Europe is investing heavily in trains • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#601

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

shafyy wrote: post #406

Fargren wrote: post #2

Living in Spain, I love trains and take them over airplane when it's an option. However, trains are often around twice as expensive as flying for may routes. I know nothing about trains, but intuitively I would expect the opposite, and I really wish it was more affordable, specially high speed rail.

Fucking love trains. I live in Berlin and visit Zurich often (that's where I'm from). I can just get into the train in the monrning, work, eat, drink and by the end of the workday I'm in Zurich. Extremely convenient, and not really more expensive than a flight if you book a couple of weeks in advanc, even for first class.

I did the exact same thing. I would work in Berlin and I would go back to Switzerland every second weekend. I much preferred the train.

Partly because airports in Berlin are shit.

If you go at the right times you get a lot of space, you can put your feet up and have a nice table as well.

It is more expensive then flying however.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#602

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

xeeeeeeeeeeenu wrote: post #231

It seems likely that hydrogen will replace diesel in trains. Companies like Alstom[1], PESA[2] and Talgo[3] are developing hydrogen trains. Germany has already started deploying them on a small scale[4], while Poland is planning to[5]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstom_Coradia_LINT#iLint [2] - https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/poland-pesa-presented-a-hydr... [3] - https://www.railwaypro.com/wp/talgo-to-launch-…

Never understood how this makes sense.

Just make they hydrogen into methanol or whatever and use mostly existing tech instead.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#603

Post by ncmncm » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:03 PM UTC

aurizon wrote: post #538

ncmncm wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The measure of fuel you need to carry is not weight, but energy content. It takes a much smaller weight of LH2 to match the energy content of diesel. So, correspondingly less than 10x volume. It is this better "gravimetric energy density" that makes LH2 an attractive fuel in many cases. You end up needing only about 2-3x tankage space, including the insulation. Better gravimetric energy density doesn't make so much d…

There is truth in that energy density. but it is still cheaper energetically to chill boil off to liquid back to the tank that to make new hot hydrogen you then chill to liquid back to the tank. The end game of clathrate storage will solve many of these problems.

True, keeping the LH2 below its boiling point is, energetically, strictly cheaper than producing as much new hydrogen as would have boiled off, and then chilling that... But, it incurs the added complexity cost of building refrigeration plumbing into the tank, and maintaining that. That could mean the tank has to be above ground, for easy access (which might be needed anyway).

My expectation was that native electrical energy will be cheap enough that wasting some is better than complicating your system. Each tradeoff will be an engineering analysis. In this case it will all depend on how good your insulation is, which is of course better in an underground tank. Many old conventions will be overturned as the marginal cost of electrical power at peak times gets cheaper.

Both will be tried, so we will see.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#604

Post by einpoklum » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:04 PM UTC

novembermike wrote: post #353

einpoklum wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why couldn't DB Netz do both people and freight, if both are profitable (after subsidies for passenger traffic)? i.e. why does it have to be a choice?

Typically everyone does both freight and passengers, but it'll be better at one or the other. Passengers want fast trains with few delays that get close to population centers. Freight doesn't care about speed as much but cares about the overall throughput and wants to end up in distribution centers.

Anyway, about "distribution centers" - just have an optional turn when approaching some town, choosing between the central train station and the "distribution center" location. That in itself does not sound like much of an issue.

However, other comments suggest that freight needs _slow_ speed and must avoid tunnels. Maybe that's the reason?

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#605

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:10 PM UTC

singhrac wrote: post #301

Mildly unrelated to the article at hand, but I wish Amtrak had better quality (faster and more consistent) wifi onboard for NE regional and other non-Acela trains. I think even the Acela doesn't have high speed wifi. If I could work during a 6+ hour journey it would really change the equation on traveling for me. The desks that are available on these trains is a huge change from the tiny lapdesks on flights. The thin…

Starlink could solve this reasonably cheaply. You basically need a few Starlink antennas per train and then a decent wifi hotspot in each car. Then and then when the train is in range of mobile connection you can use both.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#606

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

pg_bot wrote: post #80

ape4 wrote: post #12

More feasible than planes to electrify or switch to hydrogen (hydrogenify?)

Batteries are still too heavy and take too long to recharge for most commercial travel by plane. If we had better batteries, planes would become electric. Hydrogen has an infrastructure problem. Planes aren't designed for holding hydrogen and they would need to be redesigned entirely to accommodate for using it as a fuel. Hydrogen is hard to store and transfer as it tends to embrittle a wide variety of metals. There…

For the distances need to be viable in a lot of regions we are pretty close.

Current companies are targeting something like 400km. And that is with pretty conservative design choices along every dimension.

With some real investment that would allow companies to embrace more ambitious designs we could do much more then that.

Batteries can be a structural part of the plane. You can use the airflow to cool them potentially. There are lots of opportunity to do much, much better.

I think the connection between most major capital is around 500km. So an 20-30 seat plane that can go 600+ km is really not that far away as people think.

And this is with batteries that are not really optimized for flight. You can push the charge speed up considerably if you are willing to have less cycles. And it very well might be worth to do that. Even so your total investment in electricity and batteries combined is still gone beat fossil fuel by a wide margin.

If we are talking about investing billion into something, it should be electric planes!

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#607

Post by panick21_ » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

foepys wrote: post #71

ParksNet wrote: post #48

It doesn't make sense to emphasize passenger travel over goods transport for rail. Rail's strength is efficient transport of heavy loads at slow speeds. People are light and often want to go at high speeds. Europe should reorient its rail network for rail transport, and passengers can travel by bus or plane. But - Europe's rail network is completely reliant on subsidies, and its easier to get them when you're transpo…

No, just no. You obviously don't have experience with European infrastructure. Rush hour traffic on any German Autobahn will quickly tell you that adding more busses and cars is the worst idea here. European roads are also impossible to build and maintain without subsidies but somehow nobody or at least very few people talk about that.

A general problem with all these debates is that rail and road have for so long been deeply interlinked with states strategy and subsidies that any real cost comparison is almost impossible.

We are using tunnels all over Switzerland that are built many decades ago. How to you take stuff like that into account?

Sure we could just say 'lets wipe all infrastructure of Europe and start fresh, what the most efficient combination of things?' but that is a pointless exercise.

People very lives have been shaped around existing infrastructure as well.

Everything is interlinked to a crazy degree that makes finding and comparing solution challenging.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#608

Post by jseban » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

pg314 wrote: post #578

jseban wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rolling resistance of steel wheels on steel rails is much, much lower than rubber tyres on an asphalt road. Exactly, and you need rolling resistance for traction. The heavier the load, the lower resistance you need, and vice versa, because the weight of the load increases resistance. Which is why you don't ship hay on trains, and don't ship iron on trucks.

> Exactly, and you need rolling resistance for traction. No, you don’t. Look at e.g. gears: almost no friction, perfect traction. > Which is why you don't ship hay on trains No. You don’t ship it on trains because that is uneconomic. You keep your cattle close to your hay producing fields, where they can also graze. Also, by your reasoning, an empty train would not be able to move?

Also the reason why trains can't run uphill, while cars and trucks can.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#609

Post by linspace » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

einpoklum wrote: post #560

meerita wrote: post #534

Trains are great for no more than 600km range trips. I live in Spain, and it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane. I arrive to the station 10 mins before departure and I never had troubles. With airplanes I need to be there 1 hour before. Then you spend another 30 mins getting into the plane, following the instructions for just only 1h trip. The same trip Barcelona -> Mad…

> it's great to get into the train without doing all the procedures you do with a plane. Well, if they just let go of the security theater and phobias, we could theoretically have a situation where you just board with no procedures, like on a train: Ride a local train/metro/bus up to the larger train station, flash your card or pass or what-not, maybe flash your passport, put your suitcase on the baggage cart or belt…

Barcelona-Madrid vía the "Puente Aéreo" (air bridge, freely translated) is the closest I have seen. There are departures every half hour, you buy one ticket and can take any of them. Boarding is also very fast.

Re: Europe is investing heavily in trains

#610

Post by ant6n » Tue, Apr 12, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #542

ant6n wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im French rail planning, rail is considered competitive with air travel up to 3h. In German planning, up to 4h. With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km. Plus, one could try to revive night trains. Arriving at 9am in the morning in some far away city, we’ll rested, would be useful both for vacations and business trips. And could easily allow distances of 1500km even without having high speed rail lines eve…

> With 250km/h average, that would allow up to 1000km. Sadly going through the alps at that speed is not that simple. But I'd love to have interconnected cities.

There are several connections through the alps being built right now. Gotthard base tunnel through Switzerland, Brenner Base Tunnel through Austria/Italy, and a connection Italy/France. Not all connections through Europe go through the Alps, and u can get a decent average speed even if occasionally dropping below the maximum speed for some rough areas.