7 ms·

Amazing. I wonder if one can do anything like this with the current concrete sleepers and thermite welded tracks.

IAmBroom 1y ago
The welds could be cut and rewelded, obviously. The sleepers are molded with preset widths, however, and would need replacement.
- close04 1y ago
  Probably the biggest challenge is that there is way more rail traffic today and it's more tightly coupled in logistics chains and people's day to day lives. Disruptions are more expensive and harder to tolerate. And that's on top of the technical challenges, tolerances leave less room for error today.
  - shaftoe 1y ago
    (US centric assumption) It might be easier to change today than it was in 1886. Back then, trains were really the only means of travel between cities. Today, there are less passenger trains than back then, though more freight (even with trucks and planes). But freight diversions/delays could be scheduled well in advance and have alternative means. Not to mention, since then we've developed variable gauge train tech. A subset of trains could run during the cutover. It's likely more costly today, but less disruptive.
    - MyPasswordSucks 1y ago
      Passenger travel is easy mode. The economic consequences of disrupted freight dwarf anything you could imagine from disrupted passenger travel of equal duration. That's why the US has always strived to do a really, really good job with their freight rail system, and US freight is still to this day generally considered the best freight rail system in the world, even as passenger rail lags well behind. Remember that freight is more than just moving pallets of finished goods to Amazon warehouses. It doesn't matter if you've given the cows a month's advance notice, if they don't have feed they're still going to starve; and no matter how many KPIs you dangle at the silos, they're only going to hold x amount of reserve grain.
      - AlotOfReading 1y ago
        Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to constraints.
        franktankbank 1y ago
        I see several trains go by per day on my pretty sleepy tracks. You have no clue the amount of semis that would need to be built to accommodate your proposal, they just do not wait in the wings. Do you think all the bulk shipments are being done for fun and someone isn't waiting for 5000 gallons of HCL and 2000 tons of coal?
        AlotOfReading 1y ago
        I'm well aware that it's a couple hundred trucks to replace a single train. I'm not sure you understand that this is what already happens. Rail carries around a quarter of freight ton-miles in the US. Trucks carry much more than that. All of the stuff that isn't bulk, time insensitive freight, or anything that surges in excess of the carefully scheduled rail capacity already has to spill over onto trucks. That includes things like disaster recovery shipments, unusual seasonal demand, and so on. There's also a population of truckers that work these temporary jobs, as well as a certain level of excess vehicle capacity in the fleet carriers to service it, plus whatever truckers can be pulled from other work to meet the demand. Anyone looking at massive losses will pay the sticker shock to put it on trucks. Anyone who can afford to shut down instead will wait. That's the system working as intended.
        franktankbank 1y ago
        Thanks for the response. I'm curious what percent of stuff that would normally end up on train ends up as spillover onto trucks. Any idea? I think stuff is quite finetuned already and there may only be an extra few percent of capacity in trucks. I agree, in a lot of cases it might work to just bite the bullet and wait or try a different apparatus. However the stuff on the trains typically is not slackable. That is, you aren't transporting computers and sofas via rail.
    - Reason077 1y ago
      > "Today, there are less passenger trains than back then" I don't think this is true in Europe. Certainly in the UK, passenger rail volume since the 2010s has set records higher than in any previous years, exceeding numbers that were last seen before WW2. Today there are fewer miles of track than there were in that era, but modern signalling technology allows more trains to operate safely on the same tracks, and modern trains run much faster on average. As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does. Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs only 17% in Europe. One reason for this is that in Europe many lines are congested with passenger traffic, leaving few slots for freight trains to operate - except late at night.
      - jabl 1y ago
        > As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does. Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs only 17% in Europe. One reason for this is that in Europe many lines are congested with passenger traffic, leaving few slots for freight trains to operate - except late at night. It's also that rail tends to be more competitive for long haul traffic, and the US operators have big trans-continental freight networks well suited to that. In Europe there's a sharp drop off in modal share as freight crosses borders. Each national railway operator is in practice fiercely protective of its own turf, and there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. So in practice cross-border freight is largely done with trucks instead. Despite the EU commission wanting to get some competition going on the rails and better interoperability requirements etc etc. for at least the past 30 years, the operators are still in the "discussion about preparing to setup a committee to discuss interoperability" phase.
      - crote 1y ago
        > As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does. Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs only 17% in Europe. Europe also has far more freight-friendly waterways. US rail is designed for dirt-cheap bulk transport for things like coal and grain. In most of Europe that's done by barge - but US geography doesn't really allow for that.
- Gravityloss 1y ago
  Since it's only 90 mm, I wonder if one could add some sort of a 45 mm lateral adapter between the rails and the ties on both sides. At least for low speed track parts...
phkahler 1y ago
Imagine one short "train" whose tail is able to pull up one rail of the track behind it. Then another train whose front is an automated thingamajig to take the loose rail and nail it down a specific distance from the fixed rail. How much play there is in the loose rail depends on how far apart these two train are. Notice that the nailer runs on the narrow rails while the nail-puller runs on the wide ones.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Probably not, but laying track or replacing sleepers is a very satisfying to look at, fully automated process.
gosub100 1y ago
Even the wooden sleepers would have to be weakened by moving the spikes over. Unless the old holes were patched.

The welds could be cut and rewelded, obviously. The sleepers are molded with preset widths, however, and would need replacement.

close04 1y ago
Probably the biggest challenge is that there is way more rail traffic today and it's more tightly coupled in logistics chains and people's day to day lives. Disruptions are more expensive and harder to tolerate. And that's on top of the technical challenges, tolerances leave less room for error today.
- shaftoe 1y ago
  (US centric assumption) It might be easier to change today than it was in 1886. Back then, trains were really the only means of travel between cities. Today, there are less passenger trains than back then, though more freight (even with trucks and planes). But freight diversions/delays could be scheduled well in advance and have alternative means. Not to mention, since then we've developed variable gauge train tech. A subset of trains could run during the cutover. It's likely more costly today, but less disruptive.
  - MyPasswordSucks 1y ago
    Passenger travel is easy mode. The economic consequences of disrupted freight dwarf anything you could imagine from disrupted passenger travel of equal duration. That's why the US has always strived to do a really, really good job with their freight rail system, and US freight is still to this day generally considered the best freight rail system in the world, even as passenger rail lags well behind. Remember that freight is more than just moving pallets of finished goods to Amazon warehouses. It doesn't matter if you've given the cows a month's advance notice, if they don't have feed they're still going to starve; and no matter how many KPIs you dangle at the silos, they're only going to hold x amount of reserve grain.
    - AlotOfReading 1y ago
      Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to constraints.
      - franktankbank 1y ago
        I see several trains go by per day on my pretty sleepy tracks. You have no clue the amount of semis that would need to be built to accommodate your proposal, they just do not wait in the wings. Do you think all the bulk shipments are being done for fun and someone isn't waiting for 5000 gallons of HCL and 2000 tons of coal?
        AlotOfReading 1y ago
        I'm well aware that it's a couple hundred trucks to replace a single train. I'm not sure you understand that this is what already happens. Rail carries around a quarter of freight ton-miles in the US. Trucks carry much more than that. All of the stuff that isn't bulk, time insensitive freight, or anything that surges in excess of the carefully scheduled rail capacity already has to spill over onto trucks. That includes things like disaster recovery shipments, unusual seasonal demand, and so on. There's also a population of truckers that work these temporary jobs, as well as a certain level of excess vehicle capacity in the fleet carriers to service it, plus whatever truckers can be pulled from other work to meet the demand. Anyone looking at massive losses will pay the sticker shock to put it on trucks. Anyone who can afford to shut down instead will wait. That's the system working as intended.
        franktankbank 1y ago
        Thanks for the response. I'm curious what percent of stuff that would normally end up on train ends up as spillover onto trucks. Any idea? I think stuff is quite finetuned already and there may only be an extra few percent of capacity in trucks. I agree, in a lot of cases it might work to just bite the bullet and wait or try a different apparatus. However the stuff on the trains typically is not slackable. That is, you aren't transporting computers and sofas via rail.
  - Reason077 1y ago
    > "Today, there are less passenger trains than back then" I don't think this is true in Europe. Certainly in the UK, passenger rail volume since the 2010s has set records higher than in any previous years, exceeding numbers that were last seen before WW2. Today there are fewer miles of track than there were in that era, but modern signalling technology allows more trains to operate safely on the same tracks, and modern trains run much faster on average. As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does. Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs only 17% in Europe. One reason for this is that in Europe many lines are congested with passenger traffic, leaving few slots for freight trains to operate - except late at night.
    - jabl 1y ago
      > As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does. Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs only 17% in Europe. One reason for this is that in Europe many lines are congested with passenger traffic, leaving few slots for freight trains to operate - except late at night. It's also that rail tends to be more competitive for long haul traffic, and the US operators have big trans-continental freight networks well suited to that. In Europe there's a sharp drop off in modal share as freight crosses borders. Each national railway operator is in practice fiercely protective of its own turf, and there are a lot of hurdles to overcome. So in practice cross-border freight is largely done with trucks instead. Despite the EU commission wanting to get some competition going on the rails and better interoperability requirements etc etc. for at least the past 30 years, the operators are still in the "discussion about preparing to setup a committee to discuss interoperability" phase.
    - crote 1y ago
      > As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does. Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs only 17% in Europe. Europe also has far more freight-friendly waterways. US rail is designed for dirt-cheap bulk transport for things like coal and grain. In most of Europe that's done by barge - but US geography doesn't really allow for that.
Gravityloss 1y ago
Since it's only 90 mm, I wonder if one could add some sort of a 45 mm lateral adapter between the rails and the ties on both sides. At least for low speed track parts...

phkahler 1y ago

Imagine one short "train" whose tail is able to pull up one rail of the track behind it. Then another train whose front is an automated thingamajig to take the loose rail and nail it down a specific distance from the fixed rail. How much play there is in the loose rail depends on how far apart these two train are. Notice that the nailer runs on the narrow rails while the nail-puller runs on the wide ones.

Cthulhu_ 1y ago

Probably not, but laying track or replacing sleepers is a very satisfying to look at, fully automated process.

gosub100 1y ago

Even the wooden sleepers would have to be weakened by moving the spikes over. Unless the old holes were patched.