Slashdot Mirror
China Going Up and Coming Down
SoCalChris writes "The BBC writes that China has just completed the world's highest railroad, climbing to 16,640 feet (5,072 meters) above sea level. The cars will be sealed to help passengers cope with the pressure changes from the altitude. The line is expected to begin carrying passengers next year." This news comes at the same time that their Chinese taikonauts return from their spaceflight after just 115 hours in orbit.
SoCalChris writes "The BBC writes that China has just completed the world's highest railroad, climbing to 2*2*2*2*2*2*2*2*5*13 feet (2*2*2*2*317 meters) above sea level. The cars will be sealed to help passengers cope with the pressure changes from the altitude. The line is expected to begin carrying passengers next year." This news comes at the same time that their Chinese taikonauts return from their spaceflight after just 5*23 hours in orbit.
World biggest roller coaster?
-- Por mais que eu ande no vale das trevas e da morte, meu PowerMac G4 Não Travará!!!
In case if someone doesn't realize, the lower four pictures are simulated artwork, which is what the blue heading indicates in Chinese. Please don't shout "they're fake."
I once had a signature.
While we [the /. crowd] bitch and moan about Microsoft and while the great herd worry more about Britney's spawn than credible science, more about the latest American Idol than engineering and while China and India graduate more scientists and engineers than the US...you can expect many, many more reports like this. The 21st century just may be when the Sino-Communist brand of capitalism eclipses lAmerican power and influence.
I actually rode on the Central Rail Line in Peru which was the former highest. Now I am going to have to go to China to ride this thing.
DAMN.
I will say the Peruvian one seems still a bit more challenging - no wussy sealed cars. You get to experience altitude sickness in all its glory.
Are they talking about funicular trolleys or actual heavy rail? Because heavy rail generally sees a 4% grade as a maximum due to, well, physics. Since I'm not aware of any fantastic engineering innovations, this must be some sort of light rail--or at least lighter than standard heavy rail.
Asparagus has many and excellent powers.
with expanded access to new goods and services, educational opportunities, and contact with the outside world
All of the above could have been accomplished without destroying a millenium of scholastic and artistic works. Not to speak of the execution and incarceration of its living representatives.
Real shame that the standard of living in Tibet has risen steadily from the subsistence level ever since the CCP took control, huh?
For the Chinese immigrants. The native population are treated as second class citizens. Hundreds of thousands died of starvation when collectivism was first introduced, and most survivors suffer from various disabilities caused by malnutrition.
:wq
The images on Xinhua are meant to demonstrate the capsule landing. They're not pretending to be actual photos. You should know better than to trust headlines with a question mark at the end of them.
I would assume that, like other rail systems that operate in harsh climates, there are backup systems. Figure when BC Rail built their all-electric Tumbler Ridge line, they included a small diesel engine in each locomotive in case the overhead power failed so that the crew wouldn't freeze to death (winters in the Tumbler Ridge area are absolutely brutally cold). While the Qinghai-Tibet Rwy isn't electrified, there just have to be backups for such things. In this case, supplemental heat and bottled oxygen would be the two I'd worry about. Based on what I've read, the average elevation of the line is something like 13,000 feet, which is still perfectly breathable, especially to those accustomed to thin air. (I live at about 7,000, and spend weeks during the summer above 10000-11000.) It's only going to be on the high passes that you have issues with air. I'm guessing that it's not built to Western-type standards of redundancy (because, after all, this still is *China*, who was still running mainline steam locomotives until this year), but I'm sure they have something in case of failures. Figure each coach probably has its own systems, so if one fails, you pile everybody into the working coaches. My guess is that they'll probably get away from the Chinese way of one locomotive per train as well - anything running in those nasty conditions, I'd want at least two units in case one died somewhere en route.
Add yet another railway to my list of lines I have to go photograph at least once in my life...
...join the mile high club without ever leaving the ground!
-EL
This type of thing goes on all the time in western media, and there was no attempt to pass off the images as actual photographs. It's just a misconception put forth by xenophobic conspiracy nuts.
The sheer arrogance emitted from some posts are really not worthy of slashdot, and/or its readers/posters.
What China has done, - in terms of the Qinhai-Tibet rail-line, or its spacecraft, - is not better, nor worse, than those from other countries.
Do we see any comments like the
" Some of the images of the spacecraft look fake"
and
"and the ones that don't look fake show damage on the spacecraft"
and
"This just seems unsafe to me. Imagine something goes wrong and the train is stuck up at that altitude?"
and
"Well that seals the cultural genocide of the Tibetan people"
and
"Wow, you are finally almost to the point where the USA's space program was over 40 years ago. That is impressive"
and
"It also comes at the same time that the number of Chinese people living in extreme poverty rose by 800,000 last year"
ad nauseum
if the spacecraft or railway is from the United States of America or Russia ?
This development of sheer arrogance, is not checked, might even venture into the territory of racism.
I'm an /. old-timer, and I'm really sad to see /. goes to the dog because of these type of postings.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I would hardly call Amtrak representative of rail transportation as a whole. Amtrak is a joke, both to Americans and to the rest of the world and, outside of the Northeast Corridor between D.C. and Boston, and maybe somewhere out on the west coast, is useless.
Meanwhile, rail forms the backbone of most developed nations, including France, Germany, and Japan. In case you weren't paying attention, a train also now links England and France via the Channel Tunnel. Bluntly put, America is the exception, not the rule.
"Think about how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of 'em are stupider than that!" - George Carlin.
Real shame that the standard of living in Tibet has risen steadily from the subsistence level ever since the CCP took control, huh?
If I could trust a totalitarian government to do anything other than lie, maybe so. As it is they may as well be claiming that Tibetans are made of cheese for all the validity it has.
Anyway the song that "we're doing it all to raise the natives" has been the standard line of the conqueror all through history, and the natives always get the shaft in the end.
Railroads generally use a whole lot less energy (i.e. fuel) per passenger or unit of cargo than a truck/bus (not to mention a plane). There are economies of scale in running one large engine (or electric motor) relative to lots of smaller ones, and with a metal wheel you don't dissipate energy into the tires. Amtrak's problems come from several sources: (a) they don't own the tracks, but have to lease them from private owners on very poor terms; (b) the management isn't exactly clever; (c) the labor costs are extremely high; (d) they operate under an immense set of regulations. It's nothing fundamental about railroad technology, just that we aren't willing to run one sensibly in the US.
This just seems unsafe to me. Imagine something goes wrong and the train is stuck up at that altitude. Then what?
Then what? No different than what they do right now. Drive a jeep. C'mon, 5,000meters is high, it causes altitude sickness, and COULD be fatal, for some people. However, the pressurization of the cars is for COMFORT, not safety. Right now the only way to get up to Tibet is to either fly, or take a jeep/bus combo over the same 5,000meters. And no, those jeeps are not pressurized. The floors are, however, littered like crazy with empty aspirin packages...
Get real. People live up there. When I read about this train, the oxygen was the least on my mind. The first thing I thought of was how the Tibetans have been fighting this railroad, without much success (a few people have disappeared, a monk was sentenced to death and then later reduced to life in prison after Amnesty International went ape shit) since it's another permanent infrastructure put in place which makes the Chinese occupation of Tibet more and more permanent.
Free Tibet!
I understand that in the early 1940's Germany had a pretty good rail system and was making remarkable progress with rocketry. Can't wait for the Slashdot retrospective on that.
Oh! Excuse me, have I triggered Godwin's Law?
[Insert pithy quote here]
When the conductor opened the pressurized train car door for the first time in Tibet, the pasengers were heard to exclaim, "This place really sucks!" as they blew out the door.
Why don't you turn a little bit of your viewing angle, and think maybe, the whole point of building infrastructure is to help less developed areas to catch up, and hence, reduce the poverty level as a whole?
Why does everything have to be negative? This is not like building a Liberty statute which serves nothing but for display. This is a modern railway to a remote area which is almost cut off from the world. This might be a catalyst for more economic development, along the line of that railway, from Qinghai all the way to Tibet.
No one seeems to scream bloody when the US built their railway system link the east and the west over 100 years ago, which had an amazing effect on the development of the country, in terms of economic, social, cultural, etc. No one screamed bloody when the US built the national highways and other infrastructures, in the 1930s amid the biggest economic crisis when people were lining up for soup.