You might be right. I haven't been able to find any reference to railway electrification limited by corrosion. Although it might have been a common assumption some time ago which somehow contributed to certain relevant decisions on this front.
I don't think so, although logically it is a matter of the person, what is being discussed, etc. On the other hand, note that I was pretty generous (or against-my-own-interests from the perspective of people having problems to accept their own errors, over-competitive or non-properly-understanding-prone individuals, etc.) in my statement. I could also have said that it was quite right, as far as it seems to depict pretty well most of the main lines across Europe according to most of comments here which refer to somehow secondary stretches (formally part of the problem, practically a bit less as far as a very limited number of people use them). I guess that everything is a matter of perspective and understanding. For example, I have problems to understand what is the point of your comment:)
Fair point. In any case, my intention was just highlighting what I thought that was curious, not implying that one system/country was absolutely better than the other.
Only Switzerland's railway network is 100% catenary electrified in Europe.
Yes, this seems the case according to a Wikipedia article which I linked above. But as said in other posts and by others, non-electrified stretches seem to mainly be in somehow secondary locations in most of European countries. I have used trains quite a lot in the past, mostly through Europe, and they were always run on electricity.
Regarding the ideas in the rest of your comment, they are... let's say curious. Even though I have no experience in any of that (railway internals or theft), it doesn't look like a too sensible explanation for the lack of electrification. Other reasons like huge cost/difficulty and pretty long time frames (by throwing PC away, it could be said that most of politicians aren't too interested in long-term decisions whose real impact will not be enjoyed until years after they will leave) seem way much more sensible explanations.
I don't think electro-diesels are the most common diesel type, but that's just from my limited observations.
Honestly, I am not sure, but it seems to vary a lot from country to country, even within Europe. Personally, I have always traveled through fully-electrified routes, even pretty secondary ones. So, I think that, at least in Spain, pure-diesel locomotives are quite exceptional.
(London still gets it's nice new railway but everywhere else can wait)
My impression about the UK was similar to the one about Germany, again for the same wrong reasons: having only seen a small part and assumed that the rest was similar. In fact, I was traveling in (fully-electrified) trains to London quite regularly during some time quite a few years ago. In any case, it seems that the electrification doesn't cover most the lines of quite a few countries. In my country, Spain, only around 60%, but in Germany or the UK, below 40%! So, I guess that my intuition was wrong.
My comment was mainly meant about (Western) Europe and mostly for historical reasons. Trains and electrification all over Europe has been a thing since many years ago. Bear in mind that fully electrifying train routes isn't precisely an easy, quick, cheap or suitable-anywhere process. In other areas, the situation might be completely different for various reasons and there is nothing bad about it.
Your post contains pretty much the same ideas than others in this sub-thread. As said there, I have mostly visited big cities and used big lines and intuitively assumed that this was pretty much the case in the whole country. Also by bearing in mind that most of trains in my country (Spain) are electrified and well... Germany is usually ahead on most of industrialisation/modernisation fronts. On the other hand, I think that Germans tend more to use cars/Autobahns and Spaniards trains.
Diesel trains are still quite common in Germany because many secondary lines aren't electrified
I have mostly visited big cities and used main lines, that's why I was assuming that everything was similar. In any case, there is a poster up this thread proposing a quite interesting reason for diesel over electricity.
Your intuition probably has you thinking Germany is the greenest major European country
Not really. It is mostly formed by my personal experiences in my country (Spain) and in other European ones, Germany among them. I am intuitively used to see electrical lines all over any train station/route.
Regarding what you say about France being the greenest country because of its high reliance on nuclear power, I don't agree with you. What that means is that the polluting emissions of certain species (where you can include the not-directly-damaging-health CO2) which they generate are lower, but that provokes other problems like having to care about the (veeeeeeeery-)long-term storage of nuclear waste. I don't want to start a discussion here about it, just to highlight that I am not precisely pro-nuclear (ironically, I do like its technological and theoretical background quite a lot and studied it in the university).
I was intuitively assuming that most of trains, at least in Europe, run on electricity. But apparently they are building diesel-supporting locomotives even nowadays, although mostly as a backup under very specific conditions. I don't think that have ever traveled in a primarily-diesel-powered train.
Why are you capitalising the word spaces? Are you implying that spaces aren't inferior to Tabs? Many people may feel insulted by that heresy of yours! LOL.
It is just a convention. You are either ruling or "in the opposition". It doesn't necessarily mean that your party is actually having a relevant impact or is part of a coalition which has it. There might be 10 parties, 2 ruling and 8 "in the opposition", 5 of them really having coordinated actions against the government and 3 behaving independently, but also being called that. This is at least my understanding of the concept, by bearing in mind that I don't care too much about politics.
It is a direct translation from Spanish. "Estar en la oposición" ("being in the opposition"?!) refers to the political parties which aren't currently in power. So, the sentence means that the guy was elected mayor after having lost all the elections during the previous 12 years.
just this morning I had to honk my horn at the car in front of me that didn't go when the light changed
That scenario isn't precisely ideal (unless the driver of that other car fell sleep or something), but is more or less OK. I mean honking all the time to warn, greet, celebrate... And in a small town!! With virtually no traffic problems! It isn't the end of the world, but seems an unnecessary increase of noise, stress levels, aggressiveness, etc. There should be some let's reduce honking campaigns (kind of kidding, but why not?).
I am living in a small town in Spain, similar size to Pontevedra, a few hours away from there and even with a pretty similar name. Here people use cars a lot and honk constantly (why?). I live outside the center, in an almost rural area where there is virtually no traffic. A very calmed neighborhood. Yesterday's night a bunch of idiots were honking for a while during the night!! Why??!! No traffic, no people, nothing to celebrate (don't get the point of these celebrations either)!! Doing it under very specific driving conditions seems logical (I do honk before using the lights when driving, but only as a last resource), but why in any other context? Not even in big cities with lots of traffic.
This last post of yours does certainly make pretty solid points, but also gives a new pretty good sample supporting my position ("lack of a proper landing pad..."). We have again the problem of two non-validatable confronted positions and only time can tell which one is right. Before having some actual attempts on the surface, with the current technology and ideally performed by SpaceX, there is no empirical evidence to support any of our assumptions or perhaps just only mine.
I personally prefer to focus on the relevant parts of the current discussion, arguments, attitude, etc. and to avoid having prejudices about the given person/nick as much as possible. And as said, our positions are way too different and that's why I don't think that we should continue. Your approach is definitively different, perhaps a bit too aggressive, but completely up to you.
flying inside an (pseudo-)atmosphere
What atmosphere?
The word "pseudo" can be roughly understood as "kind of" meaning that it isn't exactly an atmosphere as the one you have in many planets, but it isn't outer space either. Honestly, I don't see what is the confusing part in my statement.
And regarding all what you say about the prizes, I just know that the final result is nothing on the Moon surface, what means no testing, no experience, precisely the reasons why I think that all this is likely to take quite long time. You need lots of testing in order to reach an acceptably reliable stage for something of that magnitude, much more when sending people paying for a leisure trip rather than highly-trained workers doing a very dangerous job.
Perhaps I am wrong, let's see, but still not getting the point of having a lots-of-assumptions-based discussion when our positions are so different.
Slashdot Mirror
You might be right. I haven't been able to find any reference to railway electrification limited by corrosion. Although it might have been a common assumption some time ago which somehow contributed to certain relevant decisions on this front.
Some info and images on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Some of the images in that link (e.g., Tondern station) show the kind of non-electrified setup which I have never seen in person.
That's normal with intuition.
I don't think so, although logically it is a matter of the person, what is being discussed, etc. On the other hand, note that I was pretty generous (or against-my-own-interests from the perspective of people having problems to accept their own errors, over-competitive or non-properly-understanding-prone individuals, etc.) in my statement. I could also have said that it was quite right, as far as it seems to depict pretty well most of the main lines across Europe according to most of comments here which refer to somehow secondary stretches (formally part of the problem, practically a bit less as far as a very limited number of people use them). I guess that everything is a matter of perspective and understanding. For example, I have problems to understand what is the point of your comment :)
Fair point. In any case, my intention was just highlighting what I thought that was curious, not implying that one system/country was absolutely better than the other.
you need to actually look at the trains, not just the presense of overhead line equipment
Fair enough. Yes, I also meant trains and devices on top of them connected to the electrical lines.
Only Switzerland's railway network is 100% catenary electrified in Europe.
Yes, this seems the case according to a Wikipedia article which I linked above. But as said in other posts and by others, non-electrified stretches seem to mainly be in somehow secondary locations in most of European countries. I have used trains quite a lot in the past, mostly through Europe, and they were always run on electricity.
Regarding the ideas in the rest of your comment, they are... let's say curious. Even though I have no experience in any of that (railway internals or theft), it doesn't look like a too sensible explanation for the lack of electrification. Other reasons like huge cost/difficulty and pretty long time frames (by throwing PC away, it could be said that most of politicians aren't too interested in long-term decisions whose real impact will not be enjoyed until years after they will leave) seem way much more sensible explanations.
I don't think electro-diesels are the most common diesel type, but that's just from my limited observations.
Honestly, I am not sure, but it seems to vary a lot from country to country, even within Europe. Personally, I have always traveled through fully-electrified routes, even pretty secondary ones. So, I think that, at least in Spain, pure-diesel locomotives are quite exceptional.
(London still gets it's nice new railway but everywhere else can wait)
My impression about the UK was similar to the one about Germany, again for the same wrong reasons: having only seen a small part and assumed that the rest was similar. In fact, I was traveling in (fully-electrified) trains to London quite regularly during some time quite a few years ago. In any case, it seems that the electrification doesn't cover most the lines of quite a few countries. In my country, Spain, only around 60%, but in Germany or the UK, below 40%! So, I guess that my intuition was wrong.
My comment was mainly meant about (Western) Europe and mostly for historical reasons. Trains and electrification all over Europe has been a thing since many years ago. Bear in mind that fully electrifying train routes isn't precisely an easy, quick, cheap or suitable-anywhere process. In other areas, the situation might be completely different for various reasons and there is nothing bad about it.
Your post contains pretty much the same ideas than others in this sub-thread. As said there, I have mostly visited big cities and used big lines and intuitively assumed that this was pretty much the case in the whole country. Also by bearing in mind that most of trains in my country (Spain) are electrified and well... Germany is usually ahead on most of industrialisation/modernisation fronts. On the other hand, I think that Germans tend more to use cars/Autobahns and Spaniards trains.
Diesel trains are still quite common in Germany because many secondary lines aren't electrified
I have mostly visited big cities and used main lines, that's why I was assuming that everything was similar. In any case, there is a poster up this thread proposing a quite interesting reason for diesel over electricity.
Here in Germany almost everything long and medium distance is electric
This was pretty much what I saw when I have been there. I have mostly been in big cities and used main/long lines.
Thanks for the info. Very interesting!
Your intuition probably has you thinking Germany is the greenest major European country
Not really. It is mostly formed by my personal experiences in my country (Spain) and in other European ones, Germany among them. I am intuitively used to see electrical lines all over any train station/route.
Regarding what you say about France being the greenest country because of its high reliance on nuclear power, I don't agree with you. What that means is that the polluting emissions of certain species (where you can include the not-directly-damaging-health CO2) which they generate are lower, but that provokes other problems like having to care about the (veeeeeeeery-)long-term storage of nuclear waste. I don't want to start a discussion here about it, just to highlight that I am not precisely pro-nuclear (ironically, I do like its technological and theoretical background quite a lot and studied it in the university).
I was intuitively assuming that most of trains, at least in Europe, run on electricity. But apparently they are building diesel-supporting locomotives even nowadays, although mostly as a backup under very specific conditions. I don't think that have ever traveled in a primarily-diesel-powered train.
Obligatory reference.
I think it was an argument about Tabs vs. Spaces.
Why are you capitalising the word spaces? Are you implying that spaces aren't inferior to Tabs? Many people may feel insulted by that heresy of yours! LOL.
It is just a convention. You are either ruling or "in the opposition". It doesn't necessarily mean that your party is actually having a relevant impact or is part of a coalition which has it. There might be 10 parties, 2 ruling and 8 "in the opposition", 5 of them really having coordinated actions against the government and 3 behaving independently, but also being called that. This is at least my understanding of the concept, by bearing in mind that I don't care too much about politics.
Logically, I meant "was elected major".
became mayor after 12 years in opposition
It is a direct translation from Spanish. "Estar en la oposición" ("being in the opposition"?!) refers to the political parties which aren't currently in power. So, the sentence means that the guy was elected mayor after having lost all the elections during the previous 12 years.
just this morning I had to honk my horn at the car in front of me that didn't go when the light changed
That scenario isn't precisely ideal (unless the driver of that other car fell sleep or something), but is more or less OK. I mean honking all the time to warn, greet, celebrate... And in a small town!! With virtually no traffic problems! It isn't the end of the world, but seems an unnecessary increase of noise, stress levels, aggressiveness, etc. There should be some let's reduce honking campaigns (kind of kidding, but why not?).
I am living in a small town in Spain, similar size to Pontevedra, a few hours away from there and even with a pretty similar name. Here people use cars a lot and honk constantly (why?). I live outside the center, in an almost rural area where there is virtually no traffic. A very calmed neighborhood. Yesterday's night a bunch of idiots were honking for a while during the night!! Why??!! No traffic, no people, nothing to celebrate (don't get the point of these celebrations either)!! Doing it under very specific driving conditions seems logical (I do honk before using the lights when driving, but only as a last resource), but why in any other context? Not even in big cities with lots of traffic.
This last post of yours does certainly make pretty solid points, but also gives a new pretty good sample supporting my position ("lack of a proper landing pad..."). We have again the problem of two non-validatable confronted positions and only time can tell which one is right. Before having some actual attempts on the surface, with the current technology and ideally performed by SpaceX, there is no empirical evidence to support any of our assumptions or perhaps just only mine.
I personally prefer to focus on the relevant parts of the current discussion, arguments, attitude, etc. and to avoid having prejudices about the given person/nick as much as possible. And as said, our positions are way too different and that's why I don't think that we should continue. Your approach is definitively different, perhaps a bit too aggressive, but completely up to you.
flying inside an (pseudo-)atmosphere What atmosphere?
The word "pseudo" can be roughly understood as "kind of" meaning that it isn't exactly an atmosphere as the one you have in many planets, but it isn't outer space either. Honestly, I don't see what is the confusing part in my statement.
And regarding all what you say about the prizes, I just know that the final result is nothing on the Moon surface, what means no testing, no experience, precisely the reasons why I think that all this is likely to take quite long time. You need lots of testing in order to reach an acceptably reliable stage for something of that magnitude, much more when sending people paying for a leisure trip rather than highly-trained workers doing a very dangerous job.
Perhaps I am wrong, let's see, but still not getting the point of having a lots-of-assumptions-based discussion when our positions are so different.