General Discussion

ButchKnouse:

I've never seen an electirc train (1 to 1 scale of course). Many people seem to be fascinated with them and want them nationwide NOW. I realize they are eventually inevitable, but is there some rail fan thing that makes them more fun to watch than diesels?

I only have to go to the nearest track to see electric trains, but I prefer diesel locomotives from a railfanning perspective. With electrics, you never quite know how hard an engine is working to move the train. Diesel: just open your ears hehe. It just adds to the perception of power of locomotives... In contrast, electric engines will only tell you their are fuctioning. Whether or not the throttle is on full or not you just can't say. Of course you do know the engine had to work too hard when the overhead wire snaps from the heat...

 Allow me, as a European, to add my to this issue.

In most European countries, electrification started around 1910 and is not yet fully accomplished. All main lines are, however, run by electric traction. European higspeed intercity traffic would be unthinkable without electrification. Railroads were (and still are, despite all efforts to de-regulate and privatize) state-owned businesses, their infrastructure having been paid for by the tax payer. Over the last 100 years, railroads have always been losing money, even if the now published balance sheets tell you differently. Just transfering expenses to the tax payer´s pocket book to clear up the P&L statement is just not enough...

Europe has much more of a railroad history and mentality than the US. One reason may be the much shorter distances of travel, although you can take a train nowadays all the way from Narvik on the Arctic Circle down to Cadiz in Spain, and that is a heck of a distance. As we all travel by train one day or the other, public awareness of trains is  much higher . Investments into trains have never been really disputed in public - a quite comfortable situation.

I guess the picture in the US is very much different from this. Passenger travel has been on a constant decline  - a 2-day travel by train vs. a 2 hour flight is just no option anymore.  Freight traffic is still very much intense, but to my understanding more of a hub-to-hub thing than a collect-and-distribute affair.

Electrification of the US railroad is such a big task and certainly not not possible for profit oriented carriers to finance. IMHO, it makes only sense, if truck traffic is reduced to a minimum as a  consequence, the power is generated through re-generative sources, like solar energy, wind energy or hydraulic energy.

Even if all that can be achieved, there is so much infrastructure to be built up and so much equipment to be manufactured that I still question this step to be CO2 neutral, at best.

I enjoyed your post! 

Sir Madog:

Freight traffic is still very much intense, but to my understanding more of a hub-to-hub thing than a collect-and-distribute affair.

About half of the traffic is non-unit train, non-intermodal, "loose carload" traffic still. It's still profitable, but grows more slowly than the economy as a whole.  The growth engine for frt RRing in the US is intermodal.

Another thing about electrification in certain sovereign nations - the decision was made by bureaucrats who simply didn't consult the general public, and once the decision was made, anything which might have slowed the juggernaut's march was simply swept under the rug.  Check out what happened to Chapelon's work in France.  As for China, disagreeing with the central authorities there can be hazardous to your health.

Then, too, note that France didn't go nuclear for fear of 'global warming.'  It was simply that you can't power trains with on-board reactors, and the prices for fossil fuels were going orbital.  Likewise, Japan now imports all but a miniscule percentage of the fossil fuels it uses.

Pick almost any of the 'developed' countries, and superimpose its map on that of the US.  There aren't many that won't fit comfortably between the Mississippi River and the Front Range.  THAT is the big obstacle to railroad electrification in the USA - all of those miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.

Chuck

tomikawaTT:

Pick almost any of the 'developed' countries, and superimpose its map on that of the US.  There aren't many that won't fit comfortably between the Mississippi River and the Front Range.  THAT is the big obstacle to railroad electrification in the USA - all of those miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.

Chuck

In terms of territorial boundaries, I have to agree with you, Chuck. Talking about the flow of merchandise, you have to take Europe as a whole, unfortunately divided into various systems, like DC in France, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Poland , etc, and AC in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, etc. The newer generation of electric locos is now equipped to cope with the varous national standards, but that has not been the case until the late 1990´s.

As for passenger service, I´ll recommend to take a train from Narvik in northern Norway to Cadiz in Spain - that´s roughly the same distance as from Seattle to Miami. All of that is run by electric trains... 

Sir Madog:

Railroads were (and still are, despite all efforts to de-regulate and privatize) state-owned businesses, their infrastructure having been paid for by the tax payer. Over the last 100 years, railroads have always been losing money, even if the now published balance sheets tell you differently. Just transfering expenses to the tax payer´s pocket book to clear up the P&L statement is just not enough...

Madog,

this is not precisely true. In my country for example, the main passenger railroad company has been privatized. There is no government check going into their coffers. The infrastructure is still owned by the government and the railroad companies pay usage fees.

I believe more countries in Europe have this kind or a similar setup. Britain comes to mind.

On electrification, I believe the only reason this has been done in Europe at all is because the major railroads were all owned by the governments. For the Netherlands I've been told the reason for electrification was the fact that coal was no longer in ready supply without importing it and as such, electrification made some sense. If the railroads would have been privately owned, that might not have happened in favor of diesel traction. Anyway, they could do whatever they wanted, even if that meant undertaking an investment that made no sense financially. As a result, most of Europe was "under the wire" by the time the privatization and open rail processes started.

We do still struggle with the patch work of different currents and voltages, different safety and signalling systems, wire height above railhead and even third rail electrification instead of overhead wire. This is exactly the reason most internationally operating freight carriers in Europe use diesel traction on their border crossing trains. It's simply the easiest and in the long run most cost effective in terms of fleet maintenance.

sgtbean1:

Madog,

this is not precisely true. In my country for example, the main passenger railroad company has been privatized. There is no government check going into their coffers. The infrastructure is still owned by the government and the railroad companies pay usage fees.

... two answers to that.

In most countries in Europe, railroaders were employed by the government with nice pensions. Following the privatisation, the railroads were just stripped of their financial burdens for the retired employees. This is a heavy subsidy.

Second issue is, that the usage fee for state owned rail infrastructure is not anywhere near the cost - where that leads to, we have seen in Great Britain.

I thiink Eurpeans realized early that it was easier and cheaper to deliver the power to a locomotive via wire from few locations than by the ton or gallon from many locations.  Also, the tractive effort of electric propulsion worked well in the mountainous and hilly terrain packed into the area, not to mention the problem of pollution from both coal and diesel.  Great Britain is the size of our 5 New England States and the whole of Europe would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean almost to the Mississippi River.  Comparing railroading...and its attendant philosophies...in the two geographical diverse contenents is too disparate to prove anything.