Yet France is planning new nuclear plants, as is Japan (despite their nuclear plant accident)
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.
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.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
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.
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
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."
oltmanndIf you can use electrification to speed up service, you can save cars, locomotives and have longer crew districts.
York1 John
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.
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.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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.
We'll take that out of the diesel engine maintenance and overhaul budget.
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.
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
Adding cat to an existing RoW should not need to overcome all the obstacles you mentioned.
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'.
Again, 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?
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?
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.
oltmanndWe'll take that out of the diesel engine maintenance and overhaul budget.
There ain't much there to take, Don!!!
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.)
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.
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.
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.)
Overmod This was actually the scam set up with an early run of the Milwaukee Road electrification - the basis for the claim that their regenerative braking from a descending train would supply enough energy to lift another upgrade. 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.
This was actually the scam set up with an early run of the Milwaukee Road electrification - the basis for the claim that their regenerative braking from a descending train would supply enough energy to lift another upgrade.
I don't recall reading anything about a demostration where an ascending train was pulled up by a descending train. OTOH, the first freight train hauled electrically over Pipestone pass eastbound, so it ended up at a much lower elevation than it started. At the end of the trip, an announcement was made that the Montana Power Company owed the Milwaukee a few dollars for the net regenerated energy.
Regeneration was credited with a 17% savings in power consumption, but within a year or so, operating experience showed that the reduction in brake show wear and reduced accidents had a much larger payback than the savings in electric energy.
Except for the fact that a lot of people don't want to live next to a web of buzzing wires and ugly poles ruining their views. And I thought that electric waves caused cancer-as the same envirkazis said before.
azrailExcept for the fact that a lot of people don't want to live next to a web of buzzing wires and ugly poles ruining their views. And I thought that electric waves caused cancer-as the same environazis said before.
It's amazing how oppositional folks are on here to electrification of major trunk lines. It's really not such a big deal. Most other industrialized nations seem to have overcome the difficulties mentioned here. I suspect most here have never spent much time in areas that have such services. As to noise, definitely quieter.
charlie hebdo It's amazing how oppositional folks are on here to electrification of major trunk lines. It's really not such a big deal. Most other industrialized nations seem to have overcome the difficulties mentioned here. I suspect most here have never spent much time in areas that have such services. As to noise, definitely quieter.
charlie hebdoIt's amazing how oppositional folks are on here to electrification of major trunk lines.
I think it's less a matter of being opposed to the concept than it is understanding the realities of the costs of building such a network from scratch. Never mind the lesser distances - the European lines have been electrified for years.
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...
LA-CHI sure, but this may be more like LA-Barstow
tree68 charlie hebdo It's amazing how oppositional folks are on here to electrification of major trunk lines. I think it's less a matter of being opposed to the concept than it is understanding the realities of the costs of building such a network from scratch. Never mind the lesser distances - the European lines have been electrified for years.
charlie hebdo It's amazing how oppositional folks are on here to electrification of major trunk lines.
Also remember, much of Europe had to rebuild their railways from the damages of WW II. Faced with the costs of rebuilding from near scratch and having governmental financing - they chose electric for their own reasons.
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Also, I think you will find that on a number of lightly used branch lines steam lingered on considerably longer before being replaced by diesel railcars.
rdamon LA-CHI sure, but this may be more like LA-Barstow
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