@thegraffitiexpress yes, dubblestackcontainertrains are nice, but it shouldn't be used as an argument against #electrification because in India there are dubblestackcontainerraillines wĂth #catenary: the #overheadwires are just extra high, and the #pantograph extra long. So, North-American #railroadindustry: get on with it!
#catenary
America’s most-improved regional rail line
Twenty-five years or so of traveling to the Bay Area for work and for family have not left me in the habit of handing out compliments to rail transit there. Between the limited route maps of Bay Area Rapid Transit and Muni Metro and the horribly expensive construction costs of projects like San Francisco’s 1.7-mile, $1.6 billion Central Subway, public transport around the Bay has too often served first as a lesson to others.
More recently–especially since Google moved its I/O developer conference to Mountain View in 2016–I’ve gotten acquainted with and also unimpressed by Caltrain’s commuter-rail service on the peninsula, run with trains hauled by aging, loud and polluting diesel locomotives. But this week’s I/O trip introduced me to a reinvented rail line that the rest of the U.S. should envy.
Between last May and this May, Caltrain completed a lengthy modernization project to string electric wires over 51 miles of track from San Francisco to San Jose and buy electric-multiple-unit, double-decker trainsets from the Swiss manufacturer Stadler.
So instead of waiting for my ride south from Milbrae to groan its way up to speed on Monday night, this train (packed with Giants fans on their way home from that night’s game) quietly whooshed out of the station. That faster acceleration from every stop helped my entire trip from SFO to Mountain View, starting with BART from the airport, take less time than just last year’s Caltrain ride from Milbrae to Mountain View.
Bunking down in an Airbnb four blocks from that station for the next three nights provided another reminder of how much better electrified trains are: I didn’t hear the roar of diesel engines, leaving just train horns at the nearby grade crossings.
Less obvious but also appreciated: the immense drop in air pollution at and near stations as well as onboard train cars.
My return trip up the peninsula Thursday morning, one of four northbound departures from Mountain View between 8 and 9 a.m., was as great as the ride down. Other passengers seemed to agree about the usefulness of the service, with the train looking as crowded as Monday night’s. Caltrain’s fare date for April showed a more than 50 percent jump in ridership compared to a year ago, outpacing growth at every other transit agency in the region.
(Bonus: the fastest train WiFi I’ve enjoyed to date.)
Outside the U.S., this is not that special–fast, frequent, electric-hauled trains are the default for regional rail service across Europe. But in most of the States, the best you can get outside a subway’s service area is a diesel engine, hopefully built in the last 15 years, hauling passenger cars. This trip to the Bay Area reminded me that we don’t have to accept that level of sluggish, noisy and dirty service as good enough.
We can, however, do better than Caltrain in electrifying regional rail lines, since that organization wound up spending $2.44 billion on this upgrade. Delusional NIMBY lawsuits, Trump adminstration unhelpfulness, and the pandemic aren’t its fault, but Caltrain can’t blame anybody else for an unnecessarily conservative infrastructure design and a botched proprietary train-control effort. And it still needs to raise station platforms to train-door levels to speed boarding and alighting.
A recent report called Momentum, written by veteran NYC transit reporter Nolan Hicks for New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, provides a must-read playbook for other transit organizations about how to avoid design mistakes like Caltrain’s and electrify and accelerate their routes at lower costs.
Commuter-rail managers should read it. And if they find themselves needing to head south of San Francisco on their next trip to the Bay Area, they should take a ride on a line that may make them feel bad about their own service.
#BART #BayArea #Caltrain #catenary #commuterRail #diesel #electricMultipleUnit #electricTrain #electrification #EMU #GoogleIO #Muni #overheadWire #pollution #regionalRail
Here's why #CalTrain was messed up this morning. (You can see a bit of work on the overhead starting about 3:10).
I've figured ever since electrification that something like this was going to happen eventually (I was more expecting a fallen tree) and then we'd find out how on the ball they are about getting things fixed. Getting overhead fixed in a couple of hours is not bad, really.
Learned a new term tonight. I knew about catenaries as a source of power for street cars. Learned about ground conduits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conduit_current_collection
These birds are hanging out on the #CalTrain overhead wires. 25kV, but they're not grounded, and they don't care.
I don't think the upper wire (messenger) is isolated from the contact wire.
And that one bird is brazenly sitting right on the contact wire.
#Catenary #CaltrainElectrification
Battery powered trains are a ridiculous waste of resources. Just string wire fgs!! #catenary
https://mstdn.social/@Nigel_Purchase/113500810443401796
Retrotechtacular: Powerline Sagging and Stringing in the 1950s https://hackaday.com/2024/08/17/retrotechtacular-powerline-sagging-and-stringing-in-the-1950s/ #Retrotechtacular #retrotechtacular #ColumbiaRiver #distribution #transmission #highvoltage #Bonneville #catenary #Coulee #grid #BPA
@Lyle “Double-stacked freight traffic does not work well with catenaries, and part of our agreement with CSX includes that the tracks have to be interoperable, so they can run on our tracks for maintenance purposes,” McLaughlin said in a phone interview.
American railroad executives say, "can't do." The Indian government says, "Let's do it!"
After spending a year analyzing the #hydrogen sector, I came up with the same conclusion. #Battery #Catenary hybrid solutions for non-electrified rail lines would be more cost effective. It's been done in other sectors, such as trolley buses, to minimize the amount of overhead wiring along routes. #ElectricVehicles #IntercityRail
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/04/after-trying-hydrogen-german-rail-operator-picks-batteriesgrid/
@claudsch Don't forget to tag: #CatenaireMidi #MidiCatenary #catenary
#Catenary now working on 3D :) #openrndr #generative
A relatively recent side interest of mine is rail electrification, and I found this a very useful explainer of the way weights, pulleys and droppers are used to keep the contact wire level in overhead electrification:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8MCfWPpJhXM
(At some point, I will get around to finishing @25kV’s excellent book on the subject, available as a free download here: https://ocs4rail.com)
#rail #railways #OverheadLineEquipment #catenary #electrification
- power to the tram -
#Fotomontag #foto #photo #darktable #darktableedit #fujifilm #xt1 #35mm #catenary #Oberleitung #tram #Belgien #belgium
La #catenaria en la arquitectura.
#architecture #arquitectura #catenary
://www.spaceagecontrol.com/calccabl.htm
Client Info
Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst