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Jet Turbine Locomotives
An anonymous submitter writes "I saw this article in the paper today. Not only is it lighter than a comparable diesel engine, it should burn the fuel more completely and be a bit better for the environment. Not to mention it is much faster. They should make more of a point that the North American railway system needs a major overhaul in order to support faster trains." The Department of Transportation has some information about next-generation trains, including a design incorporating a flywheel to improve acceleration.
Spokesman Warren Flatau of the Railroad Administration said the agency has invested $13 million US in developing the turbine-powered locomotive since about 1997. With Bombardier matching that, JetTrain has cost at least $41 million Cdn so far.
Don't they know you have to charge the US Gubmint at least $500 million to get any attention? There's not enough pork in this project for it to go anywhere.
Remain calm! All is well!
Few know that the first practical gas turbine was made by a couple gentlemen who weren't even sure that it would actually work.
But, these days it's almost a trivial task to make your own. Jet engines take air in the front at low speed and chuck it out the back at high speed.
So, with that in mind, I could easily throw one of these together over a lunch break. All you need are a propane torch, a ten centimetre square sheet of foil, one of those hole punches, and a five centimetre square of brass metal.
Make the nozzle fairly long for more power. If you want to have a nice methane-excretion sound like some teens' automobiles, poke a few dozen holes on the inside of the nozzle.
Remember that Force = Mass * Acceleration as well as what time your girlfriend will be home so that you don't have to sleep on the couch that night.
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
If you think the roads are bad in your state, you should see some of the rails- sure, the railroads spend money on upkeep, but in many places the parallelness of the rails can deviate as much as 10 degrees and still be within spec.
When trains encounter such areas of track, they simply slow down and take that spot "easy". Not ideal for high speed "bullet" trains.
If the railroads decided to replace all the old section rails with ribbon rails, then you might have a different outlook on such a technology.
Also, without being too much of a know it all, I'd have to point out that harmonic vibration of the railcars moving at such elevated speeds could cause a derailment for no reason other than the train was moving too quickly.
I was in a secret railroad switch-house last week, and I stumbled upon a locomotive that had been sitting there since 1880. It was fusion powered. The reactor ran on GARBAGE no less! It could levitate and even looked capable of time travel. The security guard who let me in said his only instructions were to wait for a man named "Doc Brown" to show up.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
In the railroads' minds, louder is safer. They'll probably take advantage of the jet exhaust by routing it through a huge whistle and horn. It will continuously emit a piercing, deafening alien wail audible dozens of miles away. Railroad crossing accidents will become a thing of the past, because it will be too painful to remain near the tracks as the train approaches.
> You're talking about steel wheels on a steel track
If they were smart, they'd put rubber bands around the driving wheels, just like model trains to get more traction. But of course they didn't ask me.
Think "Pushing Tin"
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You're an optimist... I predict lawsuits from grieving parents of Darwinbait.
"B-b-b-but the trains are so loud now, they practically forced Johnny to floor it and drive around the gates at the railroad crossing! When they made new trains that could go twice as fast as the old trains, why couldn't they also make them able to stop faster, too? Waaaah!"
"Where we're going, we don't *need* roads."
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I knew Slashdotters were just a big bunch of trainspotters, and now they're all coming out of the woodwork. This is amusing...
If it can stop an airplane...
Let me get this straight: The TGV runs at 320mph... on tracks rated for 250mph. Oh, that's gonna be fun.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
is that the exhaust is so hot, it melts the asphalt off of any underpass that it passes under too slowly.
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
*evil grin*
I'd love to see that in action. Johnny's pick-me-up truck gets incinerated in a blast of jet wash, windows implode, and then the train, still travelling at 140 MPH, (because even a jet engine producing 50,000 pounds of thrust doesn't do much against a train weighing tens of millions of pounds!) crushes him like a bug anyways.
(Paging Father Darwin, pickup on Track Six!)