As I'm reading Don's post immediately above, 2 questions came to mind. Then I reached and read his last sentence - The problem then becomes how to get from "now" to "then" and just how painful it would be to get a new set of technology "fully grown". - and so I was left with just 1 question, as follows:
Don, have you been either smoking the 'weed' of John Kneiling - or are you just pulling my leg ?
If neither of the above, then we're back to the 1st question: Should we - and how do we - start implementing such a system ?
John advocated essentially superimposing it on top of the existing system - sharing just the gauge, signals, and crews, with absolutely no compatibility between the equipment sets. That would be similar to the RoadRailer operations, and actually most intermodal container operations, esp. the double-stacks. They have mostly their own equipment - drawbar-connected well cars and spine cars are a complete break with traditional equipment design philosophies, and embody a lot of the kinds of improvements that you suggest, esp. freedom from a lot of the air brake hose troubles at the drawbar connections.
So OK - Where do we sign up to get started with this ?
- Paul North.
Last night in thinking about this thread, I recalled a refrain from a song or poem from like 20 or 30 years ago that seems to sum up the myriad of possible aggravations, as follows [sung or chanted to a steady, thumping beat, at about a waltz '3-count' tempo] -
''Headaches, heartaches, and all kinds of pain,
Are in the life of a railroad train.'' [and train people]
Ohhhh, yeahhhh.
- PDN.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
The biggest problem of introducing 'revolutionary' technology in the North American rail industry is that whatever is introduced, unless operated only in trains of like technology, must operate with the existing rail fleet....in most cases, with innovations such as ECP, it only takes one unequipped car to stymie the technology, while the same was the case when the Janney Coupler and the Westinghouse Air Brake came on the scene the trains being handled and the amount of equipment owned by each company was much smaller than it is today.
The ability to design a innovation and have it work, even when intermixed with existing unequipped equipment will be critical to having the innovation accepted. The cost to retrofit existing equipment to new technology is a significant hurdle to the acceptance of new technology....that and competing new technologies in the same field must be built to standards that will permit interoperability; a tall wall for the egos behind new technologies to climb. A wall that will have to be scaled if ECP is to be the standard for braking in the future.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Oltmand...the further I get away from Knieling the more I view him as you do: his mission was to get railroads and shippers to stop thinking the same old same old and find better, more economical, more efficient ways of doing what they had been doing for over a hundred years at that poing.
So, BaltACD, it follows that your statement about "...introducing 'revolutinary' technology" has great meaning both then and now. One of the first problems is that railroads are private businesses and corporations who must weigh carefully the cost of anything and everything that comes along before jumping aboard. Although we cherish private enterprise so dearly in this country it can often get bogged down in tradition and status quo on the basis of economics and the current and near future bottom line which can lead to oblivion. I agree that a wholesale reinventing of the wheel is certainly out of sight, so ways have to be found to intergrate something new and slowly abosrb it into the system. Labor and governement have often been instrumental in giving a push in the face of a market place that resists. And thankfully under deregulation, or at least with the demise of the ICC system, some marketing and planning could be done instead of the long and reactionary process applying for tariffs.
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BaltACDThe biggest problem of introducing 'revolutionary' technology in the North American rail industry is that whatever is introduced, unless operated only in trains of like technology, must operate with the existing rail fleet....in most cases, with innovations such as ECP, it only takes one unequipped car to stymie the technology, while the same was the case when the Janney Coupler and the Westinghouse Air Brake came on the scene the trains being handled and the amount of equipment owned by each company was much smaller than it is today. The ability to design a innovation and have it work, even when intermixed with existing unequipped equipment will be critical to having the innovation accepted. The cost to retrofit existing equipment to new technology is a significant hurdle to the acceptance of new technology....that and competing new technologies in the same field must be built to standards that will permit interoperability; a tall wall for the egos behind new technologies to climb. A wall that will have to be scaled if ECP is to be the standard for braking in the future.
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