China to USA....

[bendorsey]

Let me ask a question I don't remember seeing as yet.

How long would it take for a train to get from Moscow to Washington, DC via this route? At a bare minimum this is over half the circumference of the earth. 12,500 miles. Probably closer to 2/3's. 18,000 or better.

I seem to remember reading it takes one week to get from one end of the Trans Siberian RR to the other. Double or triple that from Moscow to DC.

Speed? Average probably no more then 40 to 45 MPH. High speed rail won't like permafrost, the Canadian Rockies, and so on.

Rail east from Moscow to a sea port, steamship across the Atlantic to an eastern port, then rail to DC would take half the time and potentially carry up to 100 times as much at the same time.

Economically this is a non-starter.

Afraid I have to whole-heartedly agree with Cascade. This is a PPP (Peter Pan Project). Think never never land, lol.

Ben

 

[AMTRAKwannabe]

Don't forget customs checks, two at each crossing of a border, one by the country you're about to go into to and one by the country you're leaving, you'd have it 3 times, so six customs checks...

 

[kws4000]

Do you realize just how cold it is there ?

Just keeping motor oil, and diesel fuel from gelling, not to mention the impossible feat of transporting fuel way out to the outer most harshest environments known to man, aside from Antarctica.

Condition 1 weather ... no one permitted outside ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2SeEzxMuE

Even in summer the temps rarely get out of the mid 50F, for 3 months, and the rest of the long dark year are cold to sub zero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk3bT-_OK1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bKiiiAF3mE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQOTDXB5LNA
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTa_suK-9Wk"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTa_suK-9Wk"]www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTa_suK-9Wk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY-lnr98oBk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arf74iaacOQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBvcJ2Nj53E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpeYPMEaySI

If that is the case, I wonder how the AKRR even manages to leave the yard!
And if we are going for the tunnel, it would undoubtedly be electrified, too difficult to get blower system running on MacDonald Tunnel on the CP (9 miles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Macdonald_Tunnel ). Given the number of trains and required horsepower, cue one new powerplant on plentiful fossil fuels or highly controversial nuclear. No solar power can possibly work efficiently there, and good luck maintaining wind turbines in that weather.

If you want personal evidence & advice on living in AK, I have connections....

So if I may summarize thus far:
Can it be done? Perhaps, given certain geologic unknowns.
Should it be done? Depends on who you ask, and which parameters are fudged.
Will it be funded? Depends on who wants it.
Will it be done ever? I don't believe so, but God created optimists too....

 

[JCitron]

It's my understanding that MILW line was closed due to high grades and cost of operation, ( love the high line) as to the rest I know they are all hard pressed for Engines power. And there's the fact that none have excess of car's for any cargo now, (backlog for months) and that's been for ten year now. I'd say investing in our infrastructure is way past due.:hehe:

Actually to the contrary. The line was closed out of shortsightedness of stupid management who wanted out. They setup the company to fail by signing a lease back of their own railcars, and then thought they could make money by selling off the copper during a glut in the copper market. While this occurred, they purchased new SD40-2s which were the biggest diesel guzzlers at the time during the energy crisis, all the while GE and Westinghouse were willing to subsidize new electric locomotives and update their electric system for free. Nope. They ignored the offer and went along with the diesel plan instead while their lease payments couldn't be met because the number of revenue cars in the pool was fewer. They ran older cars, which weren't in the lease program, but being older they were prone to breakdowns and derailments. This added to the freefall and then the demise of the line.

At the time the MILW Pacific Extension was the most profitable portion of the system and was also one of the fastest lines to the Pacific Northwest. It was only in the end when they deferred the maintenance on the trains and the lines did it become an Achilles Heal that everyone claimed. In July 2013 I had the opportunity to see the MILW PCE from Forsythe, MT all the way to Roundup, MT. The bridges are in place, except for smaller wooden bridges, the telegraph poles are still there, sans insulators, but everything else is gone except for a few piles of ties. When we got just outside of Melstone, MT on US Route 12, the parallel railroad heads straight to what was once a yard. Still standing was the old track order hoop waiting for the next train to pick-up incoming orders. It's funny how some things remained while others disappeared. Sadly, the old active portion of PCE ends just on the edge of Miles City. When you drive by the active section, it all looks like the line continues west, but sadly it ends abruptly in the weeds. I surely would like to see this line rebuilt, but how much would that cost in today's dollars compared to what it cost back in 1908 or thereabouts.

http://binged.it/1kyJjY5 ---- Melstone, MT. The foundation of the old roundhouse is still visible and so is the ashpit. It's obvious there was once a yard here as the rail bed fans out to accommodate the yard and station area.

http://www.american-rails.com/pacific-coast-extension.html

I agree with Jackson. We lost a ton of railroad infrastructure as we were focusing our energy on the "new" automobile and the interstate during the 1950s to the 1970s. To add to what he said. The old EL, actually the original Erie Railroad, was one of the fastest running lines, as well as one of the straightest runs across Ohio and Indiana to Chicago. This company was one of the forgotten companies by the PennCentral-centric management of Conrail. They moved the through freight to their own road and left the once competing companies to rot. The Lehigh Valley and New Haven also suffered the same fate as the Erie as its eastern coal traffic dried up and business was discouraged north of Sayre, PA/Waverly, NY because that too was routed via the old Pennsy and NYC lines. In the northeast, the old New Haven suffered the with the PC because the NH directed the traffic away from the Pennsy and NYC lines as a bridge route from New York State through Connecticut with its direct connection to the EL at Campbell Hall, and away from the northern NYC (Boston and Albany) mainline. The NH was actually a bit faster and more direct, but again it as all about favored lines.

Getting back to what Bill (Wholbr) has been saying, this may actually work and will probably be a more efficient and less costly way of building the route. The permafrost, as seen in the video I posted, is so fragile, and given that things are melting, the tunnel maybe the only way around it, or rather through it. Being a large international project, the overall cost would be far less than it is for a private company to do it alone as this cost would be divided by the multiple countries involved, and given the hard feelings we see now in the area, such a project may actually ease tensions as the consortium of countries come together in a united fashion to build the route.



John

 

[Railwoodman]

About the MILW line, very interesting. I stand corrected It's been a while that I read anything other these forms on that route. And I would never imply that mismanagement wasn't involved. Quite the contrary, schemes like you describe are exactly part of the whole problem. Lack of Direct investment to the lines and product shipping capacity isn't just because of mismanagement, although not investing seem to be a practice of modern business models . Only fix when broken, as cheap as possible as fast regardless of quality.

 

[nicky9499]

No solar power can possibly work efficiently there

It's funny you say that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_sun

^ That would help with energy requirements for a good part of the year. Correct me if I'm wrong but quite often these north poleish places also have lots of geothermal activity which can also be captured.

 

[cascaderailroad]

There is a reason why the AKRR terminates in Fairbanks ... It was a tremendous undertaking just to lay tracks that far north ... And we're now talking of making expensive geothermal drilling and geothermal power generation, and a new pipeline another 500 miles long ? How ridiculous ! And the summer sun being up 24 hours a day for 3 months, would result low wattage output on solar panels as the suns rays are diminished by the slanting of the earth poles. The RR would not be passenger orientated, as no one really wants to go to those locations, in mass. Trains would be mostly empty with no passengers, and freight revenue would soon be eaten up by the great expenditure of laying the line, and extreme maintenance costs.

This would be a gargantious political boondoggle, of 300 billion dollars, just to transport the US coal to China (they are saving their own coal for a rainy day) we send hundreds of ore carriers worldwide full of Powder River Basin coal every year, mostly to China.

 

[JCitron]

About the MILW line, very interesting. I stand corrected It's been a while that I read anything other these forms on that route. And I would never imply that mismanagement wasn't involved. Quite the contrary, schemes like you describe are exactly part of the whole problem. Lack of Direct investment to the lines and product shipping capacity isn't just because of mismanagement, although not investing seem to be a practice of modern business models . Only fix when broken, as cheap as possible as fast regardless of quality.

This is all an all too common occurrence today with lots of businesses. Everything is all about maximizing the bonuses for the management while they suck the funds out of the company. I worked for a Polaroid spin-off and saw this happen quarterly and for another company where the employees never saw raises, but the CEO is one of the richest people in the world. The former Montreal Maine & Atlantic is a classic example of running things far into the ground. This is part of the reason why they had that tragic accident back in July 2013. Guilford Transportation ran the former Boston & Maine, Maine Central, and Delaware and Hudson the same way. It took 30 years and a slight change in management to straighten out their act just a little bit.

John

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.
I agree with cascade that to try and build a railroad across the Straits and then over permafrost would undoubtedly be impossible due to the harshness of the environment and the condition of the material you are trying to build on. Therefore the only way build the railroad would be to tunnel as much of the proposed route as possible. In that respect much would depend on the material that you are going to tunnel through.

Seabeds near to coastlines are usually made up of sand or chalk (as it was with the English Channel when it was being tunnelled). It has been already stated that the subsurface under the permafrost is very soft, so tunnelling through that material will undoubtedly present no problem at all no matter how far you wish to bore. Therefore the main advantage in constructing the railroad by tunnelling would be that once the tunnels were started everybody working there is in a closed controlled environment and where the conditions above have little or no impact on the work below. In the same, once the railway is operating the weather conditions above will have no effect on train operations.

Constructing multi-chamber tunnels is also a big advantage as with the channel tunnel three chambers were being bored out at the same time, two of them where the running tunnels with a central service tunnel. Therefore throughout the construction one chamber was used for removing the spoil away from the boring machines while the second running tunnel was used to bring materials such as the concrete liners through to the boring face. The central service tunnel was used for material storage and workforce facilities.

As stated the total length of the channel tunnel is 31 miles. However, in any tunnelling operation once the boring machines are in place and working if they have materials such as the above to bore through they can be kept operating for whatever distance you wish to go however far that may be.

I seem to remember reading it takes one week to get from one end of the Trans Siberian RR to the other. Double or triple that from Moscow to DC.

Speed? Average probably no more then 40 to 45 MPH. High speed rail won't like permafrost, the Canadian Rockies, and so on.

Rail east from Moscow to a sea port, steamship across the Atlantic to an eastern port, then rail to DC would take half the time and potentially carry up to 100 times as much at the same time.

Ben

Ben, railways being constructed in the present time are all high-speed lines even for freight. Therefore you have to think of trains travelling in excess of 150 mph throughout the entire journey on any new line. The freight cars on these lines load up road trucks arriving at rail head assembly points. The trucks just drive onto and up through the rail freight cars in exactly the same way as a roll on roll off sea ferry. At the other end of the rail journey they drive off the freight cars and onto their ultimate destination by road. Therefore, no marshalling yards are needed making it a very fast efficient operation even over very long distances.

Also, sending anything to Russia by sea is a problem as that country has only one large warm water port accessible all year, that being in Crimea, say no more. Others in north Russia have to be kept open by icebreakers in winter and even that is not always possible

bill

 

[bendorsey]

Moscow to any seaport on the Atlantic. It doesn't have to be in Russia. Rails go east from Moscow as well as west. Forget Odessa, lol.

High speed is todays "buzz word". It makes everyone think of the truly high speed trains in France and Japan. Why do you assume trains like that are possible everywhere? They are not. Many factors are involved but they can only be built where possible. Not everywhere envisioned. A 200 MPH train going around curves in the Canadian Rockies would give new meaning to super-elevated curves (45 degrees, lol). Hey - have Disney build it as an E-ticket ride. Oops - - - I shouldn't have said that - Disney probably could build it an make it pay, lol.

Roadbed for a true high speed train is built much differently then one for a normal train. Support, stability, and smoothness being paramount. You might get that in the Canadian Rockies (they are made of rocks ya know, lol) but do you really think you can get that on permafrost?

And what happens when it all melts and turns into a muskeg bog? Global warming isn't a joke folks (but lets not get into that anymore then we absolutely have to). One immensely interesting global discussion at a time please.

Ben

 

[kws4000]

There is a reason why the AKRR terminates in Fairbanks ... It was a tremendous undertaking just to lay tracks that far north ... And we're now talking of making expensive geothermal drilling and geothermal power generation, and a new pipeline another 500 miles long ? How ridiculous ! And the summer sun being up 24 hours a day for 3 months, would result low wattage output on solar panels as the suns rays are diminished by the slanting of the earth poles. The RR would not be passenger orientated, as no one really wants to go to those locations, in mass. Trains would be mostly empty with no passengers, and freight revenue would soon be eaten up by the great expenditure of laying the line, and extreme maintenance costs.

This would be a gargantious political boondoggle, of 300 billion dollars, just to transport the US coal to China (they are saving their own coal for a rainy day) we send hundreds of ore carriers worldwide full of Powder River Basin coal every year, mostly to China.

cascade: I am surprised to say, I concur. But: The solar panels would have high output only in the summer, and would require a facility many times larger than any existing job even n the sunny parts of the world, just to power one train in each direction.

Bill: USA operating philosophy is different than Europe. This will involve very high tonnages, on equipment that is completely compatible with existing cars. As such, coupler and brake designs can't change too much. High tonnages do not lend themselves well to high speed, due to the drawbar pull required. High speed operation needs at least 2-6hp/ton, the Super C used up to 14hp/ton at times. This leads to an abundance of power, often wasted, as well as excess sunk cost. US knuckles are limited to 600,000 pounds tension breaking, 500,000 locomotive exertion. That's only 20% safety, and even now, break-in-2s still happen even with distributed power. And unless we get an all new truck design, everything built up to now is limited to 79mph, except Amtrak's Material Handling Cars when loaded, 90mph; otherwise, 65mph.

Oh, and Ro-Ro for America simply isn't efficient enough, its been tried with the CSX Iron Highway btwn Chicago and Detroit. Never entered full service. Doublestack, on the other hand, is actually preferred. Even railroaders in Detroit would rather see doublestack replace the Roadrailer that the customers prefer.

 

[Railwoodman]

Found these to add to discussion http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slat...ruction_of_a_high_speed_train_to_the_u_s.html
www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/.../content_17493399.htm
www.dailymail.co.uk/.../China-considers-building-rail-link-A
www.youtube.com/watch?v.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Who exactly is going to ride this railroad anyway ?

There will be no passengers.

Are you, your friends, your relatives, any of their friends, or their freinds freinds ? Is anyone going to China in the next decade, or ever travel there in their entire lifetime ?

A 125 mile long tunnel ... what a waste of money !

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.
Kws4000 I think we can agree that America and Europe have completely different philosophies on how they view and operate their railways including future development. The foregoing is undoubtedly due to the fact that railways since the 1980s in Europe have been developed almost totally as a passenger form of transport. In Britain freight disappeared completely from the railways until approximately 5 years ago when the car manufacturers, importers and exporters developed the rail car carriers running now.

In the last few years we have also had the development of “one company trains” where large retail organisations and parcel carriers use high-speed freight consists to exclusively run their own goods between central warehousing and regional distribution centres. Rapid container transfer and occasionally now Ro-Ro is then used between the local railhead and the distribution centre all of which is run on tightly controlled nightly timetables.

The above has come about due to large organisations such as manufacturers and retailers requesting that no stock holding be allowed to exist in any supply chain whatsoever as that improves cash flow in their organisations to a huge amount.

However, from what has been stated in this thread similar requirements are not being requested from American rail infrastructures and that the concept of stockholding is still accepted by American railshippers. Therefore I readily accept that the two rail systems diverge at that point.

Therefore, to bring the thread back on topic “railline between China and the USA” what would be the conclusions.

The signing of the recent trade agreement between China and Russia is a worldwide game changer?

The above will create the world’s largest market encompassing nearly one third of the worlds population in which both countries have stated that rail will be the major resource used in their transport infrastructure.

Russia will undoubtedly carry-out development/redevelopment of the entire rail infrastructure within its borders, especially in Siberia where it will give access to the newly discovered oil, gas and other minerals of the region. Therefore rail lines between China, southern Russia and Siberia will be developed to support the new trade agreement.

The European Union has already signalled that it would wish to link its rail infrastructure into that of Russia so that it could have easier access the growing markets and resources in the new alignment.

That would leave the question of whether the United States would be prepared to spend and develop its rail infrastructure and work with other countries in developing the Alaskan/Siberian link that China certainly feels can be achieved.

Witnessing what China has achieved in the last 20 years who would bet against them.

Bill

 

[cascaderailroad]

Witnessing what China has achieved in the last 20 years who would bet against them.Bill

The only thing that China has accomplished is: Buying up all the real estate property, and companies worldwide, like a gigantic monopoly game, burning (Wyoming-Powder River) coal at a feverish rate, polluting it's skies with coal haze 500 times more thick than Pittsburgh was in the early 1900's, cranking out sneekers and TV's by the billions per year ... never mind the consequences, poisoning their Country with toxic waste ... all so that we buy their junk at Walmart and the Dollar Store.

That would leave the question of whether the United States would be prepared to spend and develop its rail infrastructure and work with other countries in developing the Alaskan/Siberian link that China certainly feels can be achieved.

In the US we don't do anything except let our infrastructure deteriorate and collapse. And transport all the 1 year old broken, busted up cheap Chinese junk in trash trains, and bury all the Chinese toxic waste (Lithium Ion, Nickle Cadmium batteries ... etc ...) in landfills down south. And we go right out and buy all the cheap Chinese junk, all over again !

 

[wholbr]

Hi Cascade

In the US we don't do anything except let our infrastructure deteriorate and collapse. And transport all the 1 year old broken, busted up cheap Chinese junk in trash trains, and bury all the Chinese toxic waste (Lithium Ion, Nickle Cadmium batteries ... etc ...) in landfills down south. And we go right out and buy all the cheap Chinese junk, all over again !
/QUOTE]

Rational anwser
Bill

 

[jacksonbarno]

The only thing that China has accomplished is: Buying up all the real estate property, and companies worldwide, like a gigantic monopoly game, burning (Wyoming-Powder River) coal at a feverish rate, polluting it's skies with coal haze 500 times more thick than Pittsburgh was in the early 1900's, cranking out sneekers and TV's by the billions per year ... never mind the consequences, poisoning their Country with toxic waste ... all so that we buy their carp at Walmart and the Dollar Store.

They can't afford not to. If their growth rate drops below 6% or so, they will have serious problems. They may be progressing, but every step forward for them is two steps back in the long run. I personally think it wouldn't be a good idea to cross the bering strait. Railroads wouldn't be able to compete with ships and planes on that front, and China really isn't important enough to us to dump that kind of money into that sort of project.