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Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

japantimes.co.jp

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Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#31

Post by intrasight »

livueta wrote: post #28
jp57 wrote: post #24

For containers headed to the US east coast from the Pacific, is there any advantage of using this route and incurring two extra mode switches (sea->rail->sea), over going to a US west coast port and just incurring one (and possibly zero) extra mode switches? Given that the containers may be distributed in a variety of modes when they are unloaded at a land port (e.g. different trains, trucks, etc), it's probably reas…

This Economist article on the same topic seems to agree with you: https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/01/09/the-dwindl... / https://archive.is/ZU0ws > But projects like CIIT may still struggle to entice cargo away from the Panama Canal. The largest vessels that go through it can carry 14,000 containers. Mexico’s government accurately reckons that the coast-to-coast rail journey will be quicker than passing th…

The economist article also mentioned just going north around Canada

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#32

Post by melling »

bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

How fast can modern freight trains run? If they’re twice as fast as cargo ships, maybe we need fewer tracks?

And a longer land route?

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#33

Post by foota »

bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

There's precedence for this (on smaller scales), see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portage#:~:text=Portage%20or....

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#34

Post by bsdpufferfish »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #13

Water shortages? I thought the canal connected oceans and I thought the oceans were rising?

The American engineers who designed and built this are long gone.

Gatun lake was an artificial construction of the project.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#35

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

Something similar to this idea exists in Russia. But for larger river ships only, so smaller scale.

There is a large dam, with generating station, downstream the valley is narrow, walls are steep. Differential to top of dam is large/high. Water locks impractical.

So they've built something like a dock for the ships to enter, dock closes with ship inside, and is moved on cog rails up/downhill for a few miles, including a turntable!

By electromotors, powered by > 100.000V three-phase delivered via catenary from the sides!

At the time this made the rounds trough the net (possibly +20 years) it all looked rather insane/gigantic/impressive.

Wasted 5 minutes trying to find it, seems to be gone. shrug

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#36

Post by inglor_cz »

melling wrote: post #32
bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

How fast can modern freight trains run? If they’re twice as fast as cargo ships, maybe we need fewer tracks? And a longer land route?

Doing 100 mph with a freight train is well possible, if the track can take it.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#37

Post by sitharus »

melling wrote: post #32
bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

How fast can modern freight trains run? If they’re twice as fast as cargo ships, maybe we need fewer tracks? And a longer land route?

The Ever Given has a maximum speed of 23kt / 42km/h and carries 20,124 TEU or approx. 7660 54-ft containers.

Rail figures are harder to find, but a reasonable guess based on what I can find seems to be 400 containers per train if the loading gauge permits double stacking containers. Speeds over 100km/h are easily achievable on railways without at-grade crossings.

So one ship could easily require ten trains to move all its cargo in the same time, plus the time taken to offload at each end, which I guess is why this hasn't taken off. Though if it's all just transhipped to trains this could be faster than at most ports where containers have to be sorted to different destinations.

Though interestingly with a dedicated right-of-way the trains don't actually need to be manned, remote control freight trains exist.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#38

Post by throwuwu »

bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

Building the drydocks capable of submerging the rail cars and positioning the ship above them and then hauling the ship out would be the bigger challenge. Dealing with any slope with that much weight is tricky.

Re: Mexico building rail rival as water shortages drain Panama Canal

#40

Post by seanmcdirmid »

DylanDmitri wrote: post #9
bilsbie wrote: post #5

Surely this is a mega project: but naively, what if we built say ten parallel railways 10 ft apart and moved cargo ships over the rails? Or this guy only needs to be scaled up 10X to do the job. Not outside the realm of imagination? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawler-transporter I know the ships are huge and it shouldn’t be feasible but it would be interesting to run the numbers. Edit. Actually if my math is rig…

Weight wise it looks feasible. The hard part is getting something capable of transferring hundreds of tons that can also conform to hulls of different shapes.

If weight is ok, just put a lock on a rail: so boat enters the lock, two gates close behind it, the lock (and one gate) moves via a rail to the other side, reverse at the other ocean.
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