Amtrak's future

[Los Angeles Rams Guy]

One thing that I hope does come into play that would be in Amtrak's favor would be more public/private partnerships between the government and the freight railroads that would aim to increase capacity in key corridors that would not only be a huge benefit to the freight railroads but would also allow possible expansion of Amtrak service in such corridors.  Two prime examples I can think of off the bat are the Union Pacific's famed "Overland Route" mainline in the Chicago-Omaha segment (the former CNW; where the current California Zephyr really should be) and the "Joint Line" mainline (at least) between Denver and Pueblo/La Junta/Trinidad. 

[henry6]

Oh, I agree with you...I was talking to those who think the Amtrak budget is too big, those who think by eliminating Amtrak the savings would eliminate poverty, build thousands of miles of concrete highways, cover all air traffic controllers' salaries and still have pocket change left over for a couple dozen tanks to send to the Middle East desert!

[blue streak 1]

The problem is a chicken and egg discussion. How many people would be riding AMTRAK if there was service at a level of say 1950 or 1968?. Of course there would be some routes not performing and others overloaded. How much would be electrified saving petroleum? How much trackage would not be abandoned? (maybe petersburg - NC? B&O to Stl, Atl - Bhm sal, RI Mem - west, TLH - Tpa, etc)? How much more double and triple track in service (ie NYC albany- buffalo). Of course this is a exercise in futility. We have to go from today forward. 

[Paul Milenkovic]

Too ridiculous to talk about?

If one is fine with the market share of Amtrak as preserving some minimal level of passenger service, then the 1+ billion/year in Amtrak subsidy is simply noise in the Federal budget.  If one seeks a greater roll for passenger trains in the overall transportation system, than cost efficiency is a concern.

I am in the camp that "Why are the picking on Amtrak for wasting money when (pick your program) wastes much more money" is not an effective platform for getting more trains.

[henry6]

[quote user="

"So, if Amtrak only ran one train a day, it would be OK because it's only 1% of the DOT's budget?  The point being that Amtrak doesn't produce as much with their subsidy as the other modes."

You've got the point wrong...the point is that since Amtrak's budget is only around 1% of the total transportration budget its inclusion is not going to sink a Coast Guard Cutter or close an airport or eliminate one lane of highway anyplace.  Its so miniscule it is rediculous to argue about!

[oltmannd]

One would hope that AMTRAK has a future, but it might not be in the Federal Budget.

The Transporation Budget apparently is structured so that it includes The Coast Guard, which are really a branch of the armed services. That unfairly makes it out to be a fight between Amtrak and the Coast Guard. It is already set-up to make Amtrak a loser when more Coast Guard ships are budgeted to be built for Alaska.

Andrew

 

One of the things to remember about Amtrak vs the rest of the transportation budget is that Amtrak usually amounts to about 1% of the total budget while highway, air and water each take over 20%.  If Amtrak got the same percentage of the budget as the others, there would be a money arguement.  Until then it is just rhetoric.

So, if Amtrak only ran one train a day, it would be OK because it's only 1% of the DOT's budget?  The point being that Amtrak doesn't produce as much with their subsidy as the other modes.

(And Tom is right, the Coast Guard is part of Homeland Security now)

[henry6]

One would hope that AMTRAK has a future, but it might not be in the Federal Budget.

The Transporation Budget apparently is structured so that it includes The Coast Guard, which are really a branch of the armed services. That unfairly makes it out to be a fight between Amtrak and the Coast Guard. It is already set-up to make Amtrak a loser when more Coast Guard ships are budgeted to be built for Alaska.

Andrew

 

One of the things to remember about Amtrak vs the rest of the transportation budget is that Amtrak usually amounts to about 1% of the total budget while highway, air and water each take over 20%.  If Amtrak got the same percentage of the budget as the others, there would be a money arguement.  Until then it is just rhetoric.

[TomDiehl]

One would hope that AMTRAK has a future, but it might not be in the Federal Budget.

The Transporation Budget apparently is structured so that it includes The Coast Guard, which are really a branch of the armed services. That unfairly makes it out to be a fight between Amtrak and the Coast Guard. It is already set-up to make Amtrak a loser when more Coast Guard ships are budgeted to be built for Alaska.

Andrew

The Coast Guard is part of the Navy only during war time. In peace time they're part of the Treasury Department, but that may have changed with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

[Andrew Falconer]

One would hope that AMTRAK has a future, but it might not be in the Federal Budget.

The Transporation Budget apparently is structured so that it includes The Coast Guard, which are really a branch of the armed services. That unfairly makes it out to be a fight between Amtrak and the Coast Guard. It is already set-up to make Amtrak a loser when more Coast Guard ships are budgeted to be built for Alaska.

Andrew

[oltmannd]

Acelas certainly successful and operates with a fixed consist. They have power at both ends which I feel is to expensive. Without looking I believe they are are a total of seven units. Additional cars could be added to Acela or for that matter Talgo but Acela does not share trucks so it would be easier. No plans for growth were taken into account when Acela was built for future growth. For a system that brags about 150 mph running it is a pitifully short stretch just south of Boston where the train achieves that speed.

Classic case of tail wagging the dog.  On Jeopardy, it would read like this:

Existing ROW, electrified, 3 hr run time:

"Alex, what is 6 cars, 12,000 HP with tilt?"

The legislated mandate was 3 hours.  Forget that the incremental HP is only worth nanoseconds in running time....

And never mind that the full tilt capability can't be used because Acela was built to(o) wide.

Al - in - Stockton

Let's sort this out.

• The AE was not "built too wide".  Max width is 10' 4"; other cars are 10' 6" wide (Amfleet, Metro-North/ConnDOT's Budd Cosmopolitans and the coming Kawasaki M8, BBD Shoreliners).  Metro-North bans the active tilt out of what seems to me to be an irrational fear, since the track centers aren't so close as to make trains sideswipe (if they were, then it would happen without the tilting; one anecdotal source claimed that the track centers are 11 feet, but that cannot be; eight inches between non-tilt cars is too close and trains are not even that close together on subway systems, not to mention the freight that operates on the New Haven Line and their clearances, and AAR Plate B width is 10' 8").  Metro-North would ban active-tilt operation even if the AE were built to a width of 10 feet even.  (Where was there a "legislated mandate" to achieve 3-hour running between BOS and NYP?  The advertised 2'45 between NYP and WAS has been achieved, mostly due to deferring needed maintenance of the corridor, and still nobody's happy.)

• Metro-North's top speed is (mostly) 70 mph on the former New Haven Shore Line, with short stretches of 90 mph.  They also do the same thing that freight companies do to Amtrak, namely put Amtrak in the hole, in spite of there being three to four tracks on their territory.

• The State of Massachusetts owns the Northeast Corridor (Attleboro Line) within their borders; and instead of contracting with Amtrak to run their commuter services, they now deal with Veolia (fka Connex).  Their MAS is 100 mph, a hard-to-surmount barrier even with Amtrak apparently continuing to dispatch trains on the Attleboro Line.

• One of the biggest choke points nowadays is the PRR High Line, which is owned by Amtrak.  NJ Transit has increased traffic on this line to the point where the average speed has seriously degraded.  The line now hosts 23 trains per hour in peak direction at peak times (which is one train every 2 minutes 36 seconds) and has a station stop that was never there before (Secaucus Junction, official name Frank R. Lautenberg Station).  MAS used to be 90 mph between Swift and the entrance to the North River Tunnels; now it's dipped to 60 mph.

• There's still the matter of the variable-tension wires on the former PRR.  They cost money to rebuild, never mind the still-pending conversion to 25kV 60Hz.  Where should we divert money from Amtrak's (copious? I think not) capital budget to pay for this?

Gimme answers, people, not rhetoric.

With few station station stops and slow areas offsetting a sustained 135-mph stretch through New Jersey, a 112-mph average seems improbable between New York and Washington. The typical Pennsylvania RR mainline 1-degree curves allow up to 125 mph (SQRT of (6.93" allowable imbalance+ 4" cant)/0.678/1-deg curve) for the tilting Acela. Elsewhere, the brute power of the Acela may attain 135 mph between numerous curves; but this consumes a lot of energy and loses more without regenerative braking, battery, or fly-wheel energy conservation, and still might averages only 130 mph. This rese(r)ve speed affords some capacity to make up a minute or two

This concern with (alleged) energy consumption does not make sense.  The AE is supposed to be running at 150 mph on straightaways, not 135 mph.  The X2000 in Sweden runs at faster average speeds than the AE (lots of 90-mph averages, versus the AE's 82-mph highest average) on railroads with more curves than the former PRR, and this is in spite of its 125-mph MAS.  Other posters have commented on regenerative braking with the AE.

For what we're paying for Amtrak, we should be getting more

Still with this tired old line and no evidence to back it up, eh?  If the commuter railroads were getting what Amtrak gets every year (in terms of route-miles), we'd have rush-hour service in peak direction only.  You accused me of being "chartless", but where's your charts?

I got'em in the basement and in the office...  Harvey has it right.

[blue streak 1]

Harvey: BSOLUTELY RIGHT ABOUT THE CURVATURE HOWEVER THER ARE SEVERAL PLACES INCLUDING ONE REVERSE CURVE THAT IF STRAIGHTENED WOULD GIVE ABOUT 20 MILES OF 150+ SPEEDS. A few other locations are also possibilities.

Passengwefan: check for an e mail from me.

[HarveyK400]

I think concern for energy consumption is valid, particularly when that is used as a justification for maintaining and improving rail transportation.  The (third?) law of motion states that the speed of a body in motion stays the same unless a force is applied to change the speed.  More power and energy is needed to recover speed as well as offset resistance after a speed restriction than to maintain a constant speed by offsetting resistance.

Without track charts for the NEC, it's difficult to identify some curves.  There are very few tangents over four miles in length.  Many are only 2-3 miles long, making it difficult to accelerate to 150 mph from 125 mph.  For this reason, an average running speed of around 130 mph would be all that could be expected with sprints up to 150 mph.

I only know that the Northeast Corridor has many curves.  The Swedish Railways may have more curves, however difficult to imagine; but that does not address the question of the degree or radius of curves.  Greater time lost at the station and slow trackage leading into and away from the station may account for the disparity in average speeds.

The Acelas, despite being more than adequate for 150 mph, are still limited to 135 mph by the existing catenary.  Accelerating from 125 to 135 within two miles certainly is doable, but the average over the line still may be under 130 mph.  

Correction: the constant in the allowable curve speed formula should be 0.000678.  

[JT22CW]

Acelas certainly successful and operates with a fixed consist. They have power at both ends which I feel is to expensive. Without looking I believe they are are a total of seven units. Additional cars could be added to Acela or for that matter Talgo but Acela does not share trucks so it would be easier. No plans for growth were taken into account when Acela was built for future growth. For a system that brags about 150 mph running it is a pitifully short stretch just south of Boston where the train achieves that speed.

Classic case of tail wagging the dog.  On Jeopardy, it would read like this:

Existing ROW, electrified, 3 hr run time:

"Alex, what is 6 cars, 12,000 HP with tilt?"

The legislated mandate was 3 hours.  Forget that the incremental HP is only worth nanoseconds in running time....

And never mind that the full tilt capability can't be used because Acela was built to(o) wide.

Al - in - Stockton

Let's sort this out.

• The AE was not "built too wide".  Max width is 10' 4"; other cars are 10' 6" wide (Amfleet, Metro-North/ConnDOT's Budd Cosmopolitans and the coming Kawasaki M8, BBD Shoreliners).  Metro-North bans the active tilt out of what seems to me to be an irrational fear, since the track centers aren't so close as to make trains sideswipe (if they were, then it would happen without the tilting; one anecdotal source claimed that the track centers are 11 feet, but that cannot be; eight inches between non-tilt cars is too close and trains are not even that close together on subway systems, not to mention the freight that operates on the New Haven Line and their clearances, and AAR Plate B width is 10' 8").  Metro-North would ban active-tilt operation even if the AE were built to a width of 10 feet even.  (Where was there a "legislated mandate" to achieve 3-hour running between BOS and NYP?  The advertised 2'45 between NYP and WAS has been achieved, mostly due to deferring needed maintenance of the corridor, and still nobody's happy.)

• Metro-North's top speed is (mostly) 70 mph on the former New Haven Shore Line, with short stretches of 90 mph.  They also do the same thing that freight companies do to Amtrak, namely put Amtrak in the hole, in spite of there being three to four tracks on their territory.

• The State of Massachusetts owns the Northeast Corridor (Attleboro Line) within their borders; and instead of contracting with Amtrak to run their commuter services, they now deal with Veolia (fka Connex).  Their MAS is 100 mph, a hard-to-surmount barrier even with Amtrak apparently continuing to dispatch trains on the Attleboro Line.

• One of the biggest choke points nowadays is the PRR High Line, which is owned by Amtrak.  NJ Transit has increased traffic on this line to the point where the average speed has seriously degraded.  The line now hosts 23 trains per hour in peak direction at peak times (which is one train every 2 minutes 36 seconds) and has a station stop that was never there before (Secaucus Junction, official name Frank R. Lautenberg Station).  MAS used to be 90 mph between Swift and the entrance to the North River Tunnels; now it's dipped to 60 mph.

• There's still the matter of the variable-tension wires on the former PRR.  They cost money to rebuild, never mind the still-pending conversion to 25kV 60Hz.  Where should we divert money from Amtrak's (copious? I think not) capital budget to pay for this?

Gimme answers, people, not rhetoric.

With few station station stops and slow areas offsetting a sustained 135-mph stretch through New Jersey, a 112-mph average seems improbable between New York and Washington. The typical Pennsylvania RR mainline 1-degree curves allow up to 125 mph (SQRT of (6.93" allowable imbalance+ 4" cant)/0.678/1-deg curve) for the tilting Acela. Elsewhere, the brute power of the Acela may attain 135 mph between numerous curves; but this consumes a lot of energy and loses more without regenerative braking, battery, or fly-wheel energy conservation, and still might averages only 130 mph. This rese(r)ve speed affords some capacity to make up a minute or two

This concern with (alleged) energy consumption does not make sense.  The AE is supposed to be running at 150 mph on straightaways, not 135 mph.  The X2000 in Sweden runs at faster average speeds than the AE (lots of 90-mph averages, versus the AE's 82-mph highest average) on railroads with more curves than the former PRR, and this is in spite of its 125-mph MAS.  Other posters have commented on regenerative braking with the AE.

For what we're paying for Amtrak, we should be getting more

Still with this tired old line and no evidence to back it up, eh?  If the commuter railroads were getting what Amtrak gets every year (in terms of route-miles), we'd have rush-hour service in peak direction only.  You accused me of being "chartless", but where's your charts?

[oltmannd]

Most systems using regenerative braking such as in New York and Washington seem to be DC.  I'm not sure about the Acelas; but the "Toasters" are aptly named for their dynamic braking converting momentum (energy) to heat which is given off.  Regenenerative braking would seem to be more complicated with AC power.

Do you mean AEM7's? I thought they were called toasters because their corrugated sides resembled the inside of toasters. Or maybe I'm thinking of meatballs. I didn't know they didn't have regenerative braking, but that nickname would imply that other equipment, like GG1's, E44's, E60's did not have dyanmic brakes, since they would then also have generated heat, and would have also been candidates for that nickname.

There is no difference between a motor and a generator. 

Actually for practical purposes there are. I'm no electrician, but I do remember at the trolley museum intructors told us to use the reverser as a brake only in the direst of emergencies since the chance of flashover arcing was greater when making electricity from a motor-generator than it was when taking electricity into a motor-generator. In other words devices intended to make electricity, generators, do not take electricity as well as devices intended to take electricity, motors, and vice versa. In the flashover arcing example, optimizations one way or the other would include the number and size of the wires around the rotating core, which I believe is called the armature. Too small or too few would increase the risk of flashover in a generator, too many or too large would increase the weight and size in a motor.

In an electrified railroad generators can get as big as the powerhouse, and one usually doesn't care how heavy they are, but all other things being equal one wants rolling stock motors to be small and light.

However I'm no electrician, I'm just using my deductive reasoning to expand on what the trolley museum instructor, also a volunteer and probably not a professional electrician, told me.

SEPTA's PCC's (DC) had dynamic brakes. When they got new cars in the early 1980's with regenerative brakes I heard that they also needed to modify the power distribution system to take advantage of it. However SEPTA's the Silverliner 4's (AC also running under AMTRAK wires), mid 1970's have roof humps almost the entire car length. My dad told me that was for the dynamic brake resistnce grids. Either he must have been mixing up regenerative vs dynamic brakes or there might be some truth to HarveyK400's statement that regenerative AC is more complicated than DC.

If a locomotive (or MU car) has DC traction motors and is running under AC catenary, then braking would be dynamic, not regenerative.  The AEM7s and Septa Silverliners IVs have dynamic braking.  If the locomotive has AC propulsion (and some number of AEM7s have been rebuilt to AC), then it could have regenertive braking since the power conditioning equipment needed to regulate both voltage and frequency for regenerative braking would already be present for motoring.

The bump on the roof of those Silverliners is, indeed, dynamic braking resistors.  The similiar vintage Jersey Arrows (IIIs?) don't have them.  The Silverliners will brake with dynamic down to 40 mph or so and then air is blended in and the dynamic backed off as the speed decreases.  The Jersey Arrows were 100% air and the wheels would really cook stopping from 100 mph.  I have  a slide somewhere with an Arrow with a brake shoe on fire at Princeton Jct.

The AEM7s are generally called "toasters" by railfans, since they have the proportions of a toaster.  The Amtrak employees call them "meatballs" because they are a Swedish (ASEA) design.  "Swedish Meatballs", get it!

[Anonymous]

Samantha: sneaky. You don't mention where your polling questionaires were in the spectrum of designed to produce a desired outcome.

"How do you rate the candidate's honesty?"

"How do you rate the candidate's dishonesty?"

Designing questionnaires and conducting polling interviews requires a high degree of professional objectivity.  Accordingly, true professionals field test their polling instruments, as well as interviewing techniques, to be sure that they are as free of bias as possible. 

Professionals don't seek an outcome.  They try to determine what people believe about a given subject.  If they have a stake in the subject, i.e. a NARP member conducting a survey of people's attitudes regarding Amtrak's long distance trains, a professional would opt out of the process.

[daveklepper]

From the minescule information I've been able to examine, Amtrak's AEM-7's and Acelas and Bombardier locomotives all have a combination of the normal air, plus both dynamic and renegerative braking.  If the voltage on the catenary is normal or less, the braking will be regnerative. but if for any reason, like an unusually light load, the voltage is above normal, than the catenary cannot accept the additional power and the generated current is switched to the resistor grids.   All this is under electronic automatic control and the current itself undergoes electronic transformation before reaching the catenary or resistance grids.

[gardendance]

Samantha: sneaky. You don't mention where your polling questionaires were in the spectrum of designed to produce a desired outcome.

"How do you rate the candidate's honesty?"

"How do you rate the candidate's dishonesty?"

[Anonymous]

One of the things I was getting at was that there are places where water, sewer, electricity, gas, garbage, and transet are private enterprises and other places where they are municipal operations.  So today, do we hold anybody's feet to the fire or just accept medocrity in performance while paying the bill.  Should we do the same for Amtrak?

BUt I do like what you said about marketing, etc. concerning Amtrak.  In effect somebody has to say to Congress to S--T or get off the track!

OK, two questions:

Where is a municipal electric company operated where fees from customers make up 50 cents on the dollar of cost?

Second question follows.  If we are to approach passenger train advocacy as a marketing campaign for a product, essentially selling the product of a national passenger train network to the non-railfan non-advocate taxpayer, how are we getting off on the right foot in this campaign using a four-letter word, even if it has some of the letters blanked out?  Are you saying that there is overwhelming support for trains among the public at large but that their elected representatives are obstructing on account of influence from "special interests."  If the ambivalence of Congress (remember, we are on the path to get Lautenberg-Lott, not everything we think we want, but a major increment in Amtrak capital spending, but an increment that needs to be spent judiciously to have a good effect) reflects general attitudes of their constituents (and the lifeblood of any member of Congress is "constituent services" and bringing in Federal benefits to specific districts), are you scolding the non-railfan non-advocate taxpaying public for not sharing your perspective on the social benefits of trains?  And as such, is such scolding, which is a mode of advocacy I see in many advocacy newsletters, advancing the cause, the cause being one of persuading the "customer" (the taxpaying public) that tax money spent on Amtrak is a something they want?

The taxpayers, when polled, tend to be supporting of "more trains" or "more spending on trains" but they:

1. Generally don't know what trains we already have

2. Don't know how poor the economic performance of Amtrak is

3. Are generally aware the Europe and Japan have "good trains"

4. Aren't asked where the money would come from or asked to chose between spending priorities.

So, of course they are "for" trains! 

The point is, when the time to get serious about actually spending tax money occurs, and it may be right now, how do you "sell it"?

First of all, you have to quiet the critics.  That means means making Amtrak work better - at a minimum. 

Second, you have to have some plans that get people's attention.  Restoring the Sunset to FL?  zzzzz!  Connecting the Salt Lake City "dot" to the Portland "dot" or the LA "dot".  ZZZZZZZ!  High speed rail from LA to SF?  3 hour trip times!  Now, you have Californians attention!  Whether they really want to spent $10B on it is an open question, but at least you woke everyone up.  Would they even have gotten this far if CA had never done Amtrak-California?  Probably not.

Did you notice that Johnny Isakson, a card-carrying conservative and John Kerry, a card carrying liberal, who rarely agree on anything just floated the idea of a Birmingham to Boston HSR route connecting the big cities along the route?  The gov't would pay for constuction and a for-profit company would run it. 

Of course, this is self-promoting.  That's what politicians do.  But notice it wasn't about getting Amtrak more money for some new sleepers.  That news might not even make Trains Newswire!

The electric and water utilities (combined) in Georgetown, TX, where I live, are owned by the city.  The rate payers cover all the costs of the utility.  It is not subsidized by transfers from the general fund.  In fact, a small portion of the funds collected by the utility are used to fund city wide activities.  

Electric utilities in Texas take one of three forms of ownership:  investor, public, and co-op.  Public utilities, which are owned by one or more cities, dot the state.  The largest is in San Antonio.  As far as I know the rate payers cover their costs.  Co-ops are found in many rural areas of Texas.  They are owned by the rate-payers, who must cover all the utilities' costs.

Most of the poll results quoted by NARP, as well as others, regarding American's support for trains are high level.  Most of them, I suspect, are the results of telephone interviews, which tend to produce significantly different results than face to face interviews.  These allow the pollster to drill into the subject more deeply than a telephone interview.  They also give the pollster the opportunity to read the body language of the respondent, which can be a clue as to where the next question needs to go.  People who say one thing in a telephone interview will respond differently in a face to face interview.     

In my unscientific polls, frequently conducted in the Eagle dinner and lounge car, people have said that they want trains like the ones that they experienced in Europe.  But when told how much they cost, as well as the taxes paid by the Europeans to support their trains, their enthusiasm dampens significantly.

Before I changed careers and became an accountant, I was a psychologist.  One of my specialties was designing polling questionnaires and interview guidelines.  I know from professional as well as practical experience that the results of many polls are suspect. 

I have asked for the results and methodologies of the polls that are quoted by several passenger rail advocacy groups.  I am still waiting for their response.   

[passengerfan]

Tyhe 9.9 Billion for the CA HSR is for more than just that service. It will electrify the San Francisco - Gilroy commuter rail service and add oneor two additional traks for the HSR.The HSR will stop in San Jose after departure from San Francisco to load any passengers picked up from the penisula and hauled on the commuters.

The next stop for that train will be on the west side of Fresno followed by Bakersfield. Then into Glendale and Los Angeles.

The present San Joaquins will feed into those HSR trains at Fresno and Bakersfield. 

The other HSR will operate from Sacramento with stops in Stockton , Modesto, Merced, then Fresno where it will connect with the other system to Los Angeles. The proposed route will not use any of the present Amtrak stations except at Sacramento , Stockton, San Francisco, San Jose, Bakersfield, Glendale and Los Angeles. The rest of the valley stops will be handled by new stations with bus feeders from the San Joaquins. The Capitols will also feed passengers to the HSR system at San Jose and Sacramento.

The Surfliners will also feed into the sytem from the north and from San Diego and of course the commuter rail sytems from LA.

The Altamont Pass commuter route will also receive money to improve track and speed up that route that will also make connections at Stockton and San Jose with the HSR.

Al - in - Stockton

[Paul Milenkovic]

http://www.trainweb.org/tgvpages/acela.html says the Acela power cars (locomotives) AC traction motors and have provision for both dynamic (resistive dissipation) and regenerative (feed power back to catenary) braking along with a control system for all of the above.

Maybe any motor can be reversed as a generator, and any generator and serve as a regenerative brake, but you need the right control system and electric switching gear, some of it fancy semiconductor stuff, to make it work, hence the presence of regen braking only on the latest generation equipment, which Acela is from an electrical standpoint.

As to the AEM-7, someone else can Google that one up.

[gardendance]

ok, so does anybody know if AMTRAK recovers energy via regenerative brakes?

[Phoebe Vet]

gardendance:

While there are design differences determined by torque, voltage, and current requirements, the basic design is the same.  There is no difference between a motor and a generator.

The rotation requires or produces AC.  A DC motor uses either a mechanical brush type commutator or an electronic motor controller to change DC to or from AC depending on whether the permanent magnets are on the commutator or in the field.

All regenerative brakes are dynamic brakes, but not all dynamic brakes are regenerative.  The humps on the roof are the resistors I spoke of earlier.  They turn the electricity generated by the motors during dynamic braking into heat and dissipate it into the air.

[HarveyK400]

A lot depends on the states getting on board for regional services that can be tied together in transcontinental routes. 

[henry6]

"For all of the talk about people moving back to the city, the percentage of people in America's metropolitan areas who live downtown, as opposed to the suburbs, is very small.  

 

But one of the things that is happening in many cities...especially in the east...is that there is a reversal in the population movement and people are moving back into center city.  Highway congestion during commuting hours, increased fuel prices, high property taxes, increasing distance from center city jobs, are contributing factors.  How will this effect Amtrak?  Commuter operations? 

[HarveyK400]

I'm inclined to agree with Samantha that $10 billion is a lot to spend and still not fly as fast as a plane.  Energy consumption has to be way up as well, even if it isn't fossil-based.

I could get behind new lines between Sylmar/San Fernando and Bakersfield, and between Fresno and Gilroy as a first priority.  Whether speed would be compromised excessively following along I-5 to reduce cost between Sylmar/San Fernando and Bakersfield could be a billion-$ question.  Even limited to 80 mph on a significantly shorter route would be a great improvement over Tehachapi.  There is no such head-start for Gilroy-Fresno.

What's the chance of a 220-mph train stopping at Sylmar/SanFernando, Bakersfield, or even San Jose for a 2-hr trip between Los Angeles and San Francisco? 

I see electrification as a second priority; but maybe I'm wrong, given the energy crisis.  That in itself will cost billions for just the existing Amtrak-California, Surfliner, Metrolink, and Caltran networks but worth the cost.

How will electric-powered high-speed trains interface with non-electrified service?  Would passengers need to change trains at Los Angeles, San Jose, and Fresno?  Will separate tracks be needed simply for high-speed trains overtaking and passing regional services?  

The existing rail routes along the Central Valley easily accommodate 110-mph service.  Even 125-150 mph may be practical in some stretches with full grade separation and the horses to cross the mountains at 80 mph or more. 

 

[gardendance]

Most systems using regenerative braking such as in New York and Washington seem to be DC.  I'm not sure about the Acelas; but the "Toasters" are aptly named for their dynamic braking converting momentum (energy) to heat which is given off.  Regenenerative braking would seem to be more complicated with AC power.

Do you mean AEM7's? I thought they were called toasters because their corrugated sides resembled the inside of toasters. Or maybe I'm thinking of meatballs. I didn't know they didn't have regenerative braking, but that nickname would imply that other equipment, like GG1's, E44's, E60's did not have dyanmic brakes, since they would then also have generated heat, and would have also been candidates for that nickname.

There is no difference between a motor and a generator. 

Actually for practical purposes there are. I'm no electrician, but I do remember at the trolley museum intructors told us to use the reverser as a brake only in the direst of emergencies since the chance of flashover arcing was greater when making electricity from a motor-generator than it was when taking electricity into a motor-generator. In other words devices intended to make electricity, generators, do not take electricity as well as devices intended to take electricity, motors, and vice versa. In the flashover arcing example, optimizations one way or the other would include the number and size of the wires around the rotating core, which I believe is called the armature. Too small or too few would increase the risk of flashover in a generator, too many or too large would increase the weight and size in a motor.

In an electrified railroad generators can get as big as the powerhouse, and one usually doesn't care how heavy they are, but all other things being equal one wants rolling stock motors to be small and light.

However I'm no electrician, I'm just using my deductive reasoning to expand on what the trolley museum instructor, also a volunteer and probably not a professional electrician, told me.

SEPTA's PCC's (DC) had dynamic brakes. When they got new cars in the early 1980's with regenerative brakes I heard that they also needed to modify the power distribution system to take advantage of it. However SEPTA's the Silverliner 4's (AC also running under AMTRAK wires), mid 1970's have roof humps almost the entire car length. My dad told me that was for the dynamic brake resistnce grids. Either he must have been mixing up regenerative vs dynamic brakes or there might be some truth to HarveyK400's statement that regenerative AC is more complicated than DC.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Regional airliners cover a wide size differential, from 80-seat CRJ's to 19-seat Metros (are any of these still in service?).  I have absolutely no problem with flying in any of them.  Besides, the smaller ones fly at lower altitudes and you can actually see things on the ground.

[passengerfan]

... between New York and Washington... but this consumes a lot of energy and loses more without regenerative braking, battery, or fly-wheel energy conservation

I thought New York and Washington already had regenerative braking. Are you implying that they don't, or do you mean that some new installation with lots of braking will lose lots of energy unless they include some sort of regenerative, etc... system?

To get there I will probably take ... the Hound to Winnipeg

I'm sorry, what railroad runs a train called the Hound? :)

The Hound I refer to is the big dog (Greyhound) since that is the only cross border service offered to Winnipeg unless one flies on a regional carrier which ain't happening for me.

Al - in - Stockton

[Phoebe Vet]

There is no difference between a motor and a generator. 

If you apply electricity it converts it into motion.  If you apply motion, it converts it into electricity. 

The process of converting motion into electricity imposes a load that can be used for dynamic (no friction wear) braking.  If you put a battery in the circuit, it will charge the battery.  If you put a resistor in the circuit the resistor will turn electricity into heat which can be pumped over the side with a fan and/or radiator.  Friction brakes turn motion into heat which again must be disposed.

[Anonymous]

"But then you would still have the drive to and from the airport in each case but the time is downtown to downtown on the proposed HSR. The HSR is at a minumum six years away and who knows what the airfare will be then. Not to mention what cab fares in LA and SF will be, and for that matter what will the fare be on the HSR. I would think with fuel prices continuing to escalate that the rail when and if it gets built might be a real bargain."

In San Francisco an airline passenger can get to and from the airport on fast, frequent BART trains.  In LAX one can get to and from the airport on decent bus service.  But most people drive to the airport because a significant majority of them live in the suburbs. 

For all of the talk about people moving back to the city, the percentage of people in America's metropolitan areas who live downtown, as opposed to the suburbs, is very small.  Thus, most of the potential passengers for HSR would have to go downtown to catch the train, or the HSR would have to include numerous suburban stops, which would only increase the amount of time to get from LA to San Francisco.  In either case they too would have to rent a car or take a cab when they get to their end point.  Many of the business people would be visiting customers or headquarters located in the suburbs.