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Jack_S: Regarding your incremental speed increase analysis, you are essentially correct, but you must remember that we are talking about constant movement over time, e.g. we're running that 500 corridor maybe 200 times or more per year, thus a measly 30 minute time savings between 100 mph and 110-ish mph, comes out to 100 hours or more of time savings per year. Time is money, so you must ask yourself what that 100 hours of time savings translates into in dollar terms. Again, the more time sensitive the commodity, the more money is saved per year with the 10 mph increase from 100 to 110 mph. So the key cost/benefit variable is: What is the highest sustainable speed and average trip speed needed for a train of 125 RoadRailers/RailRunners to beat the truckers in corridors of 500 miles or more? Again, the railroad will need a trip speed that compensates for the time needed to transfer between modes at each terminal. Since trucks can average between 50 and 60 mph dock to dock (an estimate, assumes 70+ mph on the highway) for an 8.5 hour 500 mile trip between the two terminals, if we are penalized 1 hour for modal transfer at each terminal, we need to average over 77 mph just to tie the truckers time at 6.5 hours plus 2 hours in terminal delays. Thus, to be safe (in terms of getting the shippers' business) we need to average at least 80 mph, and I would expect that in order to do that you'd need to be capable of sustained speeds of up to 120 mph. CSSHEGEWISCH: Here's a poser - Which takes longer to stop? 1)Three 5,000 ton trains with two identical locomotives on each train, with the second and third trains following close enough to the first for the lead engineer to control all three via remote control, or 2)One 15,000 ton train with two lead locomotives, two DPU's one third of the way back, and two DPU's two thirds of the way back (e.g. all the locomotives are controlled by the lead engineer). Assume the train makeup between the locomotives is identical, and all have the same horsepower to ton ratio. Then turn the question around so that you are comparing one 5,000 ton train with the three 5,000 ton trains in terms of the stopping distance. Does the one 5,000 ton train stop quicker than the three closely following 5,000 ton trains? Wouldn't the engineer of the lead 5,000 ton train be able to stop the trailing two trains at the same rate as if he was only one 5,000 ton train? The point is, it may depend on the distribution of the locomotives to determine if a 5,000 ton train stops quicker than a 15,000 ton train at the same relative rate of speed.
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