3 ms·
Anecdata: as a regular commuter on the east coast main line in the UK for several years, a very common source of service interruption was blamed on overhead cab
by danw1979 4y ago
Anecdata: as a regular commuter on the east coast main line in the UK for several years, a very common source of service interruption was blamed on overhead cable problems.
From an engineering perspective the complication of the track electrical infrastructure and pantograph seem inferior to a hydrogen tank and fuel cells. Far less actual stuff to build and maintain.
- Symbiote 4y agoThat line was electrified as cheaply as possible. It's not a problem elsewhere. http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/ecml-suffers-another-failure/ http://www.rail.co.uk/rail-news/ecml-suffers-another-failure...
- VaxWithSex 4y agoAnecdata from Germany: that never happend to me. Mostly trees falling on the tracks.
- pmyteh 4y agoThe East Coast Main Line is prone to dewirement (where the pantograph comes off the catenary and normally gets tangled and brings down the wire) at an unusually high rate. The folk wisdom is that the use of wired headspans instead of rigid portals, combined with a long distance between stanchions, makes it fragile. I don't know the extent to which that's true. Set against that, the miles per technical incident for electric trains are about twice that for diesel, and a train breaking down on the ECML is also disruptive, if not obviously infrastructural...