Extinction of steam locomotives derails assumptions about biological evolution, claims researcher

[jemhouston]

Nothing like an electric locomotive chugging over the rockies when all of a sudden there is a brown out. Still thinking that there is a place for steam at each end of the technology cycle. First time during the age of discovery and the second time during the age of collapse.

If you have problems with brown-outs on your electrical grid you really need to join the 20th century!

Explain that to California. https://abcnews.go.com/US/california-bl ... d=89460998

[David Newton]

Oh and of anyone vlaims really long-distance electrification doesn't work see the Trans-Siberran Railway; and by the way the Indians are running double-stack intermodals with electric traction.

The UK's level of electrification is bad and we've botched recent schemes badly. However the UK is a paradise for electric trains compared to the US.

[kdahm]

Oh and of anyone vlaims really long-distance electrification doesn't work see the Trans-Siberran Railway; and by the way the Indians are running double-stack intermodals with electric traction.

The UK's level of electrification is bad and we've botched recent schemes badly. However the UK is a paradise for electric trains compared to the US.

It's not that long distance electrification doesn't work. It's just that there are some very high fixed costs associated with that would need to be paid. The Trans-Siberia, for example, is one long route, much easier than the 140,000 miles of non-electrified US network. And there are 26,000 +/- locomotives in the US which would need to be replaced. The sunk costs are incredibly high.

Is that a reason to not electrify some sections? No, because there are definite advantages to it. But adoption will be slow, after the decline in US electrification is reversed. I don't know if the difference in running costs is sufficient to pay for the all of the extra infrastructure, or if it's just the railroads and regulators that are holding things back.

[David Newton]

Sunk costs for locomotives are irrelevant in the medium to long term. Why? Locomotives will need to be replaced at some point in any case. So electrification can be done on routes where locomotives are due to be replaced or locomotives can be redeployed to routes where other engines are due to be replaced.

However that still does leave the infrastructure costs for catenary and power supply infrastructure and altering trackbed levels and replacing overbridges and dealing with any tunnels. Quite considerable costs.

Reality is that rail infrastructure in the US is in incredibly poor condition as with so much in the country. The track speeds in the US are pathetic. Again the UK is bad compared to many places but the US is a lot worse. Outside of the Acela corridor so far as I am aware there is nowhere in the US with a line speed higher than 79 mph. Brightline in Florida will have higher speeds but still only 125 mph. The UK's been running trains at that speed for nearly half a century on multiple routes. Line speeds of 90, 100 or 110 mph are extremely common. We're also now finally beginning to get cab signalling in place which may allow for 140 mph running on some sections of the East Coast Mainline. That's a small side benefit of the cab signalling but it's there.

Even for freight running at 60 mph for a great deal of the traffic over major sections of route is commonplace. UK freight trains are nowhere the length of US ones and the routes are far less mountainous but there is a case that US freight trains are now getting too long. Taking too long to pass level crossings and putting too much onto one train crew. Recent safety levels at many of the Class 1 companies have been deteriorating due to overworked crews and badly maintained track.

[Belushi TD]

I know not enough about the intricacies of railroads to be able to comment on most of your post, David, but I think there's an issue with the first paragraph.

There are multiple companies running railroads in the US, and I wish Theodore was still active, as he would be far better able to comment on this than me. With multiple companies running the rails, you can only shift so many of the locomotives to other routes while you electrify one route. Say, for example, you have a fraction of your locomotive stock needing replacement every year. Since I don't know how long a locomotive lasts, I can't give you a percentage. However, you will need to pay to electrify that same percentage of the routes each year, while, at the same time, purchasing new locomotives. At some point, you are very likely to end up where the percentage you need to replace/electrify is signficantly smaller than the length of the routes you are running, so you end up being VERY uneconomical in one manner or another. Either you're getting rid of locomotives that still have useful life, or you're only electrifying part of a route, and you either have to switch engines once the train gets to the end of the electrified route or you have to run other locomotives when part of the route is already electrified.

You can't just use logic and say "Hey, electrify this amount this year, and switch the locomotives around as needed" because, quite rapidly, the areas being electrified won't match up with the locomotives, and you'll be forcing companies to lose money. Then you'll get your ass sued.

Belushi TD

[Pdf27]

Explain that to California.

It applies to both California and Texas.

It's not that long distance electrification doesn't work. It's just that there are some very high fixed costs associated with that would need to be paid. The Trans-Siberia, for example, is one long route, much easier than the 140,000 miles of non-electrified US network. And there are 26,000 +/- locomotives in the US which would need to be replaced. The sunk costs are incredibly high.

Is that a reason to not electrify some sections? No, because there are definite advantages to it. But adoption will be slow, after the decline in US electrification is reversed. I don't know if the difference in running costs is sufficient to pay for the all of the extra infrastructure, or if it's just the railroads and regulators that are holding things back.

Financing is the issue. Payback times are pretty long (decades) and the way US Railroad companies are set up would mean that the capital required to do this would be returned to shareholders despite the fact that investing in it would be massively valuable for the company in the long run.

Reality is that rail infrastructure in the US is in incredibly poor condition as with so much in the country. The track speeds in the US are pathetic. Again the UK is bad compared to many places but the US is a lot worse. Outside of the Acela corridor so far as I am aware there is nowhere in the US with a line speed higher than 79 mph. Brightline in Florida will have higher speeds but still only 125 mph. The UK's been running trains at that speed for nearly half a century on multiple routes. Line speeds of 90, 100 or 110 mph are extremely common. We're also now finally beginning to get cab signalling in place which may allow for 140 mph running on some sections of the East Coast Mainline. That's a small side benefit of the cab signalling but it's there.

That's only relevant for passenger rail, which in the US was essentially killed off decades ago. However, freight running speeds are pretty slow in the US - made possible by getting rid of passenger rail and then letting them cheese-pare on maintenance costs. This is also tied in with the type of freight carried - mostly bulk goods like coal which aren't time-sensitive.

With multiple companies running the rails, you can only shift so many of the locomotives to other routes while you electrify one route. Say, for example, you have a fraction of your locomotive stock needing replacement every year. Since I don't know how long a locomotive lasts, I can't give you a percentage. However, you will need to pay to electrify that same percentage of the routes each year, while, at the same time, purchasing new locomotives. At some point, you are very likely to end up where the percentage you need to replace/electrify is signficantly smaller than the length of the routes you are running, so you end up being VERY uneconomical in one manner or another. Either you're getting rid of locomotives that still have useful life, or you're only electrifying part of a route, and you either have to switch engines once the train gets to the end of the electrified route or you have to run other locomotives when part of the route is already electrified.

You can't just use logic and say "Hey, electrify this amount this year, and switch the locomotives around as needed" because, quite rapidly, the areas being electrified won't match up with the locomotives, and you'll be forcing companies to lose money. Then you'll get your ass sued.

That's actually pretty simple to handle - you can still run diesel locomotives under the wires, this happens all the time when a train's route passes through both electrified and non-electrified sections. Given the level of consolidation in the US railroad industry, this is also likely to be a fairly minor issue.

[Kunkmiester]

Don't they also have hybrid locomotives? It would cost more individually but would make it easier to electrify since you can set up where it pays off best. Say, California where you might get tax credits or something, or long single lines across the plains states.

[Pdf27]

Don't they also have hybrid locomotives? It would cost more individually but would make it easier to electrify since you can set up where it pays off best. Say, California where you might get tax credits or something, or long single lines across the plains states.

Mostly useful for light/commuter rail - use the batteries for regenerative braking coming into stations.

You also have bi-mode engines: diesel-electrics where you can feed the motors from the overhead wires. Bit more expensive to buy than standard diesel-electrics and we have power output issues in the UK where the infrastructure means we have to have relatively small trains, but no major problem.

[Kunkmiester]

Bimode was what I meant, thanks.

[David Newton]

An example of that being the Class 88.

[Pdf27]

Bimode was what I meant, thanks.

Also known as electro-diesel depending on where you are. They've been around for about a century now.

[kdahm]

Sunk costs for locomotives are irrelevant in the medium to long term. Why? Locomotives will need to be replaced at some point in any case. So electrification can be done on routes where locomotives are due to be replaced or locomotives can be redeployed to routes where other engines are due to be replaced.

However that still does leave the infrastructure costs for catenary and power supply infrastructure and altering trackbed levels and replacing overbridges and dealing with any tunnels. Quite considerable costs.

Reality is that rail infrastructure in the US is in incredibly poor condition as with so much in the country. The track speeds in the US are pathetic. Again the UK is bad compared to many places but the US is a lot worse. Outside of the Acela corridor so far as I am aware there is nowhere in the US with a line speed higher than 79 mph. Brightline in Florida will have higher speeds but still only 125 mph. The UK's been running trains at that speed for nearly half a century on multiple routes. Line speeds of 90, 100 or 110 mph are extremely common. We're also now finally beginning to get cab signalling in place which may allow for 140 mph running on some sections of the East Coast Mainline. That's a small side benefit of the cab signalling but it's there.

Even for freight running at 60 mph for a great deal of the traffic over major sections of route is commonplace. UK freight trains are nowhere the length of US ones and the routes are far less mountainous but there is a case that US freight trains are now getting too long. Taking too long to pass level crossings and putting too much onto one train crew. Recent safety levels at many of the Class 1 companies have been deteriorating due to overworked crews and badly maintained track.

I think you are applying European thinking to the US railroads, and that's leading you down the wrong path.While there is a lot of track in poor condition in the US and maintenance has certainly been a recurring problem, you assume that high speeds are actually desired and achievable.

Here are some numbers:
US: 140,000 miles of track, less than 1000 electrified. 550 million passenger trips/year. 1.7 trillion ton-miles of freight/year. That gives 3,900 passengers per mile and 12 million ton-miles/mile of track per yer.
Great Britain: 9824 miles of track, 3300 electrified. 1.7 billion passenger trips/year. 17 billion ton-miles of freight. That gives 173,000 passengers/mile and 1.7 million ton-miles/mile of track per year.
Germany: 20,753 miles (DB only), 12,760 electrified. 148 billion long-distance and 2.7 billion local passenger trips/year. 72 billion ton-mile of freight. Yielding 135,000 passengers/mile and 3.5 million ton-miles per mile of track per year.

Totally different regimes. Both the GB and German rail systems are operated primarily for passenger service, with fitting in as it can and primarily at night. Freight trains have to keep up with passenger trains. Even at that, only 1/3 of the GB system and 60% of the German system is electrified.

In contrast, the US system is run by and for freight, with passenger service added on. Predictability is more important than high speed. In fact, for most of it West of the Rockies, high speed would actually be prohibited. For much of that, the road system has pavement built along the rail corridors and towns located every five or ten miles where the rail passes through the actual town (See wrong side of the tracks for examples). Every few miles where they do run parallel, intersecting roads have to cross the tracks. There are about 212,000 at-grade highway rail crossings in the US, more than one per mile. The trains have to slow down to about 35 mph in the towns, and are limited to 65-70 tops between towns. Otherwise, the number of vehicle-train collisions would become even more of a problem (2188 collisions, 274 fatalities in 2022, compared to UK - less than 25 collisions and 10 fatalities). A lot of that difference is that Great Britain and Germany have done much to remove at-grade crossings on the main line, while there simply isn't enough money to do so in the US.

Then there are the trains themselves. The European train height is typically limited to 5m or about 16.5 ft. For the northeast US and in areas with a lot of tunnels, it's the same. However, much of the US doesn't have that limitation and it's common to have double stacked containers and high cars at up to 20.5 ft. That's a lot higher to make something that will pull electricity down from the catenaries. In addition, there are all of those at-grade crossings, where electrification would have to span over a road and there are issues with over-height vehicles. Finally, the distance between electricity sources and transmission lines in the US means that line losses on the catenaries would also be a significant number.

The final point I'd make is economic. Even though there is a capital cost, the railroads do have decent pockets and can afford to gradually electrify some segments. If the cost of doing so is paid back in reduced fuel costs and engine maintenance in a reasonable period. For that matter, there are many rail yards in the US using switch engines. If electrification were worth it, the cost of doing so in the railyards and going to all-electric switchers would make sense, yet it doesn't seem to be happening. US businesses tend to do things when they can make money at it, when they can lose less money, or the Government will pay them to do so.

Incidentally, the idea of the Alaska Railroad electrifying anytime in the next few decades is laughable.

[Belushi TD]

And kdahm has both the eloquence and the statistics to say what I was trying to say earlier in the thread, and failed dismally.

Thank you, Sir.

Belushi TD

[David Newton]

The point about train height isn't relevant. The Indians are already running double-stack container trains using electric motive power. I specifically mentioned this earlier in the thread.

Regarding over-height loads and level crossings? Well that's a different matter. That's to some degree down to each line's configuration and is specific to each route. However it is something I didn't pick up on.

Level crossings and line access in the US in general are appalling. There's a reason railways are fenced off in the UK. There's a reason level crossings get removed where possible. 1 fatality per 511 miles of track v 1 fatality per 982 miles of track. The UK is nearly twice as safe in that regard. That's not a marginal difference. That's a huge difference. Expensive to sort out, but US railways should be making at least some effort to get rid of particularly dangerous level crossings.

Something that would be much, much simpler to do would be to properly fence the non-street running urban sections of US railways. Obviously is the trains are actually running along roads that's not an option. However there are many, many places in the US where simply fencing the railway off properly to prevent yokels wandering onto the tracks would greatly increase safety for a comparatively small expenditure and would allow line speeds to be substantially increased. Fencing rural US railways would obviously be a very different prospect!

With proper fencing there's no fundamental reason for a non-street running train to slow down at all when going through urban areas. That alone could result in substantial time savings for journeys.

[Pdf27]

In contrast, the US system is run by and for freight, with passenger service added on. Predictability is more important than high speed.

I would add an important corollary to this: the US system is built around non time sensitive freight. In the US goods have much further to travel from navigable waterways than in Europe, meaning that the railways can meaningfully compete for the bulk traffic that is easiest for them to handle and which can be delivered slowly at low capital cost. European railways don't have nearly so much potential bulk traffic (between the sea, Rhine, Danube, etc. the distance from suitable waterways is really rather short) and so need to compete for the higher value traffic which in the US has largely gone to road. So it isn't just that the US have concentrated on freight at the expense of passengers, but that they have concentrated on a different sort of freight which is difficult for European railways to address cost-effectively.

In fact, for most of it West of the Rockies, high speed would actually be prohibited. For much of that, the road system has pavement built along the rail corridors and towns located every five or ten miles where the rail passes through the actual town (See wrong side of the tracks for examples). Every few miles where they do run parallel, intersecting roads have to cross the tracks. There are about 212,000 at-grade highway rail crossings in the US, more than one per mile. The trains have to slow down to about 35 mph in the towns, and are limited to 65-70 tops between towns. Otherwise, the number of vehicle-train collisions would become even more of a problem (2188 collisions, 274 fatalities in 2022, compared to UK - less than 25 collisions and 10 fatalities). A lot of that difference is that Great Britain and Germany have done much to remove at-grade crossings on the main line, while there simply isn't enough money to do so in the US.

The last point is where this all falls down. The money is there in the event that the US railroads feel the need to spend it. Because of the particular way they're run (focussing on minimum cost per tonne of extremely large block trains carrying bulk goods) they don't see any value in sorting this. In the UK and Germany the focus is on something else, and as such the at-grade crossings have been gradually eliminated to support this focus.

Then there are the trains themselves. The European train height is typically limited to 5m or about 16.5 ft. For the northeast US and in areas with a lot of tunnels, it's the same. However, much of the US doesn't have that limitation and it's common to have double stacked containers and high cars at up to 20.5 ft. That's a lot higher to make something that will pull electricity down from the catenaries.

In addition, there are all of those at-grade crossings, where electrification would have to span over a road and there are issues with over-height vehicles.

That one has the power cables at 26ft 3in - do you really have many vehicles that tall on the roads?

Finally, the distance between electricity sources and transmission lines in the US means that line losses on the catenaries would also be a significant number.

Not really - train electrification is nearly all at 25kV AC these days for which transmission losses are very low. Even the Milwaukee Road system in the Western US (3kV DC) was much cheaper to run than dieselisation, being eventually ripped out in what was borderline fraud (the final few years of that particular railroad have a strong whiff of Enron about them).

The final point I'd make is economic. Even though there is a capital cost, the railroads do have decent pockets and can afford to gradually electrify some segments. If the cost of doing so is paid back in reduced fuel costs and engine maintenance in a reasonable period. For that matter, there are many rail yards in the US using switch engines. If electrification were worth it, the cost of doing so in the railyards and going to all-electric switchers would make sense, yet it doesn't seem to be happening. US businesses tend to do things when they can make money at it, when they can lose less money, or the Government will pay them to do so.

It's worth noting that "reasonable period" in US terms is different to the rest of the world, largely due to the expectations of Wall Street. If they had the capital to do said electrification projects, unless the payback was extremely fast (<5 years probably) they would be expected to return the capital to shareholders via a stock buyback rather than invest it in their infrastructure. For equipment and civils which will last for 30 years or more, this is a really poor way to measure value.

[rtoldman]

Comments about time demand in freight got me thinking. Since freight is the primary rail function in non metro US, is there an actual cost vs speed table for rail freight? Sort of like in a ship, laws of physics and ship design incur predictable costs in increasing a ships speed. While a ship can go faster, it is not necessarily efficient. For totally different reasons might there be an optimal train speed for freight?

[Poohbah]

Comments about time demand in freight got me thinking. Since freight is the primary rail function in non metro US, is there an actual cost vs speed table for rail freight? Sort of like in a ship, laws of physics and ship design incur predictable costs in increasing a ships speed. While a ship can go faster, it is not necessarily efficient. For totally different reasons might there be an optimal train speed for freight?

The one I do know about is 24 MPH.

Above that, you have a functioning rail network from sea to shining sea, rolling serenely o'er purple mountain majesties and across the fruited plain alike...

Below that, you have a clusterf**k of bottlenecks and overloaded sidings.

[Dirk Mothaar]

Dont say never. In a world of limited hydrocarbons, steam trains will make a come back. I dont see a battery powered locomotive pulling cars over the rockies. Is there such a thing as a nuke locomotive?

If only there was a way that electrical wires could follow the train...

Pfff. It’ll never catch on!

Have you seen the kind of winds that go through Wyoming on a regular basis? I dispatch trains in the Rocky Mountains and that picture fills me with dread.

[Johnnie Lyle]

If only there was a way that electrical wires could follow the train...

Pfff. It’ll never catch on!

Have you seen the kind of winds that go through Wyoming on a regular basis? I dispatch trains in the Rocky Mountains and that picture fills me with dread.

Or California? Snow, ice, wind cause serious problems with power lines, especially if they’re not maintained well.

Lots of rail traffic runs through PSPS shutoff areas, so you could easily see your train deenergized to ensure they don’t start a fire.

[David Newton]

Snow and ice are solved problems. See the Trans-Siberian Railway for example which deals with worse winter weather than anywhere in the US.

As for wind? Again there are places that are at least as bad as the US that are electrified and cope absolutely fine.

There are economic arguments about the situation for sure but fundamentally the US rail system could be electrified. A lot of the problem stems from the fundamental short-termism which grips so much of corporate America. Regulatory changes could certainly help considerably with that.

Overall I think it ultimately comes down to the US railway system being a run-down, poorly-managed sector. The combination of road and air competition has ground it down to the point where it just doesn't have the resources to do much. The class 1 railways aren't dead men walking, but they're not dynamic, flexible institutions either. They're far more toward the dead end of the scale than the dynamic end.