"Andy Levy" <andy.levy@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 2008 6:51 PM, <jon@dakota-truck.net> wrote:
>>
>> "Andy Levy" <andy.levy@gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>> > If he could hop on a train, it'd be better all around. But even for
>> > those shorter trips, we need faster trains to make them viable in most
>> > peoples' eyes, because the average speed is still much lower than the
>> > interstate.
>>
>> Its too bad, really. Trains have a rather intangible romantic
>> quality about them.
> Yep, and it's also far more relaxing than having to deal with the
> idiots & weather on the Thruway.
I can imagine. (I have to imagine since I've never traveled by
rail unfortunately, though I would like to try it someday.)
> To get from here to Schenectady and back costs twice what driving
> costs, yet takes the same amount of time. If it was half the price
> (equivalent to driving), or twice the speed, I'd give it a lot more
> thought.
That's a bummer, especially since it sounds like the freight side
is a tiny fraction of the cost of road travel, its too bad that
doesn't translate to the passenger side. I wonder if there would be
any efficacy to coupling some passenger cars to the freight trains?
The problem with rail lines not allowing passenger service on their
fright tracks may be the major hangup there?
> Per pound per mile, I'm pretty sure that rail is the cheapest, most
> efficient way to move stuff. My brother in law would probably know for
> sure - he's a train nut. He's gone on train-spotting weekend trips
> with friends, intentionally picking a campground that's bordered by a
> freight line.
There seems to be quite a few people who are into trains. There is
a guy down the street, about half a mile from my house who is into
Mopars in a big way, but he is into trains even more. He's got a
small locomotive like what they would use in a switching yard powered
by a Chrysler slant six, along with a caboose all set up on a couple
hundred feet of track in his yard. He has a steam locomotive in his
barn which he is in the process of restoring. Apparently there is
some big money in old locomotives.
>> I've been doing some work in a house near a set of tracks
>> that run through WNY between Cleveland and Buffalo, and have been
>> surprised at their frequency. There are a LOT of trains going through
>> that corridor.
> Our house is about a mile or a mile and a half from a rail line, and
> although we've pretty much managed to tune them out, we still hear at
> least 2 trains per night come through between dinner and bedtime.
> Which means there's probably 4 or 5. And several more overnight.
Yep, I haven't timed them or anything but I would bet a train comes
through there every half an hour or so.
>> It would no doubt take a considerable
>> infrastructure investment (privately funded, please!) :-) to be able
>> to handle those kinds of trains here, but its interesting to think
>> about.
> Although private funding is a nice idea, you'd at least need *some*
> gov't involvement. Personally, I think the medians and right-of-ways
> along our interstate highways are ideal places to start building -
> they're relatively straight & level (much of the heavy earth-moving is
> already done), they're *already* noisy, and the space is already
> "used." To do that, you'd have to have the gov't involved at some
> level.
Hmmm, I had been thinking along the lines of upgrading the existing
tracks, I had basically written off the idea of new construction due
to right of way or eminent domain issues, but your idea of using the
highways is intriguing; I hadn't considered that. There might also be
room in many places to build new track alongside existing lines.
Being in real estate, I see a lot of tax maps, and in this area
anyway, the railroad right of ways seem to be rather generous. I
don't know if it is a safety issue to keep things away from the track
or if it was done with an eye towards future expansion, but the
railways seem to control a lot more real estate than their tracks are
actually using.
Now that I think about it, an upgrade of the existing track
probably isn't such a good idea in that it may be logistically
impossible to run freight trains and bullet trains on the same set of
tracks. :-)
--
-Jon-
.- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
| '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
`-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Mar 02 2008 - 02:10:10 EST