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to answer the question: yes, railroads care about the environment but mostly to avoid negative public image and the fines and remediation cost. which is the point of the fines and remediation cost, so mission accomplished. no one is a bleeding heart environmentalist but who cares?
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Jan 16, 2016 02:04
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Yeah, gently caress those Hitachi trains during summer time. Thankfully my train trips was only 3 stops long, but was enough to really bring the hate on those trains
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Jan 16, 2016 07:26
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I didn't mind the Hitachi trainsets. Although they were shithouse in summer, if you were next to an open window it could be okay, otherwise you're stuck sweating. Three Hitachis live on the top of a recent development in Easey St, Collingwood, they're used as office space and one is a burger bar. quote:No, you aren’t seeing things. There are really three train carriages on top of this building in Collingwood. One of them just happens to be converted into a restaurant and owned by Easey’s Burgers. Their train carriage is a Hitachi 153M, which began operating in Melbourne in 1978, before it retired and was superseded by carriages with air conditioning. Easey’s transformed the inside but kept some of the carriage’s original elements, which definitely adds to the restaurant’s character.   
drunkill fucked around with this message at 11:41 on Jan 16, 2016 |
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Jan 16, 2016 11:31
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Stolen from the industrial electricity thread is this bizarre bit of train history: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/LOCOLOCO/swisselec/swisselc.htm
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Jan 16, 2016 16:56
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp-b4Ce4Mf4
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Jan 17, 2016 15:56
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I can't believe how little comes out of the stack, I always thought that steam engines belched gigatons of smoke.
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Jan 17, 2016 16:08
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The conductors just do that tourist railroads because its expected, its horrible inefficient that way
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Jan 17, 2016 18:47
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Ika posted:The conductors just do that tourist railroads because its expected, its horrible inefficient that way someone posted an english fireman/engineer video from the 30s or 40s that says exactly that. poo poo is going to get ugly between CP and everyone else. UP has pledged to block any merger. NS wants nothing to do with it. any merger kind of forces UP/BNSF to take a shot at CSX.
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Jan 17, 2016 21:32
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MikeCrotch posted:Don't worry, privatisation fixed everything that BR did wrong! Crap Privatised British Trains - EMD/Alstom Class 67  Even as the British government planned to offload the railways in the early 1990s, they committed one final act of sabotage on the industry, which, like the 1955 modernisation plan before it, was to have disastrous consequences for decades afterwards. As British Rail was on the verge of sale, the Government banned it from making any purchases of new rolling stock. The last trains ordered by BR (the Class 323 electric units for suburban routes around Birmingham and Manchester) were ordered in 1992 and delivered in 1995. The privatisation process was so long and protracted that the newly-privatised rail companies couldn't order any new trains until 1998. This resulted in a 6 year gap in new train orders, and that was enough time for almost every single train builder in the UK to go bankrupt through lack of orders, including most of BREL, British Rail's in-house train builders which had been broken up and sold off some years before. Only BREL's former factory in Derby survived after being bought by Bombardier, and Brush Traction's plant in Loughborough was saved by Wabtec but ceased to build new trains, only performing refurbishment, rebuilds and conversions. Once the new private operators and Rolling Stock Companies (RoSCos) took a look at their inventory, what greeted them was not a pretty sight. Not only was the vast majority of the ex-BR stock they had inherited built in the 1950's and 1960's (and even the more recent types included dross like the "Pacers" and the Class 58 and 60 heavy freight locos, cheaply built and badly engineered), but most of it had been severely neglected by a cash-starved BR and was in a terrible condition even considering its age. The consensus was that pretty much every single train in Britain needed to be replaced in a very short period of time, and there was nowhere near the manufacturing capacity in the country to do it. Any of this sound familiar? So, history repeated itself. In a frantic scramble to replace BR's old, rickety trains before they fell to pieces (most of which had been procured in a frantic scramble to replace steam 45 years before), dozens of new types were ordered in a blind panic from any manufacturer with a spare corner in their factory. Prototyping, pilot scheming and testing were all cut back, sometimes to nothing, and the result was pretty much what it had been the last time - a fiasco. The litany of awful types and procurement horror stories was similar to the previous one too. Of particular note was the dismal record of French firm Alstom:  The Class 175 - Brakes so squeaky that drivers threatened to strike due to hearing damage.  The Class 334 - Brakes sometimes disengaged for no reason, leading to at least one serious runaway incident when one trundled unmanned around Glasgow until someone figured out how to stop it.  The Class 458 - Cramped, defective, internal GPS would get lost and announce random stations to the passengers, didn't conform to disability access requirements. Had to be expensively rebuilt several times.  The Class 460 - Hauled off the tracks in disgrace after less than 10 years' service and replaced with 25-year-old Class 442s (a type worthy of an entry in this series in its own right). Some cars were used to lengthen Class 458s, the rest were scrapped.  The Class 180 - So faulty that for 6 months it couldn't be tested on the main line because it literally kept breaking down before leaving the factory. When it came to Britain's freight operations, the largest portion was bought up by Wisconsin Central, under the name English, Welsh and Scottish Railways (EWS). They took one look at the motley selection of ancient rustbuckets they had to haul their trains (as well as some more modern types) and decided to send all of it to the scrapyard. They placed a huge order with GM for what became the Class 66, which proved a rare success, and spelt the death knell for huge numbers of native-built freight types, some built as recently as the early 1990s. But EWS also inherited BR's postal services, and a fleet of dilapidated, life-expired 1965 vintage class 47 locomotives to haul the trains. Like the freight types, the 47s had to go and a replacement was needed. EWS sensibly decided that the new loco would be powered by the same engine as the successful Class 66. Unfortunately, EMD weren't interested in such a small order and so design and construction was subcontracted to ... Alstom. Uh-oh. What emerged was a complete lemon of a locomotive. The GM 710-series power unit was certainly impressive. The Class 67 weighed the same as the 1961 vintage Class 37, but developed twice as much power, showing how far technology had come in 40 years. Unfortunately, Alstom decided to obliterate four decades of progress by mounting it on 2-axle bogies (both the 37 and 47, as well as pretty much every express passenger diesel ever used in the UK, had 3-axle bogies), resulting in the locomotive's axleload being 50% higher than the Class 37. This was a problem, because one of the duties required of the new design was to replace the Class 37 on sleeper trains running on lightly-built lines in the far North of Scotland. The 67 was forced into speed restrictions so severe that it posted much worse timings on the route than the 37s managed, despite having literally twice the power. The class also had to be limited to 110mph instead of the designed 125mph until the suspension was altered to stop it destroying the track at high speeds. Not only was it too heavy, it was also too wide. Yes, lack of attention to detail in the specs resulted in a loco that was a few inches too wide to be accepted on the rather narrow British loading gauge (the maximum permitted width and height before a train starts bumping into lineside fixtures). The work to rectify this lasted several months, and included such advanced engineering techniques as prying off the cast-iron number and name plates and using stickers instead. The type's introduction to service was not helped when a maintenance error caused the brand-new 67002 (ironically named "Special Delivery") to suffer brake failure and slam into the back of a coal train near Bristol.  Your shipment of embarrassment has arrived. The combination of 2-axle bogies and an express gear ratio meant that the 67, despite its mighty prime mover, could only generate a pathetic maximum tractive effort (torque at the rail) of 144kN. By contrast, the 40-year-old Class 47 could manage 267 kN, the 45-year-old Class 37 with half the engine horsepower could manage 237 and the modern Class 66 with which it shared an engine could manage a whopping 409. So the Class 67 was pretty much useless at hauling freight, in contrast to the mixed-traffic designs that it was replacing. That would be fine though, as postal trains tended to be fairly short and light. But if something were to happen to the postal traffic... EWS promptly lost the contract to haul mail trains in 2003. In fact Royal Mail pulled its railway operations completely, preferring the roads. This left the Class 67 with essentially no suitable traffic. It was too heavy for sleeper trains, and eventually it was replaced on those services by re-engined Class 73 electro-diesels dating from 1965! It was, as we have seen, useless for hauling freight trains and there were almost no suitable passenger services for the class. 6 examples were leased to Chiltern Railways for use on their London to Birmingham route, but Chiltern balked at the lease terms and replaced them with new locomotives after a couple of years. This has left the Class 67 an expensive white elephant, relegated to hauling charter trains, test trains, rescuing failed trains, and occasionally hauling the Royal Train as well.  Foreign, overweight, disaster-prone, embarrassing, obsolete and a useless waste of money. And the loco's a bit poo poo too.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:25
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 That's amazing, it even looks embarrassed.
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Jan 18, 2016 18:50
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Jesus gently caress how can the British Rail network get so many thing so wrong? That said, the Victorian (Australia) Regional fast trains have had to be pulled out of service due to brake issues
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Jan 18, 2016 23:42
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Pigsfeet on Rye posted:I can't believe how little comes out of the stack, I always thought that steam engines belched gigatons of smoke.  BIG If anyone's interested, I can put up some more scans which will go into more detail.
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Jan 19, 2016 03:39
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Hexyflexy posted:
At least it manages an impressive failure. What I want to know is how the drat thing climbed into that coal hopper.
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Jan 19, 2016 03:45
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:someone posted an english fireman/engineer video from the 30s or 40s that says exactly that. Something is going on, and it isn't pretty. With coal destroyed, there's way less traffic, and these railroads are wanting to make things more streamlined. The up has stored a ton of units, and there's empty coal hoppers and cars parked everywhere. It's getting ugly, some one is bound to fall, but it won't be a western road. Personally, I have been waiting for KCS to get shook down for mergers.
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Jan 19, 2016 04:15
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BrokenKnucklez posted:Something is going on, and it isn't pretty. With coal destroyed, there's way less traffic, and these railroads are wanting to make things more streamlined. The up has stored a ton of units, and there's empty coal hoppers and cars parked everywhere. CSX and NS have both consolidated central appalachian divisions in the last month because the bottom has fallen out of coal. all the coal drags and yard jobs at the coal piers here are getting slashed. acquiring KCS doesn't seem like it would do anyone any good. KCS doesn't go to chicago/own a stake in a chicago switching railroad, CP doesn't have a connection and BNSF/UP already service their US territory. not that rail mergers have to make sense. historically, they haven't. CSX/NS would gain some additional markets without too much duplication of routes and facilities but i dont think either has much interest given how aggressive CP has been acting. i think the only thing that is going to prevent a round of mergers is the STB and Congress but thats just me talking out of my rear end. its only going to get uglier as we start heading towards a likely recession.
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Jan 19, 2016 06:15
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I'm always a fan of seeing steam in motion, but gently caress foamers like that asshate in the FJ that block traffic in the left lane. Give that gently caress a ticket. Edit: Give all those asshats a ticket. Rolling roadblock for the rage.
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Jan 19, 2016 07:15
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Agreed, at least these guys seem to be doing the speed limit (80): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sXQFE2jAsw
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Jan 19, 2016 11:50
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joat mon posted:Keeping a boiler balanced between not enough air (smoke) and too much air (too hot, too inefficient) is tough. I'd assume it's quite a bit easier with an oil-fired steam engine like the Santa Fe 3751 from the vid, right?
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Jan 19, 2016 12:18
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:CSX and NS have both consolidated central appalachian divisions in the last month because the bottom has fallen out of coal. all the coal drags and yard jobs at the coal piers here are getting slashed. I don't think we are headed towards a 2008/2009 recession. It's going to be tepid at best growth for a while, our dollar is very strong which is killing the exports. Plus coupled with oil producers keeping the tap wide open, we are going to have cheap oil for some time, which hurts sand and pipe (industrial) shipments. Coal has been dying since 08, the railroads should have said "golly a revenue source is in decline, let's find new business". Nope, it's all about next quarter, gently caress thinking 10 years ahead. But any that thought China was going to continue with 10% growth every year is a flat out moron.
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Jan 19, 2016 14:31
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joat mon posted:Keeping a boiler balanced between not enough air (smoke) and too much air (too hot, too inefficient) is tough. Cool, I always wondered about that. I spent a load of time around the Great Central Railway in the UK when I was a kid with my dad. Sometimes you'd see an engine putting out nothing but superheated steam, other times a shitload of smoke. Never knew how it worked. Man, if you ever get the chance, the engine shed/workshop at Loughborough is awesome.
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Jan 19, 2016 16:22
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I believe this is the training video on how to fire a steam locomotive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHo860Q66Gw Didn't most of the giant American coal powered steam locomotives end up with autofeeders or something so you didn't need a fireman shoveling coal every 2 minutes?
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Jan 19, 2016 18:26
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BrokenKnucklez posted:I don't think we are headed towards a 2008/2009 recession. It's going to be tepid at best growth for a while, our dollar is very strong which is killing the exports. Plus coupled with oil producers keeping the tap wide open, we are going to have cheap oil for some time, which hurts sand and pipe (industrial) shipments. Coal has been dying since 08, the railroads should have said "golly a revenue source is in decline, let's find new business". Nope, it's all about next quarter, gently caress thinking 10 years ahead. i dont think so either but im not a finance/macroeconomics guy. i read a real doom/gloom article that indicated that already low interest rates are going to make it difficult for the fed to provide any relief. both csx and ns are doubling way down on intermodal. but, its hard to imagine what other option there as coal continues to decline and oil hasn't filled the gap. i dont know much about grain but i know its seasonal and probably not the same revenue source as coal. plus, intermodal is starting to eat into that. international containers from the midwest seem to get filled with grain for the backhaul. is intermodal the last unit train? not a great thing to hang your hat on given how variable it is. in my experience, traditional transportation types(trainmaster, yardmaster, etc) are not well suited to intermodal anyways. they dont tend to understand the business or have much interest in learning. obviously some huge exceptions but the guys im thinking of are the exception, not the rule. whoever recommended 'the men who loved trains' probably should have mentioned that it was at least a quarter dedicated to giving mcclellan a big sloppy blowjob.
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Jan 20, 2016 00:43
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Traditional boxcar/merchandise traffic is needed to provide additional support. There's so many places along my neck of the woods of customers they chased away that could easily get service again with a few ties and minimal work. It's going to be an interesting 5 years ahead of us
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Jan 20, 2016 00:54
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The railroads are pretty much guaranteed to suffer as long as oil prices stay low.
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Jan 20, 2016 01:17
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You know, there is actually one bad thing about Melbourne's Comengs; Some bright spark (read; loving idiot) has been getting the doors altered on them from having a great big knob to a shallow groove mounted instead. I really feel sorry for anyone with limited/no finger strength trying to slide them open, because those doors aren't exactly light.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:00
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drunkill posted:Agreed, at least these guys seem to be doing the speed limit (80): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sXQFE2jAsw Watching all that reciprocating mass (in the tons!) makes me a little faint of heart. Railroad cockblocking ahoy! http://business.financialpost.com/news/transportation/cp-rail-asks-u-s-justice-department-to-investigate-rivals-response-to-norfolk-bid
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Jan 21, 2016 04:03
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Cygni posted:The railroads are pretty much guaranteed to suffer as long as oil prices stay low. This is our mantra. In 1990 we went to Saudi Arabia after Iraq invaded Kuwait and made incursions into Saudi Arabia because it was in our interest to do so. Today Saudi Arabia is fighting a "Vietnam" in their own back yard in Yemen with the Russian and Iranian supported Houthis. The Houthis are dragging Scuds and Scarabs out of the Yemen armories and across the frontier into Saudi and firing them at things trying to hit nuclear power plants in saudi arabia. They even killed a couple saudi officers with one. When it spills all the way to Riyadh I don't know we will come to help. Why wouldn't we? First it will raise fuel prices enough for people to cash in on a bunch of the drilling/exploration/investment on oil and capacity over the last few years in the US, but it will flush saudi billions into our aerospace and industrial military complex in the US. This will be a boon to many other supportive businesses, including railroads and boost our entire economy. B4Ctom1 fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Jan 21, 2016 |
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Jan 21, 2016 04:04
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Also add "drill baby drill" It's very similar to the housing crash, glut of supply and no demand.
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Jan 21, 2016 04:50
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FISHMANPET posted:I believe this is the training video on how to fire a steam locomotive: Yeah, autofeeders never really became necessary on British railways simply because the limited loading gauge meant that you couldn't get locomotives big enough where an autofeeder was worthwhile. There was also the tradition of having a fireman that permeated design, which led to designs which really should have had an autoloader *cough*Leader class *cough* having a fireman for no good reason. All the big US locomotives had autofeeders since once you get to a certain firebox size you can no longer shovel enough coal by hand to keep pressure up. A lot of US steam locos were getting to be oil fired by the late stages of steam anyway.
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Jan 21, 2016 17:14
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http://i.imgur.com/Jyyw5KU.gifv
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Jan 21, 2016 19:13
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sincx fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Jan 21, 2016 20:44
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http://imgur.com/gallery/g9XJf
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Jan 23, 2016 05:50
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Oh well, that was a neat set of stor...ies...  ... .
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Jan 23, 2016 06:17
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Hang on, I thought the Wisdom of the Goons decided that the whole remaining conscious for however long it takes for the family to arrive and say goodbye was an urban legend...
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Jan 23, 2016 09:49
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Oh well, that was a neat set of stor...ies... If it makes you feel any better, that last one is a really old urban legend. Edit: Paused to try to find it on Snopes (didn't), EFB
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Jan 23, 2016 10:09
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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MikeCrotch posted:Yeah, autofeeders never really became necessary on British railways simply because the limited loading gauge meant that you couldn't get locomotives big enough where an autofeeder was worthwhile. There was also the tradition of having a fireman that permeated design, which led to designs which really should have had an autoloader *cough*Leader class *cough* having a fireman for no good reason. Mechanical coal feeds were trialled on certain designs, but partly due to bureaucracy (appropriate coal was rarely provided, and the locomotives they were trialled on were barely big enough to be worth it) they weren't considered a success. When they didn't work properly, it made firing the engine manually even harder.
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Jan 23, 2016 14:40
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Delivery McGee posted:If it makes you feel any better, that last one is a really old urban legend. http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/lastkiss.asp
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Jan 23, 2016 16:17
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Captain Postal posted:Hang on, I thought the Wisdom of the Goons decided that the whole remaining conscious for however long it takes for the family to arrive and say goodbye was an urban legend... Sadly it isn't. Brother in law lost a friend like that. Also my dad worked at Beth Steel as a brakeman and watched a guy get crimped. You don't die quickly. It isn't a, you get to say goodbye thing, but more of an agonizing pain thing. Edit: Also forgot about my dad's story about how a team went down to change a giant cement block in a soaking pit. They had to cut some welds, then a second crew was to come in and cut the bolts. Unfortunately the bolt cutter team came in early, so they cut the welds and the entire cement soaking pit fell right on the entire team, killing all of them instantly except one, who was unfortunate enough to be crushed in half. He held on for about 2 hours. jadebullet fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jan 23, 2016 |
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Jan 23, 2016 17:28
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Brovine posted:Mechanical coal feeds were trialled on certain designs, but partly due to bureaucracy (appropriate coal was rarely provided, and the locomotives they were trialled on were barely big enough to be worth it) they weren't considered a success. When they didn't work properly, it made firing the engine manually even harder. Plus if the fireman got his arm in the way, it'd take it off, just like that. This was a problem in Soviet locomotives.
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Jan 23, 2016 17:42
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Brovine posted:Mechanical coal feeds were trialled on certain designs, but partly due to bureaucracy (appropriate coal was rarely provided, and the locomotives they were trialled on were barely big enough to be worth it) they weren't considered a success. When they didn't work properly, it made firing the engine manually even harder. Plus British rail operations really never required the use of an auto-stoker. Some of the biggest UK steam locos, especially the big express passenger engines like the LMS Coronations, were renowned for working their fireman to the limit when pushed to the max but that was only needed for relatively brief periods - certainly not often enough to make the downsides of a mechanical stoker worthwhile for the other 90% of the loco's service. The biggest, heaviest freight trains on British Rail were also some of the slowest. This was still the days when most non-perishable goods were shipped in unfitted trains (i.e. no brakes on the wagons) so the top speed was no more than 25mph, maybe 30mph at the most. Even with a 'big' engine like a BR 9F (a handful of which were trialled with auto-stokers) this just didn't need to burn coal at the rate which made an auto-stoker a physical neccessity on an American loco. Plus, because these unfitted trains were so slow, they were right at the bottom of the pecking order in terms of traffic flow and a crew would often spend much of their shift waiting in sidings or at signals to let other trains past, giving the fireman plenty of time to get the fire sorted out and have something of a breather himself.
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Jan 24, 2016 11:39
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