7 ms·

It's an initial step. I'm not sure if the technology would work for their main routes, but this at least is a step to test and evaluate how this technology work

It's an initial step. I'm not sure if the technology would work for their main routes, but this at least is a step to test and evaluate how this technology works.

bobthepanda 5y ago
I'm not saying that this isn't a good step, but the headline just clipped off a pretty important piece of it.
toomuchtodo 5y ago
Main routes are better served by combusting manufactured carbon neutral fuels airlines (United recently flew a route with 1 engine burning this fuel) are testing, using hybrid locomotives with smaller batteries for kinetic buffers. A big Chevy Volt essentially. Electrifying US rail outside of switchyards won’t ever be practical, unless you could drive down the cost of electrified tracks with a third rail (overhead electric at this scale would be obscenely expensive).
- sfifs 5y ago
  > Electrifying US rail outside of switchyards won’t ever be practical, unless you could drive down the cost of electrified tracks with a third rail (overhead electric at this scale would be obscenely expensive). India has electrified almost 50,000 kilometers of track with overhead wires and this is increasing eabout 5000 km a year. China has almost 100,000 km of electrified rail track. So very likely whatever barriers to electrification there are in the US are largely self inflicted and maybe corruption or regulatory capture driven.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Third rails are even more expensive for freight railroads. * Double stack well cars sit very low. There are currently no third rail installations in the US that wouldn't get sideswiped by a well car. So their installation would basically mean forgoing half of freight revenue. * Third rails have to operate at lower voltages due to the fairly small clearance to the ground, and so they require more frequent substations than higher voltage overhead wires.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Have any resources you’d recommend for learning more about the logistics of third rail power systems? Would you happen to know what the clearance is for double stack well cars? Edit: excellent resources, thanks all for replying.
    - jcranmer 5y ago
      The general clearance envelope you're looking at is AAR Plate H: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabarit_AAR_Plate-H.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabarit_AAR_Plate-H....
    - jabl 5y ago
      Third rail systems typically work at 1500V, can't go very much higher than that due to risk from arcing. Most overhead lines use 25kV, allowing much more power to be transferred, over longer distances. Which is why third rail systems are usually only seen in metro lines and similar. I'd guess in urban environments sprinkling more substations around isn't such a huge issue, as access to the power grid is seldom an issue. Also metro trains need much less power than a high speed passenger train or a heavy freight train.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        with metros the additional consideration is tunneling. generally speaking, third rail allows for a smaller tunnel diameter than overhead systems. (third rail is located near the wider section of tunnel in the middle whereas overhead requires extending the height.)
        bluGill 5y ago
        There are overhead rails you can use in tunnels. Nothing stops the high voltage arc issue (the whole advantage of overhead is high voltage), but without all the equipment to tension the cables you don't need as much room and the power will be one the middle of the tunnel. Anyone building new tunnel should allow the little extra room for overhead, but retrofitting may not be worth it.
- jabl 5y ago
  > Electrifying US rail outside of switchyards won’t ever be practical Why is that? Russia, a considerably poorer country beset by endemic corruption and other major issues, has managed to electrify the 9000+ km (considerably longer than any coast to coast US railway route) Trans-Siberian railway. With overhead lines, obviously.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Political and engineering will first, with cost a secondary concern (but still wielded as a reason not to). It makes sense, with enough clean energy, based on the cost of emissions offset by freight rail electrification to expend the capital required. Perhaps issue green government backed bonds to pay for it or print some more money. But we can’t build large infra projects in the US anymore, for a combination of reasons: nuclear power plants, California high speed rail, etc. [1] [2] [3] Personally, I would prefer electrified freight rail, I’m just unsure if the US knows how or can do it. I suggested third rail if the cost came down because in America, you can usually coax towards the right solution if you can show drastic cost savings/reductions (see the rapid renewables uptake as costs declined over the last decade). At a glance, it seems easier to throw down a third rail while doing track work versus the construction effort for thousands of miles of overhead gantries and 25kv power lines. You could pair this with HVDC transmission lines looking to use railroad right of ways to avoid NIMBYS (the SOO HVDC line in the Midwest, for example [4]), for power accessibility. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/infrastructure-megaprojects.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/infrastructure-megapro... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mega-projects-fail-infrastructure-energy-dams-nuclear https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mega-proj... [3] https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs... [4] https://www.soogreenrr.com/about/ https://www.soogreenrr.com/about/
    - jrockway 5y ago
      I'm not sure that CAHSR is an example of why we can't build infrastructure. They're building it. There are YouTubers that have done drone flyovers of most of the first construction packages, and progress is being made pretty quickly. I have a feeling that too much has been done to cancel the project now. The corresponding Bay Area projects seem to be proceeding as well (CalMod, CalTrain electrification, etc). Texas Central also seems to be making progress on Dallas-Houston high speed rail. That said, I agree that the taxpayers don't feel like giving billions of dollars to BNSF and Union Pacific, so they probably won't electrify until there is no other option. Fuel costs just aren't high enough to make it profitable, and the environmental externalities are still free. (But, of course, you'd rather see a 500 car freight train burning fossil fuels than 500 tractor trailers driving down the interstate burning fossil fuels.)
- dboreham 5y ago
  It has been attempted before: https://www.american-rails.com/pce.html https://www.american-rails.com/pce.html
- ErikCorry 5y ago
  I wonder if they have done studies on what the cost of electrification is for hybrid trains. A lot of the complication of electrification is that you have to raise road bridges to make space for the overhead power lines, you have to make tunnels larger and you have to put power lines 100s of places where they are really hard to install. But imagine a train that can go for a kilometre or two without power lines, because it's a hybrid. Suddenly every low bridge and most tunnels are handled by just lowering the pantograph (power pick-up) as you go under them. If lines cross in strange ways or go under buildings you just don't put power lines there. At level crossings you skip the power lines, so no tall trucks will hit them. I think there are probably huge savings to be made by putting the power lines in the easiest places and bridging the rest with hybrid. The battery recharges at speed as soon as power returns. You can even install a small diesel motor on the locomotive that has enough power (with gearing?) to creep to the next overhead power line if the train is unexpectedly stranded. When a power line is downed by a tree (or a cable thief), the cleanup crew just removes that section. It is put up later when the backlog from the storm has been cleared. Of course you need the train to know its location and have an updated list of where to lower the pantograph. That seems to me like a totally solvable problem in 2022. It's like 100 times easier than a self-driving car or landing a rocket with retropropulsion.
  - euroderf 5y ago
    You say it is necessary to lower the pantograph before (and re-raise it after) a gap in the line. Isn't it possible to (say) have the line smoothly rise before the gap - sort of lift away - high enough to disengage from the pantograph before the gap - so that the pantograph can be kept in the same position ? I'd think this would save on wear & tear and avoid accidents. How much upward pressure is applied by a pantograph anyways ?
    - ErikCorry 5y ago
      A lot of the gaps will be there because there is not enough head room for the wires. In that case whatever caused the missing head room would rip off the pantograph. Since you need the pantograph-lowering feature anyway you might as well use it everywhere and avoid having to build the smooth-rising smooth-lowering cables.

It's an initial step. I'm not sure if the technology would work for their main routes, but this at least is a step to test and evaluate how this technology works.

bobthepanda 5y ago

I'm not saying that this isn't a good step, but the headline just clipped off a pretty important piece of it.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Main routes are better served by combusting manufactured carbon neutral fuels airlines (United recently flew a route with 1 engine burning this fuel) are testing, using hybrid locomotives with smaller batteries for kinetic buffers. A big Chevy Volt essentially. Electrifying US rail outside of switchyards won’t ever be practical, unless you could drive down the cost of electrified tracks with a third rail (overhead electric at this scale would be obscenely expensive).

sfifs 5y ago
> Electrifying US rail outside of switchyards won’t ever be practical, unless you could drive down the cost of electrified tracks with a third rail (overhead electric at this scale would be obscenely expensive). India has electrified almost 50,000 kilometers of track with overhead wires and this is increasing eabout 5000 km a year. China has almost 100,000 km of electrified rail track. So very likely whatever barriers to electrification there are in the US are largely self inflicted and maybe corruption or regulatory capture driven.
bobthepanda 5y ago
Third rails are even more expensive for freight railroads. * Double stack well cars sit very low. There are currently no third rail installations in the US that wouldn't get sideswiped by a well car. So their installation would basically mean forgoing half of freight revenue. * Third rails have to operate at lower voltages due to the fairly small clearance to the ground, and so they require more frequent substations than higher voltage overhead wires.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Have any resources you’d recommend for learning more about the logistics of third rail power systems? Would you happen to know what the clearance is for double stack well cars? Edit: excellent resources, thanks all for replying.
  - jcranmer 5y ago
    The general clearance envelope you're looking at is AAR Plate H: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabarit_AAR_Plate-H.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabarit_AAR_Plate-H....
  - jabl 5y ago
    Third rail systems typically work at 1500V, can't go very much higher than that due to risk from arcing. Most overhead lines use 25kV, allowing much more power to be transferred, over longer distances. Which is why third rail systems are usually only seen in metro lines and similar. I'd guess in urban environments sprinkling more substations around isn't such a huge issue, as access to the power grid is seldom an issue. Also metro trains need much less power than a high speed passenger train or a heavy freight train.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      with metros the additional consideration is tunneling. generally speaking, third rail allows for a smaller tunnel diameter than overhead systems. (third rail is located near the wider section of tunnel in the middle whereas overhead requires extending the height.)
      - bluGill 5y ago
        There are overhead rails you can use in tunnels. Nothing stops the high voltage arc issue (the whole advantage of overhead is high voltage), but without all the equipment to tension the cables you don't need as much room and the power will be one the middle of the tunnel. Anyone building new tunnel should allow the little extra room for overhead, but retrofitting may not be worth it.
jabl 5y ago
> Electrifying US rail outside of switchyards won’t ever be practical Why is that? Russia, a considerably poorer country beset by endemic corruption and other major issues, has managed to electrify the 9000+ km (considerably longer than any coast to coast US railway route) Trans-Siberian railway. With overhead lines, obviously.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Political and engineering will first, with cost a secondary concern (but still wielded as a reason not to). It makes sense, with enough clean energy, based on the cost of emissions offset by freight rail electrification to expend the capital required. Perhaps issue green government backed bonds to pay for it or print some more money. But we can’t build large infra projects in the US anymore, for a combination of reasons: nuclear power plants, California high speed rail, etc. [1] [2] [3] Personally, I would prefer electrified freight rail, I’m just unsure if the US knows how or can do it. I suggested third rail if the cost came down because in America, you can usually coax towards the right solution if you can show drastic cost savings/reductions (see the rapid renewables uptake as costs declined over the last decade). At a glance, it seems easier to throw down a third rail while doing track work versus the construction effort for thousands of miles of overhead gantries and 25kv power lines. You could pair this with HVDC transmission lines looking to use railroad right of ways to avoid NIMBYS (the SOO HVDC line in the Midwest, for example [4]), for power accessibility. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/infrastructure-megaprojects.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/28/us/infrastructure-megapro... [2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mega-projects-fail-infrastructure-energy-dams-nuclear https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/mega-proj... [3] https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs-america https://www.vox.com/22534714/rail-roads-infrastructure-costs... [4] https://www.soogreenrr.com/about/ https://www.soogreenrr.com/about/
  - jrockway 5y ago
    I'm not sure that CAHSR is an example of why we can't build infrastructure. They're building it. There are YouTubers that have done drone flyovers of most of the first construction packages, and progress is being made pretty quickly. I have a feeling that too much has been done to cancel the project now. The corresponding Bay Area projects seem to be proceeding as well (CalMod, CalTrain electrification, etc). Texas Central also seems to be making progress on Dallas-Houston high speed rail. That said, I agree that the taxpayers don't feel like giving billions of dollars to BNSF and Union Pacific, so they probably won't electrify until there is no other option. Fuel costs just aren't high enough to make it profitable, and the environmental externalities are still free. (But, of course, you'd rather see a 500 car freight train burning fossil fuels than 500 tractor trailers driving down the interstate burning fossil fuels.)
dboreham 5y ago
It has been attempted before: https://www.american-rails.com/pce.html https://www.american-rails.com/pce.html
ErikCorry 5y ago
I wonder if they have done studies on what the cost of electrification is for hybrid trains. A lot of the complication of electrification is that you have to raise road bridges to make space for the overhead power lines, you have to make tunnels larger and you have to put power lines 100s of places where they are really hard to install. But imagine a train that can go for a kilometre or two without power lines, because it's a hybrid. Suddenly every low bridge and most tunnels are handled by just lowering the pantograph (power pick-up) as you go under them. If lines cross in strange ways or go under buildings you just don't put power lines there. At level crossings you skip the power lines, so no tall trucks will hit them. I think there are probably huge savings to be made by putting the power lines in the easiest places and bridging the rest with hybrid. The battery recharges at speed as soon as power returns. You can even install a small diesel motor on the locomotive that has enough power (with gearing?) to creep to the next overhead power line if the train is unexpectedly stranded. When a power line is downed by a tree (or a cable thief), the cleanup crew just removes that section. It is put up later when the backlog from the storm has been cleared. Of course you need the train to know its location and have an updated list of where to lower the pantograph. That seems to me like a totally solvable problem in 2022. It's like 100 times easier than a self-driving car or landing a rocket with retropropulsion.
- euroderf 5y ago
  You say it is necessary to lower the pantograph before (and re-raise it after) a gap in the line. Isn't it possible to (say) have the line smoothly rise before the gap - sort of lift away - high enough to disengage from the pantograph before the gap - so that the pantograph can be kept in the same position ? I'd think this would save on wear & tear and avoid accidents. How much upward pressure is applied by a pantograph anyways ?
  - ErikCorry 5y ago
    A lot of the gaps will be there because there is not enough head room for the wires. In that case whatever caused the missing head room would rip off the pantograph. Since you need the pantograph-lowering feature anyway you might as well use it everywhere and avoid having to build the smooth-rising smooth-lowering cables.