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In the old days railroads literally built towns so they could have traffic. From what I have seen here lately, is that it seems railroads no longer have this level of interest in related industries, or the general population. I am quite a novice in this area though, so I could be wrong. Why not build (RR Co.) industrial parks with track access to all areas, and then offer companies incentive to relocate, or incentive to startup. Maybe business that locate on a RR could get a tax break for relieving highway traffic. Maybe business could be allowed to locate directly on trainyard property to get immediate acces to shipments. That's what airports do. If I read right, CN is now a true continental bridge line, something similar will have to be developed to compete in the U.S. - maybe a coalition train nonstop coast to coast. Could it be that railroads in their current physical form have met a maximum? What would be the next paradigm? I don't know, you can only put so much weight on a steel wheel on a steel rail. If grades and curves were completely eliminated just how long could a train be? I see hydrogen fuel cells in green goats, but what about the constant power demands of a road locomotive? Railpower proposes a CNG loco, but CNG doesn't have the BTU/Lb. of diesel. As fossil fuels become rare, will electric locos make a comeback? or a modern steam loco burning coal with a closed system condensation cycle? I know much has been researched by serious groups already and no real benefit was discovered such as the ACE 2000. While they developed a locomotive that looked like a modern diesel but ran on steam and coal, I believe they relied to heavily on old paradigms, and thus, developed a locomotive that did not exceed any current standard. They did propose an increase in efficiency up to 18%, which is pretty high for a steam locomotive, more than double any conventional steam loco. But compared to diesel, this is not an improvement, and they hoped on the continueing low price of coal. What I say is why not 30% or 40% efficiency? what kind of boiler can do that? Instead of a large boiler and 300 PSI, why not three or four "micro boilers", that can react quickly to changes. Such small boilers could operate at much higher pressures, because they have small surface areas, maybe 1200 PSI !!!!! How about this for radical? A DRY BOILER! A chamber heated to extreme temperature, a small quantity of water is injected and instataneously explodes !!! This is repeated at high speed !!!!!!! BBBBBBBBBAM!!!!!!!!! How about configuring these dry micro boilers to operate vertically, and arrange them on horizontal manifolds, the water manifold on the bottom, and the steam manifold at the top. Water comes in at the bottom, is injected into a chamber, BAM!, then steam in the upper manifold. Unlike verticle tube boilers, there is no seperation of water and steam at the top, only pure superheated steam comes directly out of the chambers !!!! By keeping internal volumes as small as possible, this system could use an absolute minimum of steam at extreme pressures.
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