51–60 of 109 posts
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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
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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
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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…
I believe both Panamax and Neopanamax lanes can be used by most container ships. The Neopanamax lane can accommodate the biggest new container ships in addition to that.
For containers headed to the US east coast from the Pacific, is there any advantage of using this route and incurring two extra mode switches (sea->rail->sea), over going to a US west coast port and just incurring one (and possibly zero) extra mode switches? Given that the containers may be distributed in a variety of modes when they are unloaded at a land port (e.g. different trains, trucks, etc), it's probably reas…
Is it worth it? Hard to say. Sea transport is cheap, but not free. There is a lot of opportunity to reduce the costs of move switches by automation. However thee biggest advantage to this really only an come if they can sort containers to different destinations.
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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?
Doing 100 mph with a freight train is well possible, if the track can take it.
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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
So one ship will have to unload on one side and then another ship will have to pick up the cargo on the other end? So the shipping company has to have two ships, one on each side, and wait for the loading and unloading? I'm sure smarter people than me have worked this out but it seems like this would take a lot longer than the canal (which only takes 8-10 hours vs 7 hours for this train plus load and unload). Granted…
Note that the ships do not all need to be owned by the same company, the important part is the containers get where they need to be. Sometimes they are, but container logistics is often separate and even when not the shipping companies will use each other when needed to get their containers where the customer needs them.
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Just build a giant bathtub and tow that /s
Reminds me of the Falkirk Wheel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkirk_Wheel
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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.
Can you remember how it did sound when in motion?