221–230 of 305 posts
I mean, this is good news, but why was the efficiency of the system so misunderstood at the design phase? I hope someone's interested enough to find out!
> regenerative braking on the new trains is generating and sending back to the electric grid approximately 23% of the energy consumed by the system does this make sense? let's round that 23 up to 25%, and say brake energy regeneration is 100% efficient (it's not): one quarter of the energy put into the system comes back out? city driving in a car, you might have your foot on the brake 25% of the time (yes, that's not…
Even a model/toy train wagon can easily coast the length of a large room when given a push.
See how little metal is in contact, about 1cm²: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/17ysd...
There's very little friction.
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What are you talking about? The noise you hear from trains is the wheels. Battery trains basically don't exist because of this cool invention called a wire and pantograph.
The “nice smooth trains” that commenters are talking about use a pantograph, transformer and small on-board battery, and can go a small distance (few kms) through tunnels and between track segments with the pantograph lowered. The power system after the battery is similar to older model electric vehicles.
(There will be a battery for lights etc.)
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The $19 million for regenerative breaking can be used to extend lines or add new stations. We can make up for energy efficiency later.
I think you completely misunderstood the article. It says that the electricity used to power these trains was estimated to cost $19m a year, but the trains are a bit more efficient than expected, so the new estimate is only $16.5m/year. Most if not all electric trains powered by overhead wires have regenerative braking that feeds back to the grid as standard, and Caltrain's new Stadler units definitely do. Nobody pai…
However, since this has been normal in Europe and Asia for decades, I doubt the additional expense is significant.
It's great, but it took more than 20 years to get here due to environmental reviews and shaky funding. ...and this was just re-fitting an existing, relatively short stretch of track! We (as Californians) have GOT to do better than this! There are huge infrastructure projects that we need to undertake in the coming years. We have got to cut the red tape and properly fund projects.
A similar project [1] is underway in Canada, but I worry sometimes it'll fall prey to the same administrative bog that the CHSR did. It'll be managed by a new Crown corp, VIA HFR, and from my understanding they're still taking engineering bids. I expect it'll be a while before shovels hit the ground.
A cheap, fast, and reliable rail from Toronto to Montreal would be a dream come true for a lot of Canadians. Any ideas on how best to make it a reality?
[1] https://tc.canada.ca/en/rail-transportation/railway-lines/hi...
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It has been said the broader gauge was chosen at the time to make trains able to run safely over Golden Gate Bridge with strong side winds. My physics is not good enough to calculate whether that argument makes sense. And I have no idea how realistic that route ever was. I don't think the gauge is a major problem. Train orders are always a custom project, few urban networks use exactly the same standards. Railroad ma…
In particular the track gauge is a long way from being the only consideration. Structure gauge and Loading gauge are also crucial. When I first moved here despite this being an important port city a Victorian arch bridge carrying road traffic over the railway meant every single freight train carrying containers from the port to the rest of the country needed to either go on a circuitous route or use special low wagon…
In practice I am not convinced the BART is severely impacted by their "weird" gauge (whatever is meant by that, not sure what their loading gauge is, for passenger trains the distance to and height of the platforms would be most relevant).
Stadler KISS series used by Caltrain is built at least in 3 different widths.
Auckland, NZ had (not sure whether still in use) rolling stock from the UK, converted from 1435 mm to 1067 mm track gauge, the loading gauge obviously was close enough.
Finland has engines (Sr3, Dr20) and railcars (Dm12) designed for smaller central European loading gauges. They look a bit tiny compared to other stock, but they are fully usable.
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I’m getting more and more convinced that this is a main problem all over the West. In Germany, a business owner called Marco Scheel is becoming more and more popular by being very outspoken about how bureaucracy is hindering him. His company is called Nordwolle by the way. They make clothing out of sheep wool. They spend a lot of effort finding the right type of wool so they don’t need chemicals to paint it. One majo…
I associate this attitude with criticism of Wikipedia and narcissism. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's often around editing things they are related to that this comes up. I tried to do something and they stopped me . This is wrong, I should be able to do this and write my own story. Which is a perfectly normal feeling. But if you end up saying that loudly in public without ever thinking, well what if the ru…
I never said anything about Wikipedia. For the record, I'm a big fan of Wikipedia and I'm skeptical about the new US government.
Please don't assume that because someone holds opinion X that they also hold opinion Y. With the current levels of polarization, it's probably a fair assumption to make, but I think we all as individuals have a responsibility to counter that.
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Trains have little friction on the tracks. That's one of the ways they are much more efficient than a car (with rubber tires). If the moving friction is very low, it makes sense that not that much energy is used to move the train once it's at speed. Slowing it down would return some of the energy back (with the rest dissipated as heat).
Even with a car's higher rolling resistance, most of the drag at cruising speed is aerodynamic, though. But a commuter train, by definition, starts and stops a lot so it makes sense that a large fraction of the energy used would be for acceleration.
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I’m getting more and more convinced that this is a main problem all over the West. In Germany, a business owner called Marco Scheel is becoming more and more popular by being very outspoken about how bureaucracy is hindering him. His company is called Nordwolle by the way. They make clothing out of sheep wool. They spend a lot of effort finding the right type of wool so they don’t need chemicals to paint it. One majo…
I associate this attitude with criticism of Wikipedia and narcissism. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's often around editing things they are related to that this comes up. I tried to do something and they stopped me . This is wrong, I should be able to do this and write my own story. Which is a perfectly normal feeling. But if you end up saying that loudly in public without ever thinking, well what if the ru…
It sounds like Mr. Scheel is applying exactly that view. The idea is everyone should be able to use their remote farm shed for industrial purposes. Indeed, most of the intellectual foundation of the pro-freedom view is precisely that when you take a wider view freedom is generally better for everyone than authoritarianism right up until it becomes a threat to personal safety (even then, pushing the dial a little further towards freedom generally gets better results). If people can't do what they want, then how are things supposed to get done? If we're all doing things in ways that are believed to be impractical then it is going to waste an unreasonable amount of resources and be stupid.
Another cool thing in the article that I didn't know personally: Caltrain runs on 100% renewable power!
That shouldn't be put forth as a goal. It's how Germany got rid of all its nuclear plants and has to keep burning coal and buying fuel from Russia.