by CarterB
Bring back the Slumbercoaches!!
Railroad Forums
Moderators: mtuandrew, gprimr1
David Benton wrote:This study of high speed rail freight offers some insightsa in to the market , handling equipment , and rolling stock that may be used in high speed freight service .If it's Euro trains it's apples-oranges comparison to the U.S. because their freights are nowhere near as hefty as ours. Since a lot of our HSR lines are only proposed to be semi-HSR because of existing infrastructure constraints the economic upside is going to have to figure in freight co-mingling. That needn't be much of a constriction. Class 5 track allows for 80 MPH freight, but there's so little of that outside the NEC. Freight mainlines top out at Class 4 (60 MPH freight, 80 MPH passenger). Just upgrading the track class, particularly when you start getting into HSR-ish Classes 6, 7, 8 solves a lot of that problem if the freights can start doing 90-100+. The speed penalty doesn't have to widen. Having adequate passing sidings, grade crossing elimination, and de-abandoning some convenient slow-speed radial freight routes as congestion bypasses solves the problem a lot more practically than re-engineering the whole concept of a freight train. That's a nonstarter for the private freight industry that does just fine with a lot of older refurbished equipment and little need to invest in bleeding-edge tech.
http://www4.banverket.se/raildokuffe/pdf/MP0102.pdf
george matthews wrote:The Chinese proposal to build a railway between Pacific and Caribbean in Colombia is usually said to be a competitor to the Panama Canal, but it is also a competitor to Union Pacific.Would the transloading and train be faster than a trip through the canal?
justalurker66 wrote:The Colombian line has two purposes. One is to speed up Chinese exports to the eastern US; the other is to carry coal going to China.george matthews wrote:The Chinese proposal to build a railway between Pacific and Caribbean in Colombia is usually said to be a competitor to the Panama Canal, but it is also a competitor to Union Pacific.Would the transloading and train be faster than a trip through the canal?
As far as UP goes ... does much cargo go from a boat in California to a boat in the gulf? Or does a Panama boat-train-boat route be enough of an improvement to compete in getting trainloads to the eastern US?