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>>A key benefit of the technology, says Mr Paczek, is that it allows operators to bring freight wagons to a stop very quickly – and, as a consequence, that mean
by Avshalom 1y ago
>>A key benefit of the technology, says Mr Paczek, is that it allows operators to bring freight wagons to a stop very quickly – and, as a consequence, that means they could, in principle, safely put lots of independently moving wagons relatively close together on one stretch of rail, increasing the density of freight transportation in a particular area.
THAT'S CALLED A FUCKING TRAIN.
- CuriouslyC 1y agoNot defending this mess of an article, but they meant a train of trains.
- Avshalom 1y agothat's also just a train.
- ascorbic 1y ago"Independently moving" is the distinguishing part there
- Avshalom 1y agoYeah, which is to say not a train of trains but just individual cars, packed as closely as possible together, on a track... you know what the closest you can pack two cars on the same track is? touching each other. It's a fucking train.
- albumen 1y agoNo. The aim is to “increase the density of freight transportation in a particular area.” That would be maximum tonnage carried through an area over a period, eg a year. It’s possible more tonnes of independently moving wagons could move through an area over a year by being individually dispatched 24/7 in close proximity versus larger traditional freight trains that only run a few times a day.
- general1465 1y agoWhich would need completely different signaling systems, where sensors for sections are every few meters instead of like now having sections hundreds of meters or even kilometers long. That's investment of hundred of billions + maintenance. In Europe we are integrating ETCS since 1996 and it is still not done.
- ascorbic 1y agoThey're not independently moving if they're coupled together. You can fairly argue that the idea is bad, and I know it's not as fun a dunk as "you invented a train", but multiple wagons that can move independently (and can therefore be switched to different destinations) are fundamentally a different thing than a single train.
- albumen 1y agoUncharitable interpretation of TFA. “independently moving wagons” are different from a series of linked wagons that all have to leave the terminus at the same time, travel together, and arrive together. This idea would allow independently moving wagons to be dispatched as required from multiple destinations, share the line with others in very close proximity, and break away seamlessly to their different destinations.
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- woah 1y agoIt seems like it's impossible for anyone to develop any new technology for trains without online commenters screeching "THAT'S CALLED A FUCKING TRAIN". It seems to generally be clustered with a sort of leftish, anti-AI, maybe anti-tech worldview. Like they feel they have ownership of railways as a concept as sort of a charity case, and if "tech bros" are working on improving them, it's sort of like taking their cause away from them.
- general1465 1y agoElectrification of a rail is a thing since 1879 and 1881 in regular service. Techbros just figured out how to grasp technology of 19th century. A wire above a rail...
- tsimionescu 1y agoIt's more that people have started realizing that governments and big tech have been playing this game for a long time, where instead of doing the work of using the huge resources they have to build useful infrastructure with the technolgies that we already have, they prefer to invest in useless new tech, coincidentally being sold by their own cronies. And they often have the nerve to do this while claiming that problems that are solved everywhere else in the world, and have been for 50-100 years, are somehow almost insurmountable.
- woah 1y ago> Like they feel they have ownership of railways as a concept as sort of a charity case, and if "tech bros" are working on improving them, it's sort of like taking their cause away from them.
- tsimionescu 1y agoThe key point here is improving. For example, the doodad the BBC is marketing here is clearly not an improvement, is it? It's much more costly than traditional electrical rail (solar panels are much more expensive to maintain than a pole with a wire), it requires massive new infrastructure (the railway company would have to create a whole solar energy management division), and the only benefit is that it allows the railway company to avoid dealing with the regular electrical grid that powers everything else - for no clear reason.