American freight trains-59 mph....German Freight Trains-80mph The FRA is FAXing US railroads over.

[Overmod]

I have to admit that I wasn't paying much attention to railroad technology during the years the Iron Highway was under development. (It is one of the pre-Junctionfan technologies that would have been used to provide truck-ferry service...). I assume that you know about this:

http://www.stcwa.org.au/journal/2April2003/1049082567_3671.html

including why (if there is, in fact, such a why) cars of the train may have gone to preservation rather than being put to work.

If I had to guess, I'd say that single-wheel installations that don't have some sort of cross-reinforcement would be prone to develop some kind of shimmy at speed, possibly worse at certain critical speeds or on some kinds of track or track profile. That's part of the reason I favor a through axle with the wheels able to rotate individually on it.

But from what you describe, the torque tube would be joining the ROTATING components, but is nowhere near stiff enough to 'force' both wheels to keep together on curves -- perhaps it winds up and 'kicks' the slower wheel instead of letting it grind the way that a classical axleset does. That's an awful big 'perhaps' -- please, please tell me you can find someone who will explain this...

[M636C]

Overmod,

I hadn't seen that website. It does explain who was thinking of running it and to some extent where. In Australia, clearances in the East don't allow even a relatively low level vehicle like the Iron Highway to carry trucks, although there is no problem west of Adelaide. (In fact, you coudn't even drive trucks at rail level in the East - we have special Road Railers with a cut down profile for tunnels).

I've always thought of the Iron Highway as a solution for a problem we haven't developed yet.

A possibility is that the two cars in the museum are not there as an alternative to scrapping, but are there being assembled by a group of people experienced in rail technology and capable of getting complex item to work at a low cost.

But nothing has been heard from Rees or South Spur about actually using the Iron Highway. There is virtually no TOFC traffic in Australia now, not since the Eyre Highway (across the Nullarbor) was actually given a pavement in the 1970s.

And sorry, I'm just describing what I saw, with all the expletives deleted. The "torque tube" looked like a classic afterthought brought on after testing, and yes, it didn't look strong enough to do much, compared to the really heavy duty nature of everythng else.

We think that Rees (or South Spur) bought the Iron Highway for scrap value to see if it could be used for anything, but thought better of it when they had a close look. If I find anyone to explain all this, you will be the first to know.

Peter

[Overmod]

I note that the following item, from just a few months ago, has a contact e-mail in it:

http://www.dotars.gov.au/transinfra/technewsletter/issue7mar04.htm#7

Of course, this person may well be known to you, but it does seem to me that he'd be in a position to tell what current plans for the Iron Highway are. I certainly hope they're not actually cutting it up at this point, even if they can't find a cost-effective service to run it.

Seems to me it would be a logical service for the new 'mid-continent' extension north of Alice Springs; wouldn't this be a sensible way to transport Indonesian and Chinese-sourced goods to the southern Australian states, on a route where there is no real effective road equivalent and something of a premium application for higher speed (high utilization of high-speed-capable equipment; happy co-existence with passenger operation).

Logical thing, I wonder, would be to build 'high-level platforms' at roughly deck height, with a very long shallow slope, to allow multiple trucks to turn and pull off directly rather than have to uncouple, drop ramps, drive over the ROW structure, etc. This is perhaps the classical poster child for 'appropriate technology' solutions: dirt, RCC, and paving rather than adaptive hydraulics, fancy indexing locators, or dual-mode RoadRailers...

Is there a map of Australian rail routes with high vertical clearances? I'd expect that any SAR route would have more-than-adequate lateral clearance, for the same reason some American ex-Erie mainlines do -- broad gauge legacy.

[Paul Milenkovic]

1) What did the Super C (Santa Fe Chicago-L.A. piggy back train that ran maybe 14 double-trailer flatcars and a squadron of locomotives an kept a faster schedule than the Super Chief-El Capitan) use? 3-piece freight trucks or something fancy? They may have been limited to 79 MPH, but they must have done a lot of 79 MPH running to keep their schedule. What ever happened to it? Was it too expensive to operate? Did it cause too much disruption of other trains?

2) The Alan Cripe Turbo Train used a solid axle connection between the wheels while Talgo famously allows them to rotate at different speeds. If you want to see some ultra-cool drawings of the Turbo Train suspension system, go to http://ep.espacenet.com (European patent database -- uses PDFs, unlike USPTO), and search on Alan R Cripe. The thing uses a set of "wishbone" links and looks somewhat like the suspension on a Honda. The other ultra-cool thing you will find is his earlier versions of the Turbo Train done for the C&O railroad in the late 1950s -- there was a kind of connection between Turbo Train and Train X after all.

3) What ever happened to the Turbo Train? I heard that both Via and Amtrak Turbos spent a lot of time in the shop. Was the problem with the helicopter gas turbines (PT-6's) not meant for railroad use, with the power transmissions, or was that single-axle tilting suspension part of the problem? Or was it something prosaic like trouble prone wiring, AC, auxiliary systems?

4) I rode the Turbo Train once, over 30 years ago, and I thought it rode really well. Didn't seem very fast or have much acceleration (the acceleration honors go to the Budd Silverliner MU cars), and I remember that inside Grand Central (with the turbine shut off!) the thing reeked of jet fuel so bad that Mom thought she was going to vomit, but as a kid, the smell of jet fuel was the smell of things to do with, well, jets. The domes with the Plexiglas partition to the cab were beyond cool.

5) Is the pedestal the guide in which each axle wheel bearing is mounted? The British as well as the Japanese believe that to control hunting, you have to keep the axle bearing from wobbling inside that thing -- that lozenging effect -- and that is why the British like some kind of crank connection between the axle and the truck side frame -- to keep the axles stiff to that lozenging displacement. Don't you suppose some kind of rubber bushing in the pedestal to keep the axle bearing from wobbling would be good enough for 80 MPH operation with freight?

[M636C]

Overmod,

I am amazed! I spent years working for our Federal government, and never found anything useful on a website (aside from tax information) even including stuff I had to write for the websites myself!

The "integral ramps" look to me a bit like an accident looking for a place to happen!

The Iron Highway, and most other TOFC cars, have retaining lips to allow driving lengthwise, but if you didn't have to do that, plain flat cars with appropriate tiedowns would be good.

In Melbourne, at Webb Dock, they have a car deck height platform used by container fork lifts which would be suitable for that operation, except there are no routes out of Melbourne with high enough clearance for TOFC.

The "Iron Highway" photos on the website are all taken in the USA.

But CRT can't have given up yet. Perhaps Seymour are really doing a test assembly of the cars for CRT. But since it was sitting next to the recovered tender tank of a three cylinder Pacific scrapped in 1954, you got the impression that it was in the "past" category.

CRT operate a German freight railcar, a "Cargo Sprinter" obtained (just before the factory shut down) with a Federal research grant. I don't believe it can do anything that a couple of old switchers regeared for road speeds and a few standard flat cars coudn't do for lower cost (and there are enough for a few trains just sitting around).

They may have, or hope for, Federal funds for the Iron Highway. Anything diverted from roads would be good. The big problem with road funding is that it goes everywhere, distributed evenly, not according to need (or it would all be in a couple of cities).

The Victorian and South Australian clearances were theoretically the same as NSW standard gauge. In SA, there weren't many bridges and few tunnels, and a guy named Webb ex the MKT fixed up clearances for locomotive cylinders in the 1920s. The net result is that SA, and WA who only built the standard gauge in 1965, have good clearances. The former Commonweath trans-Australian (East-West) line never had any restrictions apart from the occasional bridge over the line (which they have excavated).

I'll ask Mr McNamara what's happening! (Don't hold your breath- a friend has been asking other people in the organisation without results)

Peter

[Overmod]

Peter, I think you've hit the right nail on the head, for the right reasons, with the Cargo Sprinter. The idea of small, independently powered vehicles for freight is an old and sweet-sounding song -- but usually gets into trouble when capital cost factors in. I remember some discussions with John Kneiling in the early '70s regarding 'feeder' use of his gas-turbine integral-train underframes in this kind of service by fitting them with 'modular cabs' (mine was essentially a light hi-rail vehicle with "MU" control for x number of the powered Kneiling rakes.) The problem was that light-traffic revenue almost never pays for the high-dollar hardware.

I believe the point of the Cargo Sprinter is that its length, weight/axle loading, and fuel consumption are less than a more conventional 'alternative', and perhaps its operating speed would be substantially higher as well. Australians are considerably ahead of the USA with respect to operating and maintaining this sort of vehicle -- you have an extensive service with railcars and DMUs that have multiple-speed transmissions, and some of the equipment from these could be used for the sort of thing a Cargo Sprinter does if you wanted to do "adaptive re-use." But I suspect the regeared-locomotive approach would be less expensive, as well as easier to re-convert if desired. My only question then is whether there would be increased track damage at the 'new' higher speeds permitted by the gearing.

Paul, I don't recall that the Super C cars were given particularly special suspension, and haven't yet found out any direct references about what things were done to the cars to make them suitable for higher speeds. AFAIK the trucks were conventional three-piece construction, but with better tolerances and perhaps pads for better absorption and/or lubrication at key points. Be interesting to look at one of the car cyclopedias from this era and see whether any manufacturer took pride in supplying the 'world's fastest freight' (sorry, BSM proponents!)

Cripe's stuff was nifty. And I thought he was shrewd to pitch the thing to UA and get them to build it!

After all these years, I still remember the Christmas card where Rudolph met his match...

To my knowledge, the train failed due to high operating and maintenance cost, spread over too few specialized units. This particularly applied to fuel cost, and availability post-'73. The transmission in particular was almost surely a formula for disaster -- take a look at its internal construction and you'll see why! Like all articulated trains, Turbo suffered from capacity problems. I have not seen track quality explicitly mentioned as a reason for demise, but this was almost certainly a major factor, both with regard to the public perception of the ride quality and with respect to maintenance of suspension, drivetrain, and other mechanical stuff. A very major problem was the issue of platform height -- many of the major stations in the NEC at the time were high-level platforms, and the Turbo was inherently a low-level train. If I recall correctly, the accommodations in the 'coaches' themselves were a bit cramped, following 'airliner' specs, which has never really been a formula for success in American passenger service -- I can't say because I was always up there on the glassed-in deck, looking out! If you were in one of those seats close to an axle, it was said you had a ride experience akin to being in a bus with a flat tire.

Presumably VIA Rail had similar experiences with their much longer Turbo sets -- to my eyes, very attractive in their mostly yellow livery, btw.

My understanding is that all the Turbos were cut up long ago. I'd like to be wrong.

You're correct about pedestal (it's much the same component the British refer to as 'hornguides'). Note that almost all modern high-speed trucks don't use them, as they explicitly preclude radial steering (except Cartazzi) and do require shimming or adjustable Franklin-style wedges, etc. to preclude uncontrolled axle tramp.

I had thought that the principal point of the 'crank' was to minimize the required sideframe length (and mass) and improve stiffness there, while maximizing the effective wheelbase (which, for example, can give better tracking and increase the period of any lateral truck oscillation that would build up to hunting)

I think most current practice follows the idea of using rubber-isolated struts to control wheel alignment in all desirable planes, and otherwise allowing the axle to 'float' relative to the truck frame. There are some pretty good illustrations of the Henschel FlexiFloat bogies on the Web that indicate what's needed with both primary and secondary suspension to get the proper mix of stiffness, decoupling, and isolation.

Back when I first started learning about high speed, the conventional 'wisdom' was that primary suspension needed to be very stiff, and secondary very soft, for high-speed passenger transportation. Canadians may remember the somewhat weird-looking chevron-sprung axleboxes on early LRC power -- IIRC much like the trux on the GP40X locomotivex. Secondary a la Amfleet, with those rubber bags. The problem is that soft VERTICAL damping and spring rate doesn't necessarily turn out to assure sufficient LATERAL ride quality -- I intensely disliked the sickening characteristics of short-period lateral excursion of the early cars. which was only compounded by the giggling of various plastic interior panels. I think it's much better to use struts, etc. to keep the axles located positively and allow the right 'mix' of effective spring rate and damping that's appropriate to a given speed or range of speeds in vehicle operation.

[oltmannd]

One variable in hunting is length. The longer the car, the high the hunting threshold speed. 90' TTX flats less likely to hunt at 80 mph than a 50 foot flat. In fact, some RRs limit those converted 50' box car intermodal flats to 50 mph because of stability issues.

[M636C]

Guys,

A truck used in Australia on our earliest 85' container wagons was a "General Steels Aligned Truck" which had rods linking the sideframe with the bolster, much like traction rods on passenger trucks. These held the sideframes square with the bolster without adding much weight or cost.

These were US Trucks and were available in the right timeframe for the "Super C"

Rockwell had a truck with sideframes with a cross beam on each that had ball joints on the far end connecting the two sideframes, allowing relative vertical twist but no lozenge movement. I think it was intended for cabooses, but we used one under a box car for high speed trials in the early 1970s.

I don't have my 1970 Cyclopedia with me right now!

One problem with the "regeared switcher" approach was the old 567s wouldn't meet current emissions requirements, the whole thing with the Cargo Sprinter having reduced emissions as a major goal. It would probably be better than the replaced trucks, but not as good as the two big truck engines under the Cargo Sprinter.

Peter

[Anonymous]

I live in miami fl and work near the fia east coast . north miami main line. the trains i see cruising by are intermodels and rock trains. i have rode along with these trains in my truck and i know for a fact thespeed of these trains do reach 50mph. too me thats a safe speed for trains .. we have to keep trains on the tracks for safety. trains need safe operations not a happy go lucky person with a need for speed... accidents kill and destroy people property and above all change lives forever...

[Anonymous]

Overmod said
My understanding is that all the Turbos were cut up long ago. I'd like to be wrong.

Not entirely true. Amtrak still owns (and to my knowledge, still operates [the latest I can confirm their operation is 2001]) a few Rhor turbos, and recently refrebished them for the aborted Acela Commuter service

[Overmod]

I was referring only to the UA/Alan Cripe TurboTrains, not the Frangeco-style and Rohr trains. As you point out, a number of those are still around. However, to me any of those French trains lack the magic of the Cripe train...

[daveklepper]

Rode the two NY-Boston Turbos about 5 or 6 time, about 3 or 4 times to GCT and twice after it got switched to Penn. Rode well at high speed even on jointed track. Rode poorly on jointed track at 35mph in the Park Av. Tunnels and poorly through switches. At one time the engineer pushed it to 110 mph going west on the eastbound express track Rye to New Rochelle to make sure he'd make his slot at Shell Tower. Rode beautifully. Maintenance and fuel costs ended its operation. One was taken on a USA tour just after Amtrak started.

I thoroughly enjoyed sitting behind the engineer in the "pod".

[Anonymous]

you have to remember that european trains have a coupler system, bumpers and
chain link, which inhibits monster trains such as we have in america. all their freight
trains are short by our comparisons. also they do not have compatible electric
transmission systems to permit runthrough freight from country to country, except for
say, germany to switzerland and austria. so their freight traffic is within their
own boundaries for the most part. also they have to have fixed schedules for freight
trains to fit into the operating pattern with fixed passenger schedules. american
railroads can not operate freight trains on a rigid schedule day after day. the differences
are tremendous. of course the germans don't and can't operate a 17,000-ton freight
train, nowhere even close. another great difference. no use trying to compare the
two countries! theo sommerkamp [e-mail]

[Anonymous]

Do you want freight trains to do 80? There is a lot of things that have to go in to the track layout. I shoud know I work for CP as a forman in the track dept. Just take the DOT Haz mat book. Most RR shipped what in that book if the state and Fed will let them move it. Now would you like that stuff move like a 18 wheeler?????

[CrazyDiamond]

At the risk of showing my very limited knowledge here goes:

First I acknowledge that greater speeds allow you to do more with less....but as speed increases, it takes more and more effort (cost). Fuel consumption increases, wear increases exponentially, mechanical quality has to increase, engineering has to increase, derailments become more catastrophic ( one CN derailment incurred a $28M envriomental charge), etc...so while speed offers its benefits more speed in North America RRs does come with ever increasing costs.

I look at capacity as an equation:
Volume = Frequency + Intensity + Duration
Volume = How Often + How Long&Speed + Delay

In the posts above all we have talked about is increasing the intensity of our trains....longer heavier faster trains. We talk about speed as a tool to reduce the Delay and to get more.

From my perspective here in Halifax, Nova Scotia the Frequency variable is under-utilized. Its seem we have this "day shift" mentality....trains arrive early in the morning to drop off freight, the yard/port move containers around to (a) disassemble the arrivals, and (b) assemble trains for departure. Then in the early evening the trains depart here. Contrainers can often sit in port for a day or longer before its actually moving on the track. THIS IS HUGE DELAY from the customers perspective!!! IMHO, if we (North America) spent our effort (cost) into having our yards/port and RRs organize their operations so that trains are leaving/arriving on a 24 hours basis....I think that would yield a much higher ROI. Our trains can still run at the speeds and lengths they are now, so there would be no need to spend billions and billions with these infrastructure overhauls.

I know more trains require more locos and more staff, but I think this can easily be paid for from the money we would have spent on the effort (costs) I mentioned above. As well, today's computing applications are nothing short of amazing....and I think very advanced CTC, scheduling, timing, perhaps a few extra sidings, and better supply-chain integration with the (a) customer, and (b) distributors/shippers, etc would give the North American RRs: newfound capacity with less end-to-end delay. Sure gees, if a contrainer can be taken off a ship, and be on its way in 4 hours instead of 24 then we just saved 20 hours right there!!! How fast of a train would we need to make up 20 hours!!!

Yes maybe no???

Side Note:
Comparing apples to oranges here.... I work for the telecommunications industry...and while our operations are very different than the RR, we are not without our own unique challenges. However our infrastructure is very well utilized.....with many of our 'routes' running minimum 75% utilization at any given time, and 100% some of the time. Our reporting and modeling applications tells us when and where to add capacity, and how much to add.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by athelney

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

There are quite a few places where you can run a freight train at 79 MPH.....railroads cannot get an acceptable rate of return to justify the extra expense in fuel and maintenance on railcars.....Doesn't pay? - Don't do it!

What about the time element -- ie A to B at least 10mph faster say with an intermodal -- doesnt this translate into more dollars if you can get it there quicker! -- especially with so many Asia - Europe land bridge trains .

"Faster" only works if you can wring inventory out of the entire supply chain. An hour or two doesn't usually help much.

If you take UPS traffic as an example. "Faster" only works if you can arrive a "sort" earlier. In most of thier lanes that move by rail, an additional 10 or 20 mph on the max speed (provided you could accomodate it without hammering your overall capacity) wouldn't do this. The UP/CSX train operated for UPS at 75 mph max. was an attempt to do this in one of the lanes where it would work. However, the complexity of getting the train over the road on schedule turned out to be untennable.

Not sure there is really all that much land bridge traffic. Nearly all containers landing in US ports have US destinations.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by athelney

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

There are quite a few places where you can run a freight train at 79 MPH.....railroads cannot get an acceptable rate of return to justify the extra expense in fuel and maintenance on railcars.....Doesn't pay? - Don't do it!

What about the time element -- ie A to B at least 10mph faster say with an intermodal -- doesnt this translate into more dollars if you can get it there quicker! -- especially with so many Asia - Europe land bridge trains .

"Faster" only works if you can wring inventory out of the entire supply chain. An hour or two doesn't usually help much.

If you take UPS traffic as an example. "Faster" only works if you can arrive a "sort" earlier. In most of thier lanes that move by rail, an additional 10 or 20 mph on the max speed (provided you could accomodate it without hammering your overall capacity) wouldn't do this. The UP/CSX train operated for UPS at 75 mph max. was an attempt to do this in one of the lanes where it would work. However, the complexity of getting the train over the road on schedule turned out to be untennable.

Not sure there is really all that much land bridge traffic. Nearly all containers landing in US ports have US destinations.

Think of "faster" in the cumulative vein rather than the single trip idea. 2 hours on one trip means you're two hours earlier for embarking on the return trip, then another 2 hours saved on the return trip, after a week you might have saved 10 or 15 hours in your cycle, after two weeks you might have added another trip or two to your cycle......., in a year you've added 10, 15, maybe 20 extra trips to your annual cycle.

It's all about rail car utilization, the more revenue trips per year the better your bottom line. It's all about better labor utilization, the more miles a crew can cover within the hours of service, the better your labor productivity.

If it has to go at a snail's pace, put it in a barge or a pipeline. Railroad technology is intended to move bulk commodities at speed, otherwise it's a waste of national capital.

[rrandb]

What about the need for closer inspections of equipment thar operates at the higher speeds. How many passenger cars weight 286,000 lbs? Also the cars used with high speed passenger trains were equipted with special high speed trucks. And if i remember correctly the former high speed freight were only faster compared with normal freight times. They did not run that much faster they were only handeled faster.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd

QUOTE: Originally posted by athelney

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

There are quite a few places where you can run a freight train at 79 MPH.....railroads cannot get an acceptable rate of return to justify the extra expense in fuel and maintenance on railcars.....Doesn't pay? - Don't do it!

What about the time element -- ie A to B at least 10mph faster say with an intermodal -- doesnt this translate into more dollars if you can get it there quicker! -- especially with so many Asia - Europe land bridge trains .

"Faster" only works if you can wring inventory out of the entire supply chain. An hour or two doesn't usually help much.

If you take UPS traffic as an example. "Faster" only works if you can arrive a "sort" earlier. In most of thier lanes that move by rail, an additional 10 or 20 mph on the max speed (provided you could accomodate it without hammering your overall capacity) wouldn't do this. The UP/CSX train operated for UPS at 75 mph max. was an attempt to do this in one of the lanes where it would work. However, the complexity of getting the train over the road on schedule turned out to be untennable.

Not sure there is really all that much land bridge traffic. Nearly all containers landing in US ports have US destinations.

Think of "faster" in the cumulative vein rather than the single trip idea. 2 hours on one trip means you're two hours earlier for embarking on the return trip, then another 2 hours saved on the return trip, after a week you might have saved 10 or 15 hours in your cycle, after two weeks you might have added another trip or two to your cycle......., in a year you've added 10, 15, maybe 20 extra trips to your annual cycle.

It's all about rail car utilization, the more revenue trips per year the better your bottom line. It's all about better labor utilization, the more miles a crew can cover within the hours of service, the better your labor productivity.

If it has to go at a snail's pace, put it in a barge or a pipeline. Railroad technology is intended to move bulk commodities at speed, otherwise it's a waste of national capital.

In a homogenous world, you'd be correct. But intermodal traffic is all about production schedules and corresponding gate cut-offs.

With carload traffic, the cycle time game is won and lost first in the "last mile" part of the trip, second, in the number and duration of intermediate handlings. A distant third is train speed.

[spbed]

Where does your 59MPH statement come from as last month I paced a BNSF train east of Daggett & my car said speed was at 70MPH & I was keeping perfect pace with the train which meant he was also doing 70? [:p]

Originally posted by trainfinder22

Living nearby to MP 186 of the UPRR  Austin TX Sub

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