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By Road and Rail?
CygnusXII writes "Now this is a novel approach to Dual Mode Transportation. This is an interesting and refreshing approach, that could revolutionize the transportation industry. BladeRunner Dual Mode Transport, or see the main web page. The innovative vehicle will run on road as well as rail. It is as applicable to freight as to passenger transport. Branch-line infrastructure costs could be at least halved because signalling and points could be largely, if not totally, made redundant."
Its already been done.
Without rails.
Takes out most rail infrastructure cost
I guess this is the main reason. I guess it's designed mostly not for human transport, it's for freight. And a crate does not get off the train and attaches itself to a truck all by itself...
Neat idea, I hope someone will feel like putting some $$ in.
Paaul B.
Parent is correct, as I understand U.S. Trademark law.
What the parent is alluding to are "field of use" restrictions. More so than many other countries, the U.S. requires that a person registering a trademark provide fairly specific fields in which the trademark is being used or will soon be used.
That's why Lindows/Windows was a problem (both are computer software), but Blade Runner/BladeRunner shouldn't be a problem
If you read the site, they note that there have been previous solutions that do exactly what they're trying to do here. The advantage they claim is that their design doesn't attempt to power the rail wheels, and instead uses the main tires to provide power and braking. They say that this results in a significant cost savings.
There's also what appears to be some clever design work which allows the operator to reduce the amount of weight placed on the tires to increase fuel efficiency while cruising, but then rapidly change the weight distribution so as to press down hard while braking.
And what makes this better than a low wagon for transporting trucks? You simply drive a truck onto the wagon and off you go. It's used all over Europe.
A good rule of thumb for stopping distance is roughly 1 meter per kph in daytime, about 1 1/4 at night; I've heard that at 80kph (which is exactly 50mph for those of us in the States) the distance is about 81 meters (about 245 feet) and at night it's about 95m (about 300 feet).
Not a chance. You don't know anything about railroads, do you? They already thought of this.
Every railroad operates on a "block" system. This is an interlock designed so that only one rail vehicle may enter an area of track at a time. At the start of each block is a red / green signal and either a speed limit sign or an automated transponder to tell the operator the maximum speed limit for the block they are about to enter. The area of a signal block is something large enough for a train to come to a complete stop, or if necessary, when a train enters a track the signal for the block it is in and the block before it (to allow for any train following it) become red. The faster trains run in an area the larger the block is (or the more preceding blocks are also interlocked). Once a train enters a block, the signal behind it at the entrance to that block turns red and stays red until they enter a new block or change to a different track. It may also cause the transponder in the block behind it to order approaching trains to reduce speed in case they get to their block before they are clear so that they won't have trouble slowing down if necessary. Only once it is completely clear of a block will the signal for that block turn green again. A train operator who sees a red signal will stop their train and not enter the block until it turns green, same as you will stop at a red light when operating a motor vehicle on a street.
An automated train will warn the operator that the next block is occupied and if he fails to bring the train to a stop and crosses the red signal anyway, it will trip the emergency brakes and the train slams to a stop. This is why it's said when a rail engineer runs a red signal he "tripped a signal." If the engineer enters a block at a speed faster than the transponder it will either apply braking or give a warning then trip. The rail system is designed to prevent this sort of thing from happening. This system is also in place in the event of rail fissures, there is a small electrical current running along the rail, if any rail comes loose, it breaks the connection and turns the block red so a train can't enter it, or possibly opens an earlier switch so trains can be routed around the block, I'm not exactly sure.
I do know that rail systems are specifically designed to prevent this sort of thing in the absence of negligence or intentional misconduct. If a train operator ignores signals in some cases they may be able to run red lights (on non-automated trains) but the scenario you describe can't happen except by intentional misconduct or flagrant negligence. Besides that
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
The modern implementation of TOFC started in the mid-1950's - special flats cars were being built in the early 1960's (often owned by Trailer-Train) - the earliest implementation dates back to about 1920, didn't take off then because of opposition from the state highway authorities (trucks were avoiding road use fees).
For long hauls - it makes more sense just to use the box (i.e. containers) - as it reduces weight and air resistance. The Espee pioneered double-stacks (i.e. stacking two containers on one car) with articulated car-sets to further reduce tare weight and train length (single stack trains were too long for the sidings).
To answer your question - the onde advantage of this approach over TOFC is that you can have much smaller trains.
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
This is certainly not new news. Similar vehicles were in use in the 1960s in Germany. The whole concept of putting a bus on rails, i.e. building a light-weight DMU with bus components, isn't exactly new either..
The stopping distances quoted above are for automobiles on dry pavement. Trains take quote a bit more distance
150-car freight train stopping distance
30 mph =3,500 feet or 2/3 of a mile
50 mph =8,000 feet or 1 1/2 miles
8-car passenger train stopping distance
60 mph =3,500 feet or 2/3 of a mile
79 mph =6,000 feet or 1 1/8 miles
(Data from various Operation Lifesaver websites...)
The Adelaide O-Bahn has been around for years, going on the road in the inner city but gliding around on tracks at over 100km/h on tracks to destinations.
It's supposedly (according to their advertising) the fastest bus service in the world, as well as extremely cost-efficient. I think that it's fun as well and a great tourist attraction!
Amtrak used to do this, but has been discontinuing this service. When David Gunn took over Amtrak one of the first things he did was stop this. The reason is that it was causing long delays at terminals where the passengers were waiting on the trains while the roadrailers and "Amboxes" were being added or dropped off. Another good reason to stop this service is that it wasn't making money and the freight railroads saw it as revenue that they were losing. The only ones left are ones where the customer has a long term contract.
Well, you can try asking for one. The railroads (in the US) are hiring right now due to the combined effects of the recent economic upswing and new retirement rules, which caused an unexpected surge in early retirements. Here's some sites to check out:
Demand clogs traffic, profits for Union Pacific
Union Pacific website
BNSF website
and more
If instead of being short-sighted and closed many branch lines in the early 1960's, a certain Dr. Beeching had looked to the almost immediate future, things could be very different now. It was possible with 1950 or earlier technology, you do not need electronics or software to make things like this work, as has been well demonstrated in the past. With modern engines and so on, microprocessor controlled of course, the environmemntal benefits improve dramatically, the economics slightly.
This should succeed, at least in a limited range of applications. The most obvious is where coal is brought from open-cast sites by road, and transferred to rail for its final journey to the power station. One place in the UK (Kincardine), the final rail journey of 2 miles to Longannett power station is only so the lorries don't pass through the village, the road part of the journey is variable up to 10 miles or so. The coal is dumped in a heap in the yard of an obsolete power station, once or twice a week a train comes along, a digger shovels the coal from the heap into wagons, which takes at least a day, and the train trundles slowly along to the power station. Now, if the lorry simply drove into the yard, set itself on the track, and drove direct to the power station, costs would clearly be saved. And, as the continuation of this particular piece of railway has just been approved for re-opening for through freight services, and passengers over part of the route, it might be feasible to bring in the cola from other more remote opencast sites in the same way.
I wish them every success with this redevelopment of a very old idea.
But the concept works very well indeed in the Channel Tunnel, which continues to lose money at an ever-increasing rate......
If you can get the weight down, while maintaining end loading requirements for safety and to avoid damage during routine shunting (200 tonnes IIRC, maybe a lot less if you will only ever be coupling up to, shunting or running amongst lighter vehicles than a standard train), and find a way of safely anchoring the cars in place, it would be viable again.
The other way is to couple cars together into road trains, so the whole group of maybe 50 or 100 would occupy much less road space than individually, but some technological breakthroughs would be needed to make such a thing safe, and prevent abuse, such as some people turning off their engines, and others paying the fuel bill. Now, a burst tyre within the train would not be immediately disastrous, the adjacent vehicles would hold the one with the burst tyre in line, but there would have to be means of stopping the whole train when that happened, by signalling the driver at the front, so the defective car could be uncoupled, But a burst tyre on the leading vehicle might cause a huge catastrophe. Issues of steering and so on are also quite tricky.....
But I hope someone solves these problems too, there is the potential for another workable concept somewhere.
Other things such as automatic guidance of road vehicles should not even be considered with technology likely to be available in the next 20 years, every possible method has so many failure modes of significant probability of occurrence that they would cause a major escalation of the accident rate even if deployed only on a small scale.
If using rail, the safest option, I wonder if it might be possible to avoid carrying the considerable weight of rail wheels while on the road, and only pick them up at the station? It hardly matters on a lorry, but on a car it would be very significant, and on a bus still quite significant. It somehow makes me think of a certain German aircraft that dropped its undercarriage on takeoff, to save weight, but I am sure competent mechanical engineers could come up with something more practicable.
Britain's railway network has been often described as the worst in Europe....by the British press. "The grass is always greener". I have also seen SNCF compared badly to the british network by the French press. No-one notices when things go right, they only notice when things go wrong...
OTOH yes, the japanese railways are fabulous. More expensive and slightly less densely packed than the UKs railways, but the quality of service is impeccable. They do make eveyone else look bad by comparison.
And no, I'm not employed by Network Rail in any capacity, nor any of the train companies in the stupidly denationalised British railways.
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Anyway, the well-developed art of the signaller is to keep it all on the move, and try to keep it all running to schedule, and that is done by making sensible real-time decisions about what will be held and what can proceed. Except in a dire emergency, such as a derailment, a train will never have to make an emergency stop because of something ahead, when the signal is cleared, that means exactly that, the route is cleared to the next signal (not at all like traffic lights, which will change to red as you approach). There are different speed limits for different classes of train to allow for stopping distances, the drivers are highly competent and know where the signals are, so they know when they may have to stop, and if for example they have a yellow signal, they know that the next one may be red, and can reduce speed accordingly.
The instances of stopped passenger trains being wiped out by following heavy goods trains are extremely rare, in fact I can't find records of one at all, the nearest was a sideswipe at the end of a loop when one train over-ran, largely due to frozen mechanical signalling equipment IIRC, and that was about 50 years ago. Oh, and maybe there was the braking problem at Shrewsbury, when a train of oil tanks ran out of control into the bay platform where an empty passenger train was standing, and wiped it out. It is surprising, but that is in no way one of the common types of accident, on a dense and overcrowded network like the UK.
One night on my way home, I was duly annoyed when a long, slow freight train was let out of the yard ahead of us, we were stopped maybe 3 minutes. But it was going non-stop (if possible) on a long journey, our train had about 15 stops so the freight would have been well on its way, at 60mph, before our second or third stop, rather than running behind and having to stop at every signal. On thinking about it, it was clear that the signaller did make the right decision.
So, in that instance, they did not run the freight immediately behind the passenger train, the expert made a real-time decision not to, but he would have been within his rights, and would not have been criticised by anyone if he had done the opposite. But, the freight would still have braked to a stop at every preceding signal, or the driver would deliberately set his speed so the signals were just changing from red to yellow as he approached, so he could keep it rolling. Either way, he would get nowhere near the passenger train. The signallers actions achiebed overall efficiency, they had no bearing whatsoever on safety, he could have run all the trains that night in any order he wished.... (but some possible sequences would have attracted complaints from the train operating companies, who might have had to pay compensation to passengers for being too late!)
The art of making it all run well in real time, despite various snags, is quite impressive, but without that expertise, the signalling systems will still enforce safe separation, and it generally takes a double human error, or maybe a rare equipment failure and a human error, to defeat that.
BTW they would have enforced double-block working for a nuclear train for example, or a Royal Train, or lots of other t
If people had botherd to RTFA they would see that the claimed advantages are that the fuel consumption and emissions are lower than either a truck running on the road or a standard train due to the way it drives itself on the rails.
In addition it also has the advantage of being able to quickly switch from rail to road. This is faster and more efficient than loading/unloading trailers and boxes on a railcar and truck.