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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

#41

Post by redleader55 »

myself248 wrote: post #25
Brian_K_White wrote: post #13

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

The canal forms a ladder that raises ships from one ocean, up through a series of locks, into waterways that cross over the middle of the isthmus, then back down the other side. The canal itself it not all at sea level. Locks work by controlling the release of water from a high point to a low point. The water needs to already be at the high point, by tapping a river or something that's fed by rain; locks do not have…

Just adding a few small details here: 1. When the canal was built, it was deemed to hard and expensive to dig at the level of the two oceans so they imagined the locks system as a solution for that. Back then, the canal was built with US money in a time of conflict between Panama(which was part of Colombia) and Colombia. Today Panama is an independent country, but they don't have the finances to upgrade the canal. 2. They don't want to bring water from the ocean up the canal is because the canal gets its water from a series of fresh water lakes. Bringing salty water would kill the life in the lakes are around the lakes and cause a lot more problems long term.

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

#42

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #40
DylanDmitri wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#43

Post by FrancoisBosun »

asylteltine wrote: post #29
nadermx wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or perhaps instead of 10x wideing, just build a permanent bidirectional conver belt.

Yeah all they need is a blueprint and the logistics bots will take care of the rest

DoshDorington did something like that… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzpUQZIr15g&t=900s&pp=2AGEB5...

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

#44

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #35
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, includin…

Krasnoyarsk ship lift?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_ship_lift

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

#45

Post by dessimus »

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…

I'm no engineer, but I would not imagine that the Panamax ships are built to handle that kinda of stress while still loaded with cargo. The ships are designed to have the weight of itself and its cargo spread out pushing out against the displaced water pushing back on the hull rather evenly and not a handful of highly concentrated points.

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

#46

Post by reactordev »

intrasight wrote: post #31
livueta wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So clearly they don’t know what they are talking about. Any sailor would tell you, you don’t go above and below 55 degrees. Granted these are steel container ships but the seas don’t care. What’s one or two lost containers of goods? They sit just below the water surface for the next vessel to crash into.

The Panama Canal has two paths. Only one can be used for container ships. Even that has been at capacity for quite some time. A more integrated shipping supply chain is needed to get goods from A to Z. Rail, truck, boat, and plane.

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

#47

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #44
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, includin…

Krasnoyarsk ship lift? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasnoyarsk_ship_lift

YES! Thank You!

But there was more on sites like rbth, onlyinrussia, or some such. Much more detailed pictures.

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

#48

Post by FpUser »

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #35
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, includin…

This is Krasnoyarsk dam. It is located in small town of Divnogorsk some 40km up the Yenisei river. I was raised in Krasnoyarsk and have seen this with my own eyes.

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

#49

Post by bdcravens »

dessimus wrote: post #45
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…

I'm no engineer, but I would not imagine that the Panamax ships are built to handle that kinda of stress while still loaded with cargo. The ships are designed to have the weight of itself and its cargo spread out pushing out against the displaced water pushing back on the hull rather evenly and not a handful of highly concentrated points.

Just build a giant bathtub and tow that /s

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

#50

Post by novok »

sitharus wrote: post #37
melling wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 al…

I could foresee a parallel loading crane to train track system where the cranes take up to 10 or 20 containers at once and then put them on 10 to 20 parallel train track at once on the other side.

Hand counting how wide a panamax gets, they seem to max out at about 19 or 20 containers wide and 15 containers deep. It also looks like shipping containers already can be top latched with this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZQPxl9zssk

So if you could automate this system at 30m per transfer of 10, a port with 15 cranes could do 300 containers an hour and clear a boat in about 15 hours. You could expand the system further into a full panamax width and do it in about 8 hours per panamax boat with 4500 TEUs.

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