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Costs of a Catenary System for a High-speed railway Bullet Train?

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Obi
  • Member since
    February 2023
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Costs of a Catenary System for a High-speed railway Bullet Train?
Posted by Obi on Wednesday, February 22, 2023 2:00 AM

So I have an assignment which asks me to figure out the costs of building a new transportation system from one area to another and I have decided to make a bullet train and I am also tasked with figuring out how the electric fields of the train work and thats the the catenary system comes into play (I am pretty sure at least). I wanted to ask, in Australia if possible, what is the cost of a Catenary system per kilometre?

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Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, February 22, 2023 10:20 AM

A modern catenary system will be constant-tension.  The detail design, available parts, and consulting engineer resources will be chosen accordingly.

For the overhead: you must survey and place the bases for the overhead infrastructure and its support equipment, then design, fabricate, and install the bridges and pulloff supports needed for the wire.  This includes the frames and anchors for the constant-tension weights.

When a given overhead support infrastructure for a constant-tension span is installed and tested, you can string and tension the appropriate span.

Note that if you were using dual-mode-lite or a variant, you could start drawing benefit from a given section of overhead as soon as it can be powered.  A typical electrification requires that the whole section of railway be finished before any trains run, and that arrangements be in place and supported to handle the probably longer or heavier consists electrification would make possible.

My recommendation would be to implement dual-mode-lite at DC-link level of some form of diesel- or hydrogen-electric power (which is in itself an interesting design exercise) and then conduct progressive buildout/rollout of OHLE starting with grades or other territory that can benefit from 'snapping' or the increased capacity available to a power consist 'under the wire'.  The wire can then be extended to other sections, but with permitted gaps anywhere there are 'hard' clearance requirements, excessive costs, etc. -- the trains are sized to self-powered output, not the greater prospective capacity of the pure electrics, and use the hybrid power to span the gaps painlessly until the budget or the political will allow.

You should carefully describe how and where the external power will be connected to run the electrification, including how you propose to ensure continuity in future, and taking action to control current and future electricity charges.

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Posted by charlie hebdo on Wednesday, February 22, 2023 1:45 PM

Obi

So I have an assignment which asks me to figure out the costs of building a new transportation system from one area to another and I have decided to make a bullet train and I am also tasked with figuring out how the electric fields of the train work and thats the the catenary system comes into play (I am pretty sure at least). I wanted to ask, in Australia if possible, what is the cost of a Catenary system per kilometre?

 

Contact Siemens.

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Posted by rdamon on Wednesday, February 22, 2023 6:00 PM

Or ChatGPT via Bing  :D

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Posted by oltmannd on Monday, February 27, 2023 9:13 AM

Obi

So I have an assignment which asks me to figure out the costs of building a new transportation system from one area to another and I have decided to make a bullet train and I am also tasked with figuring out how the electric fields of the train work and thats the the catenary system comes into play (I am pretty sure at least). I wanted to ask, in Australia if possible, what is the cost of a Catenary system per kilometre?

 

try this at 7:00 mark  https://youtu.be/-yHqXMIvQXw

 

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, February 27, 2023 9:50 AM

In the intervening time since the New Haven to Boston electrification, the Chinese have essentially 'commodified' the installation of high-speed catenary and supporting infrastructure, and standardized many of the components and systems used to implement the construction.  To the extent they have not, it would not involve rocket-science levels of engineering to modify what they have into what would be needed.

As with effective TLM and self-launching viaduct construction, a comparatively modest investment in reusable equipment allows its cost to be amortized across a potentially very large range of these electrification proposals... with the cost for each reducing in proportion to the cost for all.

Since as I recall the OP is overseas (New Zealand IIRC, although he mentions Australian context) he may have better working access to Chinese railway engineering sources that can give him current specifics and best practices.

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