International Railroading

[HSSRAIL]

March 30, 2012

Been working on some things.

There was a proposal I have heard talk of concerning a Russian Proposal to build a trans-ocean tunnel under the Bearing Sea between Russia and Alaska it would also include a pipeline for oil and natural gas. Has anyone heard anything about this recently and can enlighten the board in general and me in particular on recent developments?

High Speed Rail in the United States has been rather moribund although this has only meant passenger service. A tunnel under the Bearing Sea would push the need for a national high speed network to move freight. I have been tossing ideas around on how that could work. One of them is an Electric-Hydraulic Brake for freight trains.

Howard

 

[whitepass]

I remember a TV show on this, it was a pipe dream kind of thing as there is nothing at ether end. To get a rail car to Alaska you put it on a barge and move it like 500 miles north.

 

[oknotsen]

Wild guess... more will be announced on the first day of the next month... which happens to be the 1st of April, aka April Fools day?

 

[JCitron]

Wild guess... more will be announced on the first day of the next month... which happens to be the 1st of April, aka April Fools day?

I was thinking the same thing!


If you think about it, there's a lot of obstacles even in the short distance between the Eurasian and North American continents. This is an extremely geologically active region in the world. Around the Pacific Rim and in the Bering Strait are volcanos and constant earthquake activity. The ocean is a also quite deep here as well, which would make construction and maintenance very dangerous and very expensive.

John

 

[HSSRAIL]

The Russian Gauge is 5 feet which is another problem.

There is a highway between Vancouver, BC and Alaska a railroad could be built it never was because there never was enough traffic to justify such a project. Although, I suspect there are substantial mineral deposits int the Canadian Artic that might support building a railroad.

I know little of the geology under the Bearing Sea. Although there is a technology available in which tunnels can be built in precast concrete sections and than floated below the surface of the sea but not rest on the bottom and be anchored to the bottom. The Bearing Sea might be a good test of that technology.

Howard

 

[JCitron]

The Russian Gauge is 5 feet which is another problem.

There is a highway between Vancouver, BC and Alaska a railroad could be built it never was because there never was enough traffic to justify such a project. Although, I suspect there are substantial mineral deposits int the Canadian Artic that might support building a railroad.

I know little of the geology under the Bearing Sea. Although there is a technology available in which tunnels can be built in precast concrete sections and than floated below the surface of the sea but not rest on the bottom and be anchored to the bottom. The Bearing Sea might be a good test of that technology.

Howard

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/interior/RIM_of_FIRE.html

Here's a map outlining the ring of geologically active area including the Bering Sea and Strait.

I've seen the precast concrete tunnels being used. The BigDig used them to connect I-90 to the Logan International Airport (Route 1) when they built the extension back in the mid-1990s. One of the workers told me they found all kinds of cool stuff at the bottom of Boston Harbor including old freight cars that must've fallen off of the old rail barges that were used by the Union Terminal Railroad - a New Haven subsidiary.

John

 

[rjhowie]

Maybe too quick to shove this to April 1st. There was a tv programme I seen last year on the same idea of challenging situations and went into the idea of such a rail link. However the sheer cost of such in the geography terrain concerned may put this into the file "Wishful Thinking, if only"?

 

[Euphod]

As far as I know, this was proposed for the "Bering Straight", in the "Bering Sea" and the main obstacle I remember hearing of was the ice.

 

[oknotsen]

Lets put it this way:
I remember that it took a lot of time and money to make the Euro Tunnel (that 50km thing between France and England). It started in 1986 and has had some serious problems making a profit.
The Bering Straight looks a bit wider and is in a bit more geologically active region.

Sure, I have also seen the decumentaries about lunar stations, traveling to outside our galaxy and even those about tunnels crossing the ocean, but if it ever happens I doubt I still have my real teeth.