World rail speed record broken.

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Also what killed rail passenger service in the 50's was the rapidly growing airline industry.
I don't see how High speed passenger rail service in the US can work unless it build entirely separate rail network from the freight lines-You can only imagine high speed passenger trains can never "share"the same tracks that the slower moving freights use.Also another big problem in the US for the high speed passenger trains is grade crossings-we can only imagine what could happen if a 250MPH train hits a car at a grade crossing.The car will be destroyed and the car would serve as a stunt launch ramp for the train-the lead cars of that train will fly at those speeds.and when the train leaves the tracks-no contreol of it whatsoever.Can you imagine the nightmares planning high speed passenger routes in the US?I would love to see it-but don't think it will happen.I think it would be difficult to get folks to ride the trains again no matter how fast since they are so used to their cars and low cost airline service.
Yes-I too love how the Railroads maintain ALL of their equipment largely by themselves-and even build special equipment to do these tasks.
 
Not An RR Worker, Just a Buff

Yes, to both! As airlines switched to jets, long distance travel quickly switched to air, with short distance travel done mostly by car (on those new federally paid for highways/roads). This is totally did the RRs in as they lost most if not all their market. Just for the record passenger traffic on railroads never really was that profitable, well not after the turn of the century thereabouts. Freight is what paid the bills and still does. Railroads that had a steady and good freight business like UP are still around. Many of the rest either went bankrupt or merged themselves to death and in the end the merged RR died as well. Don't forget also many RR's made their money hauling coal. As railroads switched from non-steam engines, and homes switched to oil or natural gas for heating less coal was needed. Still, large amounts of coal are hauled to power plants.

As for HSR and traffic accidents, by it's nature High Speed Rail has no or very few grade crossings. This is why HSR costs so much as totally new lines are normally built. A high speed train may travel over conventional rails for part of it's route, but the real speed comes when it gets onto it's own tracks. The only fatal accident in the history of France's TGV occured when a TGV train hit a car at a grade crossing as the train was not on it's own dedicated line. The car was totally destroyed (IIRC sliced into two), the train suffered only minimal damage and mainly just derailed. Still no one on the train was injured, and the the entire TGV train remained upright.

L.
 
Off hand you would think that grade crossing accidents are sometime things you hear or read about one every few months or so but in reality there is at least one if not two or three every single day somewhere in N.America. The ones I never understood were the old farmer in his pickup out on the prairies getting creamed by a train on a country crossing where you can see a train coming in either direction for miles. Very odd when you hear from the crew that the guy wasn't speeding or anything, just poking along and never stopped like he never saw it coming.
 
I too,am a RR buff-not an employee-It would be VERY interesting to work for the RR-Instead of transportation-I work in communications.Interested in both.-mass communication and transit.
In the accident involving the TVG train-that is amazing the car didn't act as a "launch ramp" for the train.I would think a derailment at those high speeds would be very dangerous-for folks on the train and anyone nearby.The incident could of been worse-doesn't the few grade crossings have sensors that tell incoming TVG train crews that something is on the track?and if the crew DOSEN"T take action-the train is slowed and braked to a stop automatically.Maybe that was on the Japanese "Bullet" train system.Theirs has a amazing safety record as well.Impressed with both.If only Amtrack was that safe!Another thought for a new Hi Speed RR system-think acquiring the property for it would be darn near impossible and unecomical.RR's typically own the "strips" of property their tracks are laid on.
Coal is still a large business for the RR'swe still have lots of coal powerplants and still more are going to be built.Not only are the RR's needed to haul the coal-but power plant boiler parts,Generators,and turbines-these are too large and heavy to be hauled by truck.These peices of equipment are shipped by rail to and from the powerr plants when new itmes are purchased by the power company-or when defective ones have to be shipped to their manufactuers for repairs-like gen rewinding-A rotor for a large power station generator 800Mw-could weigh more than a 100tons-and equally interesting-when its in use be spinning up to 3600RPM!The rotor(feild) and stators both have windings.
On steam railroads-the bigholdouts are China,India,and Africa-these still use steam locomotives-but they are converting over to deisels rapidly.Steam equipment is costly to maintain-and is more dangerous to operate.These countries do have low cost labor and large coal supplies making steam still useful to them.A while back in "Trains" magazine they had an excellent article on the narrow guage RR's used in Cuba to haul sugercane to their suger mills.the locomotives where fired by sugercane residue instead of coal or oil.and these locomotives date back to the 1890's some of the oldest RR equipment still in use.The Cubans are clever to keep those old loco's still going!they have to fabicate ALL of the parts.
 
Communications is big area of RR operations, falls under Signals and Communications. All the Class 1 RR's should have employment opportunites posted on their websites. In fact most if not all of them are near desperate for new employees in the operations end of things notably train crews but singals and comm as well. They are all 10 years ahead of the national average in aging employee retirements and the exodus began about 2 years ago. UP was getting so bad they were having to leave enroute trains stranded at crew change points because they didn't have enough employees. It got so bad 2 summers ago they had to request crews from all the other RR's including the Canadian ones to keep their trains running. They meaning all the RR's are finding it very difficult to find any kids who even want the jobs because none of them want that type of work, they all want cushy office jobs, no nights, no away from home, it's true. I told my great nephew to apply but he doesn't want it, nor does a good friend of mines son, neither have college, but they could get a RR crew job and be pulling in $40k easily and near double that in just a few short years. They'd also bend over backwards to get more girls interested because it's the one area of the RR's where woman aren't that interested.
Check out UP.. at UP.com for example.
 
Tolivac, do not know all the particulars of the French TGV rail accident,but do know that since the train was not on it's dedicated track it would not be running at full speed. It certinaly wouldn't be allow to run that fast on tracks with/near/approaching a grade crossing. OTHO there was a VERY bad HSR accident a year or so back involving a German ICE HSR train in Germany. That accident had a large loss of life and injury rate. Don't remember exactly what happened, but IIRC the train some how jumped track and smashed into a tunnel it was about to enter into.

High speed rail as I stated, when running true to form, that is in speeds in excess of 150 mph or so most always does so on dedicated HSR tracks. That means cab signal system instead of track signals, special block signal timing and other safety measures. Also HSR lines do not have big heavy freight trains running on them the way normal railroad ROW's do.

Speaking of right of ways (ROWs), it was the taxes railroads had to pay on that and other real estate that helped drive many out of business. Many Northeast and Mid-west states heavily taxed railroads as a hold over from when they were one of the largest industries in the country.

Yes, it would be VERY expensive to aquire new rights of way to build any rail line today, especially when one considers the rather low return on investment. This applies to passenger traffic, in many areas freight traffic is booming and cannot keep up with demand. Railroads ripped up much double, triple and even four track right of ways back in the bad days to save money. Again less rail equalled less taxes on right of way. Many abandoned rail lines were turned into bike and nature paths so they cannot be returned to trains even if anyone wanted.

Steam is not a very good nor economical way to power a locomotive. Basically from the time the boiler is ready, things start to go down from there. Not to mention steam locomotives are labour intensive, and very dirty. After WWII and diesels came on the scene in a big way, American RRs couldn't dump their steam locomotives fast enough. A few tried to stick with steam, but eventually all converted over. In a test one early diesel (think it was by GM)took a freight train cross country without having to stop for fuel and did not break down. In an era when steam locomotives would have to stop every 50 miles or so for coal and water, RRs at once saw the time savings. Labour was another matter as the unions also saw what was coming up the pike and fought hard to keep the same number of men working the trains, weather they were needed or not.

PeteK:

It is a crying shame isn't it that those jobs go begging cause everyone wants to be the next Bill Gates or a Wall Street tycoon. RR's pay good money, but like everything else one has to pay dues.This means starting out at the bottom and taking the less than flashy jobs/shifts until your number comes up.

L.
 
Steam worked well for powering trains for well over 100 years until deisels and electrics took over.for what a steam locomotive is-its amazing that they even worked-like a bumblebee flying.The "big Boy" class of steam locos have about the same pulling power as some deisels.There is some fascination about steam equipment-its almost like its a living thing with the sounds and motions of all those moving parts.Deisels and electrics of course have far fewer moving parts.There is some steam equipment in use-but primarily for steam railfans. It is not used for profit service other then rides for railfans.Its good that it is-Its an art that should be preserved-its better that those steam locos have some use rather than a boring static display in a park or museum.Yes they pollute-are expensive to run-but they are fun.At present the India,chinese,African RR's are converting from steam to electric and deisel.Many Railfans liked to travel to those places to see and ride their steam trains.
On RR jobs-its too bad more folks aren't interested.Railroading is hard and dangerous,dirty work-but someone has to do it.Rr's should make the jobs more attractive-the pay and benefits are excellent.I would consider it if I was younger.It is the nations oldest industry.Seems like everyone has some interest in it in some way or another.With more goods needing to be moved-RR's are needed more than ever.Oh yes-saw a "crew change" at a VRE train stop in Manassas -It was on the "C&O" or was it B&O"the freight train stopped at the commuter stop.A taxicab pulled up to the station.The fresh crew got out of the cab and went to the train.The old crew and them talked a few minutes-then the train left with the fresh crew.the releived crew got into the cab and it left.Didn't take more than 15min.Almost like a shift change at where I work-but no cab.Assume the RR pays for the cab.Yes,I knew of someone that worked in the communications dept for the B&O Railroad -he now works for the same agency I do.He worked for the RR for several years and commented in their good pay and benefits-better than most other jobs.Now he wished he stayed with the RR.
 
The ICE Crash

The ICE crash was caused by a wheel design flaw. The ICE train involved actually has a totally different design to the TGV which has been operating almost incident free for well over 20 years.

The ICE trains had compound wheels, basically the wheels had a shock absorber built into the wheel itself. There was a layer of rubber sandwiched between the outer rim of the wheel and the wheel body. It somehow became damaged and the wheel disintegrated at speed causing the train to leave the rails!

TGV trains have a completely different wheel layout to ICE, or any standard train. The wheels are very large and sit between the coaches rather than under them. The trains themselves are also fully articulated and this has proven an enormous advantage in terms of crash worthiness as the TGVs tend to remain fully intact and in line with the rails rather than splitting up.

Interestingly, the alcela express does not have that design and is not articulated. It uses bombardier coaches which are not of TGV design at all.

It's highly unlikely the ICE style accident could happen a TGV.
Also, next generation ICE will be more TGV like..
 
The TGV interiors are pretty funky

This is the new interior being rolled out across the TGV fleet

4-8-2007-10-40-13--mrx.jpg
 
Business class

Here's business class

These trains carry over 850million people per year, without incident. Probabally a safer record than even the safest aircraft.

4-8-2007-10-40-47--mrx.jpg
 
Here's their corporate video :)

This is a video showing the upgrading of the SNCF network 1980 to 2007

 
Here's their corporate video :)

This is a video showing the upgrading of the SNCF network 1980 to 2007

 
And you cannot escape their trademarked jingle!

Everytime the automatic announcement system in any station in france announces anything you get their little jingle!

 
High Speed Rail in the U.S.

A regional high speed rail system linking primary cities in California and Las Vegas makes a lot of sense. So would regional lines in some other parts of the country. For really nationwide travel, though, even most high speed rail is too slow compared to aircraft. For instance, at an average of 150 mph it would still take roughly 8.5 hours of travel time just to go from LA to Dallas, and 20 from LA to NYC. Factor in stops in other major cities along the way and to make that 150 mph average the train would have to be going considerably faster.

Laundress is right in that true high speed rail can't have at grade crossings . . . this contributes to the enormous cost. Unfortunatley I think Gov. Schwarzenegger is going to cut the research budget for the California line, so who knows when or if that will happen. Not soon, that's for sure. The beauty of a line like this or other regional lines is that they would remove a significant amount of traffic from airports in the form of people flying short distances of under 600 miles or so.

One reason pasenger trains went downhill in this country is their own lack of interest in customer service and comfort. When I was a very small child in the early '60s my mother like to take me and my sister on long summer trips from our home in Dallas to visit family in LA and Seattle. She didn't like flying so we usually took the train. I still vaguely recall sitting in the observation car and looking through those wonderful green tinted windows at the scenery. That might have been on the Portland Rose, although I'm not sure. Some time in the mid '60s the railroads started to downgrade their service, with the last straw being the removal of dining cars from many routes. Mom said she wasn't going to try to feed herself and two small children from vending machines, and from that point we always took the plane.
 
They make an aweful lot of sense on medium distances.

High speed trains make an aweful lot of sense for short to medium haul distances and would work fantastically well in areas like the North East US / Southeastern Canada.

California
Between the texan cities.
Between the midwest cities.
Perhaps the pacific northeast too Vancouver into Washington state and seattle.

They can carry a lot more people, much more efficiently and avoid all the hassle associated with air transport.

Of couse, longer haul and unreachable destinations make more sense by air due to the speed.

But, for example on a typical french long TGV route, the train will beat the aircraft by delivering you point to point city centre to city centre without any check-in or security queues.

Each train can also carry hundreds of people, operate much more frequently, provide a far higher level of on board services e.g. restaurants and bars. Big comfortable work spaces, tables, etc etc. Not to mention you can use your mobile phone for calls, or thesedays 3G internet access at decent speed.

It can also make use of energy generated from CO2 neutral sources i.e. from hydropower, nuclear, wind, etc

They make a lot of sense on busy routes in Europe between cities that are up to even 1000km apart. When you start to go beyond 4 hours, aircraft have an edge.

There are plenty of examples of where it could work extremely well in the US and Canada. Any area where you want to link a number of cities within a reach of eachother in a few hours by TGV.

In Europe it would be equally impractical on longer haul routes where air transport's the only option.

Really you'd want to be looking at faster than 150mph too. The majority of the TGV network operates at between 186 and 200mph, the very early generation (now all upgraded) ran at 169mph (TGV Sud Est)
 
HSR In The United States

Suffers from several starting problems:

First diesel trains top out at around 125mph, which means true high speeds require electric power and that is something rare in the United States outside a few areas. Aside from parts of the former Pennsy NEC, there are few electrified rail lines in the states. Those ROWs that were electrified such as the fromer Milwaukee Road, ripped out that infrastructure long ago. This is one of the reasons building a HSR is so expensive. Aside from that not many communites are egar to have all those poles/cantenarys up and down their areas. Europe had the benefit of moving from steam locomotives almost straight to electric power after the war mainly because petrol is dear on that side of the pond, with no natural resource. Contrasted with the United States which had ample supplies of petrol which made diesel cheaper than over head electrical power (in essence diesel locomotives are electric powered, just they produce such power internally rather than taking it from wire/tracks). Heck at the time diesels were taking over from steam petrol was cheaper than coal, which was another reason for the switch over.

HSR really "works" when the distances travelled are around a 300 mile radius between points. In highly developed urban areas of the Northeast such as between Washington DC and Boston for instance. Or Chicago and the Twin Cities. After the 300 mile distance benefits begin to fall off as planes are faster. One would probably have to sell passengers on the ease of travel or other benefits verus air travel to make it work, and one would need a steady stream of passengers.

Railroad Services and Their Decline:

As stated passenger service for most railroads broke even at best or was a loss even at the best of times. Reason it was there is that the government mandated all Class I RRs have passenger service. Indeed any RR with any pretentions of being a major RR wanted a first class passenger service as sort of "bragging rights". Well that service costs money, and increasingly RRs were in short supply. Labour laws and other costs made staffing and running things such as dining cars and or offering food service very expensive. Prices even by the day's standards weren't cheap either, and many people simply packed a box lunch/meal to take along (rather like flying today), instead of paying for food on the train. First class passengers on long distance trains were another story, but after the 1960's or so they pretty much had switched over to air travel (the Jet Age),along with much of the businessman travel. This left not much of a large paying market for many services such as a dining car. Well let us say what passengers that were left were willing/afford to pay was not what it cost the RR to provide the service. So things began to go by the wayside.

Speaking of Big Boys!

Those were some remarkable locomotives, but ate coal and drank water. IIRC didn't get more than 30 miles or so before requiring a recoaling/water. That simply wouldn't do today as freight customers want goods moved fast. If trains are to compete they must be as if not more reliable and fast as trucks, their main competition. Remember also steam locomotives cannot be kept in constant travel. After a period of time (weekly or monthly), the locomotive must be taken out of service for a "shed day", where her fires are dropped, and he boilers cleaned amoung other things. Think of a steam locomotive as one large steam boiler on wheels and you get the idea of what sort of maintainence must be done. Just has coal fired home boilers need work, so do steam engines. There is no getting around diesel locomotives are easier and cheaper to run than steam. They are mostly vastly more reliable than steam engines and have a very long life span with less work needed.

What diesel locomotive makers got railroads to look at was instead of having one or maybe two huge steam locomotives to haul a heavy train, diesels could be lashed up in units to create the horsepower needed for a particular train. This is still how it's done today. A RR take alook at the load and allocates the head end power (or in case of very heavy freights end and middle power as well),required for the job. Beauty of diesels is one man can control all the engines in the lash up, rather than several steam locomotives each with it's own engineer.

HSR is somewhat easier to build in Europe and other places as there isn't a NIMBY tradition and people running to courts that will block the project. By and large the State decides what is required and goes about it,in a democratic fashion, but still it is less bothersome when compared to the United States. To build a HSR between say Washington DC and Boston involves no less than several states, each with their own views and can block any project. The only way around this would be for the federal government to step in with some sort of eminent domain powers, but that is a very touchy matter.

Final thing to consider is that Americans are simple too wedded to driving short and in some cases even long distances to really embrace rail travel in large numbers ever again. It would take a HUGE shift in popular thinking to bring about a change. Look at all the people who could take mass transit or commuter RR to work, yet insist on driving. They respond they simply like their own space and being in control of their travel.
 
The only difference is that the airlines now seize your packed lunch and throw it carry out a controlled explosion on it in case those sandwiches contain any plastic explosives!

Or at the very least, require you to check it into the hold :)

If only the railways had thought of that one :)
 
At the same time that this record was being set, Washington, DC's METRO had a one of the motors in a brand new car on the Green line overheat and catch fire with flames shooting out of it when the train pulled into the (underground) Waterfront Station which promptly was filled with smoke necessitating a two hour shut down of the station, single tracking of trains, etc.
 
Now THAT is what I call an informative thread! It really is fantastic to be able to follow through on something like this and to learn so much from both the technical and logistical perspectives. Many thanks to all contributors!

One of my ambitions has been to travel on the Eurostar, and I was delighted to finally have the opportunity of traveling on their service from Brussels to London last December. I booked it online about 2 months in advance, and (thanks to a tip off on another website) was surprised to find that its actually cheaper to book a return ticket than a one way journey! Ridiculous, but true. As a special treat, I decided to book business class from Brussels to london, and chose the cheapest journey in economy from london to Brussels a week later, knowing full well that I would'nt be using it.

The flight from Dublin to Brussels cost €45, the Eurostar tickets €140 (€100 business + €40 economy), and the flight from london to Dublin was €38. The journey time on the train is timetabled at 2h 20m to cover a distance of 340km, 55 km of which is under the waters of the English channel.

As for the big day itself, well it didnt exactly go according to plan. To begin with, I managed to miss the booked journey from Brussels to London, and as it was a non flexible ticket, I had to purchase new! The 'lady' at the counter wasnt too interested in my sob story, and informed me that i had no option but to pay out over €270 for the cheapest seat on the next service, until I remembered to ask for a return instead and found the price dropped by over €100!! And that was for business class on the Brussels to london part of the journey too!

I tried my best to enjoy the rest of the experience, and I have to say that I was duly impressed. Check-in and passport control took about 5 minutes, the waiting area was clean and modern, and the train arived on time. The journey itself was well worth it too. I lost count of the times the free bar service came through the cabin, the food was restaurant quality and the service was courteous and efficient. As for the train itself, it took a bit of getting used to traveling so fast yet so close to the ground, but the speed really was amazing. Unfortunately, our train managed to break down in the city of Lille in France, but the delay was only about an hour. The conductor couldnt apologise enough, and told everybody on board to contact customer service at Eurostar upon arrival in london. I didnt bother following it up until last week, and instead of the expected verbal apology for what was just a technical fault, they gave us two free tickets EACH to use on a future Eurostar journey. Now THAT is what I call customer service, and they certainly get my vote as a safe and comfortable alternative to air travel!
 

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