Should We Electrify Freight RR?

There's been some technology bouncing around for a few years now based off technology used during the Victorian Period. Now, in Victorian times, it didn't quite work right, but a number of power plants are starting to use this process.

Essentially how it works is this:

The Coal is fluidized, meaning that it's powdered to a very fine powder. On the level of talc powder or very fine cement. This fluidized coal is then blown into the firebox of the boilers, and is allowed to burn. Fluidized coal combustion is nearly total, with very little unburned coal left behind. The exhaust gas is then vented up and into a cooling system. This system using water, cools the exhaust gas down to the point that any particulate matter or fly ash in it settles out. This fly ash and particulate matter is gathered and depending on the system either returned to the firebox for combustion, or in some cases captured and placed in trucks or railcars, to be sold to carbon black companies for use in printer materials and some lubricants. The remaining flue gas is then pumped through a calcium carbonate bed (lime), which reacts with the carbon dioxide in it and further removes the dangerous greenhouse gas. Ultimately, when the exhaust gas is vented into the atmosphere, the parts per million of greenhouse gas is on the level of the purest natural gas, with some tests suggesting this system is greener than them.

In victorian times many power plants would recapture their exhaust particulate matter, placing it in bags and selling it to various companies. Concrete companies were big buyers, placing these "cinders" in their product. Hence the name "Cinder Block."
 
Freight will never get priority over passenger in electrification. Any attempt to electrify rail will go to passenger first because moving people (who will get unhappy and complain) is a major priority even though some do not move by rail.

Wind turbines - will never produce enough power. There has been plans for putting a bunch of these nearby and mention of how many homes will get power from them,
http://www.statenislandusa.com/2008/wind.html
Three percent (said elsewhere to be 5000 homes) from seven of these and that is for the smallest borough of New York City. They spent half a billion and a little over a year just to figure this out.:o This is supposedly at the only site in NYC that could support a wind farm. Might work for rural areas (no offence) but will not help major metropolitan locations. NEXT!

Military running Railroads - Will never happen. The Army's current railroad is run by Reservists, no full timers. And other than WWII, no one wants the military to run non-military rail no matter opinion on their efficiency because of perception (people will think Big Brother is invading their lives, soldiers/federales storming homes, etc.) and difference in priorities.

Fallen Flags - Did not have to deal with some of the issues we have today. Any comparison between what they did and current situations can often lead to false conclusions.

Power plants - While most plants do use coal, some especially in the northern MidWest and I think the Pacific NorthWest use wood, largely wood waste, there's a small industry involved, they take unusable wood, old railroad ties and other waste items and chop it all up into something about as small as woodchips but doesn't have to be chips so anything that small works and ship it all to wood burning electric plants. Don't know how clean they run compared to coal but wood is a replaceable resource with planning for reforestation.

Other things to consider.

Existing infrastructure - While we have the knowledge, we have not implemented a lot of modern techniques into what runs our elctricity today. Some places do rolling brownouts or even blackouts to prevent overload, largely in the northern MidWest and I think the NorthEast. This has gotten more attention after the last big cascading blackout in this area. You print an article about electrifying any portion of rail while this goes on, the average person (forget corporate, political, etc.) will complain why you will not improve service to homes before doing this. The average person will not care about any details regarding electrifying any portion of rail when they may have to worry about a rolling outage killing their baby monitors and such. You send electricity the railroads' way before fixing residential issues, you highly risk pissing off the general public who are not railfans and will not be consoled as to why you will not get them the power for their baby monitors, ovens, lights and such before doing this.

Film - Don't believe anything on film before checking other sources. I don't know this Jim Klein but a lot of stuff based on the film industry's weird view gets blamed on Corporate America (among some other common targets) so much to the point where I could spill a drink and someone will claim Corporate America did it as part of a big conspiracy plot.:sleep: The whole "Corporate America" thing is one of the common targets of blame that came from Hollywood getting too involved in things beyond what it should be doing, entertainment and nothing more. I will not go into my whole Hollywood complaint other than to point out that the influence of the Hollywood industry on the public and society is messed up and shouldn't be taken by itself as fact. And media news too.
I have read a lot of items, for example, that showed what killed trolleys and electric freight in NYC was not corporations, politics or money, it was common population issues with folks getting tired of waiting to cross streets on foot and accidents where street running trains and trolleys killed people no matter what safety precautions were taken by anyone. This was before autos became as big as they are, it caused the elevated and subway movements. Those sources were books on railroads.
And remember that some railroads are Corporations.

Major change doesn't happen overnight - I could name a bunch of subjects that prove this. You would be better off targeting specific areas of rail than just talking in general about doing this. Do you really need electricity on those light branchlines and shortlines that run a couple of freights a week? Do they justify the cost of building whatever system you run the electric on?

Environment - Don't forget birds. Those suckers will land on anything and they have no means of telling bad landing spots from good. You stick a bunch of wires all over the place and birds will target them for rest stops, ZAP!, now you've started a bird killing problem in an age when environmentalists will compalin and some bird will be listed as endangered with railroads to blame soon followed by several documentaries on how railroads killed the whales.:o Who's gonna check all those remote areas for dead birds between the rails?
Did I forget to mention the other small woodland creatures that will jump onto wires for transport when they run near trees? I've seen squirrels here that run along the low cable lines between utility poles, no one is perfect and will be able to keep up with how a small woodland creature will manage to try wire transport from a tree, ZAP!, more environmentalists complaining.
No corporation or politicians here, just another of many things to consider.
 
StorkNest said:
Freight will never get priority over passenger in electrification. Any attempt to electrify rail will go to passenger first because moving people (who will get unhappy and complain) is a major priority even though some do not move by rail.
Click to expand...
No, priority will go to the best business case. I assume we're talking about railroads putting up at least most of the money here.
Wind turbines - will never produce enough power. There has been plans for putting a bunch of these nearby and mention of how many homes will get power from them,
http://www.statenislandusa.com/2008/wind.html
Three percent (said elsewhere to be 5000 homes) from seven of these and that is for the smallest borough of New York City. They spent half a billion and a little over a year just to figure this out.:o This is supposedly at the only site in NYC that could support a wind farm. Might work for rural areas (no offence) but will not help major metropolitan locations. NEXT!
Click to expand...
The potential for generating large amounts of electricity is there in the USA, it just needs truly huge facilities in the windiest parts of the country, and a good grid to shift power from where the wind is blowing to where it's not.

Existing infrastructure - While we have the knowledge, we have not implemented a lot of modern techniques into what runs our elctricity today. Some places do rolling brownouts or even blackouts to prevent overload, largely in the northern MidWest and I think the NorthEast. This has gotten more attention after the last big cascading blackout in this area. You print an article about electrifying any portion of rail while this goes on, the average person (forget corporate, political, etc.) will complain why you will not improve service to homes before doing this. The average person will not care about any details regarding electrifying any portion of rail when they may have to worry about a rolling outage killing their baby monitors and such. You send electricity the railroads' way before fixing residential issues, you highly risk pissing off the general public who are not railfans and will not be consoled as to why you will not get them the power for their baby monitors, ovens, lights and such before doing this.
Click to expand...
The amount of power needed to electrify the first class railroads is only a small percentage of the total requirement. It won't make the (admittedly problematic) current situation that much worse.

Film - Don't believe anything on film before checking other sources. I don't know this Jim Klein but a lot of stuff based on the film industry's weird view gets blamed on Corporate America (among some other common targets) so much to the point where I could spill a drink and someone will claim Corporate America did it as part of a big conspiracy plot.:sleep: The whole "Corporate America" thing is one of the common targets of blame that came from Hollywood getting too involved in things beyond what it should be doing, entertainment and nothing more. I will not go into my whole Hollywood complaint other than to point out that the influence of the Hollywood industry on the public and society is messed up and shouldn't be taken by itself as fact. And media news too.
I have read a lot of items, for example, that showed what killed trolleys and electric freight in NYC was not corporations, politics or money, it was common population issues with folks getting tired of waiting to cross streets on foot and accidents where street running trains and trolleys killed people no matter what safety precautions were taken by anyone. This was before autos became as big as they are, it caused the elevated and subway movements. Those sources were books on railroads.
And remember that some railroads are Corporations.
Click to expand...
Don't you just love a good conspiracy theory? There's also plenty of sources that suggest that corporate America has far too much influence over the political process, and has done for a long time. Admittedly in the case of the trolleys, this happened at a time when the automobile was on the rise, and no-one had really seen the down-sides of a car-dependent culture. That being said, only a few countries had as complete a policy of abandonment as the USA, and many systems survived and even thrived in other countries.

Major change doesn't happen overnight - I could name a bunch of subjects that prove this. You would be better off targeting specific areas of rail than just talking in general about doing this. Do you really need electricity on those light branchlines and shortlines that run a couple of freights a week? Do they justify the cost of building whatever system you run the electric on?
Click to expand...
No, it makes sense to electrify the most heavily used sections, and those branches that would minimise the need for loco changes.

Environment - Don't forget birds. Those suckers will land on anything and they have no means of telling bad landing spots from good. You stick a bunch of wires all over the place and birds will target them for rest stops, ZAP!, now you've started a bird killing problem in an age when environmentalists will compalin and some bird will be listed as endangered with railroads to blame soon followed by several documentaries on how railroads killed the whales.:o Who's gonna check all those remote areas for dead birds between the rails?
Did I forget to mention the other small woodland creatures that will jump onto wires for transport when they run near trees? I've seen squirrels here that run along the low cable lines between utility poles, no one is perfect and will be able to keep up with how a small woodland creature will manage to try wire transport from a tree, ZAP!, more environmentalists complaining.
Click to expand...
Unless a bird sits on the high voltage wire and is earthed at the same time, it won't be electrocuted - otherwise all high voltage lines would be scenes of creature carnage. I suspect that the noise will make them less popular perches. Don't forget, electric railways have been working just fine all over the rest of the world for decades - this isn't new...

Paul
 
Don't expect support from the HAM radio community.

Seriously though, explaining to the voters why power plants are being built to supply the railroads but not the public won't be easy.
 
Hi All: Well I must admit there is new technolygy on the Coal process, so it going to be around a while..And Ithink the Obama administration thinks that way to..But look at Dubai, building all that outlandish stuff..Where do you suppose all that money came from? We are paying good money to that Country for our oil, the world for that matter..We could be spending that good money on things like Electrification, our own infrastruction. But no we are not because our past history says we are way to Conservative, non-progressive..So again We set back and watch the world go by..


Bob Cass:) :)
 
It all boils down to money, if in the long run it is cheaper to electrify then it would happen, no matter where in the world.
Trouble is it is still cheaper to run diesel than to electrify, only when the oil starts to run out and the prices start to sky rocket will this change, and the railroads of the world will electrify, the power companies had better be prepared for it, because by then it will be a necessity.
On the other hand if a government is prepared to help the power companies build more power stations then the price of power would come down due to there being a surplus, and that would cause the railroads to recalculate their electrification plans.

Cheers David
 
Really, when you look at the infrastructure side of things, it comes down to a question of cost. The big disadvantage isn't the electrification or the specific types of locomotives required, or even the repair costs, but the up front cost of actually stringing all the wire. If you look historically at those railroads that had overhead wire in the US (nec for example) stringing all the wire was the most expensive side of things. Once the wire was up, it wasn't much hassle. Look at the PRR. They Electrified a good portion of their route, what has become the NEC, and had plans to do more but the cost was running them into the ground.

Taking NS for an example, if we were to say the government decided to force them (as part of EPA standards) electrify their total 21,500 miles of trackage, at the average 10,000 dollars a mile to string wire and post poles, it'd set NS back 2,150,000,000 Or, Two Billion, One hundred fifty Million dollars. Now that's just for electrification. If then, NS were to purchase an electric locomotive for each one of the Diesel locomotives they have on their roster, then you're looking at between 10 and 30 million dollars for each locomotive. It doesn't take long for that to quickly reach into the billions also, again making it very ineffecitve cost wise.
 
pommie said:
It all boils down to money, if in the long run it is cheaper to electrify then it would happen, no matter where in the world.
Trouble is it is still cheaper to run diesel than to electrify, only when the oil starts to run out and the prices start to sky rocket will this change, and the railroads of the world will electrify, the power companies had better be prepared for it, because by then it will be a necessity.
On the other hand if a government is prepared to help the power companies build more power stations then the price of power would come down due to there being a surplus, and that would cause the railroads to recalculate their electrification plans.

Cheers David
Click to expand...

But who makes the decision and what costs are included? Global warming will probably impact African countries far more than the US. Do you include the impact on them or just the bottom line of the railroad companies?

Cheerio John
 
For a company profits must come first (with maintenance a very close second) and any investments that cut into them must show a return sometime in the future.
The considerations I can think of,

The initial cost of the infrastructure, this would be spread over 10 years (just a guess)

The cost of electricity, and allowing for this to rise the more you use, putting more demand on a demand verses supply system.

Present diesel loco's would be replaced/converted as needed over the ten years, meaning a lot of diesels would be replaced anyway, so no real extra cost on those units.

Work out the cost for the 10 year conversion period, fuel/oil going down electricity going up, then for the next 10 years costs after conversion, no fuel/oil just electricity.
Then work out how much would be spent on diesel fuel and engine oil in the same 20 years without any conversion, and minus the expected diesel/oil consumption during the 10 conversion period.
Now you know the total cost of conversion spread over 10 years, with the cost spread over 20 years, and the savings for per year after conversion, if the cost of conversion is the greater than the savings in that 20 years, then it will not happen without Government intervention.

How the power is generated is up to the power companies, who in turn must put profits first, if all the railroads decided to electrify over the next 10 years then all of a sudden new power stations would spring up every where because the power companies would see those all those dollars dangling in front of them :D

Of course I have been known to be wrong, but only once :p :hehe:

Cheers David

Edit, this would also mean a price drop of diesel for the truckies as the demand declines :)
 
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:wave: RE : Of course I have been known to be wrong, but only once

Can we Quote you on that ? :D


Jokeing mate :)
 
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pommie said:
For a company profits must come first (with maintenance a very close second) and any investments that cut into them must show a return sometime in the future.
The considerations I can think of,

The initial cost of the infrastructure, this would be spread over 10 years (just a guess)

The cost of electricity, and allowing for this to rise the more you use, putting more demand on a demand verses supply system.

Present diesel loco's would be replaced/converted as needed over the ten years, meaning a lot of diesels would be replaced anyway, so no real extra cost on those units.

Work out the cost for the 10 year conversion period, fuel/oil going down electricity going up, then for the next 10 years costs after conversion, no fuel/oil just electricity.
Then work out how much would be spent on diesel fuel and engine oil in the same 20 years without any conversion, and minus the expected diesel/oil consumption during the 10 conversion period.
Now you know the total cost of conversion spread over 10 years, with the cost spread over 20 years, and the savings for per year after conversion, if the cost of conversion is the greater than the savings in that 20 years, then it will not happen without Government intervention.

How the power is generated is up to the power companies, who in turn must put profits first, if all the railroads decided to electrify over the next 10 years then all of a sudden new power stations would spring up every where because the power companies would see those all those dollars dangling in front of them :D

Of course I have been known to be wrong, but only once :p :hehe:

Cheers David

Edit, this would also mean a price drop of diesel for the truckies as the demand declines :)
Click to expand...

From an accounting point of view 25 years is acceptable. Long term Canadian Government bonds are currently costing around 4% at the moment so even take it out to 40 years and you can pay it back at roughly 5% of the capital amount per year. Now this is where you get into a religious argument, should you use the government to guarantee the bond or not remembering that their responsibility should be to the population which stands to gain from the electrification. Many Americans would disagree saying that government should only respond to company lobbyists.

There are upward pressures on the price of gas from what might be thought of as unusual sources.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16727

When doing the calculation you have to take into account that electric locos generally last longer and have lower maintenance costs.

Cheerio John
 
I understand that the USA use diesel for all their freight, however, like everywhere else, Oil will soon run out. When that does, so will diesel fuel and that means that a new source of power for trains is needed.

I do would like to see that all freight (and passenger) trains in the USA ran on electric as, the power source can come from practically anything.

With electric trains, you can run faster, more powerful trains along much longer tunnels. Just think, if all the infrastructure is electrified and can take much faster electric trains. Journey times between yards, places and stations can be alot shorter, especially on routes where the track is extremely long and straight as a ruler.
 
insulfrog said:
I understand that the USA use diesel for all their freight, however, like everywhere else, Oil will soon run out. When that does, so will diesel fuel and that means that a new source of power for trains is needed.

I do would like to see that all freight (and passenger) trains in the USA ran on electric as, the power source can come from practically anything.

With electric trains, you can run faster, more powerful trains along much longer tunnels. Just think, if all the infrastructure is electrified and can take much faster electric trains. Journey times between yards, places and stations can be alot shorter, especially on routes where the track is extremely long and straight as a ruler.
Click to expand...

Not quite that easy.... those pesky Track Classes come into play in the USA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States_(rail)

Have fun,:)
 
johnwhelan said:
From an accounting point of view 25 years is acceptable. Long term Canadian Government bonds are currently costing around 4% at the moment so even take it out to 40 years and you can pay it back at roughly 5% of the capital amount per year. Now this is where you get into a religious argument, should you use the government to guarantee the bond or not remembering that their responsibility should be to the population which stands to gain from the electrification.
Click to expand...

25 years is a long time for most companies to pay off an investment - most prefer to put their money into something with a shorter payback. As you say, this is the kind of project where some kind of bond finance is probably the best bet.

Many Americans would disagree saying that government should only respond to company lobbyists.
Click to expand...
Really? It's even more scary if the American people are happy with this kind of thing. In the rest of the (democratic) world governments have fallen over far less... (anyone in the UK remember cash for questions?)

There are upward pressures on the price of gas from what might be thought of as unusual sources.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=16727
Click to expand...

Now that is interesting. I guess the current fluctuating oil prices make it hard for Auto companies to provide what the market wants. It takes a lot of money to develop any new car, probably even more for hybrids and electric cars (at least when it's your first to market), so falling oil prices can really undermine this investment. Personally I suspect that $4-5 per gallon (as the article suggests) may not be enough to wean Americans off their gas-guzzling cars - that's about the price of gas here, and the roads are full of V6 sedans and SUVs. In Europe, where gas is more like $8 per gallon, 4 cylinders (especially diesels) rule.

Paul
 
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