I found this site whist surfing the 'ole "interweb"
http://freightturntables.com/home
What made me think that they may be serious is the major industry players (at least equipment manufacturers) who are affiliated. They seem to be well along on planning the first installation. At over 200 million + does this make any sense? I guess the big selling point is that it uses much less real estate than a regular classification yard. And they tout speed of operation as well...
Love that animation....Someone needs to build a working scale model!
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
KISS
Definitely have to be computer choreographed.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Okay, so the operation is pretty impressive.. But, I see some problems. First of all, could more than one track feed the turntable, or is feeding the turntable strictly a one track operation? How much computer support would be needed to precisely track each car? How much congestion would this cause as trains entered the turntable. Wouldn't there be a need for a staging yard for trains waiting to be "processed" as it were? What about getting an outbound train ready to go, while an inbound train is being processed? Or could that even be done. What about land usage? There would still be a need for tracks to hold the cars, correct?
I think we need someone like Nbrodar to chime in here, I can see this working to a point, but for a larger yard like Clyde, or Proviso, or even Eola, would this be an efficient way to build and classify trains. I get the feeling something is missing in the operation that the website shows for this turntable.
ndbprr wrote:It makes absolutely no sense to me. Instead of just cutting a car out you need to have the turntable do it. What do you do when it has a problem? At least with a yard if a turnout is defective you just avoid it. With this thing if it breaks you go home.
HA!! you hit the nail right on the head... That's what was missing while I was watching the video on the website. No fault tolerance, or none that was apparent to me.
TimChgo9 wrote: ndbprr wrote:It makes absolutely no sense to me. Instead of just cutting a car out you need to have the turntable do it. What do you do when it has a problem? At least with a yard if a turnout is defective you just avoid it. With this thing if it breaks you go home.HA!! you hit the nail right on the head... That's what was missing while I was watching the video on the website. No fault tolerance, or none that was apparent to me.
I saw the same thing. When it breaks you are out of business until the part is shipped from who knows where. There are no work arounds like with conventional yards. Seems to me someone would have tried it for more than just a locomotive in the last 140 years if it made real sense.
HA ha ha ha haaaaaa....
No, wait, uh...ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa....
Ok, I got it.....man, for a second I thought Futuremodal had found a buyer....
This is about as nonsensical a concept as I have seen in a long time.
As pointed out, if the table breaks, you're shut down till it gets fixed.
And all the cars entering the table, or yard for that matter would have to be pre-blocked in big groups for this to function efficiently...single car switching on this would take hours.
Oh well, at least someone is taking a idea and trying to make it work...but with railroading, as Larry already pointed out, KISS works best.
23 17 46 11
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
All right--I counted as many as 15 cars on that turntable. That's 750 feet minimum diameter, or about 35 tracks wide.
Now, where are you going to find railroad trackage that you can steer from various compass points to a common center? Right--you'd have to acquire the land!
Just how many locomotives are going to have to give up their prime movers to power this thing?
And then there's the matter of all of the other problems previously mentioned.
(too bad they don't have a razzberry smiley to go with this!)
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
15 cars is about 4 million lbs that the turntable is going to be rotating. Just think of stopping a 15 car train with 1/2 inch precision. Yah!
dd
Just thought of an improvement, folks:
they could eliminate some of those locomotives/trackmobiles/whatevers by spinning the 750-foot turntable fast enough to utilize centrifugal force to propel these 140-ton cars into the proper (and properly-aligned) track.
Think Dan Harmon has been tinkering with that invention of his in the basement again...
"Scotty, beam me up another cross hopper car full of di-lithium crystals"
"Aye, Captain!"
As a railroad surveyor, I want to see a yard in this country that would have the operating footprint to accomodate that thing.....huge waste of land resources, especially in an urban area. (on top of the fact that there are too many failure scenarios to render the thing useless, including the inevitable blind shove into the pit with the train biting the turntable.)
No, won't work. At first I thought maybe on some smaller scale like one car turn table. But seriously, what is the advantage to this turn table to say, flat switching or hump sorting????
But I still love wacky ideas. And speaking of Futuremodel, where is he at, I haven't seen him promote his "ideas" lately?
Does anybody remember what happens if the handbrakes were not set and the table was not lined up? Thats right folks the big hook came out and someone got a butt ripping. Good luck cleaning up a couple cars of hazmat in the pit.
When I first saw this thing, I was impressed....for about 2 seconds. Then, all of the negatives began to pop into my head, the first one being the sheer size of something like this. I could not wrap my brain around this thing at all. There are far, far too many things that can go wrong, and this is not a solution, at least not for a large complex, and probably not even a small one either. Too many moving parts, and a reliance on only one way in and out.
Complexity breeds failure, and as Larry put it earlier. KISS..... that always works best. I could only imagine the size of the power plant it would take to power this thing, not to mention the size of everything else. How would maintenance and repair crews gain access to repair something that may go wrong inside underneath the inner table. Who would want to crawl the 500 or so feet through maintenance tunnels to get to the problem.....
No, this goes under the heading of "What happens when someone thinks too much", or "A Solution in Search of a Problem"
I would deck it to keep out the snow and ice, so when there is a problem, I would walk across the table and open a hatch to start the repairs. One computer would be able to handle generating the cut list and operating the table.
I see this working best at a location where several lines come together already that way it's not just one way in and out and is more efficient. It would make short work of block swapping operations. I think the inventor sees it as a time saver as the mainline power only has make a cut and pull away. The trackmobiles and turntable do the rest of the work letting the mainline train go on its merry way much quicker than in a flat yard.
This system misses the real issue, the issue in a yard is not switching cars, its capacity for in bound and outbound trains, there are only so many track coming in to and out of a yard. Even if you switch the cars faster, you still have to get the trains out. The other part hit upon in other posts is where do you put the trains while you air test them. Many a person has spent countless hours agonizing over how to run a yard more efficently and I'm sure there are more efficent ways to run a yard, but the money, resources and land to put such new wonders just is not available.
Yard operations are not a static system easy for computers to run, there are so many more variables than just moving cars from one track to another. A derailment in this system and you shut down the whole operation, in a yard today a derailment will limit your ability to classify as many trains but will not put the whole yard out of comission till it is cleaned up. Interesting but as said earlier, not practical.
Actually, this idea already works. Anyone here been to the B&O Museum? The TT is enclosed under ths big roof. I doubt if the TT moves very fast. At least the pit is covered so a visitor can't fall in. What I don't know is how many of the cars/locos have been repaired since the roof collapse?
Now how's this for an idea: suppose a facility could be built like a stadium with a big dome roof? All the space with no posts/supports in the way? All the glass to supply some light/heat?
edblysard wrote: HA ha ha ha haaaaaa....No, wait, uh...ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa.... Ok, I got it.....man, for a second I thought Futuremodal had found a buyer....This is about as nonsensical a concept as I have seen in a long time.As pointed out, if the table breaks, you're shut down till it gets fixed.And all the cars entering the table, or yard for that matter would have to be pre-blocked in big groups for this to function efficiently...single car switching on this would take hours. Oh well, at least someone is taking a idea and trying to make it work...but with railroading, as Larry already pointed out, KISS works best.
Hi Ed,
The damn contraption will put you out of work - better start looking for another job. LOL
Mark
On the other hand it might be wise to keep your yard trackage as a back up when those Houston rains flood the turntable pit and short circuit the whole thing.
The proposed site for the pilot facility is Tremley Point NJ. I took a look at that area with Google Earth, and it is a massive petrochemical complex, rivaling Texas City in size. It would seem almost certain that what they are going to sort is almost exclusively hazmat flammables.
The land itself appears to be coastal wetlands, although I wasn't sure from the web site.
Right, they only need $200 million to build the pilot. It ought to be a slam-dunk! NOT!
Yeah Mark,
It's got me sweating bullets already....
Rrnut282...Mike, that's pretty much how it happens now.
The road power pull into the receiving yard, cuts off his train, runs through the yard and begins to double up his outbounds.
If he has time left to work, he might get back out of the terminal...if he is short on time, his replacement crew is usually waiting for him.
From the classic movie The Graduate:
Mr. Robinson: Ben, this idea seems pretty half-baked.
Ben: Oh no, sir. It's completely baked.
I think that just about says it all.
Haven't heard from CShaveRR on this one yet. Assume Carl is still on the floor, laughing, gasping for breath...
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
Just stopped back in to see how the discourse was going when one of those random thoughts struck me with regard to this idea.
Rubik's Cube....
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