Backshop blue streak 1 Oltmann's post about the hogback nature of the ATL - CLT route brings up an interesting point. Imagine part of your electric train is going uphill and other greater weight train going down hill. For a few minutes the downhill portion in regeneration could supply enough power to up hill section that the uphill section would need no network power. Not really. Even if the locomotives were going downhill, they'd still be pulling the part of the train that was going uphill. Of course, I'm not an engineer, so I could be wrong.
blue streak 1 Oltmann's post about the hogback nature of the ATL - CLT route brings up an interesting point. Imagine part of your electric train is going uphill and other greater weight train going down hill. For a few minutes the downhill portion in regeneration could supply enough power to up hill section that the uphill section would need no network power.
Oltmann's post about the hogback nature of the ATL - CLT route brings up an interesting point. Imagine part of your electric train is going uphill and other greater weight train going down hill. For a few minutes the downhill portion in regeneration could supply enough power to up hill section that the uphill section would need no network power.
Not really. Even if the locomotives were going downhill, they'd still be pulling the part of the train that was going uphill. Of course, I'm not an engineer, so I could be wrong.
They started with a long, heavy train at the top of one of the grades, and the train 'lifted' with the regenerated power was much smaller.
A problem, of course, is that the regenerated power is not of constant strength, and is only there at the time the train is descending in regeneration, so unless you have a train running upgrade, at precisely that time, close enough that electrical losses don't queer the efficiency, does the trick work. This was a large part of the reason for 'volume IV' of the Lawson & Cook dual-mode-lite setup: the inclusion of 'wayside storage' that could hold the energy produced by even severe regenerative braking long enough to make it available in useful measure to help another train.
In those days, the going technology was very large flywheels, including those rotating on magnetic bearings in a vacuum or a hydrogen atmosphere. We had one at PPL that was made as a very large rotating cylinder of reinforced concrete with steel-mill slag in the aggregate, which was spun up to relatively high speed for a tokamak shot. (What was fascinating was that you could see that enormous thing visibly slow down with a jerk (!) in use.)
blue streak 1 Oltman's post about the hogback nature of the ATL - CLT route brings up an interesting point. Imagine part of your electric train is going uphill and other greater weight train going down hill. For a few minutes the downhill portion in regeneration could supply enough power to up hill section that the uphill section would need no network power.
Oltman's post about the hogback nature of the ATL - CLT route brings up an interesting point. Imagine part of your electric train is going uphill and other greater weight train going down hill. For a few minutes the downhill portion in regeneration could supply enough power to up hill section that the uphill section would need no network power.
blue streak 1Oltman's post about the hogback nature of the ATL - CLT route brings up an interesting point. Imagine part of your electric train is going uphill and other greater weight train going down hill. For a few minutes the downhill portion in regeneration could supply enough power to up hill section that the uphill section would need no network power.
The Perpetual Motion machine.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
By having an inflated value associated with its release to the environment -- likely, in part, following the model used for the commercial Freons to help speed the transition to HFC refrigerants.
Which replaced them with more explosive, flammable, and toxic refrigerants instead (look at the warning at the back of any new refigerator.)
oltmanndWe'll take that out of the diesel engine maintenance and overhaul budget.
There ain't much there to take, Don!!!
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
York1Again, in the potential savings amounts, carbon is the single largest 'savings' and nearly half of the total projected savings. How does carbon save money from the projected cost?
How does carbon save money from the projected cost?
This was also a premise of some of the 'carbon credit' schemes in the earlier days of AGW: those conserving or reducing carbon release would be happier and happier if the pro-rata value of their 'virtue' were worth more and more on a risk-reduced market. Of course, just as with bitcoin you have to establish a high value per ton of carbon reduced or sequestered, and just how that trick is accomplished bears careful consideration and attention.
Again, in the potential savings amounts, carbon is the single largest 'savings' and nearly half of the total projected savings.
York1 John
charlie hebdoAdding cat to an existing RoW should not need to overcome all the obstacles you mentioned.
I suspect that things like an EIS can be standardized, too, and then any individual factors (and 'First Nations' concerns with railroads on their lands) can be addressed quickly and administratively rather than via the usual drawn out make-it-too-hard-to-pursue obstructionism that has become SOP for consultant-ridden rail boondoggles.
As noted, with dual-mode-lite any part of the overhead can be used as it comes up, or deenergized if its use is unwarranted at any particular time. I see no reason why a good constant-tension installation wouldn't last at least as long as the PRR Gibbs & Hill plant, and with far less maintenance and perhaps better 'weather resistance'.
Adding cat to an existing RoW should not need to overcome all the obstacles you mentioned.
York1
You have to start with some high-level planning and some best-guess estimates to even know whether a project is worth pursuing. You have to make quite a few guesses and assumptions in the process, and often those turn out wrong.
On a major government project like this, engineering itself is expensive enough that you spend as little as possible until the project has secured funding commitments. The local agencies really can't afford to do the engineering without a grant, and the Feds often won't fund it unless it's part of an approved project, so the approval is necessarily approved based on sketchy preliminary estimates.
Furthermore, it can take quite a while to go through all the environmental review and other processes necessary to get federal approval. If you put a lot of effort into developing a refined estimate, you will have to be constantly refreshing that estimate as everything around you changes.
Finally, utilities are just really tricky. I was just chatting with a contractor a couple days ago about a project where, in the process of building a mile or two of track, they encountered 130 unmarked utility crossings, of which about 20 were active. In a preliminary design, you ideally would know what's there and whose responsibility it is to relocate each one, but the utilities themselves have to participate in the relocation planning, and they probably won't commit to a plan until they know when a project will happen. And then once the plan is made and you open up the ground, and nothing is what it was supposed to be according to the maps. There also can be some utilities that don't get their work done in time, which holds up the contractor, which results in a change order. Just a lot that is hard to predict.
Dan
Where is the time value of money in the table? I am assuming the cost of arranging and disbursing the necessary financing has been rolled into the 4m/mile figure.
Someone with more patience than I can figure out what interest rate on that billion cost is going to be, and determine the extent to which perceived risk influences that rate. Subtract this yearly from the "annual savings" -- assuming the 'principal' is being paid down yearly. If it is not, run the TVM for the period of the financing, and divide that into the number of years to get what to subtract on average. I would expect the rate charged for power to go up, perhaps in proportion to the opportunity cost of "electricity" in the general market.
I'm sure PJS1 can put together a list of 'desiderata' for what the true allocated costs of electrification ought to be.
It's longer than 20 years, and most if not all the cost variables will only increase over time.
zugmann How much a year to run a catenary dep't for a large RR? I'm sure it will take a healthy bite out of that $51 mil.
How much a year to run a catenary dep't for a large RR?
I'm sure it will take a healthy bite out of that $51 mil.
We'll take that out of the diesel engine maintenance and overhaul budget.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmannd zugmann oltmannd I envision freight rail electrification to be a wash for equipment. New electric locomotives would cost what new diesel locomotives costs....Some power conditioning equipment replacing the engine-generator set. Lower locomotive maintenance costs washing with catenary system maintenance costs. Anything wash out the addition of the catenary/ET dept/crews/cars? If you can use electrification to speed up service, you can save cars, locomotives and have longer crew districts.
zugmann oltmannd I envision freight rail electrification to be a wash for equipment. New electric locomotives would cost what new diesel locomotives costs....Some power conditioning equipment replacing the engine-generator set. Lower locomotive maintenance costs washing with catenary system maintenance costs. Anything wash out the addition of the catenary/ET dept/crews/cars?
oltmannd I envision freight rail electrification to be a wash for equipment. New electric locomotives would cost what new diesel locomotives costs....Some power conditioning equipment replacing the engine-generator set. Lower locomotive maintenance costs washing with catenary system maintenance costs.
Anything wash out the addition of the catenary/ET dept/crews/cars?
If you can use electrification to speed up service, you can save cars, locomotives and have longer crew districts.
With Wall Street having a vision of only a Quarter - the 20 year payback is a non-starter. The Carriers can't accept all the investment necessary for electrification for it to take 20 years for the payback on than investment.
oltmanndIf you can use electrification to speed up service, you can save cars, locomotives and have longer crew districts.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-agency-vote-groundbreaking-rule-limiting-locomotive-emissions
"The agency votes Thursday on a rule that would ban the use of locomotive engines more than 23 years old by 2030 and increase the use of zero-emissions technology to transport freight from ports and throughout railyards. The rule would also ban locomotives in the state from idling longer than 30 minutes if they are equipped with an automatic shutoff."
Overmod Californians have trouble with railroad engineering estimates and implementation.
Californians have trouble with railroad engineering estimates and implementation.
The original San Diego Trolley line was done on-time and within budget. OTOH, the serious planning started 45 years ago, did not involve any federal money and was a bipartisan effort. Also helped that they started with pretty much off-the-shelf equipment.
Looking back at freeway projects over the last 55 years in San Diego County, it seems that projects are taking quite a bit longer than they used to.
Yet France is planning new nuclear plants, as is Japan (despite their nuclear plant accident)
rdamon Overmod York1 Why was the original estimate off by nearly a half-billion dollars? Californians have trouble with railroad engineering estimates and implementation. If you think this was unfortunate, review CAHSR. One article cited unplanned utility relocations and COVID Delays for ~$160M of it.
Overmod York1 Why was the original estimate off by nearly a half-billion dollars? Californians have trouble with railroad engineering estimates and implementation. If you think this was unfortunate, review CAHSR.
York1 Why was the original estimate off by nearly a half-billion dollars?
Californians have trouble with railroad engineering estimates and implementation. If you think this was unfortunate, review CAHSR.
One article cited unplanned utility relocations and COVID Delays for ~$160M of it.
York1Why was the original estimate off by nearly a half-billion dollars?
From the 2021 article about Caltrains' electrification:
Caltrain has announced that the Electrification Project cost has increased to $2.44 billion. This will require an additional $462 million over the initial estimate for the project, $129 million over the estimate made by the Federal Transit Administration earlier this year. The project is still expected to be completed by 2024.
Why was the original estimate off by nearly a half-billion dollars?
Why was the FTA's estimate off by over 100 million dollars within a year of the estimate?
These are the kinds of questions that make most people question programs like this, and will make many (most?) vote against upgrading rail lines in the future.
OvermodColumbia & Port Deposit and Kearny lost their wire quick; Atglen & Susquehanna and much of the Morrisville line are simply gone. ...
I knew the Atglen line was gone. However the Trenton Cutoff from its connection to the Harrisburg line at Glen, to Morrisville is still intact as can be seen on Google Earth. NS's map shows this and the Columbia-Lancaster line still there.
oltmannd Overmod Columbia & Port Deposit and Kearny lost their wire quick; Atglen & Susquehanna and much of the Morrisville line are simply gone. GE made a very attractive option in the rebuilt E44, but it didn't matter: even before the mid-Eighties I think much of the 'freight' electrification was gone. I heard (and Don can confirm or disprove) that Amtrak got the rights to enough 25-cycle power that they could demand 'their' price for the other electrifications as well as the NEC proper. Let's just say the "negotiation" over billing for power (and trackage rights) for Conrail on the NEC didn't turn out to be much of a negotiation in the end. Amtrak more or less dicated terms - and they didn't have much to do with collecting revenue from Conrail. Conrail walked away.
Overmod Columbia & Port Deposit and Kearny lost their wire quick; Atglen & Susquehanna and much of the Morrisville line are simply gone. GE made a very attractive option in the rebuilt E44, but it didn't matter: even before the mid-Eighties I think much of the 'freight' electrification was gone. I heard (and Don can confirm or disprove) that Amtrak got the rights to enough 25-cycle power that they could demand 'their' price for the other electrifications as well as the NEC proper.
Columbia & Port Deposit and Kearny lost their wire quick; Atglen & Susquehanna and much of the Morrisville line are simply gone. GE made a very attractive option in the rebuilt E44, but it didn't matter: even before the mid-Eighties I think much of the 'freight' electrification was gone.
I heard (and Don can confirm or disprove) that Amtrak got the rights to enough 25-cycle power that they could demand 'their' price for the other electrifications as well as the NEC proper.
Let's just say the "negotiation" over billing for power (and trackage rights) for Conrail on the NEC didn't turn out to be much of a negotiation in the end. Amtrak more or less dicated terms - and they didn't have much to do with collecting revenue from Conrail. Conrail walked away.
And Amtrak hastened their trip out the door.
oltmanndI envision freight rail electrification to be a wash for equipment. New electric locomotives would cost what new diesel locomotives costs....Some power conditioning equipment replacing the engine-generator set. Lower locomotive maintenance costs washing with catenary system maintenance costs.
Overmod zugmann Even if Amtrak wasn't charging high costs to get freight off of there - does anyone think that Conrail would have upgraded to the next generation of motors to replace the aging GG1s/E33s/E44s? And if they did, would they have expanded electric operations? fun to think about. Don Oltmann was there, and he has much to comment. Remember that even if the White Wonders didn't pan out so well, GE thought enough of the opportunity in 1980 that they produced, at their expense, rebuilt E44 4453, with nominal 6000hp, with the clear idea that running the remaining E44s through the 'program' would produce a reasonable fleet of motors. Presumably a suitable version of E60 could be built for any expanded service (as things turned out, they could have had a substantial number from Amtrak very cheap...) But the real future was in the dual-mode-lite project (from the late 1970s to early 1980s) directed by Lawson and Cook, which developed an electric conversion 'package' for an existing locomotive (the example was a SD40-2, as the 'representative' good road power of the time, and still famous today). The premise (and in my view a highly intelligent one) was that consists pulled by these could run on unelectrified or electrified parts of the system without engine change or reblocking, without needing to reserve incompatible power. The summary of this study can be read here: https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/15203/PB81191314%5B1%5D.pdf Among the conclusions I drew from the study was that further electrification for freight-only purposes was likely only with substantial subsidy (which, in the United States, would essentially be government-funded or government-mandated). That would be further leveraged if non-"electrified" locomotives were set up to be capable of taking power like road slugs (at much lower cost, and greater operating flexibility), and appropriate cabling provided to the dual-mode-lite equipment. The detailed Volume II of this study is also available on the Web, and this has very specific detail modeling of a number of potential routes, including a discussion of the economics of progressive electrification. (For those with the interest, Vol IV comprised a "wayside energy storage study" with contemporary approaches and equipment. That, too, is radically more 'implementable' now than it was then...)
zugmann Even if Amtrak wasn't charging high costs to get freight off of there - does anyone think that Conrail would have upgraded to the next generation of motors to replace the aging GG1s/E33s/E44s? And if they did, would they have expanded electric operations? fun to think about.
fun to think about.
Don Oltmann was there, and he has much to comment.
Remember that even if the White Wonders didn't pan out so well, GE thought enough of the opportunity in 1980 that they produced, at their expense, rebuilt E44 4453, with nominal 6000hp, with the clear idea that running the remaining E44s through the 'program' would produce a reasonable fleet of motors. Presumably a suitable version of E60 could be built for any expanded service (as things turned out, they could have had a substantial number from Amtrak very cheap...)
But the real future was in the dual-mode-lite project (from the late 1970s to early 1980s) directed by Lawson and Cook, which developed an electric conversion 'package' for an existing locomotive (the example was a SD40-2, as the 'representative' good road power of the time, and still famous today). The premise (and in my view a highly intelligent one) was that consists pulled by these could run on unelectrified or electrified parts of the system without engine change or reblocking, without needing to reserve incompatible power. The summary of this study can be read here:
https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/15203/PB81191314%5B1%5D.pdf
Among the conclusions I drew from the study was that further electrification for freight-only purposes was likely only with substantial subsidy (which, in the United States, would essentially be government-funded or government-mandated). That would be further leveraged if non-"electrified" locomotives were set up to be capable of taking power like road slugs (at much lower cost, and greater operating flexibility), and appropriate cabling provided to the dual-mode-lite equipment.
The detailed Volume II of this study is also available on the Web, and this has very specific detail modeling of a number of potential routes, including a discussion of the economics of progressive electrification.
(For those with the interest, Vol IV comprised a "wayside energy storage study" with contemporary approaches and equipment. That, too, is radically more 'implementable' now than it was then...)
In 1979, Conrail was in with both feet trying to figure out a power billing plan with Amtrak and the commuter agencies. Up until that point, PC was paying the whole amount and didn't really care which train used what amount of power. Power meters were installed in a bunch of equipment to see what consumption really looked like.
I suspect if Conrail had worked out a good deal on trackage rights, they's have stayed on the corridor instead of moving to the Reading/LV route. It was a lot faster.
There really wasn't anything wrong with the E33 and E44 fleet. Conrail was upgrading/overhauling them at Harrisburg in the late 70s.
What would have happened next? Stanley Crane showed up. Staggers happened. No new locomotive order after 1979 for three years. (save a partial GP40-2 order) So, E33/44s would have kept running.
...and Chase MD wreck wouldn't have happened...
E44s had suppression braking speed control on them. Downward cab signal change required 17# reduction if you were over the speed for that aspect. They also would apply the brakes if you didn't acknowledge a downward cab signal change. The B36-7s that sailed throught the cut section at Chase weren't equipped with either. Ricky Gates locomotives would have stopped on there own.
rdamon Here is the CalTrain project to compare. 51 Miles $2.44B https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification https://www.caltrain.com/news/cost-caltrain-electrification-increases-project-track-2024
Here is the CalTrain project to compare.
51 Miles $2.44B
https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification
https://www.caltrain.com/news/cost-caltrain-electrification-increases-project-track-2024
Interesting. That amount includes all the equipment, as well.
I envision freight rail electrification to be a wash for equipment. New electric locomotives would cost what new diesel locomotives costs....Some power conditioning equipment replacing the engine-generator set. Lower locomotive maintenance costs washing with catenary system maintenance costs.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.