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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.
If you were willing to foot the extra bill for one of these in new trains that you bought (assuming that you buy trains) it would have more advantages than just efficiency and speed--can you imagine how cool this would look in an advertisement?
Living next to a railway crossing - I wonder how loud it's going to be - Judging from Jet's flying in and out of airports - I'll be moving away from any railroad tracks.
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
As of right now, most North American railways are used to transport cargo, and the very fact remains that speed isn't really a problem right now, as even though trains are very slow, a speed increase would probably not be necessary, as it would only cost more on shiping. On the other hand, these new technologies could be more useful in other places, such as the Far East, where rail transport is still the primary way to transport both passengers and cargo.
Union Pacific has a jet powered locomotive. They used to have more, but they burn so much fuel that they aren't very economical to operate. Plus, you can't park them underneath overpasses because the exhaust will melt the asphalt. So they just have the one now and it is mainly used for special loads and public relations.
Smeghead every day of the week.
This may be obvious to most people, but this train doesn't actually get thrust from the jet engine. The jet engine is used to power an electric generator, which in turn powers electric motors for the wheels. This is how diesel locomotives work too.
I'd guess the reason they say this locomotive is faster is due to the much lower power to weight ratio of the jet turbine compared to diesel engines. I don't see how this would make any difference on a fully loaded train, however, as the delta in weight between a jet turbine and a diesel engine has to be a small fraction of a percent of the overall weight of the train.
UP had a few turbine locos in the 1960's but they didn't do well. In the past, the problem with turbines in locomotives has been low efficiency (especially at part throttle) and low reliability. They are getting better, but I doubt that you'll see them in freight locos in the near future. Their lighter weight is not a big advantage in freight pullers. Sounds good for lightweight passenger travel, though.
Here is Bombardier's own page on it and a photo of the locomotive.
---Mike
It won't get slashdotted. It's a major news site.
Mod this down. If you like the content, GO TO THE SITE.
Take my karma when above comment is lower than mine
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
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!
I hate flying. The cramped seats. The claustrophobia. The ridiculous rules about standing and walking around...
I'd much rather travel by train, but it's always been much too slow. Even though these new trains are still slower than flying, they make up the difference quite a bit.
A smooth, relaxing train ride where all seats are Business class or better? Sign me up.
When hydrocarbons are burned throroughly, the only waste products are hydrogen and carbon. These can be safely absorbed into the ecosystem.
Incomplete combustion results in particulate matter and cancer-causing inorganic compounds.
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
This isn't about some jackass engineer at Bombardier strapping a jet engine onto a flatcar to make it go faster. Bombardier is proposing the use of a turbine in the same way they are used in natural-gas fired power plants. Presumably, the turbine will drive a generator whose electricity output will drive electric motors as in a conventional diesel locomotive.
I'm all for it if it will bring high-speed rail service to North America. Electrifying the existing rail system will take decades if it happens at all--Canada and the U.S. just aren't densely packed enough to support the infrastructure investment seen in Europe. If we can get high-speed non-electric locomotives, we might see high-speed rail service to more cities, offering a viable alternative to the inconveniences of air travel.
~Idarubicin
I guess they could be clearer, but I doubt this locomotive uses the jet engine for propulsion, rather it uses the jet engine to generate electricity that drives the same gigantic electric motor that moves the train today. Although the engine is a much higher-tech device to maintain than a diesel engine, it should be cleaner and possibly quieter as well.
You can go faster because a turbine engine that generates the same kilowatts as a conventional diesel does will be lighter. Less weight can equal more speed.
All that said, I'm not sure that "less weight" is a priority for most locomotives. If I remember correctly, the enormous weight of the locomotives is critical in pulling literally miles of loaded box cars up an incline. Of course, passenger trains are packed with very low density compared to freight, so maybe that's what this is for.
There is a country (Japan) that spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on train design research and has hands down by far the most effective rail network in the world from everything from technical efficiency of trains to timeliness.
Because of Japanese expertise in this area, other countries (other asian states, some european) either licence the technology outright or tap the experts to develop their own technology (recently China and Korea are doing this).
The problems the US faces are known quantities. Why re-invent the (fly-) wheel? The comparative advantage of nations is real. The US should shelve its hubris and buy a proven japanese design rather than investing in more white elephants.
You missed the whole point of the article. All of Japan's (And Europe's) high speed trains are electric powered. For the US to use these technologies would require a huge investment on upgrading the current track to electrified. This engine will work on any track, and will save quite a bit of money in the long run if it actually works as described.
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.
I have seen several Freight Trains powered by gas turbines.
t m
http://www.railpower.com/2support/locomotives.h
I looked into train travel a couple months, Florida to St Louis and it was more expensive than airfair.
The trip would've taken longer than a bus too.
So, no cheaper than airplanes and it takes longer than a bus... any wonder hardly anyone travels via trains anymore?
We want fast or cheap. Trains are neither right now.
Is it too much to ask that submitters read the article they're submitting? The entire reason this train was developed is so it could be used on existing tracks with a minimum of modifications. It's right there in the second paragraph of the article: "Bombardier believes its 240-kilometres-an-hour JetTrain is the answer to providing high-speed rail service throughout North America using existing track and without the prohibitive cost of electrifying rail networks."
I had read about early attempts to use this technology to power trains, but I seem to recall some heat dissapation problems. I believe it was when these locamotives were stationary beneth things like overpasses and tunnels that they had problems with the output from the jets burning/melting things. My guess would be that they solve this using some of the same technologies they use to reduce the heat signature of aircraft.
This isn't the first gas turbine locomotive that Bombardier has built. Back in the 70's and early 80's Via (Canada's Amtrak) had a gas turbine train (called the "Turbo") operating between Montreal and Toronto that was built by Bombardier. It wasn't as reliable as diesel engines and didn't offer any particular advantages. Gas turbine engines are considerably lighter than diesels and perhaps a bit more fuel efficient, but light weight isn't very important for a locomotive. I remember once watching the Turbo getting towed through Belleville ON by a diesel unit because there was a couple of inches of snow over the rails and the Turbo couldn't plough trough it.
Trains are nearly obsolete? Gee, try telling that to the rest of the developed world. Most Japanese people ONLY use trains. The way to get around Europe is on the trains. In fact, it is not TRAINS which are obsolete, but the US and Canada, who still have these ridiculous diesel engines that are just not suited to getting people around (I had the misfortune--or the adventure--of geting around China for a month on diesel trains--30 hours from Canton to Shanghai; ugh). North America needs to jump on the railway bandwagon for a lot of reasons, most importantly to reduce energy consumption and associated air pollution. You may not realize it, but as much as gas costs now, it's STILL far, far less than what the rest of the world pays, thanks to a fossil of a fossil-fuel-hungry government. Unfortunately, this train doesn't really address that issue very well, as it still uses fossil fuel (albeit less than all those passengers driving SUVs). To really clean things up, we need electric trains, like the rest of the developed world. From a convenience standpoint, however, this train--should it be accepted by the public, which it won't be, since we all love our farcical SUVs so damn much--would make life a whole lot easier. Instead driving hours to get up to my meeting in San Francisco next weekend, I could sit on a train, kick back, drink a beer, read some news on my PDA, watch the scenery fly by, take a nap, and wake up refreshed and ready to work. I would not have had to deal with bastard drivers, getting lost, or even paying attention to where I was going. I also would not have had to be security screened, sniffed by drug dogs, had my fingernail clippers taken away, or sit in a cramped, loud seat in a fart-smelling plane. Trains are the way to go for short-to-medium length trips, and people like you, with your 1950's idea of the railroad, are the people who keep it from happening. Go on, spend some time abroad. Take advantage of other countries' great train systems. If you come back still thinking trains are "obsolete," I'll refund you the cost of reading this post. ;)
You know, the state of North American railways is in many ways worse than in some third world countries. Why can't we get proper electic locomotives like everyone else has?
Because North America is very big, and relatively sparsly populated. It is not at all certain, that electrifying the entire grid is an economically optimal solution. In remote areas there are no power plants, so either you have to construct new ones in the middle of nowhere or the power has to go through very long cables (which causes a lot of losses).
Tor
If you look at the weight of a fully loaded train and the weight of an unloaded one you will see they are very close. A light weight train car will weight in at 50,000 lbs and can carry less than 3 times that. When the average loads these carry are a few pallets and is typicaly less than 10% of the weight of the car. The result is a huge mass that gets moved and that takes energy.
The reason train cars weigh so much is so they don't come off the track when they are pulled around corners. Even with the large radius curves on trainlines, the side forces of a mile long train with a fully loaded car at the back will be quite high. The early solution to that problem was to make the train cars weigh more and the result is now all trains cars fit into a standard weight. This also makes passenger trains weigh far more than they should. The US rail industry could save a major part of its energy bill by introducing a lighter train standard but that would cost a fortune in new rolling stock.
There's a lot of surface area in the US so there's a lot of open space to cover for any rail system.
One reason Japan's rail system is so much better than the United State's is because Japan is just that much smaller of a country. And as for Europe, Texas alone probably equals the space covered by several European countries.
Although many people seem to think of them in the same way. Jet fuel is a very close relative to diesel fuel. . . and kerosene, and in a pinch they can often be substituted for one another, so substituting jet fuel for diesel will have *no* effect on the enviroment, per se. However, burning jet fuel more completely than a diesel engine burns its fuel will, indeed, have a positive effect and is virtually soot free.
You want a nasty fuel enviromentally? Very little is worse than ordinary pump gasoline.
KFG
The "seven trains operating since 1977 in New York State using jet turbines
incorporated into coaches." are awful trains.
I remember when they went into service and replaced the nice big heavy comfortable
slowish trains, with a lot of room, real dining cars, and seats that were
like chairs. Then Amtrak bought these turbo trains from the French. They are
not at all nice, lighter weight, uncomfortable, slowish trains with not much
room, snack cars, and seats that are like airliner seats. ( Some moron
at Amtrak probably thought they were loosing business to the airlines
because people like those airline seats.)
They were always getting disabled every time they hit a snowmobile because
they were so fragile. They were supposed to be fast, but they aren't because
the rail beds are so crummy.
Fast trains aren't fast if they are on slow tracks, and until Amtrak
can get their own tracks the freight trains will keep messing up the rail
beds for all these fast trains.
And they smell just as bad as diesel trains, because there is no
difference between the jet fuel they use, and diesel fuel.
At around 200mph, easily achievable using current train systems if you got high speed rail all the way, you should be able to go from downtown San Francisco or LA to New York in 15 hours. That is actually not that different from air travel if you take into account all the overhead associated with air travel (security, parking, transportation to/from airport, etc.), and it's a whole lot more pleasant. With improved technology, perhaps one could even get that down by a few more hours. And trains don't fly into buildings either.
Most heavily-used mainline railroads in the US do have continuously-welded rail. It's expensive and tricky to build correctly, so they don't bother with it on more lightly-used lines.
Same applies to concrete ties, bi-directional signaling, centralized traffic control, and all the other technologies that make railroads run faster and more efficiently.
is that they don't throttle well. They like to rev up, to VERY high speeds, and stay there. When attempts were made to use turbines in racing cars it was found that this made them very effective for oval racing, but nearly useless for road racing. They're even more useless for road driving with it's stop and start patterns.
They are, however, when used at constant rate, far more efficient than piston engines. This makes them good for turning generators.
This would make them good for *hybrid* cars, in which there is renewed interest. In fact, the locomotives that are in question here are conceptually the same as a hybrid car.
KFG
The M1 tank has a turbine engine also. Generally these types of engines are used in applications where a high power-to-weight ratio is required and cost is not the issue.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class. Especially since I rule. -Randal, Clerks
I had the chance to cruise on the Millennium last year, which has two gas turbine engines hooked to electrical generators which both supply energy to the ship's power grid and also power the motors driving the propellers. I'm sure kilotonnes of ship will help silence the engines, so I can't speak to noise, but they were amazingly vibration-free, unlike more common deisel engines with a direct physical linkage from engine to drivetrain to prop.
I'm not sure how that translates to train use, but I'm curious to find out. Considering that they'd probably provide electricity to power the wheels, I wonder if a sufficiently sized flywheel arrangement or battery bank could mean that the engine could operate at constant speed, preventing the frequent idleup and idledown which creates a much more distracting noise at a distance than the noise of a constant engine...
Kevin Fox
I don't know if you are familiar with rail service in Europe but it is a good alternative to flying or driving. For example high-speed rail is considered THE way to travel between Paris and Brussels.
.5 hr to get into downtown Portland. 4.5hrs total. .5hr to station, .5hr to .25hr waiting for departure, 2.5hr train ride, .25-.5hr to get to destination in Portland. 3.5hr-4hr total.
There are train corridors that already are quite popular such as Vancouver BC-Seattle-Portland, Boston-NYC-DC, and LA-San Diego. Many areas have corridors they would like to see higher speed, more frequent, and more reliable service. In some cases the states and cities are even willing to invest their own money (YVR-SEA-PDX Talgo service).
If I want to travel between Seattle and Portland (about 200 miles) I have 3 options:
1. Fly, 1hr to get to airport, 2hrs to clear security and check in, 1hr for flight,
2. Drive, about 4 hours, 6 or more during rush hour or if there is an accident.
3. Train,
and trains don't require a body cavity search.
If we were willing to invest even a fraction of the total subsidies given to either the auto industry or air travel industries in passenger rail services people actually wanted to use we could probably achieve ridership rates approching Europe.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
That's true, however, note that I said that when talking about people moving, trains were dead. the military, for example, loves trains because it moves all their tanks that way.
However, in cargo moving speed is not necessary. Aircraft handle the high speed, low volume traffice quite well.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
That's just another way of saying "let the bondholders pay for the mess." Which isn't necessarily a bad idea, but someone ultimately is going to have to pay.
Let a new company with new vision and an eye towards the future of transportation develop a high tech train system in America.
There's not a single passenger train system in the world that isn't subsidised by some government. Cut the funding and you can expect ticket prices to rise and the number of passengers to drop sharply.
Of course in todays low interest rate environment maybe the system could be sustained, at least until interest rates start going up again.
We don't need old companies to make a new train system.
Considering that it's only old companies that have the capital to make a new train system, yes we do.
This is exactly what a diesel engine does. Spins a generator so it can drive an electric motor. Hell we could have nuclear trains if we wanted.
The US is not ready for high speed trains, the infrastructre is FUBAR. Railroad crossings are lethal at the moment and likely to become worse with 100mph+ trains.
The Amercian public is not wishing to travel by train, so get the passangers off the track and make them exclusively for freight.
The best thing that could happen is for AmTrak to be put out of it's misery it's assets sold off and everyone forget about rail travel in the US.
Maybe in 50 years if nothing better has come along America can rediscover trains but until the current crippled system is ripped out nothing will improve.
The problem with shutting down the system is the loss of right-of-way. IF you loose that the game is over forever due to cost of replacing the land as well as NIMBY issues. There have been some attempts at rail banking (saving the right-of-way after the rails are pulled out. As much as I would like to see rail upgraded "distroying the line to save the line" just won't work.
Oil exploration and energy generation in general are economic activities. The more oil costs, the more marginal fields will be exploited and the more alternatives will be found. This will take years and years, as it already has taken years and years. It's not like there's one tap in the ground and when it goes dry there is no more oil There are a number of different quality oil sources in the ground, and some are more expensive to exploit. As the price of oil goes up, they will become economically feasible, and there will be enormous economic advantages to find cheaper sources of energy. At some price, biofuel will be feasible, at some price wind power will become feasible, and at some price, solar power will become feasible. Gasoline cars will never be obsolete because those alternatives will be used for applications that are flexible with regards to the source of their energy (anyone that uses electricity for example) when those alternatives are cheaper than oil, so the demand for oil will decrease dramatically, leaving only those who have no choice but to use oil as the only market for oil.
personal attacks hurt, especially when deserved
"Unfortunately, this train doesn't really address that issue very well, as it still uses fossil fuel"
Actually, it addresses it very well. With the JetTrain, you have a fossil-fuel turbine generating electricity which turn electric motors on the train wheels. With an electric train, you probably have a fossil-fuel turbine generating electricity which turn electric motors on the train wheels.
The JetTrain would use slightly more energy because it has to push a large engine and a big tank of fuel around. It's minimal compared to the weight of the load, though.
An electric train would use massive amounts of energy and resources to build out electric tracks over thousands of miles.
it's a one time versus an ongoing cost.
Compared to SUV's, the savings are fricking massive.
Bryan
We also have a Congress who feels that Amtrak should be paying its own way, and not requiring federal subsidies.
Meanwhile, just how big is the tax infrastructure that's already in place supporting our road and highway system? Road traffic is really *heavily* subsidized by our taxes, and not just the ones at the pump, tires, and vehicle registration.
I've also heard that there's a heavy federal infrastructure involved in air transport, though I know nothing of the breakdown there between private and public sector. I remember Reagan ordering the air traffic controllers back to work, suggesting public sector, there. (I don't remember Taft Hartley being invoked, though it may have.)
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
What ever happened to Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) engines? It seems like they'd be perfect for a locomotive application, inasmuch as they can take fuel directly to electricity with no moving parts. A quick Google search shows one old but promising article on an LMMHD auto engine, and that's about it: comments on the infeasibility of this approach would be appreciated.
I think if we were to design a gas-turbine locomotive in 2002, the worries about fuel consumption, noise levels and exhaust emissions are no longer major issues, thanks to the efforts of GE, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce in the last 25 years in dramatically reducing fuel consumption, noise levels and harmful exhaust emissions on airliner jet engines. A Turbo Train using a modified version of today's modern jet engines would be quite powerful, generate much less noise, have very low emissions and would be far more efficient than the old GE Big Blows that UP used during the 1950's and 1960's.
However, we still must eliminate a big problem with gas turbines: the hot exhaust from the engine. Both GE Transportation Systems and GM's EMD will have to figure out how to cool that exhaust in a very small space before we can build a modern gas-turbine locomotive. Remember, we're not taking about a ship, where there is plenty of space to either divert the hot exhaust or install various technologies in the exhaust stream to cool the hot exhaust.
Thus US rail passenger vehicles must be built to withstand impact with freight trains. Other nations have a far greater percentage of passenger-only track including many dedicated lines. Also in many nations the rail infrastructure has been continuously modernized resulting in more sophisticated switching and control system.
Amtrak inherited its system after decades of private neglect and was originally a way to prevent the various passenger rail services in the US from individually being shut down or sliding into bankruptcy. That passenger rail still survives in the US at all after decades of far less support then virtually every other transportation medium speaks to its tenacity and durability. Unfortunately Amtrak has always been stuck with conflicting missions and starved for infrastructure (again, much of what it began with was already obsolete or decrepit; upgrades, replacements and refurbishments have always been piecemeal and/or minimal.) That and impressively bad management.
Another problem has been the extraordinarily high strength requirement has been set by the US's Federal Railroad Administration which results in US rail passenger cars being at a minimum of twice as heavy as every other nation's. A result is that there is literally no other market for US vehicles thus tried & proven designs from other nations can't be used in the USA. Spanish, Swedish, German, etc. - none of their highly successful trains can now be imported into the US due to the FRA's unique requirements.
Thus when folks point out the curiosity of Amtrak hiring the consortium of Alstom/Bombardier to design & build the Acela instead of buying a successful somethingelse model they're ignoring that the somethingelses simply aren't allowed to run in the US on an ongoing basis. After license and redesign fees it would have cost more to convert an existing train then to just design & build one to Amtrak's (& the FRA's) unique requirements, which is what was done.
Of course now Amtrak & Alstom/Bombardier are mired in suits and counter-suits, ignoring the mediation structures built into their contracts and publicly blaming each other for the problems the Acela is facing. Amtrak claims the Acela doesn't meet specifications and was delivered late. Alstom/Bombardier claim Amtrak wasn't timely in providing specifications and making design decisions, many of the problems are with features Alstom/Bombardier advised against, and that Amtrak is running the vehicles on substandard track & caternary against Alstom/Bombardier's recommendations.
Of course much of this could have been avoided had the usual process of building a test train, running it ragged for a year, then dissembling it to examine it for understanding of it's rail performance, maintenance characteristics, wear patterns, practical experiance, then refining the design before going into production been followed. Indeed reexamination of the original train's evaluation appears to show the precursors of many of the problems now appearing on the Acela.
Instead however Amtrak ordered 20 trains in one design/build package (and now claims it'll never order another.) Thus as each trainset was built it was manufactured slightly differently from the ones before as experience was applied and improvements made. This now gives Amtrak 20 subtly different trainsets and no further application of the lessons learned nor incentive on the designer/manufacturer to refine the vehicle.
Whatever the case the losers are the citizens of the US & Canada. Why Canada? It turns out the money Amtrak used to purchase Acela Express was from a $1 billion low-interest loan from the Export Development Corp. of Canada. Yep, if Amtrak goes belly-up not only will the US public be out but also the Canadians. As you can imagine the prospect of a US quasi-governmental agency going belly-up and forfeiting on it's debts to Canada doesn't play well north of the border
Ironically there is a widely rumored proposal in Canada for investing CA$3-billion to improve train service in the Quebec City to Windsor corridor (incl. Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and possibly Kingston). The "VIAFast" upgrade is expected to take advantage of trains like Bombardier's newly (re)announced turbo train as well as track-swapping with CPR & CNR to create a dedicated passenger rail route. Indeed there's even renewed interest in a new high-speed Calgary-Edmonton corridor route to serve that rapidly growing part of the country.
Anyway, now you know why the US is stuck with slow trains: Inheritance, lack of investment, political game playing, lousy management, and extreme requirements. On the other hand neighbors in much the same situation are instead expanding their rail systems in logical yet ambitious ways. Makes me think of the tortiose & the hare...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
I fail to see how a jet train will make much difference given that passenger rail travel is generally a failure in North America.
There is the immediate issue of population density - it is not high enough to economically justify the huge construction and maintenance costs. Very few passenger routes (mainly between large cities in the North East) actually turn a profit.
Of course, this exact same argument could be levelled against passenger car travel, as the hidden subsidies in the form of public roadworks, tax benefits to car manufacturers and oil companies, etc. all add up to about 4 times as much as the visible cost of owning and operating the average car.
The issue then becomes, at the core, one of culture. We are wedded to our cars, they are ingrained into our very way of life far more than their mere utilitarian purpose entails. Life in America revolves around the car, not the other way around. Given that, passenger rail travel has no hope of succeeding beyond a few niche markets.
Finally, the high-speed rail travel is only moderately successful even in its ideal arenas of rail-crazy Europe and Japan. The Eurostar, Thalys and ICE make a profit (and that's BEFORE accounting for public subsidies) only over middle distances connecting the major hubs, i.e. London, Brussels, Paris. Other routes to Switzerland, Germany and the South of France have always been making huge financial losses, even more so now with the advent of low-cost, low-frills airlines that get there in half the time.
think of anti-noise and anti-IR technology developed for military aviation - most attack helicopters now-a-days are virtually silent (until its right on top of you) and have very low IR signatures (to avoid Stingers)
MrCreosote Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump!Meow!Thump! "You're right! There isn't enough room to swing a cat in here!"
I'm really not sure why everyone gets down on American railroads. American railroads are completely different beasts from those in Western Europe and Japan. They are geared towards freight, particularly bulk freight. They move huge quantities very cheaply. Do Europeans have anything comparable to the 100+ car long freight trains that are common in the US? (Just drive I-80 west of Iowa. Original transcontinental railroad still handling hugh trains.) Also remember that the US freight equipment tends to be much larger (because of all of the grade separation requirements, railcars in Europe must fit under all of those old underpasses, while upgrading to stacked containers requires many fewer modifications to the road in the US.)
Huge freight trains and fast passenger trains just don't mix well on the same lines. The US could build dedicated passenger lines (like European governments did) in some locations, but a national network just doesn't make much sense. Even the regional networks would require constant subsidies to operate.
I know, its off topic.
Don't compare old-tech, experimental turbines with what's available now. The whole reason for this project is that turbines are *more* efficient than diesels, not less. If diesels were more efficient, they'd be the first choice for electric powerplants, and they're not- turbines are.
Another reason for this project is that the service requirements of a passenger train are different from that of a freight train. Passenger trains pull lighter loads, travel faster, and need to accelerate more rapidly. Most locomotive technology in the US was designed with pulling freight in mind. Even the passenger locomotives are based on freigh-pulling designs. This project is a clean-slate design, with a specific purpose in mind. It should fulfill that purpose much more efficiently.
I knew Slashdotters were just a big bunch of trainspotters, and now they're all coming out of the woodwork. This is amusing...
Although this looks promising on paper, one can but wonder if that turbine locomotiveis yet another boondoggle (sp?).
Given that the turbine's fuel appetite does not significantly changes when the turbine goes from idle to warp factor nine (unlike a diesel), one wonder what fuel economy will be with a SINGLE 5000 hp turbine engine. Okay, granted, with hotel power (to light-up the cars and air-condition/heat them), you still suck some power from the engine when the train is stopped.
One would think that a sensible way to address this problem would be to use 10 smal 500 HP engines whose number that kick-in would depend of the power needed at a time. But of course, this would mean higher maintenance costs and more chances for something to go wrong. However, modular design could make it easy to replace a turbine.
Even if we end-up with a super-magical turbine locomotive that runs all the time and doesn't suck fuel all the time as well, we'd face a little problem that is caused by the turbines's very suitableness for powering aircraft: low weight.
Of course, low weight means less power needed to go at high speed. But is means also less weight on drivers. Perhaps railroads will be clipping newspapers coupons looking for sand clerance sales (sand can be injected right in front of driving wheels to boost adhesion if the wheels start to slip Wheels will definitely slip if there isn't enough weight on them)...
So, one wonders of the suitableness of a turbine locomotive-hauled passenger train. Will it slip? Will it haul? I'm afraid that a turbine
engine will have to be weighted up... But that weight need not be always deadweight. Big cities call for big commuter train traffic: the thing electrification is for. So, why not add a pantograph and power transformer allowing for full-power operation under catenary when approaching terminals? At least, this will reduce downtown air pollution.
Wouldn't a better way be to have distributed traction throughout the train? You keep power generation in a lightweight power car (it would hardly be a locomotive anymore), and have traction motors throughout the train itself, so to take advantage of the weight there, too. Smaller traction motors, too, or at least, bigger derated ones. The first french TGVs had powered axles under the passenger coaches, and the Hikari Japanese bullet-trains running on the Shinkansen, as well as the newest german ICE trains have distributed powered axles through the trains (and the ICE-3 trains are real neat, too because the front seats of the first cars look on the track ahead, over the engineer's shoulders).
But of course, one hits other problems, such as safely sending traction power throughout the train. You're talking at something like 1000 amps at 600 volts there. Coupling/uncoupling cars would cause problems, and at each car, you also have connections that can go wrong. 100 years ago, in Paris, a subway train caught fire, killing more than 100 people. The cause: high-intensity traction power sent through flexible cables throughout the train. Such lessons from the past are not easily forgotten...
An lighter articulated train would be better in this respect, but then, you end-up with with an unflexible consist.
But, again, adding cars and removing them is expensive, more expensive than hauling around empty seats (or it seems, looking the way some MBAs with adding machines seem to think in railroad adminive departments). But, after all, the french TGVs are articulated, so this is less a problem it might see.
Aha! Let's compromise on, oh, four car articulated, self-contained (1 first class parlour/club-car, 2 second class coaches, bar car & checked luggage/bicycle space with reversible control cab) units, two of which could be powered by one power car. So a 16 car train could be feasible, and you can retain some flexibility.
And then, do we have a tilt-train ? Tilt-trains are attractive, but is still one more thing that can go wrong. And with motorized trucks, you have less room to put the needed power-banking mechanisms...
It should work politically: engineers looove that kind of contraptions! And politicians looove to be associated with forward-thinking technology... But what kind of engineers? Aircraft engineers are clueless about railroad problems (one should remember the woes suffered by the late UAC turbo train), and railroad engineers are justifiably wary of sleek lightweight technology that falls apart at the slightest rail joint...
I am afraid that having efficient turbine power for high-speed passenger trains would end-up in a costlier, less flexible exercise than using electrified off-the-shelf technology in the long run...
I plugged "JetTrain bombardier" into google and got postings on the railroad.net forums. Seems quite a few folks there are pretty skeptical. A good read, in all:
I D=5208
http://www.railroad.net/forums/messages.asp?Topic
just my blog and pix
Turbine B: Turbine > Gears > Wheels
Is Turbine B possible?
Not really. The great thing about turbines is that you can run them really hot. The bad thing is they are fragile to shocks. You run these things either at the limit of your metals or use something inherently fragile like ceramics(experimentally at least). This allows you to get a big temperature difference, which means lots of energy can be extracted (at least that's what all those thermodynaics equations seemed to be about.)
If you tried to run it direct to the wheels you'd probably have to run it so cool that any energy efficiencies would be lost. You also wouldn't get the acceleration you can get by putting electric motors under every car in the train, powered by single lightweight generator car.
There are some pictures of this locomotive here
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
Boil something with it, turn another turbine, generate more elecricity.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
I think you're basing your assessments on the old United Aircraft Turbotrains and the even older GE Big Blow locomotives that Union Pacific Railroad ran during the 1950's and 1960's.
Fortunately, if you've read Bombardier's web page, JetTrain has been designed with the following in mind:
1. The train is designed to meet the very strict FRA requirements for crash survivability, requirements that are actually stricter than those in much of Europe.
2. The JetTrain locomotive uses far more modern gas turbine engines than the old Turbotrain. Remember, Turbotrain was built during the 1960's; with 30 years of research and development since then derived from developing quieter, more fuel efficient and less-polluting jet engines for the commercial aircraft industry since 1970, Pratt & Whitney today can deliver a gas turbine engine for the JetTrain that will use much less fuel, spew out way less exhaust emissions and generate far less noise than the old Turbotrains.
3. Because JetTrain is a clean sheet design, it won't have to owe anything to current diesel-electric locomotive technology, technology that emphasizes more on initial pulling power for heavy trains. Remember, the entire JetTrain trainset uses the latest in materials technology to keep the weight down while still meeting FRA safety standards.
If Bombardier can demonstrate it can properly cool the hot exhaust from the gas turbine engine so it doesn't become a fire/high-temperature hazard to nearby objects, JetTrain with its potential 155 mph (250 km/h) top speed could be just the train for a number of Amtrak routes here in the USA. Already, Amtrak is in the process of upgrading the Chicago to Detroit corridor to handle trains in excess of 100 mph; JetTrain would be a natural for this route. And since Amtrak's Southwest Chief long-distance train between Chicago and Los Angeles runs mostly on AT&SF railroad trackage (which was rated for 100+ mph operation back in 1937!), imagine a JetTrain variant of the Southwest Chief going between Los Angeles and Chicago in under 36 hours! (That is faster than the record for this route set by the Santa Fe Super C freight train in the late 1960's.)
While having high-speed electric trains with overhead wiring is nice, you're forgetting that setting up all that catenary wiring is exorbitantly expensive, especially when you also have to tie in that wiring into the local electrical grid. And don't forget the NIMBY crowd that might not be too thrilled by the installation of all that wiring for various reasons.
I think if Bombardier can work out the bugs on JetTrain, it may become the primary form of locomotion for high-speed rail in the USA, mostly because you can skip out on the expensive overhead catenary wiring installation.
1) I like trains.
2) I don't like planes.
3) I would rather see the world than see the clouds.
4) Speed doesn't really mean anything to me, I can work on a train while traveling.
I have no sig, does anyone have one to spare?
Flywheels to help acceleration? I was under the impression that flywheels 'store' energy to help keep the cruising speed constant despite sudden changes in energy delivered from the engine. For example, in your car, when you push in the clutch, isn't it the flywheel whose rotational momentum buffers your wheels from the now-disconnected engine? Correct me if I'm wrong - this stuff interests me.
Sigh,
Time for gas turbines 101. Here's the biggest difference betwen Gas turbines and Diesels. A diesel can idle on almost no fuel whatsoever, that's why you hear them idling all the time. The fuel/wear and tear it takes to start them vastly outweighs the fuel needed to run them for an hour or eight. Because they use a reciprocating compressor, and a reciprocating compressor maintains is efficiency accross its speed and horsepower band (actually dropping off at the top end) you can turn them down to zero HP out and the fuel going in drops to 1-5% of max power.
GT's have a compressor which relies on the velocities of the compressor blades and the air mass flowing through the compressor to make its magic happen. You dump all the vibrating, clanking, and flailing parts of a recip engine and rely on the momentum/dynamics of the working fluid to get a gizmo which takes 14.4 PSI air at the front and shoves 200-300 psi air out the back with one moving part which is in perfect rotary balance.
The problem is: It only performs this miracle in a small RPM range. Slow down by 10% and the efficiency goes to pot. Long story short, GTEs have only one fuel flow setting, ON. that's why the military was working on an APU for the M1 Abrahms tank. IT would keep the housekeeping electrical systes running without throwing all the fuel away!
There have been advancements in GTEs. Variable inlet stators allow them to have a somewhat broader band of acceptable efficiency. I would not be surprised to see that this engine has intercoolers between the compressors stages. This is a BIG help to efficiency (less HP needed to crank the compressor). This is not done in AC engines because intercoolers are bulky, but not heavy. The second thing you COULD do in a train is to use a recuperator. The takes the nice cool compressed air, and heats it with the exhaust air. Saves on fuel big time, reduces the noise and and the thermal plume of the engine. Again bulky but not heavy.
Modern, digitally controlled, intercooled, rucuperated, gas turbine engines are bone head simple to operate and basically have squat for moving parts and maintenance needs. And they're light. Damn light. Mostly air in fact.
Modern Turbochanred intercooled diesels are damn efficient too. Comfortably close to Carnot efficiency. BUT the massize engine block needed to take the reciprocating pistons is god auful heavy. Damn near a solid block of iron.
Modern diesel freight engines need to be heavy because they need lots of traction to get moving. A passenger train hauls mostly air and aluminum. People weigh squat next to 100 ton freights. That's why passenger cars are so long. They're full of air. Its posible for this type of passenger train to weigh 1/20-1/100 of a freight train with the same HP. A lightweight engine will impose much smaller dynamic loads on the track system.
A big limiting factor is the engine weight. Modern high speed/non electric passenger trains have big fat engines up front. In europe, they offload the engine by using overhead electric power.
This is an interesting solution to the speed problem. I hope it works.
*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!)