I’d be interested to hear about how these trains (and others) would behave in an earthquake. I remember a work colleague who lived through the Loma Prieta going from Berkeley to San Francisco and I’m sure it wasn’t pretty.
PS.: huge fan of trains and public transportation here, hopefully other places in North and South America would follow suit!
Caltrain's new electric trains
51–60 of 140 posts
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#52As a European, this article is outright bizarre, and makes me appreciate what we have much more. I will complain less about trains from now on.
Same! Glad to see it wasn't just me. Trains here have been electric since 1920… EMU units have been a staple since 1990, though some routes still have locomotives of course. There is no lack of stupidity, however, at the system level. The state owns the rails and procures service from private actors who then manage the traffic more or less successfully. The booking systems are chaotic, the prices are high. It is some…
Where's here? The UK and most of Europe, for instance, still has plenty of diesel service.
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#53The trains are the Stadler KISS model, from Switzerland.[1] Many in use worldwide since 2012. Caltrain is using the 25KV version, which is high for a commuter line but compatible with the California high speed rail system. (BART is 1KV. Streetcars are 400-600V.) Some of the Caltrain electric trainsets are currently running, intermixed with the two generations of Diesel trains. And the occasional freight train, which…
> (BART is 1KV.
How much amps do they need? 2000A? 5000A? How do they carry so much current?
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#54The trains are the Stadler KISS model, from Switzerland.[1] Many in use worldwide since 2012. Caltrain is using the 25KV version, which is high for a commuter line but compatible with the California high speed rail system. (BART is 1KV. Streetcars are 400-600V.) Some of the Caltrain electric trainsets are currently running, intermixed with the two generations of Diesel trains. And the occasional freight train, which…
It's worth noting that BART's mainline 1000 volt setup is pretty unusual (and thus expensive). BART's idiotic cable car is, well, a cable car. And eBART is diesel (DMU).
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#55Someone tell the Town of Atherton that electric trains don't pollute. I think they're now up to 3 lawsuits against California high speed rail, at least two of which are on environmental reasons.
Can we just tell the town of Atherton to not exist? Atherton is a "general law" city of California and the legislature can dissolve it with a simple majority vote. The purpose of a city in California is to advance and further state policy, so I never understood why the state stands around acting powerless while reactionaries thwart broadly supported state initiatives.
Atherton residents include the NBA's Stephen Curry, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, Bill Gurley, Doug Leone etc. A fuller list is toward the end of this Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherton,_California
There might be some brave souls willing to pick a fight with Atherton's leading citizens. But no one like that is serving in the state legislature.
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the local, when you drive you don't stop every 5 miles and pick-up/drop-off a couple dozen people :) The bullets (limited stops) is actually really fast (~45 minutes MTV to SF). At rush hour when it's 1.5 hours from Sunnyvale to downtown SF that's when the bulk of the bullets are scheduled and it's twice as fast as driving, plus you can have a beer ;)
How do the “bullets” work? Passing local trains when they’re stopped on stations? I didn’t notice a third set of rails anywhere for that.
They don't really pass, except in Burlingame and Sunnyvale. I think they basically just leave enough room between regular trains for the bullets to skip some stations. This is one of the reasons I think the SJ-SF segment of HSR may end up being a bottleneck.
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#57Anyone interested in Caltrain operation should check out the Caltrain HSR blog, https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/ . It's not just about high-speed rail. For example, last week the blog pointed out that the new trains take an extra 8-10 seconds after stopping at a station to begin opening the doors. Which chews up 12% of the trip time savings achieved by the move from diesel to electrified trains!
> As seen in the timeline graphic, allowing the step to deploy and retract while the train is in motion would remove this wasted dwell time. It's interesting... I wonder if extending the step while the train is in motion has the potential to knock people down who's currently on the platform and standing too close to the train. > since the step itself does not extend over the platform (it reaches only 63.5 inches from…
> I dunno about that. What if they had an umbrella or grocery bag or such dangling over the platform edge?
If it's over the edge the train itself will take their arm with it.
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#58A few weeks ago I was visiting UK & France, and had several opportunities to experience both LNER and Eurostar trains. I have no illusions that the US is ready for actual HSR, and we'd probably subject it to TSA security as bad or worse than what the Eurostar has now. But LNER ... now that is something I'd like to see here. Not HSR, but 125 mph is still half again as fast as most Amtrak trains. No security hassle, ju…
> we'd probably subject it to TSA security as bad or worse than what the Eurostar has now
I take the Eurostar a few times a year for work between Amsterdam and Paris and there's literally no security whatsoever. If there's security to board the Eurostar in routes to/from the UK maybe it's because of Brexit?
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#59As a European, this article is outright bizarre, and makes me appreciate what we have much more. I will complain less about trains from now on.
> makes me appreciate what we have much more. I will complain less about trains from now on European trains are lovely. But coming from New York, where our regional rail runs with Swiss on-timeness, the tolerance for delays in the U.K. and Germany is wild.
Trenitalia has entered the chat.
Deutsche Bahn is orders of magnitude better. One time my wife and I were taking the train from Venice to Munich and they (Trenitalia) simply forgot half the cars somewhere.
Re: Caltrain's new electric trains
#60> Instead of the rumble of a diesel engine, the trains now run on 100% electricity. What fuel is used to generate the electricity? (Honest question since I have no idea how electricity markets work) > Caltrain […] was the first service to convert from diesel to electric in the West. (A handful of other passenger trains in the country run on electricity, including an Amtrak line in the Northeast.) This is so misleadin…
> What fuel is used to generate the electricity? (Honest question since I have no idea how electricity markets work)
Depends on which system you're talking about. Muni is 100% hydro. BART is more coy but claims their electricity is "greenhouse gas-free" and their diesel (for eBART) is "renewable".