That's interesting. Googled the GG1 and read a lot about it. Apparently it was in service for nearly 50 years too. Here's a bunch of non-ev-train related stuff to give an idea of the train freight industry,.
In 2009, Berkshire Hathaway bought Burlington Northern which is the largest freight railroad in the US and was their largest acquisition to date something like 44 billion dollars. Apparently it's got about 33,000 miles of track and 3 transcontinental routes. The wikipedia entry lists a bunch of their assets where you can see a listing of locomotives, freight cars, etc and routes. It's old, but you can get an idea. Wikipedia lists some old 2009 data of 85,419 freight cars and 6400 locomotives. As I conjectured, they mostly are set up for handling open car bulk freight. Looks like around 70% of their freight cars are basically hoppers of some sort, 12% are flat cars, 10% are box cars, 5% are refrigerated and some other miscellaneous (they claim only 0.4% tanker trucks, which seems low) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNSF_Railway Here's a little snippet at the shareholders meeting about improving operations and profitability....basically they talk about demand being flat (probably for bulk items) and trying to reduce costs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xETcgeTHBqo Their new big thing appears to be "precision scheduled railroad" which apparently is saying trains leave on time rather than waiting to make a bigger train... https://www.up.com/customers/track-record/tr091019-precision-scheduled-railroading.htm And of course for the future there is "hyperloop"....(This is on the Union Pacific website of all places) https://www.up.com/customers/track-record/tr100819-emerging-transportation-trends.htm So we have a mix of struggling to make trains run on time in combination with futuristic pie-in-the-sky dreams It just gives a little insight into why railroads are the way they are and why they struggle to keep up with the flexibility of trucks They've got wonderful tracks and are doing fine with bulk stuff, but there isn't a lot of growth opportunities in bulk stuff, it's flat. It seems to me the problem for future growth seem likely in logistics and penetrating the truck market. Trying to get from truck to train and back to truck. They "can" do it by lifting up a 40,000lb trailer and putting it on a 100,000 lb flat car (which I'm sure helps the efficiency (hint...sarcasm) but it seems to a naive person like myself that there must be better ways On Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 02:41:54 PM PST, Lee Hart via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote: In the heyday of the all-electric Pennsylvania Railroad, a train going down a mountain regenerated power back into the lines to power another train coming up the mountain. I played a lot with electric trains in my deformative youth. One of my fond childhood memories was a family vacation out east, where I got to see *real* electric trains in action. Seeing and hearing the mighty GG1 locomotive in action was an amazing experience. Yes, there are all sorts of alternative ways to run a railroad. Alas, innovation seems to be a dirty word in the US. "We've always done it this way" is the sacred motto of Big Business. Lee -- Excellence does not require perfection. -- Henry James But it *does* require attention to detail! -- Lee Hart -- Lee A. Hart https://www.sunrise-ev.com -----Original Message----- From: Electric Vehicle Discussion List <ev@lists.evdl.org> Sent: Nov 19, 2024 5:44 AM To: ev@lists.evdl.org <ev@lists.evdl.org> Cc: Lawrence Winiarski <lawrence_winiar...@yahoo.com>, Lawrence Rhodes <primobass...@sbcglobal.net> Subject: Re: [EVDL] Hydrogen trains As I was describing the energy use, It takes a heck of a lot more energy for a train to get up the mountains than it does to go on the flats, and then the otherthing is you could in theory provide a lot of energy when you are going downhill. Perhaps if you wanted to have a fully electric locomotive maybe it might be useful (at least in the beginning) to only electrify the mountain areas? That might start the process. These all electric locomotives could shuttle back and forth as "helper" locomotives. Go up the mountains. Disconnect...and wait for the next train that is going down and provide "brakes"/regen into the grid on the way down. Then as you said, you'd only need a limited amount of batteries probably to change direction and stuff... On Monday, November 18, 2024 at 02:58:59 PM PST, Lawrence Rhodes via EV wrote: I think batteries would only be needed to pass stalled vehicles or sections of track without power. Lawrence Rhodes -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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