It could be possible to link America by rail?

[Anonymous]

Looking at world map, I asked me if one day it will be possible to link the three Americas by rail. Most countries have its own rail networt, so It will be possible to link them one day.
The problens are the hills of Andes and the different gauge found in that vast land. But it could be solve in a future not distant of us.

Pedro

[Junctionfan]

It should; but alot of money whould be involved. I have also thought about a Trans Continental Route between Canada to Brazil but I am not sure that all the railroads along the way even use standard gauge. Venezuela and Brazil have a few SD70 and SD70Ms running around somewhere so at least those countries should use standard gauge.

[Anonymous]

In the meantime, read (or reread) Paul Theroux's "The Old Patagonian Express" recounting his travels by train through the Americas.

Of course, strategic portions of the journey included air flights. I wonder if more or less of the trip could be accomplished by rail today than was possible when he wrote the book in 1979.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by pedrop


The problens are the hills of Andes and the different gauge found in that vast land. But it could be solve in a future not distant of us.

In another thread, some one asked about train travel from China to Russia. When the Trans-Mongolian Railway train enters Russia and the Trans-Siberian trackage, the trucks on the cars are changed to accomodate the change in gauge. It's an old solution that is still in use today.

Wayne

[Overmod]

I suggest you get a good contour map and look at it when you consider an "all-rail" solution.

To be meaningful, a rail route would have to offer something that an equivalent road, or air, stretch doesn't. For one thing, it had better not have extensive curvature, or operation next to... or above... rock- or mudslide-prone slopes. Freight service would involve severely limited grades as well. There are numerous stretches along a 'trans-American' route where these conditions could not be met without civil engineering of a magnitude, let alone at a cost, achievable with any effective syndicate or organization of governments credibly capable of the undertaking.

The question is not really 'is it possible' but 'is it desirable'... and 'would the effort pay for itself in benefits'.

[Anonymous]

Brasil have goog railroad and brand new locos, like Dash 8 and 9. I think it isn´t necessary the same train run from canada to Argentina, but one from Canada to Mexico, then other from mexico to Panama, then other from panama to Brazil and son on. I think roads like this shoud be built for human reasons, not for money interest. Banks around the world are growing up every they, and the people around they are more and more poor each day.
The problem is that we don´t have railroads connection on this route. And this is the question: why not built those lines?
Pedro

QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan

It should; but alot of money whould be involved. I have also thought about a Trans Continental Route between Canada to Brazil but I am not sure that all the railroads along the way even use standard gauge. Venezuela and Brazil have a few SD70 and SD70Ms running around somewhere so at least those countries should use standard gauge.

[Big_Boy_4005]

As much as it might be geographicly possible to do this, it is highly impractical. The demand for such transportation deep into virtually uninhabited land is almost nonexistant. The environmental not to mention the economic costs far out weigh the benefits. Railroads go where people go. For these remote locations it is much easier to fly.

[Junctionfan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Big_Boy_4005

As much as it might be geographicly possible to do this, it is highly impractical. The demand for such transportation deep into virtually uninhabited land is almost nonexistant. The environmental not to mention the economic costs far out weigh the benefits. Railroads go where people go. For these remote locations it is much easier to fly.

You are right. Even than when I dreamed of such a superline, I didn't expect anything other than tourist trains and the odd intermodal. I am not to sure how used it would be. It would likely be a waste of land that could be use for better things.

[Overmod]

Not really a waste of land... in fact, I'd be willing to say it would almost never be a waste of land... very, very little land needed for single-track, and not much more for double. There's an opportunity cost for some of the land, perhaps (where it goes through cities, etc.) but there are railroad lines through some pretty upscale places (Main Line Philadelphia, Hudson Highlands, San Clemente to name three) that have very little impact on real-estate values.

It's the construction cost, and the ongoing maintenance cost, that would be the problem, and to build it to 'super-railroad' standards... let alone TGV-class high-speed main... would be adding astronomical percentages onto already-astronomical first-construction-cost numbers. And you have to earn enough not just to pay it back, but to make it attractive for people to lend it to you in the first place...

[DSchmitt]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Big_Boy_4005

As much as it might be geographicly possible to do this, it is highly impractical. The demand for such transportation deep into virtually uninhabited land is almost nonexistant. The environmental not to mention the economic costs far out weigh the benefits. Railroads go where people go. For these remote locations it is much easier to fly.

Right. There is a Highway route, hiowever. The Pan-American Highway

http://www.fact-index.com/p/pa/pan_american_highway_1.html

[Anonymous]

With the popularity and efficiency of other forms of transportation the days are gone when railroad builders would lay their tracks into wilderness and then build the destinations such as luxury hotels that only the railroad could serve. Mountainous, unpopulated areas with no significant, bulky product to export will likely never see a railroad.

Added: My first thought in this thread was that such a Pan American route would have to be a "Water Level" route, ala The NYC route up the Hudson River. My second thought, as Mark said, was "why bother?"

Wayne

[Junctionfan]

I believe that The BC/ Alaska rail connection is in the planning stages by CN. Why wouldn't such a line extension be unprofitable? I don't see your reasoning for this.

[Overmod]

Junctionfan, look at a map of the area between the two systems.

Then superimpose a mapping of precipitation and temperature.

Then tell me what you'd gain by running through trains between Alaska and the lower 48 (or connecting via CN to inland Canadian points).

I looked at the possibility of both inland and coastal routings of an Alaskan rail link back in the early '70s. It did not make much operational sense. Can't say much has changed about it since then.

Tell me what the carloadings will be, how long it will take for that traffic to pay back the line's survey and construction costs, and then repeat your question about 'why wouldn't such a line extension be unprofitable?' -- that's the same question I'd ask, but I wouldn't have made a Freudian slip... ;-}

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill

A Pan-American rail link would be almost as economically dubious as a rail link to Alaska. The latter is a project whose true purpose is to transfer wealth from the pockets of the many to the pockets of the few.

Railroads are a form of inland transportation -- see Stuart Daggett's book Principals of Inland Transportation. They rarely provide lower cost freight transportation than littoral or bluewater shipping. Faster, yes -- if that matters. (If the Jones Act was repealed, a great deal of rail freight in this country would immediately shift to water.)

Since there's an excellent direct-water route between Tacoma-Seattle-Vancouver-Prince Rupert and Anchorage, where 75% of the Alaskan population is clustered, the rail link's only value would be inland transportation to the Alaskan and Canadian frontier. I have no idea what it would haul -- the mineral deposits are unexciting and the timber stand in the dry, cold interior varies from marginal to worthless. Oil and gas are more efficiently pipelined.

A Pan-American link is made even more fatuous by water transportation, since for the most part it would virtually be in view of the ocean. Passenger travel, maybe, but the urban concentrations that justify high-speed rail of the Japanese variety, as opposed to highway or air, do not yet exist and probably never will.

Overmod and Elliot are dead on.

Has there ever been a rail project anywhere that CANNOT be defined as "economically dubious" in some form or fashion? Hasn't the Alameda Corridor been economically dubious so far? Isn't Boston's "Big Dig" economically dubious? And how is it that the Alaska rail link would "transfer wealth from the pockets of the many to the pockets of the few."? When was that last time ANY pork barrel project did not fall under that statement? It is the nature of the beast, although there is an alternative funding method that harkens back to early U.S. rail financing schemes.....

I assume the "transfer" comment is somehow related to the assumption that the Alaska rail link will require a massive taxpayer subsidy, which it seems are only appropriate for places like LA and Boston. God forbid that Alaska be compensated for having half its land locked up by the federales, which is preventing Alaska and most of the Intermountain West states from truly realizing their economic potential.

The obvious answer for funding the Alaska rail link is of course a land grant. Whether that could be done for a Pan American rail link I don't know but is is certainly doable for most of the Western U.S. As to whether such projects would fall under the acceptable terms of current (read: shortsighted) "economic justifiability" standards, it is doubtful since those caveats basically eliminate Jim Hill's concept of "build for the future". The vast mineral and timber wealth of Alaska's interior, the Yukon, and upper BC are assets we just may need in a decade or two, so if we build the heavy haul connection now, it will be ready when we need it. "Dry" timber is harvestable and replantable, you know!

It makes more sense to build a single transporation mode with comprehensive commodity coverage than to end up having to build many single use modes. An oil pipeline can only haul oil (and maybe some refined petroleum products), a natural gas pipeline only natural gas, a coal slurry pipeline only coal. A railroad can handle all these commodities and then some: raw timber, processed timber, mineral aggregates, trailers, containers, pulp, paper, etc., etc. The people who are supporting these concepts do so because they realize the value of having heavy haul/time sensitive responsiveness is essential for long term economic sustainability and security. Such things trump the regression into the rubber stamp acceptance of "economically dubious" labels for such projects.

Don't knock time sensitivity either. A Pan American railroad could speed up the trip for perishables from Brazil, Chile, Argentina. Fresher perishables means greater satisfaction for the consumer and greater economic stability for producers.

The oft criticized railroad land grants that opened up the West to development were a stroke of genius, even if some lefties back East still regret that action to this day. We could always modernize the concept to placate the doubters. Give the land grant to the states with the caveat that the land remains in the public domain, let the states establish a revenue stream from sustainable resource extraction, and use that revenue to cover interest or dividend payments for the investors of the project.

It is possible therefore to construct such projects without transfering a dime from the many to the few.

[BaltACD]

& Big Boy -

Between the two of you, you have defined the situation. Of course the creation of railroads in the US was a venture of dubious economic success when they were undertaken in the early 19th Century....and we all know that outcome.

While a Pan-American rail system would appear of dubious economic vitaltiy today, open up the 'uncharted' wildernesses of South and Central America could lead to explosive economic development within those wildernesses. That could either benefit or hurt mankind as we presently know it. Of course the same statements could have been voiced 175 years ago, and the propably were. The vision of the founders of the US rail system was truly of heroic proportions, well beyond the vision of their comtemporaries.

[Big_Boy_4005]

I think we have the major issues pretty well discussed here, but just for fun, here is a population density map of half of the world. I wish I could have gotten the rest of the world on, but for this discussion this should do. Unfortunately the key was on the page with the other half of the world, but that pale yellow that covers most of the interior of South America, and northern Canada, and Utah and Nevada equates to under 2 people per square mile. The darker the color, the higher the density.



This really shows why passenger rail works in some places and not in others. Look at Europe, almost no yellow. India, Japan, Korea, and eastern China are similarly dense. Look at the northeastern US. This is why Amtrak clings to life. By this standard Austrailia should have no passenger railroads at all.

The criteria for freight is different, but seeing where the people live in South America, near the coasts, ports handle all comodities. Ships may be slower, but the fact that they don't have to cross borders makes them much simpler and ultimately safer than land travel.

Sorry Pedro, Brazil may indeed have nice railroads, but they are for domestic use, and interchange with Argentina only. That is where practicality ends in that part of the world. Sad but True.

[Anonymous]

[i]I wonder if more or less of the trip could be accomplished by rail today than was possible when he wrote the book in 1979.

The most long distance passenger trains in Brazil was abandoned a few years ago. But they stiil running on Argentina land.

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