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The Swiss reap the benefits of consistent investment in their rail infrastructure. - Switzerland is very small, yet with massive elevation changes. Conventiona

The Swiss reap the benefits of consistent investment in their rail infrastructure. - Switzerland is very small, yet with massive elevation changes. Conventional trains can only handle gentle inclines (while the Swiss have lots of unconventional mountain railways, those aren't carry a significant volume of freight) compared to roads. Railroads also predate cars and trucks. Together, that means that railroads got better routes first, using very expensive tunnels out of necessity. That means shorter routes that allow higher speeds (no twisty mountain roads). - Swiss railways rely on their impressive timeliness and efficiency to achieve very high utilization of limited resources (e.g. limited parallel tracks in tunnels and other constrained areas). That effectively means freight trains must travel at higher speeds and be much shorter than trains in the US. - More recent investments in infrastructure have gone into longer, deeper, more direct "base" tunnels that replace earlier tunnels with more direct routes. Given the choice between auto tunnels and railroad tunnels, it is much cheaper and easier to build rail tunnels (e.g. handling electric trains require much less ventilation than diesel trucks), and the utilization can be higher (e.g. trains are centrally maintained, controlled by trained operators with good automatic safety systems, where traffic can end up depending on the worst driver on the road). Together, that means rail journeys have continued to get shorter (sometimes by hours) while the roads stay much the same.

panick21_ 3y ago
The US has smartly standardized on nuckle coupler while Europe stupidly continually used manual coupling. Thankfully this might be finally changeing. Because its now 100 years later we can jump ahead in technology. Having cargo cars that automatically couple, but not just physical, also hydrolog, electric and data, plus the ability to digitally decouple. Swiss Cargo already does this in production. Making it a Europea wide standard is in progress. https://www.dac4.eu/ https://www.dac4.eu/ This is something we really need to interduce to continue to push electric rail transport.
- cpgxiii 3y ago
  The difference in couplers between the US and Europe is a fascinating bit of history. The US mandated automatic couplers in 1893, taking effect in 1900, since the existing manual couplers were a major cause of industrial accidents. Even today, most European freight rail depends on absolutely ancient manual couplers. A major secondary benefit of the AAR-style automatic coupler is a much higher strength, allowing for much longer and heavier trains than are possible with the manual connectors. Historically, the few European trains using automatic couplers were exceptionally large/heavy, like Swedish iron ore trains between Kiruna and Narvik.
  - panick21_ 3y ago
    Its kind of a back and forth. Before Adopting the Janney coupler the US had an even worse coupler then those used in Europe. The current European coupler don't have as high and injury rate as those that were the justification for the US government to force the Janney coupler. Even Soviet moved to an automatic coupler, SA3, but somehow the Europeans never went beyond the screw coupler. > AAR-style automatic coupler is a much higher strength, allowing for much longer and heavier trains than are possible with the manual connectors. This isn't necessarily generally true for all 'manual' connectors. You could design a very strong manual connector as well. But your overall point is true, the US coupler are much higher strength. Europe never had much cause to improve on this aspect because you simply can't be using very long trains on the European network. > Historically, the few European trains using automatic couplers were exceptionally large/heavy We have to be specific about cargo trains here, lots of passenger trains use forms of automatic coupling. But the issue with those is, while many of them use the same kind of Scharfenberg couplers they don't have things like power, hydrolics and data in the same place. We really need to standardize all of those things, including the decoupling protocol. It looks like the new standard will be a form of Scharfenberg coupler, they will be able to form much bigger trains then is possible today but still not be as strong as the American ones are. Good video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUj4ne3ENRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUj4ne3ENRI

panick21_ 3y ago

The US has smartly standardized on nuckle coupler while Europe stupidly continually used manual coupling. Thankfully this might be finally changeing. Because its now 100 years later we can jump ahead in technology. Having cargo cars that automatically couple, but not just physical, also hydrolog, electric and data, plus the ability to digitally decouple. Swiss Cargo already does this in production. Making it a Europea wide standard is in progress. https://www.dac4.eu/ https://www.dac4.eu/ This is something we really need to interduce to continue to push electric rail transport.

cpgxiii 3y ago
The difference in couplers between the US and Europe is a fascinating bit of history. The US mandated automatic couplers in 1893, taking effect in 1900, since the existing manual couplers were a major cause of industrial accidents. Even today, most European freight rail depends on absolutely ancient manual couplers. A major secondary benefit of the AAR-style automatic coupler is a much higher strength, allowing for much longer and heavier trains than are possible with the manual connectors. Historically, the few European trains using automatic couplers were exceptionally large/heavy, like Swedish iron ore trains between Kiruna and Narvik.
- panick21_ 3y ago
  Its kind of a back and forth. Before Adopting the Janney coupler the US had an even worse coupler then those used in Europe. The current European coupler don't have as high and injury rate as those that were the justification for the US government to force the Janney coupler. Even Soviet moved to an automatic coupler, SA3, but somehow the Europeans never went beyond the screw coupler. > AAR-style automatic coupler is a much higher strength, allowing for much longer and heavier trains than are possible with the manual connectors. This isn't necessarily generally true for all 'manual' connectors. You could design a very strong manual connector as well. But your overall point is true, the US coupler are much higher strength. Europe never had much cause to improve on this aspect because you simply can't be using very long trains on the European network. > Historically, the few European trains using automatic couplers were exceptionally large/heavy We have to be specific about cargo trains here, lots of passenger trains use forms of automatic coupling. But the issue with those is, while many of them use the same kind of Scharfenberg couplers they don't have things like power, hydrolics and data in the same place. We really need to standardize all of those things, including the decoupling protocol. It looks like the new standard will be a form of Scharfenberg coupler, they will be able to form much bigger trains then is possible today but still not be as strong as the American ones are. Good video on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUj4ne3ENRI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUj4ne3ENRI