Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
I don't think you are going to see much in the way of changes in size; there's a lot of cost involved in changing specifications for roadbed and infrastructure. If the past fifty years is any measure of the future, you are probably going to see changes in appearance- like paint schemes. That will be a side effect of consolidation of railroads. Knowing my luck, the future rail executive will probably decide on a rainbow of colors- so long as that rainbow is black. The boxy, modular appearance of locomtives probably won't change; it's easy to assemble, and probably easier to maintain than "car body" type locomotives. Technological changes are harder to figure out. I doubt that freight cars will look much like they do now. (Freight cars don't look a lot like they did fifty years ago. They're bigger, for one thing.) I suspect that some bright individual will figure out a faster way to standardize loading and offloading bulk goods, so that one speciality car (like a chemical tank car) can be used for carrying something else- like grain, or coal. It's even possible that a railroad inventory for freight cars will be nothing more than TTFX flat cars- with industries owning standardized containers that get loaded and unloaded with whatever they are producing. And no one can tell what changes there will be in materials used to build freight cars, either- we have come a long way from wood and iron. You'll probably see less people; the trend is to make do with less people doing more. That's not just railroads, either- that's everywhere. There's a lot of changes that won't be visible, mostly in train control, signalling and communication. Trains will get longer, and yards will get bigger to handle them. Coupler technology will change So will braking. Engineers will still deal with a lot of energy behind them, and there has to be a better way to control 10,000 tons of kinetic energy than air and brake shoe. Will there be a change in actual locomotive propulsion? Current technology is beginning to look at alternatives. I doubt we will see anything so drastic as fusion powered locomotives, or even nuclear powered ones, either. Steam locomotives lasted over a hundred years. They just got bigger and more powerful. The change from steam to diesel on main lines took a little over 30 years. The primary reason, from what I can tell, was economy. You might spend more on a diesel locomotive initially than a steam engine, but you saved more in terms of maintenance- people, time and equipment- over the long run. There's other kinds of locomotives being tested right now, but I don't see anything like the FT-A and FT-B combination demonstrators causing rail presidents and engineers to take notice the way they did for diesels. Since it's your crystal ball, Mookie, I don't think you'll see passenger trains outside museums. You will see a lot of mass transit light rail, but main line intercity traffic will probably cease to exist. The reason is because passenger service doesn't make money, and freight railroads hate passenger trains. (Cornelius Vanderbilt was the first to put that hatred into succinct words- nearly a hundred years ago.) Erik
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag