the most use. If you can electrify 50% of traffic you would make a great upgrade, and it wouldn't require anything near 150,000km of track.
    • gok 5y ago
      The operational complexity is nontrivial. You would need to attach both diesel and electrical locomotion to every train that has even a small segment in unwired territory, which would be most runs, in exchange for relatively small fuel savings.
• trothamel 5y ago
  https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/crgmsais_-_analysis_of_freight_rail_electrification_in_the_scag_region.pdf?1605991886 https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/crgmsa... According to this study from 2012, the cost of electrifying railroads in California is about $4.8M/track mile, and according to google, there are about 140,000 route miles of freight rail in the US. I'd assume that doing this in bulk might drop the costs substantially, but we're still talking about a huge network.
  • bobthepanda 5y ago
    It's not necessarily doing it in bulk that would make it cheap, it's basically turning it into an assembly line capable of doing a small amount of miles every year for ever cheaper cost. American infrastructure projects tend to be super big, then don't do anything for 10+ years before you kickstart everything up again. This is a fairly poor idea if you want to keep knowledge around from the last time it was done.
    • trothamel 5y ago
      It's one of those things that's kind of useless if you only do a small number of miles a year though - if you don't have the ability to make the entire journey electric, you have to involve two locomotives and the cost to switch them. That might be why Battery-Electric looks good, as you only need to electrify the two stations.
      • bobthepanda 5y ago
        Not necessarily. Amtrak is currently investing in dual-mode locomotives: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/amtrak-siemens-finalize-deal-for-new-equipment-to-replace-amfleet-i-equipment/ https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/amtrak-sie... My understanding of how these work is that when not connected to wires directly, a diesel generator supplies electricity instead. So partial wiring is possible with these. Amtrak has some additional constraints (they can't run diesels under the Hudson River) but to some extent a lot of freight operators have similar restrictions but deal with them differently; due to ventilation concerns, most Western mountain tunnels only permit one train in them at any given time, and the crews have to carry respirators and oxygen in case the trains stall inside the tunnel. --- Britain also has trains that do this running with a program of incremental electrification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_802 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_802 Once the electrification is complete, the equipment can be converted to full electric operation simply by unplugging the diesel generators.
• jsnodlin 5y ago
  Yes. It’s much, much cheaper to carry power with you rather than electrify hundreds of thousands of miles of rail.
  • Aloha 5y ago
    Indeed. Nevermind how vastly more expensive MOW costs are for electrified lines.
    • gsnedders 5y ago
      This depends heavily on the density of operation; globally at least for heavily used lines the total cost of operation (infrastructure, locomotion, etc.) is much lower for electrified lines, in no small part because each locomotive needs much less maintenance. From that regard, it's somewhat surprising that none of the busiest lines have been electrified.
    • inglor_cz 5y ago
      The sheer vastness of rural America does not lend itself to using overhead wires. In Europe, a bout of bad weather will tear down the wires in multiple places and make the line unusable even though the tracks themselves are fine. It is always "fun" to commute after a night of heavy wind, but at least the countries here are mostly compact and the locations that took damage are close to one another, so a few crews can fix them in a day or so. That would be much harder in the flyover country. I am not sure how the Russians keep up their Transsib line; it is long, electrified and goes straight through thousands of miles of wilderness.
      • _0w8t 5y ago
        My father in Belarus in eighties and nineties used to travel few times per week about 35 milles in one direction by a local electric train with overhead wires (called "elektrichka" in Russian). Not a single time the train was cancelled. Even delays more then 10-15 minutes were extremely rare including on the days with heavy snow or strong wind. Even all maintenance were done at night and never disrupted the traffic. So if 40 years ago Soviet Union managed that, I am sure US should be capable to build electrical lines that are not destroyed by a bad weather.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  If you want to do things incrementally it makes perfect sense.
• xeromal 5y ago
  Not sure if you realize how huge the US is, but overhead wire would be a ridiculously expensive effort for not much benefit.
• konschubert 5y ago
  The US has a much higher percentage of freight transported by rail than the EU. I would not be so dismissive of their way of operation.
• jcranmer 5y ago
  It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to string up the overhead wire by themselves, and that's using the lowest cost electrification jobs done world-wide. It would cost hundreds of billions more to actually clear bridges and tunnels for the extra height needed for catenary. Then you'd have to actually buy all of the locomotives (not even going to speculate there). And then there's probably significant extra cost in building out transmission infrastructure to the railroad tracks--I'd guess there's large slices of the West where there's nothing around nearby you could hook traction substations up to. All-in-all, you're talking about a trillion-dollar investment to do so. At the same time... the performance benefits really aren't worth it for freight trains. Remember that diesel locomotives are already an electric drivetrain--the diesel is merely fueling a generator that's sitting on board to power the drivetrain. The big savings with electrification come with weight reduction--and with freight, the weight of the locomotive is a small component of that weight--or using EMUs that let you have every wheel being powered (and with freight cars, that's again never going to happen).