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~Coxy posted:I choose to believe this is true. 
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Dec 9, 2018 04:56
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vains posted:coal. I have spent a lot of time at coal ports and there is an awful lot of money involved. Seems like it would be pretty stressful. But would be good to do for a bit then do burnouts in your ferrari.
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Dec 9, 2018 06:12
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blindjoe posted:I have spent a lot of time at coal ports and there is an awful lot of money involved. Seems like it would be pretty stressful. But would be good to do for a bit then do burnouts in your ferrari. at class 1s, the pay is between 80 and 130. not poverty level but not ferrari burnout money either. at a shortline or terminal company, its 130-210 but they're typically at a different layer of management. Chillbro Baggins posted:When Kay Bailey Hutchison dies, she'd better get an express passenger train named after her to haul her corpse around. I don't agree with a lot of her political views (she's a Republican from my state), but she's really into keeping Amtrak going, so she's not ENTIRELY evil. why is this good? amtrak is dysfunctional, at best. consider the following: 1- the northeast corridor is the easiest slamdunk moneymaker on the amtrak network. airline security makes alternate modes of transportation along this corridor appealing. traffic along this corridor is terrible and there isn't much room to make 95 bigger. even if you did, the choke points in baltimore, philly and new york are still going to be there. 2- we(the american taxpayer) spent $1.2billion acquiring acela trainsets. 3- acela can make the boston to dc run in 6'40" for an average speed of 65mph (top speed 150mph) 4- northeast regional can make the boston to dc run in 7'50" for an average speed for 54mph (top speed 125mph) for nothing, 0 dollars, they could have run an northeast regional express with 5 stops(washington union, baltimore penn or bwi, philly 30th, ny penn, boston) vs 38 stops and made the run in less than 6' easily. for $1.2billion, i'm 100% that amtrak could have identified trackwork, signaling or dispatching systems and addressed congestion at ny penn/baltimore penn, that would have raised the northeast regional average speed by 10mph easily. once you make these changes, then it makes more sense to acquire the highspeed trains that can take advantage of increased speeds on the whole route. for some reason the northeast corridor is quadruple tracked for much of its length*. if this had been reduced to 2 tracks plus some passing sidings in 1970, it probably wouldnt have cost anything through savings on maintenance through almost 50 years of reduced cost. but, because they aren't run like a for profit entity and they're beholden to congress in a way that conrail never was(congress appoints the board), its an inefficient mess that creates higher ticket prices for travelers in this area. i'm not a big shareholder value guy by any stretch of the word but the present amtrak structure isn't any good either. *quadruple tracks are a legacy of slower/less powerful trains, higher rail utilization in pre-1950 america and the limits of earlier signaling/dispatching. one of the first things that conrail did was begin pulling up quadruple tracked routes.
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Dec 9, 2018 20:45
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They actually do run local/express on Metro North commuter trains in Connecticut, which uses those quad tracks. As well as Amtrak of course.
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Dec 9, 2018 20:50
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yeah, iirc the whole of the NEC south of New Haven is quad tracked
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Dec 10, 2018 15:41
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And the speed limits are mostly due to RI and CT being dicks and some super tight turns that they have to turn the tilting mechanism off for.
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Dec 11, 2018 01:51
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So when Trump dies will there be a presidential funeral truck? 
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Dec 11, 2018 06:02
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:So when Trump dies will there be a presidential funeral truck? It would make sense 
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Dec 11, 2018 12:44
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Pretty sure they'll just take the body off the scaffolding and drop it strait into the pit.
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Dec 11, 2018 18:24
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Dec 11, 2018 20:47
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beep-beep car is go posted:And the speed limits are mostly due to RI and CT being dicks and some super tight turns that they have to turn the tilting mechanism off for. i dont think states can regulate railroads, interstate commerce and all. i wont pretend to know why the average speed is low, i'm just confident that for $1.2billion you could probably get more than 10mph.
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Dec 12, 2018 01:14
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sincx fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Dec 12, 2018 02:13
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vains posted:why is this good? amtrak is dysfunctional, at best. I agree that Amtrak as it is is a shitshow outside the DC-to-NYC corridor, but Kay Bailey seems to genuinely (for a politician, at least) want to make it work, and any attempt at bettering mass transit in the US makes a politician slightly less evil in my book. I'm not saying she's a saint or anything, just that she's not the worst person in her party/was the better of my state's US Senators/probably would've been a better governor than Perry. Lesser of two weevils, and all that. She likes trains. Can't get anything really done, but at least she tried, and kept this and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMVj04lfyo going. For the Brits, DC-NYC is about the distance from London to Blackpool. For people in any of those places it's a long drive/train ride, for my Texan rear end it's Monday.
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Dec 14, 2018 01:38
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Bad Angus! Bad!
Chillbro Baggins posted:I agree that Amtrak as it is is a shitshow outside the DC-to-NYC corridor, but Kay Bailey seems to genuinely (for a politician, at least) want to make it work, and any attempt at bettering mass transit in the US makes a politician slightly less evil in my book. I'm not saying she's a saint or anything, just that she's not the worst person in her party/was the better of my state's US Senators/probably would've been a better governor than Perry. Lesser of two weevils, and all that. amtrak is shitshow everywhere because its not clear to anyone if its supposed to make money or not. is it a public good or is it a money making venture? who knows.
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Dec 14, 2018 01:47
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vains posted:shitshow everywhere because its not clear to anyone if its supposed to make money or not. is it a public good or is it a money making venture? who knows. That describes most of America, honestly
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Dec 14, 2018 11:19
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vains posted:amtrak is shitshow everywhere because its not clear to anyone if its supposed to make money or not. is it a public good or is it a money making venture? who knows. The idea that passenger rail is a way to make money is a very American point of view. The concept is ridiculous. Airports and airlines are heavily subsidized, roads are paid for with tax dollars, why would passenger rail be any different? The rest of the world realizes this, it's only the US that has this delusion that trains are the only kind of transportation that should support itself.
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Dec 14, 2018 18:00
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:The idea that passenger rail is a way to make money is a very American point of view. The concept is ridiculous. Airports and airlines are heavily subsidized, roads are paid for with tax dollars, why would passenger rail be any different? The rest of the world realizes this, it's only the US that has this delusion that trains are the only kind of transportation that should support itself. The problem is Amtrak is arguably a government run entity, and that is bad, because "small government" or some poo poo.
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Dec 14, 2018 18:28
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And government run implies non-profit because America.
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Dec 14, 2018 19:52
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:The idea that passenger rail is a way to make money is a very American point of view. The concept is ridiculous. Airports and airlines are heavily subsidized, roads are paid for with tax dollars, why would passenger rail be any different? The rest of the world realizes this, it's only the US that has this delusion that trains are the only kind of transportation that should support itself. the fact that it isn't clear to anyone whether or not amtrak is supposed to make money is the problem, not its present p&l statement. i dont think there is any similar venture to the nec in the world, foamers feel free to enlighten me of a 1:1 comparison, but i'm reasonably certain that passenger rail is a money making enterprise in europe. if it wasn't, there wouldnt be 3 italian passenger rail companies. iospace posted:The problem is Amtrak is arguably a government run entity, and that is bad, because "small government" or some poo poo. the issue with it being a government run entity with direct congressional budgetary oversight is that congress isn't very good at running corporations and non-railroad people(the board confirmed by congress, the president confirmed by congress) are also historically bad at running railroads. the budgeting process prevents any long term planning. the people on the board of directors, who are confirmed by congress/nominated by the president, are not operations or railroad people. they're politicians, investment bankers, lawyers and people owed a favor. the president and ceo of amtrak came from an airline. the chief operating officer joined amtrak as a human resources guy. edit: amtrak has two marketing people. the cmo at least has transportation marketing experience. the other guy was a congressional aide and did something with a shortline. edit: not even the chief safety officer is a railroad guy. those aren't the people you want running a railroad. they dont know what they're doing. vains fucked around with this message at 21:52 on Dec 14, 2018 |
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Dec 14, 2018 21:44
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Railroads are funny to talk about in the US anyway. Especially when people want to readily talk about roads. Because in a comedic twist, the rails themselves are private property owned by corporations that amtrak has to lease time on to run. Meanwhile, roads are public property and trucks pay out their tax at the fuel pump. But because everyone uses it, the cost is subsidized over millions of people making the individual cost small. Likewise, europe has density in its favor for making rails work. If you were dropped off at a train station in europe, you can still walk to somewhere to eat or do any shopping. Now, outside of a couple cities, the US does not have that level of density. For most places, you ride amtrak then still have to call a cab, uber, whatever to get to anything. And if you are going to do that, why not take a plane where the same story applies but didn't take you several days to get to the destination. The NEC is unique in that the distance is short enough where rail can compete with the short flight times between the cities. Likewise, the cities are old densely populated cities so it isn't as inconvenient to make trips on it.
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Dec 15, 2018 02:19
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Minto Took posted:iirc, 4141 was parked at the library and will get parked again at the library once the funeral train does it's rounds. On the other hand, LTEX 4141 
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Dec 15, 2018 04:10
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vains posted:the fact that it isn't clear to anyone whether or not amtrak is supposed to make money is the problem, not its present p&l statement. So are airlines. That doesn't mean they don't get subsidized to hell with ATC, airports being built, etc. I bet if you look at those railroad companies, there's a lot in building and maintaining rails, etc.
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Dec 15, 2018 06:51
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A pretty common model is that a state-owned company handles the rail network and its maintenance.
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Dec 15, 2018 10:58
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From the OSHA thread, this thing is just incredible:
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Dec 15, 2018 15:48
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I've seen one of those at the Hobo Railroad in NH. I believe there's a museum in Maine that has a working one.
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Dec 15, 2018 18:00
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nm posted:So are airlines. That doesn't mean they don't get subsidized to hell with ATC, airports being built, etc. who cares if they're subsidized? every medium/large size company in america probably gets money from some level of government. my issue is that we(the american taxpayer) aren't getting a good return on our money because the company is not well managed. which makes sense when the board is composed of people owed a political favor and the executive team has almost no one with any railroad experience. again, for example, buying acela trainsets doesn't make any sense when 1) acela can only take advantage of its top speed for a very limited portion of the trip 2) northeast regional can't even take advantage of its top speed for a majority of the trip 3) amtrak could have ran an express northeast regional, servicing the top 5 or 6 stations by ridership, and gotten exactly the same transit time as acela gets now. a well run company(where changing service is not a political issue, where capital isn't doled out on a yearly basis and instead able to be budgeted for over multiple years, where the board isn't staffed by people owed a political favor, where the executive team isn't picked by the president) would probably have spent that $1.2 billion dollars differently. it doesn't offend me that it exists. it doesn't offend me that it gets money from the government. it bothers me that it isn't run very well. so, when i want to take a trip on it, it probably costs more than it needs to.
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Dec 15, 2018 19:02
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:I've seen one of those at the Hobo Railroad in NH. I believe there's a museum in Maine that has a working one. I remembered seeing a video clip of it. I'm not sure if Owls Head owns it or if someone else does. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPJkkH3ELAA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw22NSKi38A Looks like there's another one too. I have to go see one of these some day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbWlDL7kdD0
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Dec 15, 2018 22:46
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That thing owns and I want one just to piss off the neighbors.
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Dec 16, 2018 08:09
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Megillah Gorilla posted:From the OSHA thread, this thing is just incredible: Thing of beauty! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_Steam_Log_Hauler
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Dec 16, 2018 17:23
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https://www.facebook.com/csrail/videos/915380095239607/
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Dec 16, 2018 21:09
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This aired on australian tv tonight. https://twitter.com/SBS/status/1081834002636390400 The full 17 hour? version will air across a few nights later on
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Jan 6, 2019 14:35
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I just looked up Aussie rail to see what sort of trips I could do, that definitely looks interesting!
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Jan 7, 2019 17:21
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:The idea that passenger rail is a way to make money is a very American point of view. The concept is ridiculous. Airports and airlines are heavily subsidized, roads are paid for with tax dollars, why would passenger rail be any different? The rest of the world realizes this, it's only the US that has this delusion that trains are the only kind of transportation that should support itself. Amtrak had profitability written into the very legislation that created it in order to be the way to kill it. The whole thing was designed to fail on purpose, because it had already failed in the first place. Also, I wouldn't call the ATC system a subsidy. The airlines pay directly into a fund to pay for that and that money can't be touched by anyone other than the FAA. The funding model is completely unique. It is more like the airlines being forced to pool money for a collective system.
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Jan 7, 2019 18:11
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sincx fucked around with this message at 05:55 on Mar 23, 2021 |
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Jan 7, 2019 18:34
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Oh yeah, hi thread - I started work as a test engineer (the normal non-train style engineer) for a company that does roadway work equipment. Does anybody care how some of this poo poo works? I'm not sure if the maintenance side of stuff is covered much or is interesting to anyone.
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Jan 8, 2019 13:07
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Found a website with a bunch of technical articles in English about rail technology in Japan: http://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/technology/index_technology.htmlmekilljoydammit posted:Does anybody care how some of this poo poo works? I'm not sure if the maintenance side of stuff is covered much or is interesting to anyone. Yeah, just post.
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Jan 8, 2019 13:42
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mekilljoydammit posted:Oh yeah, hi thread - I started work as a test engineer (the normal non-train style engineer) for a company that does roadway work equipment. Does anybody care how some of this poo poo works? I'm not sure if the maintenance side of stuff is covered much or is interesting to anyone.  
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Jan 8, 2019 23:32
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mekilljoydammit posted:Oh yeah, hi thread - I started work as a test engineer (the normal non-train style engineer) for a company that does roadway work equipment. Does anybody care how some of this poo poo works? I'm not sure if the maintenance side of stuff is covered much or is interesting to anyone. Yes, absolutely. I pass that stuff all the time on my daily commute and while the broad strokes are clear enough I've always wondered about the details.
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Jan 8, 2019 23:58
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All right, I'll start off with a big word dump and fill in pictures later as I go find publicly available stuff - I'd prefer all together not to get fired after all.  So, two basic sorts of things tend to be going on, surfacing gangs and tie gangs. Tie gangs tend to incorporate surfacing gangs at the tail end because everything they're doing disturbs things so surface needs to be evened out a bit anyway. Basic concept in North American rail is the rail itself sits on an anchor plate, which is a cast steel plate to spread the load. The rail is spiked through the plate, and the plate itself is spiked to a wooden tie, usually around 9" wide by 7" tall by 8'6" long. The rail also has anchors clipped to it to control movement along its length - these are heavy steel clips that are squeezed into the tie on either side every few ties. The tie's position is fixed by being in a well packed bed of ballast, which is crushed rock on average around an inch, inch and a half. Optionally, the first piece of equipment down the rail in a tie gang is a regulator - regulators are used for shaping the ballast correctly. They work like big drat snowplows, with extra plow "wings" on the sides - it's a bit more sophisticated though because there's doors on the front and rear of the wings that you can use to pull ballast up the side towards the ties as you go. At the end of the gang its job will be to spread ballast evenly in a nice slope on either side of the ties and between them - if it's up here, it's exposing the ends. Most of those are Kershaw. Next up is the spike puller. These are relatively small but have room for a couple guys in the cab. Function's pretty obvious, it has bars that reach in from the sides and try to pull spikes up. It and everything else is a giant pile of hydraulics. An anchor spreader follows this - it spreads the anchors so that they're not clamped onto the tie. The first TRIPP is after that - those are around 20 tons and 36' long and Nordco pretty much owns that market. They have a rail lifter a bit behind the front wheels that clamps onto and lifts the rail up, and a tie exchanger behind it. The tie exhanger is a big extendable arm with a gripper on it that has enough stroke to grab onto and pitch ties - up to around 10 tons of force. After that there's a couple guys who pick up the anchor plates from wherever the hell they ended up and set them on the end of the ties near the hole. Next is a couple cranes - one to pick up the dead ties and one to place new ones for the next two TRIPPs. Those ones are taking the fresh ties and shoving them into the holes the first trip left. The usual mix is one TRIPP removing and one inserting because that's about what the relative cycle speed ends up at. You then have a rail lifter that hydraulically lifts the rail so a couple guys can put the plates back between the rail and tie. Then comes an anchor squeezer to squeeze the anchors back into the tie. Behind that you need a tamper. There's a variety of sizes of them; Jackson and Harsco do most of them. The big tampers are around 30-35 tons and 40ish feet long with their projector buggy stowed, which I'll get to, for rail gangs there's sometimes smaller ones that get used. The basic function is to have 8 vibrating work heads drive into the ballast on either side of the tie, on either side of both rails, and squeeze together to compact the ballast and use it to force the tie up. In a tie gang this is all they're doing. In a surfacing gang, there's a projector buggy that goes about 60-70 feet in front of the tamper with lights at a set elevation. There's photocells on the back of the tamper at a set but adjustable height above the rail, and wheels right after the tamper work head that follow the rail that mechanically connect to a shadow board. What that shadow board does is, when the tampers pull the tie and rail up enough, they break the light from the projector buggy and the photocells don't see it. Since the distance from the photocells to the buggy is much longer than the distance from the photocells to the shadow board, angles mean that variations in the buggy's height from track imperfections have much less of an effect than variations in the track near the shadow board. The modern version of this uses linear actuators to move the photocells up and down to map the track imperfections. Now that the tie is tight to the rail, the spiker does its thing and trailing everyone, the regulator is shaping the ballast back to how it should be - filling in spaces between ties and supporting their ends. And... that's the basics of a tie gang, though don't sue me if I mixed up a few at the end of the pack - I haven't been working on stuff back there as much. On a good 8 hour shift, a good gang can do on the order of 1,500 ties replaced. In my experience, how many get done depends on how fast the mechanics can fix poo poo breaking.
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Jan 9, 2019 00:47
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That is cool as poo poo. I'd figured out some of that from youtube videos and just staring at the things parked on a siding while my train went by, but not all of the details. Thanks for the post!
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Jan 9, 2019 01:34
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