That is why I propose electrifying only 65,000 of 178,000 miles of US railroads. A difficult determination to make exactly without extensive knowledge of specific railroad operations. At $120/barrel, perhaps 4 trains/day might be break even (MANY variables !)

OTOH, there are operating savings to an all electrified railroad. No loco switching, no fuel storage & handling, no diesel maintenance.

After Phase I of electrifying 65,000 miles of main lines and heavy spur lines, I think that regions will switch to 100% electrification. West Coast first IMHO.

Best Hopes,

Alan

One interesting new development in locomotive power is the hybrid diesel/electric locomotive. GE has developed a main haul hybrid locomotive and Canadian manufacturer Railpower has a switching hybrid locomotive. Since most conventional diesel/electric locomotives are already essentially series hybrid vehicles without the batteries, the technology is pretty simple to add. Just replace the resistance banks currently used for dynamic braking with batteries. They usually put in smaller diesel generators, since the batteries contribute significantly to the power. Railpower also has developed a hybrid rubber-tired gantry crane for handling large shipping containers.

Hybrid switchers could become essentially the equivalent to a Chevy Volt with overnight battery re-charging stations, further reducing diesel fuel requirements and emissions. Also, by adding electrical overhead pickups, main haul hybrid locomotives could be flex-fuel vehicles, running as pure electric locomotives where electrical distribution allows for overhead lines and switching to their diesel generators where the lines aren’t economic.

Dave, if you get a chance check out an article in the current issue of 'The Railway' magazine in the UK on how "Green are the railways".

All types of railway locomotion are compared via thermal efficiency with some interesting conclusions, ie for passenger transport a diesel loco with coaching stock is deemed the most efficient.

Now I know why when in Berlin last year the DB were running regional services with diesel, double decker coaches, and driving unit on the end. All the advantages of multiple unit operation without a required loco run around at the turn around point but with all the efficiences of single loco operation.

With some minor exceptions, the red lines are on operating rail lines .

There are enough abandoned rail lines for the rest. The San Diego-Phoenix section would be built largely on abandoned or unused ROW for example.

I can see the reuse of abandoned rail lines on a large scale as spur lines. OTOH, only a few new main lines are needed.

Ownership and operation of the rail lines is an open question. I would prefer the existing railroads to own these "red lines" but with public trackage rights (just as any licensed airline can operate out of any airport) with regulated fees paid to the owner.#

An underlying theme is to build not "just enough" rail capacity, with frequent bottlenecks, but to overwhelm the demand with capacity. This is, IMHO, needed to beat truck speeds and capacity.

Best Hopes for Speed an Reliability,

Alan

# This is the new model in the EU, and it seems to be working reasonably well. French TGV trains on German tracks, Swiss trains on Italian tracks, etc.

I ALMOST included a spur from San Jose to Sacramento, but thought the cost for the few saved minutes perhaps not worth it. That is an expensive and built up area. Even 100 mph service requires a wider buffer zone (180 mph even more).

These are straight lines between urban areas, so subtleties of routing may not show. I foresee vegetables being trucked (smaller trucks) from field to central depot on rail siding. Two, three, or four times/day during harvest a small loco comes by and picks up full refrigerated rail cars, which are brought to a switchyard. And every few hours a refrigerated unit train leaves the switchyard (high value means that trains can be as short as 20 and 30 cars, but longer is better).

Should that unit train leave on 60 or 110 mph tracks ?

How far till the unit train reaches the semi-HSR tracks is part of the equation, and I do not know the California tracks well enough.

Let me investigate.

But I hope that this illustrates my thought process.

Alan

Well, some of us still can food. Besides vegetables and fruit juice-we have a juice press-(hot water bath canning mostly) we also can meats (pressure canning). However, it's clear a lot of people have stopped canning. A neighbor offered us a lot of canning jars from his mom and we were the only people he knew who still canned. Interestingly, our local, boondocks store still carries canning supplies.

We also dehydrate and freeze vegetables. Our dehydrator holds 2 bushels of stuff and we'll have close to 40 cubic feet of freezer space once we get our small freezer back from my MIL.

Todd

Abandon Norfolk to Jacksonville line because of
Intracoastal Waterway.

I don't think transporting most of the NE's vegetables would be at all necessary - or wise, given California's growing water constraints. The California to NE route essentially amounts to transporting tons of water from a dry, water limited place to a wet one. Far better to combine this with a system of widespread gardening and local farming and produce most of the Northeast's winter produce there.

Fresh greens can be fairly easily produced without supplemental heat in hoop houses - the only really unsustainable components being 8 mil plastic or something similar that has to be replaced every 5-10 years. Double layered with spun floating row covers, fresh salad greens, collards, kale, scallions, etc... Add in root cellared (could be done in large scale dug cold storage) cabbage, apples, potatoes, onions, turnips, carrots, parsnips, beets, celeriac, etc..., forced turnip and beet greens, carrots and parsnips mulched and kept in the ground, sprouting seeds and locally/home preserved food, and you've got it covered. The problem will be enabling people to make such a radical dietary change - one of the reasons I consistently argue that agricultural changes have to follow dietary ones. Moderate transport, perhaps by ship, of citrus and bananas from Florida could supplement this.

Sharon

Elliot Coleman (author of Four Season Harvest would disagree. He grows and sells a wide range of stuff year round in New England. Salad greens, cabages, broccoli & caulifower, kale & collards, spinach, chard, other potherbs, root vegies all can be grown and made available fresh during the winter. Winter squashes & onoins can be stored and sold throughout the winter as well. Lots of good eating there.

Apples can be stored & sold fresh throughout most of the winter as well, although they do tend to start looking not so good by late winter. That's the time to crak open the applesauce and canned apples for baking!

As far as greenhouse production goes, protection from frost is only part of it, and that alone does little more for you than simple cold frames. The other big issue is sunlight -- there is simply too little of it to ripen most summertime crops in the wintertime. So what you would need to grow summer crops like tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, summer squashes, cukes, sweet corn & green beans are not only greenhouses, but greenhouses that also have artificial lighting. Now you are really talking expense and much higher energy inputs. Compare that with the expense and energy inputs of transport from Florida and I'm not sure that it is worth trying. Of course, tomatoes & corn can be canned or dried, peppers canned or frozen (ditto with summer squash, but mainly good only in casserole recipes), cukes pickled. Green beans can be canned or dried or frozen or even salted. Most local fruits really must be fresh on a seasonal basis only, and then it is canned or frozen (or in a few cases dehydrated) the rest of the year. Citrus from Florida makes a nice change from that, and should continue if at all possible.

Thus, in summary, it is quite feasible for people living anywhere in the northeast (or really anwhere north of Florida for that matter) to have at least 4-5 servings per day or more just of locally grown fresh vegetables, plus a local fresh or canned apple or two a day, plus several servings of canned or frozen or dehydrated local vegies or fruits. All this without even resorting to a serving of Florida citrus, which would be a nice "icing on the cake" so to speak. From a purely nutritional point of view, there is no real need to transport in anything except Florida citrus during the winter months.

Anyone remember how to store food in Mason jars?

Yup. Wisconsin Aluminum foundry makes a gasket-less pressure cooker.

The local Goodwill sells the empty jars at $.99 cents (do the math VS new jars)

I had a Dallas-Ft. Worth > OKC > Tulsa > Kansas City connector, but I erased it. I cannot see enough people or express freight to make it worth doing faster than 60 to 70 mph. The travel market is not large enough for people to justify semi-HSR. What freight do you see ?

New Orleans has a double track, unlimited capacity RR bridge over the Mississippi River. Once the busiest RR bridge in the world (perhaps it still is). Replacement cost ? Perhaps $10 billion.

New Orleans is also served by 6 of the 7 Class I RRs in North America, so it is a natural rail transfer point (including regular to semi-HSR rail).

New Orleans is also the closest Gulf port to the Panama Canal, so container etc. traffic should expand when the Panama Canal is expanded in 2014.

Alan

Mountains in the way will escalate costs dramatically. The faster the train, the wider the radius of the turns. Quite an issue in rugged mountains.

Only the Gadson Purchase (Southern 1/4th of Arizona) avoids major tunnels, twisty routes, etc. Which is precisely why the USA bought that section of land from Mexico.

Also, true high speed rail (180 mph) is not attracting significant market share for trips of 500+ miles in the EU or Japan today. The Brits rarely travel to Spain via Chunnel and TGV. Likewise Berliners and Italy.

If experience shows that "things have changed", then a Phase II may be in order. Connecting Tuscon to San Antonio seems to be the most cost effective first link. Shorter and over good terrain.

Alan

The four cities along they Louisiana coast were to prevent the line from crossing too much water. A limitation of the software used. It will draw straight lines between designated cities/airports and compute the straight-line miles. I added a rough guess on circuity depending upon terrain.

http://gc.kls2.com

OTOH, there is not too much in Arkansas or Mississippi to either originate express freight or passengers or as a destination for either.

I do not consider gambling (a major industry in MS) to be worth long term capital investment to attract gamblers. So neither Las Vegas or the Casino Coast (or Atlantic City) got new rail lines.

Alan

That line already exists :-), the one major line Amtrak owns, the NorthEast Corridor or NEC.

Electrified from Boston to Washington DC (you missed Philadelphia), with almost high speed rail (150 mph), Acela.

I think Acela was poorly engineered, and the tracks could certainly be improved in places, but it is not on the map because it already exists. Good catch though.

Best Hopes,

Alan

I doubt Alan does. Stupid game. I like badminton.

Ever play football? or soccer? or chess? Or 'Call of Duty 4'? What game will satisfy you?

Baseball. How bout 'Hunt for IED's in Anbar Province'? WTF, dude?

Let's play another game.

What province is Ramadi located in?

Double or nothing?

Who's the 7th biggest producer in OPEC?

Never even heard of it. Interesting concept.

However, I prefer to play with the rules set by reality :=)

Best Hopes,

Alan

Yes.

Alan

A far as transferring power from one car to another from a single pantograph pickup, I got detailed real world info from Ed Tennyson (SEPTA in Philly uses a single pantograph to transfer power from 1 EMU to the rest of the train, when EMUs are joined together).

Rubber covered jumpers work fine, but people cut them off for the copper. Several brands for transfer via the coupler, he recommended Ohio Brass.

I like the idea of a major Metro area having several inter-modal transfer points (say four to six in Dallas-Ft Worth area). Short trains are shuttled 1 to 3 times per day from central switch yard to each transfer point. If someone is in a hurry they can pick up at central switchyard. In the case of Dallas, containers could be xfered to DART and run on their rails off-peak as trolley freight.

Such a system would significantly reduce truck miles on Urban highways.

But such a transition will be step by step. However, it helps to know where you are going when you start :-)

Best Hopes,

Alan

2004 numbers were $2 million/mile for single track and $2.5 million/mile for double track.

Labor is a significant component. Cheap electrification can be done with wooden poles (Ed Tennyson used 18" diameter treated poles that may still be in service for SEPTA).

Typically the carrier wire is stranded aluminum & steel (Al for conductivity and Fe for strength) and only the contact wire is copper (a very low % silver alloy# is preferred for wear resistance and additional mechanical strength). Other train trolley wire designs are in common use as well.

# Measured in troy ounces of silver per ton. 1 troy ounce has exactly the same electrical properties as pure copper, but improved physical properties. From distance memory I liked 3 or 4 troy ounces of silver per ton.

Best Hopes,

Alan