CSX Freight Train

[jason1973tl]

I think most of the problem in the states is the same. The government is too busy taxing us to death and spending it on pet projects. The result is an infrastructure that is quite literally falling apart at the seams. I think the rail system is just another example of that.

[Bicycle Bob]

"Trucks have to use 17-22 speed transmissions and so they are at their maximum efficiency only a fraction of the time during acceleration."

With such narrow ratios, they stay much closer to the ideal RPM than cars, and very close to the top of the rather flat efficiency curve. In the lower gears, they are storing energy as kinetic or gravitational. I wish MPG guages would account for that.

RR cars are stressed to take the "buffing loads" that occur when two strings of cars are joined together in the freight yards. This makes them relatively heavy, although it works out OK on bulk carriers for iron ore, which may be the figure quoted. I'm sure that nobody claimed the RR could move one ton at a time at that rate, but for well-packed containers, it seems quite reasonable. We could probably engineer small robot trains that could get get that kind of efficiency on truck sized loads, too. The challenge might be in gracefully transitioning from roads to rails. Drivers might drop off trailers for a robot to forward to the proper station for pick-up, or ride along and catch some zzs.
Traditionally, trains have run at wide separations for safety, but with computers and such, they could be made up or broken up on the fly, with cars able to depart or join at any station without stopping the main train. An express shipment might be introduced at any point, but would not get the benefit of drafting, unless it collected a train of its own, which it probably would at busy times. With computers and robots handling the coupling of cars, and self-propulsion/braking, they could be built as lightly as the load dictated. Use of the rubber tires to lift the steel wheels from the track would be a simple way to eliminate all switching of the rails, which would be a problem area, and return the vehicle to regular road use.

I'm sure we could look up the payload ratio of railway cars and average trains.

Re: Donner Pass. Long, long ago, I rode my touring bicycle over that road, and stopped at the summit for a breather and a last look back. I was about ready to head out when I saw and heard a train coming up too. So I waited until the locomotive was abreast before starting. It still had a lot of train to get up to the summit and accelerate, so it took a loooong time to pass. :-) Carrying all my gear, I felt a certain kinship with the big freighter.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by dcb

are the overhead wire guys in bed with the electric utility? They would have no motivation to upgrade in any event, sans regulation.

As far as I know, the national railroad may produce it's own power. In recent years it's been selling it's surplus to individual homes.
Some of the problems with introducing new technology are because of labor unions: they are against any kind of change, fearing it will cause job losses, etc. The national railway is grossly overemployed, and producing billions of dept every year. And this status quo has been for the last 20 years.
One example of this is an archaic law that says that a train with only one engineer in the cabin can't go faster than 130 km/h. There are a few new trains that can go 160, or even 200 km/h, but they were constructed with only one seat in the cabin. Someone came up with the brilliant idea of changing the 50 year old law to account for advances in signalling technology, but the union hushed him arguing that this "would reduce the number of second cabin engineers". There are no second engineers in the first place, since the cabin won't fit them. So, trains are still slowly chugging along.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Piwoslaw

Some of the problems with introducing new technology are because of labor unions: they are against any kind of change, fearing it will cause job losses, etc.

Same thing happened with US railways starting maybe half a century ago. The unions insisted on "featherbedding", keeping jobs that had been made obsolete by newer technology. That pushed up the railroads' operating costs, they lost business to trucks on the new interstate highways. Without income they couldn't maintain & improve infrastructure, started dropping marginal routes - eliminating the jobs the unions tried to keep - and often the tracks were torn up and the rail beds converted to other uses.

Even today, when I drive out to my friends' ranch, there's about 5 miles of track along the road that is just a parking area for unused boxcars, and another spur along the valley that has miles of parked flat cars...

[Clev]

Originally Posted by RobertSmalls

Nope, a freight train probably couldn't move more than a few feet on one gallon. Their ridiculous claim of one ton, one gal, 436 mi is based on the factual 436 ton-miles per gallon figure, which requires that you have tens of thousands of tons of freight all going from one point on the rail network to another.

Trains have an advantage over trucks (which are in the 100-200tmpg range) due in part to the very low coefficient of rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails. The aerodynamics of trains is also interesting in that each train car is drafting the one in front of it.

Anyway, trains have a lot going for them, but moving one ton of freight 436 miles is something they are terrible at. For that particular task, your best bet is a small pickup truck, or maybe a Jetta or a Prius with a trailer.

It's all in the semantics. The 436 ton-miles per gallon is an average for the entire fleet, from 10,000 ton trains to switch engines, unloaded engine ferrying, yard hostlers and the like. The 10,000 ton trains get better; switch engines get worse. Better yet, that's 436 ton-miles of FREIGHT, with all of the other equipment already factored in.

FactCheck.org: Can a freight train really move a ton of freight 436 miles on a gallon of fuel?

The tagline isn't strictly accurate, but on average, they move 436 tons of freight one mile, or 1 ton 436 miles, for each gallon of diesel burned.

[Big Dave]

I used to work for CSX and have an (expired) engineer's card. The numbers are completely valid, for reasons everyone has touched on: engines run at optimum bsfc, surprisingly low aero resistance, gentle grades (rarely over 2%), extremely low rolling resistance, etc

A train usually coasts most of the distance of a leg. I ran a westbound train out of Washington, Indiana. Fifteen miles west, I topped the "ruling grade" at 30 MPH and coasted all the way to Cone Yard in East St. Louis where I had to get on the brakes. All the way across Illinois coasting. Is that a hypermiler's dream or what? I'd occasionally have to rev up the engines to compress air to keep the air brakes from dragging.

The US had some straight electrics at one time - mostly in hilly terrain. The Pennsylvania Railroad's mainline west of Altoona to Pittsburgh was electrified until the early 1970s. A division of the N&W in southern WV was electrified. The only things preventing a comeback are the high capital cost ($10 million a mile) and doubt as to where you'd get all that electricity. Yes, electric railroad dispatchers would hold a train at the top of a hill unti another train started up. Then he'd release the downhill train. The downhill train would go into regen braking and feed the power into the catenary and provide 85% of the power needed for the uphill train. By electrifying mainline operations the US would eliminate a quarter million barrels a day of oil consumption.

Straight electrification technology could be applied to truck lanes on Interstate highways.

[bgd73]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

I used to work for CSX and have an (expired) engineer's card. The numbers are completely valid, for reasons everyone has touched on: engines run at optimum bsfc, surprisingly low aero resistance, gentle grades (rarely over 2%), extremely low rolling resistance, etc

A train usually coasts most of the distance of a leg. I ran a westbound train out of Washington, Indiana. Fifteen miles west, I topped the "ruling grade" at 30 MPH and coasted all the way to Cone Yard in East St. Louis where I had to get on the brakes. All the way across Illinois coasting. Is that a hypermiler's dream or what? I'd occasionally have to rev up the engines to compress air to keep the air brakes from dragging.

that is awesome.
I learned this with trucking..the sense of coasting, and entire hills taken up by the previous..40 tons of course.
in airplanes your thinking chunks of the world crossed on a glideslope.

I do not get the point across about lightweight and ecomod being evil. It is not the answer for ecomod and real goals. My opinion does not go over well here in many cases.

I learned some engines respond as heavier, they hang on in hills, they have a longer glide, they like weight. All diesels feel that way after years of a four banger gas...until the 3 main boxer...that is just a simple genius in its own righteousness.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

The only things preventing a comeback are the high capital cost ($10 million a mile) and doubt as to where you'd get all that electricity.

That capital cost seems high: $10 million/mile for hanging catenary cables?

One way to beat that would be using high-speed flywheels for energy storage in locomotives. From what I've read, they can store enough energy to accelerate a train from stop to running speed. So you'd have to install the catenaries only on parts of your rails - say near stations and on the uphill sides of the "ruling grades". (Same thing would work for city bus lines: a bit of overhead line at the stops charges the flywheel and gets the bus moving, then it cruises to the next stop on stored power...)

As ot where the power comes from, IIRC I once worked out that the diesel used by US railroads is the energy equivalent of 10-20 1 GWatt nuclear plants. (And that's neglecting savings from regen, or the inherently greater efficiency of electric motors.) So sourcing the electricity does not seem to be a major problem.

[Big Dave]

The estimate in 1982 was $2 million per mile. A sizeable chunk of that is that the rail grid and electric grid run at about a 45 degree angle to each other, so an electrified rail system would need a lot of new substations and transmission lines. The only mitigator is that the railroads already have a right of way.

[Piwoslaw]

Originally Posted by Big Dave

A train usually coasts most of the distance of a leg. I ran a westbound train out of Washington, Indiana. Fifteen miles west, I topped the "ruling grade" at 30 MPH and coasted all the way to Cone Yard in East St. Louis where I had to get on the brakes. All the way across Illinois coasting. Is that a hypermiler's dream or what? I'd occasionally have to rev up the engines to compress air to keep the air brakes from dragging.

So, except for recharging the compressed air, you were EOC?