TRAINS TGV Article

george matthews wrote:

It's worth noting that Europe also lacks American safety standards. FRA standards exist for a reason and have saved many lives of the decades.

What nonsense.

No, it's absolutely true. In fact, Europe has traditional trailed in terms of railroad safety. It's pretty telling that automatic coupler and air brake were American safety innovations.

Cowford wrote:

Paris makes up a whopping 20% of France's population. This has shaped the country's network in a relatively simple single hub with four "spokes"

Station Aficionado wrote:

I suspect that it is also easier for the French government to obtain or take land for a dedicated HSR right-of-way. My understanding is that under the French equivalent of imminent domain, the landowner is in a weaker position vis a vis the government than under the American system.

and Mr. Mathews noted:

I believe that the French government has a policy of offering more than the market price for properties. Thus they have less difficulty in getting agreement. However, such people as named vineyards have a lot of clout in getting routes diverted.

And I could also have cited the unique means by which an historically Catholic nation has reconciled a strict separation of church and state, or the embodiments in official policy of the unique reverence for art held by the French. And while the French reatained their democratic ideals, no western democracy paid a heavier price in the two World Wars.

Point simply being, that a system developed under such a set of circumstances should not be held up as a panacea for a nation which, while also a tested democracy, holds to a near-polar oppposite in many of the standards and protocols by which that democracy is applied.

Long-term trends will continue to argue in favor of concentration, as opposed to centralization, of our transport system. And it's my personal prediction that, as demonstrated in the 2008 run-up, petroleum dependency will continue to act as a drag on economic re-orientation and recovery that few Establishment politicians have the guts to deal with. It's time to replace te thinking that peddles HSR as a cure-all with one that gives advocates of transport restructuring with the justification for saying "I told you so" when the cycle repeats.

The American safety standards are absurd. Europe has safety standards, they just don't involve making a commuter train (or Acela) survivable with a head-on collision with a coal train. We need to lighten up, pun intended on our collision and crash force standards for trains that start running in 2015 when the PTC mandate is in place, or for ones running in current PTC territory.

We also need an actual high-speed route to start out. At least to start off, the FRA should allow Acela to do 170 if it's more than 5 miles away from any freight traffic.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: Again, weight is a far more important issue in aerospace than in passenger railroads.

You do not understand the forces and energy involved at high speeds. The current generation of HSTs are too heavy for practical 200+mph running, which is why it's so rare. The french have looked into aluminum trucks, there's serious talk of the use of composites, and even the current bilevel TGVs use some interesting alloys in their bodies.

Every single operator, excep for the US DOT, of HSTs, has determined their current ones are too heavy. How on earth can you say weight isn't important, when it's universally listed as the number one thing to engineer out of new HSTs?

It's worth noting that Europe also lacks American safety standards.

Yet they run a safer, per passenger km traveled system, than the US. It's also notable that the Japanese have effectively NO crash standards, yet the Shinkansen is by far the safest rail system in the world, period.

FRA standards exist for a reason and have saved many lives of the decades.

No, they've shifted the deaths to other modes, notably automotive traffic. That's not saving lives, it's moving them around. The FRA's regulations make rail too slow and expensive to compete with driving, thus folks drive instead, out of choice or need (i.e., the system doesn't exist).

I can assure you that a North American passenger train can be derailed by a sheep, although that's precisely what happened to an ICE train in Germany.

A train in California hit a pickup at a grade crossing at low speed and killed 10 passengers in the process. I can't think of any accident overseas where such deplorable crash performance existed. Even GTW 2/6s have hit pretty substantial trucks without major injury to anyone on board.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: No, it's absolutely true. In fact, Europe has traditional trailed in terms of railroad safety. It's pretty telling that automatic coupler and air brake were American safety innovations.

Automatic stops are mandatory on all German lines, with few exceptions. Track gauge standards are to the millimeter, even at lower speeds. Braking distances are required by law to be below certain lengths or different speed classes.

In the US, the FRA has very loose track standards, no requirement for enforced stops, and no braking standard at all, even for Tier II. The Acela's braking rates (nevermind track dynamics!) likely would make it illegal in Germany - the old AEM-7 hauled Metroliners would surely be restricted.

Well, it takes a lot of distance to brake when you're hauling around a massive steel frame that is designed to survive a crash. The Acela tops out at 168mph, even with 12,000 hp. I do sort of wonder about its weight being a hazard to another, lighter train in a train-to-train collision. Luckily, it only runs in ATC territory, and soon, PTC territory.

GP40 6694 wrote: At least to start off, the FRA should allow Acela to do 170 if it's more than 5 miles away from any freight traffic

Um, not quite, unless the FRA's going to get rid of Class 9 track requirements and the catenary wire on the former PRR suddenly gets upgraded (one of the reasons for being held down to 125-135 mph on there). And no fast train runs any faster than 150 mph on a traditional railroad corridor; the fastest that the ICE-T tilt train runs on traditional German rail corridors is 143 mph, and TGVs run no faster than 137 mph on traditional French alignments.

nasadowsk wrote:Automatic stops are mandatory on all German lines, with few exceptions. Track gauge standards are to the millimeter, even at lower speeds. Braking distances are required by law to be below certain lengths or different speed classes

Well that's funny. One of the things that Deutsche Bahn AG often gets criticized on is lax maintenance. Track gauge tolerances to the millimeter? I hope you realize how small a millimeter is. You'd need very expensive laser-guided machinery operating daily, and coolant systems to keep the track from expanding and contracting due to ambient temperatures. (This is the list of German main lines with Linienzugbeeinflussung aka "linear train control", mandatory for all trains operating at or over 100 mph. So it's not "all German lines", unless you mean all German high-speed lines.)

amtrakowitz wrote:

GP40 6694 wrote: At least to start off, the FRA should allow Acela to do 170 if it's more than 5 miles away from any freight traffic

Um, not quite, unless the FRA's going to get rid of Class 9 track requirements and the catenary wire on the former PRR suddenly gets upgraded (one of the reasons for being held down to 125-135 mph on there). And no fast train runs any faster than 150 mph on a traditional railroad corridor; the fastest that the ICE-T tilt train runs on traditional German rail corridors is 143 mph, and TGVs run no faster than 137 mph on traditional French alignments.

Yeah I know about the CT cat issue, but isn't that Amtrak, not FRA? They don't want Acela shutting down the NEC because it ripped the wire down at Princeton junction doing 150.

If the track needed to be upgraded, then that would be part of the requirements for operations at those speeds. Bureaucracy is all that's stopping it.

amtrakowitz wrote: (This is the list of German main lines with Linienzugbeeinflussung aka "linear train control", mandatory for all trains operating at or over 100 mph. So it's not "all German lines", unless you mean all German high-speed lines.)

And anything without LZB is required to have PZB.

Either will enforce a stop and prevent / mitigate a Chatsworth-style event.

Nasadowsk wrote:

goodnightjohnwayne wrote: No, it's absolutely true. In fact, Europe has traditional trailed in terms of railroad safety. It's pretty telling that automatic coupler and air brake were American safety innovations.

Automatic stops are mandatory on all German lines, with few exceptions.

In the United States, many railroads removed their automatic stops in the 1960s and when passenger volumes collapses. These are very old technology safety devices - although I can see why they aren't worth the bother for a single, or at best, a handful of daily passenger trains.

Nasadowsk wrote: Track gauge standards are to the millimeter, even at lower speeds.

Knowing the Germans, some of those standards are set for purposes of maintaining employment. As previously stated, when sheep can derail and ICE train, it isn't a good indication of safety. Of course, the Europeans have never seemed to worry very much about substantial pilots - or "cow catchers," in the day of steam.

[quote="Nasadowsk"In the US, the FRA has very loose track standards, no requirement for enforced stops, and no braking standard at all, even for Tier II. The Acela's braking rates (nevermind track dynamics!) likely would make it illegal in Germany - the old AEM-7 hauled Metroliners would surely be restricted.[/quote]

Hey, when it's in emergency, it's in emergency. The main thing is avoid flat spots on the wheels. Ha-ha.

most right of ways in England are fenced . i would say the same goes for Germany , but cant remember from traveliing there . i believe the "sheep" were actually a type of mountain goat, a herd of which somehow got into a tunnel . you will be surprised how much damage ainmals can do , my small dog virtyually wrote a meduim size car off and lived . apparently the worst anuimal is a pig , very solid and can write a car off easily . an animal stuck in the wrong place could derail a train .

David Benton wrote:most right of ways in England are fenced . i would say the same goes for Germany , but cant remember from traveliing there .

Only a couple high-velocity lines are fenced in Germany, e.g. the Frankfurt - Cologne 300 km/h route. The tunnel entrance area in the case with the sheep wasn't fenced in. The ICE derailed because some of the about 80 (!) sheep got stuck in the bogies. Neither the couple hits on the front destroying parts of the lead waggon, nor a similar single hit on a second ICE going through the same tunnel a few minutes earlier had something to do with the derailment (the driver of the second ICE only noticed the damage two stops later).
And yes, they were sheep, not goats. The final criminal investigation (took two years) speculates that wild dogs scared the herd out of their (fenced-in) pen, made them go through a small creek (sheep hate water!) and drove them into the tunnel. Other potential causes for derailment such as some switch malfunction were investigated and denied.

Nasadowsk wrote:And anything without LZB is required to have PZB.

§15 EBO:
(2) Routes that are authorized for 100+ km/h speed have to be equipped with a PZB system
(3) Routes that are authorized for 160+ km/h speed have to be equipped with an LZB system
(4) For routes authorized for less than 100+ km/h speed the Federal Transport Ministry (for DB) or the relevant state transport ministry (for other companies) can individually require equipment with a PZB system.

Instead of LZB any automatic stop system that can both enforce a stop and guide a train's speed is a possibility (e.g. ETCS). Instead of PZB any automatic stop system that can enforce a stop is a valid possiblity, such as general Indusi systems working with other standards; in particular some private companies operating with their own network do not use one of the DB PZB standards (Indusi I 54, I 60, PZB 90), but other systems. There are supposedly still a couple routes in East Germany without PZB. Due to the above paragraph these are limited to 100 km/h max. Until 1998 DB still used some 800 vehicles without Indusi equipment, also limited to 100 km/h legally. Since 1998 almost all vehicles were rebuilt to use PZB 90.