411–420 of 465 posts
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Yes, the acceptable tolerance is -4mm+7mm.
Where? Finland specifically, or elsewhere? Both my local tram system in Germany as well as DB as the national infrastructure operator in Germany have construction tolerances of only +/- 2 mm. Maintenance tolerances on the other hand can be quite a bit larger, at least in the plus direction (on the order of 15/20/25 mm).
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First sentence from the article: The Finnish government has announced the conversion of its rail network from Russian gauge (1,524 mm) to European standard (1,435 mm). 1524 - 1435 = 89 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_ft_and_1520_mm_gauge_railway... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway
So "closer to 10cm" then Clearly not "doable", without guage changing bogies.
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There are no ready-made gauge changing machines, though. Not exactly a big market for those.
There are no ready-made gauge changing machines, though. Not exactly a big market for those. So what? I'd there isn't a machine, you build one. Large industries like mining and shipping and the military don't just stop because they can't buy a needed item off the shelf because there isn't a market for it. They build stuff all the time. I worked in a factory for a few years, and can tell you that if industries followe…
Let’s say you have a problem and the only way to solve it is with a thingamabob. The thingamabob doesn’t exist, so you need to make the first one. Unknown to everyone, the military, the O&G/mining industry, and the rail industries all try to build one at the same time. Do you think they all cost the same? What about the time to design and build them?
The oil and gas people will call up some machinists and engineers the same day. Time is money and they need the problem solved. It doesn’t need to look pretty. I don’t think anyone would disagree that they would be the first with a thingamabob. First one might break, they’d get Bob on a Cessna from the nearest machine shop with a replacement.
The military would have some meetings, which would spawn more meetings, and eventually put out some requests for proposals. They’d review the proposals and ten years later they’d have their thingamabob. No doubt it would be the most expensive.
The rail industry… the modern, passenger rail industry in wealthy western countries? There might be proposals, or designs or prototypes with large amounts of money spent, but I think it is reasonable to say the thingamabob would never actually be built and used. Look at CAHSR or Stuttgart 21 or Turin-Lyon.
The project is theoretically a good idea but it's not really practical, and nobody is honestly suggesting it for real -- surely plans are cheap, and planning is even cheaper. But there are fewer than handful of railway lines crossing over the eastern border to Russia. Those can be blown up for good, for long enough distance that it's not feasible for Russia to rebuild track and reconnect to the main network should th…
Why do you say that?
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In 1886 the USA switched the rail gauge of the southern states to standard gauge. Most of the work was done over two days. http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html Obviously doing this today would be a much more complicated affair, considering the much higher speeds and weights of contemporary trains.
This is a lot easier to do with wooden sleepers than with concrete ones. You can drive new nails into wooden sleepers almost at will, so you can keep the sleepers in place and "just" move one rail to a different position. Concrete sleepers have pre-fabricated holes for the indicated gauge, which means replacing them. German soldiers re-gauged Soviet railways on a very short notice too when Barbarossa started.
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I believe that’s what I said.
"'86, in the south? Let's not be racist and assume the labor was Chinese - surely it was 95% recently freed black slaves paid almost nothing + 'free' prison labor. (/s, a little)." It's not what you said
[https://www.train-museum.org/2019/02/18/black-railroad-jobs/]
Which part do you think I didn’t?
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It depends entirely on the context. For routes where total travel time is mostly governed by moving time, and the stationary time in stops is negligible, the capacity boost from double-deckers easily outweighs the longer (un)loading times. The alternatives to increase capacity can also be problematic: with longer trains you start running out of platform length (and long platforms add walking time); while running more…
Trains can run fully automated today, and if you are running into capacity issues they should be. You may still need more personnel, but it is a different type of personnel and full automation gives enough other advantages as to be worth it. If the size of your blocks are an issue, then that is a problem worth solving. If you are can't fit in all those trains, then you need to build more track not try to compromise.…
That might be the case in very controlled environments such as a subway network, but in other, more heterogeneous environments GoA 4 is not there yet.
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Compare this to the completely bonkers logistics of the US Military: https://youtu.be/iIpPuJ_r8Xg Even Unicef has a massive logistics center in Denmark with pallets of stuff categorised and ready to be sent for any emergency: https://www.unicef.org/supply/warehousing-and-distribution
Well yes but the US usually fights in faraway places to bring freedom (though the only thing they manage to 'liberate' is oil, see how Afghanistan and Iraq turned into hellholes as soon as they turned their backs) Russia just likes to kill the shit out of their neighbours which is a lot easier logistically.