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Re: Can Anything Stop CAHSR Project?
Author: Dr Zarkoff
Date: 02-13-2013 - 12:38
>As far as today's engineering geniuses - they will try to reinvent the wheel, rather than apply the lessons learned over the last 180 years of rail transportation in this country, and a rich engineering heritage that succesfully operated 80-100 mph trains at a profit 90 years ago with "antique" equipment.
BARTD tried to reinvent the [transit] wheel in the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with 3 phase third rails, etc. -- "we're not going to use old technology". In the end all they wound up changing was the track gauge and propulsion voltage -- to values which today make the cost per car for new equipment astronomical compared to CTA, NYC, MBTA, etc. Not even the door nor seat configurations changed from what they were by 1910.
You can raise that 100 mph by quite a bit. A friend who worked for the PRR once told me that during some GG1 testing on the section of test track, they had a 3 or 4 car test train and decided to see how fast they could go. At something like 120 mph, and still accelerating, they decided enough was enough. I've never been able to verify this story, but it is consistent with reliable stories I've heard of the 1940-1940s era Afternoon Congressional (or its equivalent) leaving Philly about 1/2 hour late and arriving DC on time. The Metroliners of the 1960s and 1970s had a much longer schedule time because they couldn't keep the one of the GG1 era.
Orrin Schmidt, the guy who used to be in charge of maintaining the Electroliners on the North Shore, once told me that they stopped using the last few steps of field tap positions on the controller because 105-10 mph was just too fast.
100 or 120 mph are essentially the same because the differences in the times per mile aren't all that great: 36 seconds/mile vs 30 @ 120 mph. It doesn't depends on how much money you wish to pour into building and maintaining the physical necessary to go this fast so much as where it will come from and will the investment earn a reasonable return.
Even the Worker's Paradise, the former USSR, had to keep return on investments in mind. When they stopped paying attention, their economy collapsed (in 1989).
So if investors see no reasonable return from an HSR scheme, no money. Trying to make up the difference with taxes will start down the trail to a Soviet Union style economic morass.
When he was SECDEF, R.S. McNamara ran the numbers for the US's involvement in the SST program. His team reached the conclusion that it wouldn't be economically viable and killed the program. There were howls of derision from the US aviation industry about the US chickening out because the French and the Brits were forging ahead with modernity, all that slick European technology. Turns out he was 100% correct, and with retrospect, the US aviation industry now concedes that he essentially saved it from bankruptcy.
From: NY- Chicago Air Line --> " When the planning of the Air Line started, electric railroading alreay had made huge progresses since 1893. In 1903, railcars from Siemens & Halske and AEG ran at above 200 km/h on the military experimental Marienfeld?Zossen outside Berlin (see Land Speed Recors for Rail Vehicles). However, the physical laws which made rising infrastructure requirements and costs with rising speeds were well known by the railway and interurban companies. Therefore, European high-speed electrical railway projects from around 1900 (e.g. Berlin-Hamburg and Wien-Budapest) were too expensive to be realized (Krettek 1975, p. 47-49)."
As far as I'm concerned all this hype about HSR is deja vu all over again. That US-wide map from that guy in Berkeley is nothing other than the NY-Chicago Electric Air Line, reanimated -- the Undead Railroad from the Black Lagoon.
BARTD tried to reinvent the [transit] wheel in the 1960s and 1970s, experimenting with 3 phase third rails, etc. -- "we're not going to use old technology". In the end all they wound up changing was the track gauge and propulsion voltage -- to values which today make the cost per car for new equipment astronomical compared to CTA, NYC, MBTA, etc. Not even the door nor seat configurations changed from what they were by 1910.
You can raise that 100 mph by quite a bit. A friend who worked for the PRR once told me that during some GG1 testing on the section of test track, they had a 3 or 4 car test train and decided to see how fast they could go. At something like 120 mph, and still accelerating, they decided enough was enough. I've never been able to verify this story, but it is consistent with reliable stories I've heard of the 1940-1940s era Afternoon Congressional (or its equivalent) leaving Philly about 1/2 hour late and arriving DC on time. The Metroliners of the 1960s and 1970s had a much longer schedule time because they couldn't keep the one of the GG1 era.
Orrin Schmidt, the guy who used to be in charge of maintaining the Electroliners on the North Shore, once told me that they stopped using the last few steps of field tap positions on the controller because 105-10 mph was just too fast.
100 or 120 mph are essentially the same because the differences in the times per mile aren't all that great: 36 seconds/mile vs 30 @ 120 mph. It doesn't depends on how much money you wish to pour into building and maintaining the physical necessary to go this fast so much as where it will come from and will the investment earn a reasonable return.
Even the Worker's Paradise, the former USSR, had to keep return on investments in mind. When they stopped paying attention, their economy collapsed (in 1989).
So if investors see no reasonable return from an HSR scheme, no money. Trying to make up the difference with taxes will start down the trail to a Soviet Union style economic morass.
When he was SECDEF, R.S. McNamara ran the numbers for the US's involvement in the SST program. His team reached the conclusion that it wouldn't be economically viable and killed the program. There were howls of derision from the US aviation industry about the US chickening out because the French and the Brits were forging ahead with modernity, all that slick European technology. Turns out he was 100% correct, and with retrospect, the US aviation industry now concedes that he essentially saved it from bankruptcy.
From: NY- Chicago Air Line --> " When the planning of the Air Line started, electric railroading alreay had made huge progresses since 1893. In 1903, railcars from Siemens & Halske and AEG ran at above 200 km/h on the military experimental Marienfeld?Zossen outside Berlin (see Land Speed Recors for Rail Vehicles). However, the physical laws which made rising infrastructure requirements and costs with rising speeds were well known by the railway and interurban companies. Therefore, European high-speed electrical railway projects from around 1900 (e.g. Berlin-Hamburg and Wien-Budapest) were too expensive to be realized (Krettek 1975, p. 47-49)."
As far as I'm concerned all this hype about HSR is deja vu all over again. That US-wide map from that guy in Berkeley is nothing other than the NY-Chicago Electric Air Line, reanimated -- the Undead Railroad from the Black Lagoon.
