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Trains May Soon Come Equipped With Debris-Zapping Lasers
Molly McHugh writes: Holland's chief transportation service is testing a unique new way to clear the rails of fallen leaves and other small debris: by mounting lasers on the fronts of locomotives. The lasers will cause the leaves, which produce a condition commonly referred to as "slippery rail" in the fall and winter months, to vanish in a puff of smoke.
Wouldn't it be easier to mount brushes or something?
I would think that it'd take one heck of a laser to fry wet leaves on a train track. The whole thing sounds like a boondoggle to me.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Maybe I'm just a terrible person whose sense of childlike wonder and love of lasers has shriveled; but isn't 'clearing leaves' the sort of job where a simple nozzle blowing compressed air(turned on and off based on sensor input if it turns out that you can implement a sensor system at lower cost than just running the compressor a bit more often) at the track immediately in front of the wheels would be more than adequate for the purpose?
My understanding is that some trains even have a compressed air supply already(for pneumatic braking and sundry other duties), and all trains, since they have to move, are going to have a fairly burly supply of either mechanical or electrical energy to run a compressor. Much simpler and likely more durable than a laser and optics high-powered enough for debris clearing, and less likely to cause amusing track fires.
Am I missing something here, or did somebody just fail to KISS?
Wait.. "puff of smoke" ? If the lasers are powerful enough to do that, what's keeping it from setting things on fire?
They managed to become a national laughing stock after announcing the trains were late because of "leaves on the tracks" somewhere after privatisation, something that apparently hadn't been a problem for more than a century. So now they're going "lookit we got m*****f****** LASERS on our trains!" and we're like, that's cool. But will it make the trains run on time now?
I mean, how do, say, the Japanese manage to run their bullet trains on time without lasers and why has the Dutch National Railways' performance gone to crap in the last decade or two, despite massive increases in leadership compensation? We'd love it if lasers will magically fix everything, but somehow... we'll believe it when we see it.
Lame meme alert!
Seems like it would take some careful calibration to make a laser that would burn off wet leaves plastered to the rail and yet not soften the hardened steel of the rail that's going to have a multi-ton train passing over it in seconds.
Muhahaha! Muhahaha! Muhahaha!
I would have liked to imagine a train racing along, firing off lasers in Star Trek fashion.
Still, having watched the video, it's a novel application of the technology. I wonder if the energy requirement is very substantial, and whether it will be triggered manually or by some sort of sensor.
"Trains May Soon Come Equipped With Debris-Zapping Lasers"
The lovely word "may" is such an abused word. There are MANY things that MAY come, on the other hand it MIGHT not as well. My money is on that it won't be here anytime soon. There are so many technical and impractical issues that arise, that this is nothing more than a "wow...lasers, we're so 1337" 21 century etc. Sure, it makes for a good read, and even better...the house-geek will have his say over the dinner table...say...did you know honey, they're putting lasers in front of the trains now to clear the tracks. OOOOh honey, that's just up your Dart Vader alley!
Guess what? I've been working with technology and prototyping for years, and it's a riot every time this actually surfaces as an article once in a blue moon, you can't just put high power lasers in front of trains, you'll have reflection issues, IR-radiation, people claiming blindness, and the kind of power you need to "zap" it clean is extreme, this isn't your average laser pointer that can be used to write your name into a cellphone or pop balloons, heck...even hefty industrial lasers used to cut metal are so focused and concentrated that if you wanted to use it to blast away debris...you'd need a HECK of a lot more space for it to be actually practical, not to mention the need for cooling.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
As it really sounds like he's moved on from the idea of sharks with frickin' laser beams.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
First sharks, and now this....
Just askin'...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
What could possibly go wrong?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Couldn't this just as easily start fires?
"We should take the train. It's mor efficient than a car, and we don't nee dot worry about parking" "Nah" "Did I mention the lasers?" "Count me in!"
Sharks tomorrow.
Is this what trains will sound like in the future?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Keep the varmints off the tracks.
I am very disappointed at the slashdoters that are saying trains with lasers are a bad idea. Compressed air over lasers? Mr. Spock should have carried duster canned air on all of those away missions. Dr. Evil should have had sharks with compressed air tanks. That would have been way more interesting.
by fricking trains with lasers beams attached to their heads.
I read this as Zebra zapping lasers...was disappointed when I double checked the headline.
It's called the Netherlands. How difficult can it be?
Sig?
Trains May Soon Come Equipped With Debris-Zapping Lasers
That is... frickin awesome! How do I get a ticket? Can I work the laser?
Who did what now?
What about sharks? I want debris-zapping lasers attached to sharks!
Don't lasers require safety glasses? I wouldn't be surprised if this gets blocked on that issue alone.
The video shows some kind of wide laser projector about a centimeter or so above a test-rig, with sparks flaring off, and the rail moving at a (relatively) slow rate - perhaps one or two Kph.
If the sparks were only burnt excess "leaf material", that isn't a problem - but if it's rust or steel fragments burning up, that's material coming off of the rails - in effect, wear.
If this is intended to be used continuously while the train is in motion in order to keep the rails clear of debris, how much energy can be delivered to a leaf from a fixed projector moving at 50Kph? If this does deliver enough power to cause the leave to disappear in a puff-of-smoke, isn't there a chance of heating the surface of the rail enough for the carbon ashes pressed into the rail by the subsequent advance of the train to chemically react with the rail?
This might be ok for single layers of leaves - but how long does it take for multiple layers of leaves to build up on a rail?
If the huge amount of leaves in the video is characteristic of the problem they want to solve, won't the wind from the passage of any train moving at speed just redistribute more leaves on the rails behind it?
Trains have more than 150 years of history of operations and the typical issues that the regular people hear about the trains is cost to tax payers. Remember the LIRR (Long Island Railway) scandal where 80% of retirees chose to be disabled and are drawing disability pensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... , section "Pension and disability fraud scandal".
Railroad companies know how to handle snow and and dirt.
However, everyone here should talk to their friend policeman, fireman or ambulance worker and ask them what they think about railroads. They will tell you that the most frustrating thing about the railways is the suicides. Those (and I appologize for my language here) pussies who do not want to die home alone using tried and proven methods, without causing stres. Upon Rairoad suicide attempt, railway schedules gets disrupted, tens of thousands of commuters get stranded, service people need to collect remnants of people who leave the world in a "spectacular" way.
As such, rather than using superpowerful lasers to zap the leaves and dirts, it is a much better idea to rotate them by a 90 degree angle and to fry all those attention seekers. Lasers will cause pain and will give time to the attempters to change their mind.
I swear I read that headline 3 times wondering why the were zapping "zebris" off the tracks with lasers. I couldn't comprehend why they would want to do that when it has to be a very small local issue for so few countries.
Here's an article talking about the same from 2002. Apparently there's rather low tech mechanical solutions that work quite well. Kinda like the laser potato peeler, still waiting for that and my flying car.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have trains with frickin' laser beams attached
If I find out which trains have this, I'm so going to post a youtube of a chipmunk or gopher on the track. He might have accidentally wandered onto a patch of duct tape.
Anyway, yeah in seriousness this sounds like nonsense.
-Styopa
Note: Due to lasers, it is no longer safe to lye on the rails in front of oncoming trains.
Read all about it http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
When I took Amtrak to visit my parents in Sacramento in the 1990's, the kids in Oakland would put debris on the track to see what would happen when the train comes though at 65MPH. I don't mean a penny. Debris broke the brake airhose on the carriage underneath my seat on one trip. The trian slowed to a stop. The engineer spent 15 minutes repairing the airhose. Lasers should vaporize those little rascals off the track.
That has to be the most stupid idea I read this month!
The unmentioned added bonus of such a system is a burning off of underbrush due to the forest fires that will inevitably result. Three cheers for technology!
Followed by forrest fires all over the track landscape.
Who drempt this up?
About a decade ago the Brits had a slew of leaves-on-the tracks failure-to-brake accidents. Why now? everyone thought. In a bunch of places the embankments had been designed for coal-burning trains, which spit sparks, so the embankments were gravelled or very sparsely grassed. What trees the fires didn't suppress were cut down as seedlings every few years.
Time passes, the engines change fuel, someone notices they're spending money on maintaining the gravel and stops.
*Decades* pass and there are beautiful trees on the embankments tall enough to shed onto the tracks -- *that's* when the accidents start.
Wouldn't it make way more sense to just have a blower of some sort on the front of the train?
Laser laboratories take rather elaborate precautions to avoid having a laser beam go into someone's eye. If there's much power in the laser, having it hit someone's eye is VERY bad--blindness can result. (And post signs that say 'do not look into laser with remaining eye'.)
Do we really want high power laser beams possibly bouncing off shiny rails going who knows where, where some poor bastard might be looking the wrong way?
I mean, even if these lasers aren't in the visible range, I still don't want a beam in my eye.
on Rails :D
Is the shark named Ruby?
gee I hope the third rail contacts on the electrical train I road to work don't hear you
If you 'road' your train then wearing down your third rail is not really an issue...the screaming pedestrians and motorists trying to get our of your way might be a bigger problem though.
cant be right!