Should We Electrify Freight RR?

Quote: In the United States it was estimated that it cost as much to electrify a railroad as it cost to build it in the first place.

Only in the US is this sad statement so true, and this failure to upgrade our infrastructure whatsoever, keeps our RR antiquated, behind all other countries technological advancements...that's why the US fails so miserably...never upgrade anything...just keep patching up the delapidated RR...Like the Penn Central did...fail to plan...plan to fail. The city of Altoona never did anything right...now it's nearly a ghost town.
 
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Well if theories about 'peak oil' have any foundation, then diesel will become prohibitively expensive in the future, so electification or batteries will be the only way forward. In the UK, there are now plans to electify the Great Western mainline, but that still leaves us with a lower proportion of electified route miles than many European countries. On the freight front, we've had the class 66 and now the new class 70s which are diesels, but I'm not aware of any plans for new electric freight locomotives, so clearly our (privatised) railways are just as hindbound at looking to the future as those in the USA.

Paul
 
im just curious, does anyone know the cost to electrify just one mile? UP has something like 33,000 miles of track and the BNSF has around the same amount.
 
Has anyone figured out where we are going to get the electricity?
There already are plans to ration electricity here in the USA.
"So how is that hope and change working for you?"
 
We'll be getting it from the same place you're shipping all your coal to...new coal fired power plants.

It has been said that if all the projected wind tunbines that are planned for installation the next 20 years, were online right now, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans, and new nuclear plants take 35 years to construct.

Build it...and they will come !
 
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does anyone know the cost to electrify just one mile?
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According to Trains, it is about 1.5 to 2.5 million dollars per mile. To keep it in context, widening an interstate highway by two lanes costs about $20 to $30 million per mile.
 
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ON TOPIC

We must learn to.... think outside of the box.


I am surprised to see that no one has posted a viable substitute for the current fuels used by the railroad industry.

Here is, perhaps, a viable substitute:

............................................L N G.........................................

http://www.wabtec.com/railroad/new.asp

Methane may also be a viable fuel in the future..... and we poor humans, along with cattle and other related areas, generate a lot of methane.

To our young adults who posted, do not limit your thinking based on past history....you are the future of the world. Look at the box, kick the box, then......think outside the box.

OFF TOPIC

SuperFudd said:
....snip.....
"So how is that hope and change working for you?"
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Well.... Wall Street is happy. Main Street (us, the little people) are not happy.

Have fun,:)
 
Hi aardvark1: Do you really think that Methane Fuel could create the same adhesion to the rails as electric engines could? Lets not forget that it has been proven that electricity would do that..



Bob Cass:) :)
 
BobCass said:
Hi aardvark1: Do you really think that Methane Fuel could create the same adhesion to the rails as electric engines could? Lets not forget that it has been proven that electricity would do that..



Bob Cass:) :)
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Ummm.... methane and LNG would power the motors that power the generators that make electricity that powers the traction motors on the locos.

Same as diesel fuel ... just an alternative.

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***BOX***
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Have fun, :)
 
The biggest issue with Methane (goes for hydrogen too), apart from increased risk of explosion, is the low energy density (i.e. bigger fuels tanks for the same range). Also LNG is not infinite in it's supply either...

Paul
 
Let's face it ladies, the only fuel available in sufficient quantities and with sufficient output is the fusion of nucleii. Of course the Americans will want to put them in single locos whilst the rest of us will be content to put it in our power stations. :eek:

Burning anything, petrol, oil, coal, LPG, LNG, methane, cow dung, prisoners sentenced to death or indecisive politicians will always produce CARBON. This is the end product that is causing our spaceship so much woe. :confused:

Folk seem to forget that the fuel issue is actually a two pronged problem:

1 Finite limited supplies :( and

2 Emmission of carbon into the atmosphere. :'(


Cheers

Nix
 
hmm, with material like that, the risks for a explosion and/or other accidents should not be ignored in anyway,I don't care if trains are carrying it or any other mode of transportation and safety should be on the high priority list,take that CSX tunnel fire that was sparked while handling dangerous material for example!:cool:
 
Absolutely right, but the essential difference twixt fision and fusion is that when fission gets out of control we have meltdown and all manner of mean nasty things and when fusion gets out of control it simply shuts down.

Fission also leaves the problem of spent fuel rods, fusion doesn't do that.



Cheers

Nix
 
indecisive politicians will always produce CARBON
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I can happily live with a little global warming caused by burning politicians, I could even suggest a little starter kindling but I won't go there in this group. :cool:
 
Fusion does generate waste

Google..... nuclear fusion waste products

Have fun,
 
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Holy rocketscience Batman! Those links lead to a mindboggling contusion of information! :eek:

If I understand it at all (and I ain't no Einsteen fellah, I'm just your average stiff) the amount and type of waste produced depends on the process and fuel source used. We gotta understand that viable fusion power is still a long ways off but from what I can work out it promises a better alternative to fission.

Let's face it guys, the only universal law is that of cause and effect and there is no process or machine we can devise that has no effect. It basically boils down to understanding those effects and finding a point of balance.

I still maintain the infernal combustion engine is of limited life.




Cheers

Nix


Here is what's in Wikipedia about waste:

Waste management

The large flux of high-energy neutrons in a reactor will make the structural materials radioactive. The radioactive inventory at shut-down may be comparable to that of a fission reactor, but there are important differences.
The half-life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tend to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Unlike fission reactors, whose waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, most of the radioactive material in a fusion reactor would be the reactor core itself, which would be dangerous for about 50 years, and low-level waste another 100. Although this waste will be considerably more radioactive during those 50 years than fission waste, the very short half-life makes the process very attractive, as the waste management is fairly straightforward. By 300 years the material would have the same radioactivity as coal ash.[8]
Additionally, the choice of materials used in a fusion reactor is less constrained than in a fission design, where many materials are required for their specific neutron cross-sections. This allows a fusion reactor to be designed using materials that are selected specifically to be "low activation", materials that do not easily become radioactive. Vanadium, for example, would become much less radioactive than stainless steel. Carbon fibre materials are also low-activation, as well as being strong and light, and are a promising area of study for laser-inertial reactors where a magnetic field is not required.
In general terms, fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, the material it would create is less damaging biologically, and the radioactivity "burns off" within a time period that is well within existing engineering capabilities.
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Doing what your told...

:cool: Don't count out oil, according to the USGS we have discovered where the oil is in the USA, it's called the Bakken Reserves...one of four assessment units located in the continental US-America.

Having said that, the talk around about global warming whether it's scientific(much is not, some is & that's not science...) or not or whether we can do anything about it(not as much as heat-lightning does all the time), along with selfishly greedy oil rich nations that have forced the perfection of "green-renewable resources," I can say the solutions are being arrived upon...

I would say that we need to upgrade the existing rail corridors & infra-structure, rethink about how fast we need to travel & on what mode that should be, then talk about electrification...

The existing rail infrastructure would not be profitable to electrify.

We are too far into the 21st Century to go back to the stone age...:hehe:
 
Folk seem to forget that the fuel issue is actually a two pronged problem:

1 Finite limited supplies :( and

2 Emmission of carbon into the atmosphere. :'(


Cheers

Nix
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Problem 1 is over rated.
Problem 2 is not a problem.
 
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