acela: in need of a diet

DutchRailnut wrote: As for California and some of other stuff that would never be Amtrak anyway and is therefore no longer a subject on this forum.

Please document your source. How do you know that HSR will not be either built by Amtrak or contracted out to amtrak, will not wear amtrak paint and sold by Amtrak.com?

edit: In any case this thread is about why acela is such a brut on the scales. FRA policy and thinking on HSR has everything to do with how Acela got to be so chubby. FRA HSR policy fits into an Amtrak forum on that basis alone

It is wrong to say that Europe has eliminated the grade crossing problem. Even riding aboard the ICE 3 through Germany, it seemed like half the time we were on older rights of way with grade crossings, and speeds of up to 200 km/hr vs. the 300 km/hr on the new Frankfurt - Cologne segment.

hsr_fan wrote:It is wrong to say that Europe has eliminated the grade crossing problem. Even riding aboard the ICE 3 through Germany, it seemed like half the time we were on older rights of way with grade crossings, and speeds of up to 200 km/hr vs. the 300 km/hr on the new Frankfurt - Cologne segment.

http://www.andrew.com/access/0603/articles/icerail.aspx

The new north-south Frankfurt-Cologne ICE3 line - officially opened in August 2002 and in full service in December 2002 - was designed only for high speed trains and makes the 226 km (140 mile) trip in about an hour. This new direct route with minimal curves and no crossings is 48 km (30 miles) shorter than the conventional train route.

I believe the point is that the Europeans do not allow ICE to run full out unless it is on a dedicated no grade crossing line, and have over many decades worked to eliminate such crossings when ever possible. America has done almost nothing to eliminate crossings, does not even come down hard on those who run crossings, thus we have a population that is at risk and has been never educated on the importance of respecting trains at grade crossings. This long term failure to deal with problem makes installing HSR more difficult, and is partly responsible for prompting the FRA to regulate in such a way that America can not install HSR because it insists that trainsets be beasts so that they can survive the inevitable contacts. ICE can run at low speeds on old row to reach the new row, and do so at low risk, because of the work the Germans have done over the last 60 years on the grade crossing problem. They have fewer grade crossings, and they have a population who for the most part would never dream of risking a grade crossing accident.

<i>Not true, a light train will slide easier , with resulting flatspots and there fore can not have same brake rate as a heavier train. </i>

BART cars are less than 1/2 the weight of an Amfleet car and can achieve rates of up to 3.0mph/s. And with magnetic track brakes, brake rates can be much higher - the PCC is a notorious example of being able to stop on a dim.

But, like you said, lightweight trains can't stop as fast as heavyweight ones, thus the amfleet should be able to get at least 6.0mph/s, being 2 times the weight of a BART car, right?

DutchRailnut wrote:Not true, a light train will slide easier , with resulting flatspots and there fore can not have same brake rate as a heavier train.
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This is nonsense. How then do the rest of the world stop their light weight HSR vehicles????why they use something other than friction brakes of course. In the case of ice-3 eddy current brakes. It is a non issue re FRA crush weight standards and bulk on HSR trainsets.

NellieBly wrote:Ah, more FRA-bashing! I just want to ask everybody a question: did any of you see the photos of the ICE derailment in Eschede, Germany? The cafe car of that nice, lightweight train was 18 inches wide. No bodies in there -- just a sort of people slurry. Anyone like to take a ride?

So there's a reason for FRA's caution. Trains are a LOT bigger and heavier here than in Germany. Nobody wants to see a version of Eschede occur here.

FRA has in the past concentrated on prescriptive regulation. That may be changing to performance-based regulation, if legal fears don't derail the process. Prescriptive regulation is safer, legally speaking. You just do what the rules say. And remember, we have to keep the US trial lawyers well-fed and happy.

Can anyone guarantee that Acela Express passenger cars would survive slamming into the supports of a highway overpass at speed? The Eschede accident was not a head-on collision (remember, the tire of a driving wheel peeled off and caused the rails to "snakehead" cutting the train in two); and AE passenger cars have open ends—which means that if it met a similar situation, unless everyone's wearing a seat belt, they're going to fly out the open end like the people in the ICE car did and get slammed into the overpass support. Even worse, the highway bridge collapsed on the rear cars. Think the AE's going to survive that any better than the ICE?

For the record, the ICE-1 is not a "lightweight"—its passenger cars are similar in weight to the Acela Express, the ICE-1 cars being a mere 11,000 pounds lighter on average. Later versions of ICE are lighter still. (For the nitpickers, ICE-1 is highly relevant here since it was one of the pre-Acela test trains.)

(As a point of interest, ICE uses named trains. The train in question was called the Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, after the fellow who discovered X-rays.)

Like I said the acela is a custom-built train. When they were being designed alot of thought went into the fact they would be running in urban areas. Where people put debris on the track and they wanted the train to be safe. Those european trains don't run though as many urban areas as the acela. They have dedicated lines that are fenced in. Many parts of the NEC are not.
But regardless of the weight they are not doing any damage to the track. And they work good in the enviornment they were built for. steve how could you be mad at a train you never rode or seen perform. What did the acela do to you? lol. I'm just curious.

<i>Can anyone guarantee that Acela Express passenger cars would survive slamming into the supports of a highway overpass at speed?</i>

No. Even if anyone did computer simulations to 'prove' it one way or the other, there's simply no database of crash testing to VALIDATE the simulations. Unless you can validate a model, it's pretty useless.

In any case, I'm not aware of any full scale crash testing done on Acelas, and even the FRA's earlier crash tests of Silverliners, etc produced laughable results. It wasn't until they did their CEM design test (ironically of an LIRR M-1), that they started getting anything respectable (and years behind the rest of the world - the French were investigating such techniques in the 60's and 70's - it directly resulted in the wacky look of some French locomotives).

A full scale, instrumented crash test of an Acela would be interesting, but realistically, you'd have to crash most of the fleet to get any real usable results.

<i> The Eschede accident was not a head-on collision (remember, the tire of a driving wheel peeled off and caused the rails to "snakehead" cutting the train in two); and AE passenger cars have open ends—which means that if it met a similar situation, unless everyone's wearing a seat belt, they're going to fly out the open end like the people in the ICE car did and get slammed into the overpass support.</i>

What's more disturbing (IMHO) is that they ever used the wheel design they did - rubber insert wheels had never been used at such high speeds, they were only seen on low speed streetcars and such.

<i>Even worse, the highway bridge collapsed on the rear cars. Think the AE's going to survive that any better than the ICE?</i>

Given what even a 'small' overpass weighs, no train will survive on falling on it. Not even the mighty Acela, which will crush like an aluminum can. Overpasses weigh hundreds of tons, easily.

<i>For the record, the ICE-1 is not a "lightweight"—its passenger cars are similar in weight to the Acela Express, the ICE-1 cars being a mere 11,000 pounds lighter on average. Later versions of ICE are lighter still. (For the nitpickers, ICE-1 is highly relevant here since it was one of the pre-Acela test trains.)</i>

It's no big surprise they're cutting weight - I'm pretty certain the early ICE's had stability issues, on top of ride issues. In any case, lowering the weight results in lower operating and maintenance costs.

Nobody in their right mind would think that the acela or any other train would survive a bridge falling down on top of it. The safety and design of trains revolve around derailments, head-on collisions and sideswipes. Not concrete bridges crushing them. That's an disaster.

<i>The safety and design of trains revolve around derailments, head-on collisions and sideswipes. </i>

Good, let's see some crash test data showing they're safer in <i>those</i> cases.

Then again, I have to ask myself - why would I ever want to ride on a rail system that pre-assumes that trains <b>will</b> crash spectacularly, given that head on collisions and side swipes are 100% preventable (and easily!), and derailments are pretty close.

Not possible you say? The Shinkansen has never had a head-on or sideswipe in it's 40+ year history, and has had very few derailments, none of which were fatal, or even close to it. That's what a safe design is. And the Japanese do it with equipment that's built lighter than European equipment - the EMU type cars weigh as low as 39 tons (not sure which type of ton, but regardless it's still a respectably low weight).

Depending on unproven design features in a situation that's basically unpredictable, is a poor way to ensure safety

a bit of humour I missed till now

Before the first train was built, the Federal Railroad Administration required it to meet crash safety standards that senior Amtrak officials considered too strict. That forced the manufacturers, Bombardier Inc. of Canada and GEC Alstom of France, to make the trains twice as heavy as European models. Workers dubbed the trains "le cochon" - the pig.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/24/national/24acela.html

Abstract:
High-speed trains today operate at speeds between 200 and 320 km/h and MAGLEV trains between 400 and 500 km/h, whereas world record stands at 515 km/h for trains on wheels and 552 km/h for MAGLEV trains. This speed level can only be reached economically when light weight design is systematically used. Low axle load is crucial for the useful life of the infrastructure and low overall weight is necessary to reduce traction power and braking efficiency. The influence of train configuration on the mass per passenger seat is shown. For a given train configuration finally light weight design is compulsory despite the fact that requirements for structural stiffness, sound dampening, thermal insulation and other comfort items need additional mass. A number of high-speed trains such as TGV Duplex, Talgo Pendular, ETR 500, Pendolino WCML, ICN are presented and compared with the MAGLEV train TR08. A special aspect in this comparison will be passenger safety and as part of it crashworthiness of the vehicles. Development trends for the future are given

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2001-01-3254

documentation for my point that exess weight on the Acela is a problem for the NEC, infrastructure that has already suffered years of neglect. Amtrak is now spending big on the NEC, as are the states, but how much of this is to compensate for FRA mandated over weighting of Acela?

The reference to the Eschede accident brought back some unpleasant memories of our own paralell, at Homewood, Ill, in the fall of 1972, when an IC "Highliner" MU was telescoped by an older set of equipment, with gory consequences.

This incident, in turn, led NJT officials to be very careful as new MU's replaced the older equipment inherited from EL/DL&W. And all of this took place a decade before Chase brought the freight/passenger high/low speed issue to everyone's attention.

Like the controversies over open access and dispatching priorities, this is simply an issue that will have to be hashed out with reasonable compromise on both sides. Alternatives are available in almost all of the markets affected, but in some cases the price tag is going to be high and the NIMBY opposition vocal.

Given the spineless nature of many state and local politicians, the obstinacy of agencies such as the FRA may be exactly what's needed to impose a solution.

<i>The reference to the Eschede accident brought back some unpleasant memories of our own paralell, at Homewood, Ill, in the fall of 1972, when an IC "Highliner" MU was telescoped by an older set of equimpnet, with gory consequences. </i>

The irony is the Highliners are equally as heavy as the old PS cars were. Actually, had it been struck by a trailer, the trailers on those old PS train were actually quite light.

<i>And all of this took place a decade before Chase brought the freight/passenger high/low speed issue to everyone's attention</i>

The only thing Chase brought to anyone's attention was the FRA's 'look the other way' attitude w.r.t. safety. In fact, the NTSB said so in their report, right on the first page. Along with an abominable safety culture at Conrail and Amtrak at the time (and, given the continual 'near misses' we've seen, today, too), it was pretty much a given that Chase was going to happen, somewhere, at some time.

There is no 'high/low speed issue', here. The real issue is poor regulation, poor operation, and a poor safety culture. And I haven't seen anything from the parties involved that says any of those were ever addressed.

MODERATOR'S NOTE:

Moved from the Amtrak forum to the High-Speed Rail forum.