Passenger

Why does all this matter when we are living in the Passenger Railway Stone Age in America?

"In detail, the primary advantages of the new Alstom AGV train regard all aspects of performance: weight/power ratio, onboard space and comfort, energy consumption, safety and maintenance."

http://www.ntvspa.it/en/nuovo-trasporto-viaggiatori/37/3/high-speed-train-agv-italy-description

 Pretty impressive!!   Of course, some will claim that cannot work in the US.

HarveyK400:

The problem is not calculating drag.  That has been tested and factored for various streamlining elements by Davis and others; and is still relevant today for Amtrak.

Davis says a P42 can pull 30 Superliners at 75 mph on the level. Maybe it can, but we wouldn't be astonished if it fell short. (Or did better.)

Here's one data point on fuel burn: around 1977 Amtrak #4 burned 7310 gallons on one run LA to Chicago. The usual three SDP40Fs LA to La Junta, the usual two east from there; 14 cars LA to KC, 12 east from there.

schlimm:

 Pretty impressive!!   Of course, some will claim that cannot work in the US.

Yes, I am that someone who will claim that it cannot work in the U.S..  It cannot work in France either, or in Germany, UK, Italy, Croatia, Taiwan, China, Korea, or any such place.  I think it can be made to work on the surface of the planet Mars.

The claim is for 2.2 gm CO2/passenger-km (some calculation on the bus and airplane figures will demonstrate the claim is actually in CO2/seat-km, your carbon footprint will vary depending on the "load factor" of the train).  Using power generated by Diesel fuel combustion as a reference, a gallon of Diesel burns to 10,000 gm CO2.  The train has 430 seats.  Thus the train runs at a Diesel fuel equivalent of 6.6 MPG (yes, the entire 11-car articulated train) at its rated speed of 300 kph (187 MPH).  The train is using energy (at cruising speed) in the equivalent of 28 gallons/hour, 198 pounds of fuel/hour, assuming .4 lb Diesel/hp-hr, the drag of the train is thus 500 lb.

On Earth, my estimate of the rolling resistance of the train is about 1000 lb, assuming a lightweight train.  In the countries listed, well outside the Tibetan Plateau, there is considerable air drag to be added, especially at 300 KPH, even for a highly streamlined train.  Owing to the lighter gravity on Mars and the very thin atmosphere, my estimate is that the train would require 500 lb of tractive effort at 300 KPH and would meet the published specification.

Yes, the engineers in Europe are doing advanced work on railroads.  But Europe also has, how do you say, "marketing managers", "writers of glossy brochures", "sales people", and other occupations of people who wear "suits" as we have in the U.S., and sometimes the technical figures from the Engineering Department get lost and extravagant claims get made.

None of the tedious hand or programmed computer calculations I've made in the past with Davis formulas would suggest a P42 could get 30 Superliners up to 75 mph; or that the resulting calculations are too inaccurate, inadequate, and unreliable.  I might believe 20 superliners.  Subtracting the power for auxiliaries, an F40 poops out after 75 mph with 11 loaded PS gallery suburban cars according to my calculations, taking 9 miles to accelerate to that speed and 16 miles to attain 80 mph on the dead level.  This coincides with my experience as a commuter and is little better than an E8.  A P42 has almost twice the horsepower available for traction as the F40.

We don't need to duplicate tests just because they were done a long time ago - neither the physics or Amtrak trains have changed beyond the scope of past work.  More recent tests reported by Peters were for high speed trains, in this case the TGV and the effects of certain components.

The anecdotal information for Amtrak #4 is problematic with the changing numbers of locomotives and cars.

Paul, if you had any idea how much NASA struggles to get their rovers moving a few feet, you would not use Martian comparisons! 

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12101

The efficiency of the highway itself must be considered also.  Just look at the picture on page 29 of July Trains (a ten-lane highway next to a BART train). 

There must be something wrong with the way we evaluate efficiency.  Pope Benedict refers to this in his new encyclical, Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth).  "..Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence..."

The encyclical seems rather thin on environmental science, and the news report I read from Washington Post didn't mention railroads at all.  But the following is how I feel about our over-reliance on automobiles:

"...the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side..."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/07/pope_benedict_on_economic_justice.html?hpid=talkbox1

HarveyK400:

neither the physics or Amtrak trains have changed beyond the scope of past work

Well, maybe sorta kinda.  The Davis equation certainly gets you to church, but it probably doesn't get you in the right pew.

What has changed is the understanding of vehicular aerodynamics - at least on the automotive side.  And, the cross section and placement of underbody equipment on passenger trains has changed, too. 

It would be useful to what the penalty for mixing Horizon and Amfleet equipment, for example.  Is it 5% at 100 mph?  That would be 5% you could go get almost for free - don't mix.  How about some sheetmetal fairing on the underbody?  How about full width diaphragms?  A few more percentage points for a very small investment, perhaps?  Or, even some small stuff - how about those Acela roof humps?  Could they be improved?

Maglev:

Paul, if you had any idea how much NASA struggles to get their rovers moving a few feet, you would not use Martian comparisons! 

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12101

The efficiency of the highway itself must be considered also.  Just look at the picture on page 29 of July Trains (a ten-lane highway next to a BART train). 

There must be something wrong with the way we evaluate efficiency.  Pope Benedict refers to this in his new encyclical, Caritas in veritate (Charity in Truth).  "..Locating resources, financing, production, consumption and all the other phases in the economic cycle inevitably have moral implications. Thus every economic decision has a moral consequence..."

The encyclical seems rather thin on environmental science, and the news report I read from Washington Post didn't mention railroads at all.  But the following is how I feel about our over-reliance on automobiles:

"...the human race is a single family working together in true communion, not simply a group of subjects who happen to live side by side..."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/07/pope_benedict_on_economic_justice.html?hpid=talkbox1

Yes, the BART line parallels 10 free lanes.  What this says is that we should concentrate resources on transit and commuter trains and short corridor trains rather than the Sunset Limited.

I am thoroughly familiar with Bishop Ratzinger's exortation to consume fewer resources.  Have you looked yet at David Lawyer's Web site?  They are not working to cross purposes.  The problem is not overreliance on the automobile.  The problem is that the automobile is so flexible and convenient that it permits us to be overreliant on moving about and going different places.  Back in the Golden Age of passenger trains and interurbans, people just didn't get out much.  You are never going to provide passenger miles with rail on the scale we do in the U.S. with automobiles.  Japan doesn't do it, Europe doesn't do it, China and Russia don't do it, the U.S. never came close to doing it "back in the day." 

Rail may be part of the pattern of allowing people to return to higher density living arrangements, that in combination with social restrictions on driving, perhaps gasoline taxes well beyond the European level, restrictions on parking, taxes on vehicle ownership, London-style congestion tax zones, could effect the sort of rollback on automobile use that the likes of James Howard Kunstler is agitating for and maybe the Most Reverend Joseph Ratzinger is hinting at.

Do you seriously want to advance the cause of passenger rail in the U.S. by setting up tables at model train shows, farmer's markets, and civic gatherings the way I do and put up banners and hand out literature saying that your objective is to tax people out of their cars on account of Global Warming, Peak Oil, the Farmland Crisis, and General Overreliance on the Automobile and substitute trains so people can move about at 10 percent of the level they do now, say at the level accessible to the average person today in China?  I have a colleague in my local advocacy group who participates in the literature tables who advocates just that, but only privately within our board meetings but is not ready to make that the emphasis of our public outreach.

As Judeo-Christian-Islamic ethics have entered into the discussion, last I heard, no one has repealed the Commandment against "bearing false witness", which I believe is the Eighth Commandment according to the Roman Catholic numbering.  Claiming that a train that operates at 187 MPH has an order-of-magnitude less energy-consumption environmental impact than an intercity bus is a case of bearing false witness.  Passenger train advocacy would be more successful if we avoided fantasy claims easily shot down by critics and we carefully followed the Eighth Commandment.

Paul--

I distinctly do not want to become one of those people who sets up tables at the Saturday market, whose only followers are those reading my bumper stickers.  Locally, we are barely able to keep the ferries running; the Cascade rail corridor is at least alive but not bustling.  Light rail is finally returning to Seattle. 

A survey in my last Costco flyer solicits opinions on trains that might go 65 mph.  Wow, we've really lowered our standards!  My great grandfather worked for the L & N, which improved efficiency from 181 in 1923 to 130 in 1936 (pounds of coal per one thousand gross ton miles).  Such improvements are no longer possible; and for now the challenge is solving the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund.  We need to keep options open, including Amtrak.

 Here is an example of an efficiency buster: on a 2006 Northbound Coast Starlight, we were more or less on time at Klamath Falls; but were delayed two hours while the replacement engineer got his required time off duty.  Everyone (but not the HEP) cooled their heels while he sipped his coffee.  A bus carried away the Empire Builder passengers.  But if there were a bigger system with more trains and crews, or freight engineers available, such inefficiency might be avoided. 

Maglev:

which improved efficiency from 181 in 1923 to 130 in 1936 (pounds of coal per one thousand gross ton miles).  Such improvements are no longer possible; 

Sure they are.  There's been at least a 20% improvement in diesel locomotive efficiency since 1980 through a whole array of engineering and technical improvments.  On top of that add, elimination of stretch braking, reduction in HP/ton and AutoStart to eliminate most idling.  That's another huge chunk.

On the horizon, there's optimized train handling which appears to be worth another 10% and hybrid locomotives which will recycle braking energy for another big chunk of change.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Such improvements are no longer possible; and for now the challenge is solving the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund.  We need to keep options open, including Amtrak.

OK, I am missing something here.  Bankrupt Highway Trust Fund?  What bankrupt Highway Trust Fund -- I thought that and everything else is getting ARRA money.

Again, suppose the Highway Trust Fund has a significant shortfall from gas tax money and it needs general revenue.  We need to consider Amtrak as an option to that problem?  Wake me up when the Highway Trust Fund General Revenue contribution reaches 20+ cents/passenger mile.

I guess I still consider myself a passenger train advocate, but the advocacy community is grasping at straws with all manner of weak arguments in support of trains, and I begin to wonder about things.  WisARP sends out its newsletter proclaiming that the gas price crisis resulted in a 5 percent decline in automobile trip miles.  Yeah, what are trains supposed to do about that?  If you are really concerned that people taking a few less trips constitutes some crisis of mobility that important work is not getting done, and that fewer vacations are taken, bankrupting the hospitality industry, making up that 5 percent with trains would require a 50 billion dollar a year expenditure based on the formulas of the Vision Report.  That's right, pretty much the entire Federal Highway Budget and more, all taken from general revenue.  That's pretty much what they do in Europe, by the way.  Try selling that idea to people on these shores.

"trains that might go 65 mph.  Wow, we've really lowered our standards!"

Lowered standards?  We have lowered auto speeds (and then raised them in places) in pursuit of energy efficiency and safety.  Planes fly somewhat slower than at the start of the jet age for saving fuel.  They don't fly the Concorde Supersonic anymore.  What is so magical about one speed or some other speed, provided one serves a need at a reasonable cost?  Do commuter trains need to go 300 KPH?  Does the Hiawatha train or Pacific Surfliner need that kind of speed.  Our new Amtrak CEO spoke of moderate speed increases on a multiplicity of corridors as a worthwhile near-term goal, and now we are back to this "national shame" argument again?

HarveyK400:

None of the tedious hand or programmed computer calculations I've made in the past with Davis formulas would suggest a P42 could get 30 Superliners up to 75 mph

Which won't be tedious. Davis says tractive resistance (in pounds) at speed V (in miles/hour) is A + BV + CV^2, where

A = 1.3 times total tons, plus 29 times total axles

B = 0.03 times total tons

C = 0.041 times number of cars (plus maybe 0.3 for the P42 if you want to include it)

(Edit: I blew the calculation-- according to Davis, 67-68 mph would be a better guess for a P42 with 30 Superliners, assuming no HEP.)

HarveyK400:

...or that the resulting calculations are too inaccurate, inadequate, and unreliable.

The statement that the Highway Fund is bankrupt was from my Senator, Patty Murray, chair of the Senate Transportation Appropriations Committee.  If there is possibility of improving train efficiency and capacity, then that is all the more reason why a national rail network needs to tbe preserved.

I am not alone in this view.  Don Phillips in August Trains mentions his frustrations with continued decline of Amtrak.  I started posting here because I believe in passenger trains, and have gotten the impression that advocay groups are so disillusioned that they can barely support maintenance of the current Amtrak system.

My local Ferry Advisory Council is disillusioned, but they are a quasi-official body.  They are volunteers who try to interface between the community and government.  They celebrate small victories such as an intermodal connection from ferry to bus to train (from selected islands, southbound train only).

Advocates need to "think nationally, and act locally."  But the prevailing attitude is to get as much stimulus money as possible for local roads, and forget about even "shovel ready" (ie, 50-year overdue) nationwide rail projects.  What is wrong with this?   Go back to the beginning of my post--the Highway Trust Fund is bankrupt!

Maglev:

"shovel ready" (ie, 50-year overdue) nationwide rail projects. 

Name one.