Peri wrote: >I think the possibilities, here, are fantastic. Any pundits ? How could >something like this actually happen ? Well I think first is to get a good ideal of the overall design and logistics and see it's workable.
Here's an interesting place that sells lots of different undercarriages for adapting cars and trucks to railways. (note the LS60 (in link below) is rated for 80,000 lbs, so it's strong enough (probably) Surely if you had several. https://continentalrailworks.com/railworks-gears/ Is it to be self propelled for parking and getting on the rail? I like this idea because of safety. Having a spur track seems to me that you have a potential for a derailment of the big train because the track spur got set the wrong direction and I kindof would prefer to be as minimally invasive of the train infrastructure as possible. so I just envision some sort of normal train crossing that might just be wider. And you actually get something that's useful in other areas too. You could in theorybe able to back a trailer up to a loading dock for instance without having to hook it up to a tractor. If you did decide to go this route, on a real trailer they need lots of tires and axles, because...well tires just aren't that strong. Maybe 1 tire is rated for a couple thousand pounds so you need a bunch of them to support a load (why they have so many rubber tires in the trucks in the first place.. Steel wheels can be much stronger So if you were to make an an under electrified dolly (under the 5th wheel) to move the trailer around to get it off the rails, it would need a fair amount of tires to support the tongue weight, but perhaps actually maybe something like "tank-tracks" could be used...assuming it's only meant to move a very short distance to a parking area. That way you don't have to deal with inflatable tires in the front (the rear tires would support the back) Then you'd have plenty of traction and the whole thing could move up into the undercarriage out of the way easier than some big folding wheels Here's another example from the RV guys...Something like this but heavier duty. https://traxdolly.com/trax-x2/ If you went this way, it might actually be possible to construct a rubber-wheeled trailer-train in a parking lot along side the track but not actually connect them up so they are freer to move. Then once they are all in a line, you just roll them upthe apron and settle them on the track one at a time, but they are only 1 foot apart or so, so they have the freedom to get on the track and you hog up the track for as little as time as possible. Once they are in position, you lower the train wheels and hook up to the trailer in front and raise the tank treads. So that's just 1/2 the problem. You also need to move the trailer-train OFF the tracks. I envision this being done in reverse but without bothering to make the rubber trailer train, the first trailer gets to the crossing, unhooks, lowers the front dolly tracks down, (which raises the front train wheels off the tracks. Then the back train wheels raise, which lowers it onto the rubber wheels, and the whole thing goes off the apron. Another note. You probably have to be agnostic about what is the "front" of train (just like regular trains) so you need to be able to get on and off the tracks either way (with the self-propelly-tank-tread-dolly-gizmo) The train industry has lots of tracks and 99% of the time they aren't doing anything anyway...(unlike the roads which are often jammed) so IMHO the trick to selling this probably wouldn't be to work with a regular train, but to make sort of a "light" train that could use the tracks hopefully without getting in the way of the big heavy-duty train. So you'd want to make the process of moving the trailer-park-train onto the track as fast and as safe as possible. Another thing might be that trucks trailers are not actually designed to be pulled in long trains. I'm guessing the forces get pretty big if you are actually pulling them....so the lead trailer has to be strong enoughat it's couplings and frame. In Australia they have "land trains" so they have some experience at this. Anyway, you probably making the trains longer has declining benefits, so maybe shoot for a shorter trailer/train that couldzoom onto the tracks and be ahead of the big train and zoom off them without getting in the way. So perhaps more of an intercity...relatively short distance...like a few hundred miles Another note: When "pulling doubles" on a regular truck, I think they have another part they put on the rear of the lead trailer which gives a "5th wheel" hitch for the 2nd trailer. I think that would be unnecessary on a train-trailer because hopefully the trailer is supported front and back with the steel wheels, but you still would want some sort of coupling. So how about potential customers? Well, probably anyone who is currently using the railroad would probably be less interested and of course heavy items One thought might be the traditional small package guys. UPS, USPS and Amazon. They have lots of trucks (and drivers) and know about logistics. They already move a lot of trucks from 1 sorting station to another, but I'm guessing they are primary set up for trucks and don't use rail. Maybe their sorting stations are next to an airport and don't even have rail as an option....... but train tracks are only 10 miles away. They ship stuff from 1 sorting center to another on a daily basis, but imagine the fuel and personnel costs driving truck trailers 300 miles every day, back and forth. I could see it costing nearly $500/day just for the fuel and drivers but when you factor in the cost of the truck, so the additional cost of making a trailer ride on the rails and be self propelled might be offset by the fact that you need 1 less truck! (which is much more expensive) 1 truck could shuttle 10 trailers 10 miles to the offload point in much less time than driving 300 miles and he gets to spend the night in his own house rather than being on the road. I think the main problem is you want to work it all out to see if you could actually have a workable, cost effective design. Lot's of people have failed before and you wouldn't want to be just another footnote to history., but designing is the fun part anyway and it doesn't cost anything. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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