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beaulieu, Let's go back to the topic question for a moment. To paraphrase, the topic starter asked about the cost of upgrading rail, presumably to handle heavier axle loads (although he makes the same fallacious generalization as the "rail professionals" of the need for upgrading rail for heavier cars, when in fact the specificity of rail wear is due to increased axle loads, not necessarily heavier cars which are more affective on track structures such as bridges). My question to you is this: Don't you think it is more expensive to upgrade the nation's entire rail inventory for HAL cars than it would be to manufacture LAL three axle trucks for all new heavy haul car orders? Because that is the gist of the issue. Our nation is at the brink of losing most of our shortline network simply due to the fact that railroad decision makers have decided to stubbornly bull ahead with HAL to increase load factor, when the technology now exists to commercialize track friendly three axle trucks to accompli***his same goal without the need to overupgrade or alternatively abandon the shortline network. Yes, I wish I had access to some cost figures for installing three axle trucks on all new heavy haul cars built from here on out, so we would have something to compare to the $7 billion figure touted to upgrade our nation's shortline network for HAL cars (not to mention the untold billions probably needed to upgrade and/or maintain the Class I mainlines for HAL over and above that which would have been needed to maintain a LAL sufficient network). Until and if some other TRAINS contributor can come through with such numbers, logical thought does follow that it would have been less expensive to upgrade to three axle trucks for all new heavy haul car orders rather than having to upgrade the tens of thousands of miles of track across the nation. Also, even though you'd need 50% more braking equipment on three axle trucks than two axle trucks, the wear on those brakes would be 33% less. More brakes cost more money, but more brakes also spread the wear more evenly. More brakes means more stopping power. As for radial steering (or some variation thereof), one thing is for sure - whether you have radial two axle trucks or three axle trucks, you would never hear a single flange squealing around curves when such trucks have the radial steering. And one more thing - having LAL's via three axle trucks for heavy haul cars would also mitigate the effects of flat spots on wheels. 40 tons weighing down on a single axle with a flat spotted wheel will cause much more damage to the rail than 25 tons.
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