Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

up.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 100 posts

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#51

Post by coryrc »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #11
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have like 220,000 miles of railroad. We do have nice things: a working freight railroad system that helps reduce transit costs.

If the freight rail system were as good as it should be, long distance trucking would be a rounding error instead of the dominant freight mode.

Long distance trucking gets heavily subsidized by all other road users. Damage is caused by the fourth power of weight, but trucking only paid 35% of maintenance while being responsible for 99% of the cost.

https://truecostblog.com/2009/06/02/the-hidden-trucking-indu...

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#53

Post by dgoldstein0 »

albumen wrote: post #49
thaumasiotes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But of course, this was done in response to past serious crashes that occurred because the asphalt melted. So, it's sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't scenario for the organizers. Well, not entirely. You always have the option of repaving the roads with cobblestone or something.

Or just have the cyclists use fatter tyres.

That would also require fatter wheels. Which together have higher moment of inertia which makes for slower bikes (as more energy is required to get the wheels to the same speed).

Not exactly what people want in a race.

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#55

Post by heisenbit »

vivzkestrel wrote: post #45
gblargg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would electrification prevent track from warping due to heat from the sun?

cuts down carbon footpriunt which in the long run ll help cut down temperatures

If we are in the long run stabilising that would be already a win. Until the temperatures go down it will be a long, long, long time if ever. So temperatures will go up and we have to adjust. The scale of required adjustments is not understood yet and the increasing number of surprising needs to adjust is scary.

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#56

Post by Dah00n »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #53
albumen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just have the cyclists use fatter tyres.

That would also require fatter wheels. Which together have higher moment of inertia which makes for slower bikes (as more energy is required to get the wheels to the same speed). Not exactly what people want in a race.

And yet fatter tyres are faster than the slimmer ones they used to run. No-one run slim tyres these days.

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#57

Post by Dah00n »

atourgates wrote: post #3

In a somewhat related practice, some roads in the Tour de France this year have been painted with "white shit" (rider Tom Pidcock's words) in order to combat the asphalt melting in the heat, with the unfortunate side-effect that it seems to be slippery and several riders (including Tom Pidcock) crashed going around a corner when the lost traction. Coverage here: https://velo.outsideonline.com/road/road-racing/tour-de…

This isn't a new thing in the Tour and it is normally not a problem, but since someone crashed on it then it must be the "white shit" that caused it. Not one of the hundreds of other variables - like the rider.

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#58

Post by baq »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #53
albumen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just have the cyclists use fatter tyres.

That would also require fatter wheels. Which together have higher moment of inertia which makes for slower bikes (as more energy is required to get the wheels to the same speed). Not exactly what people want in a race.

Fatter wheel is better than a dnf right?

Re: Painting the sides of railroad rails white to reduce derailment

#60

Post by reaperducer »

TylerE wrote: post #16
anonymars wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trucks and trains serve different purposes. My understanding is the US has a higher percentage than most of freight carried by rail. Indeed at the expense of its passenger rail

Airlines killed passenger rail, not freight. Prior to it all being rolled into Amtrak virtually every railroad was losing money on passenger service.

The Post Office shifting mail transport from trains to planes is what changed the economics.

The passenger trains also carried mail, which helped make them profitable. Then the mail, and the money, moved to passenger planes.

Post reply on HN