electric trains

[puddle jumper]

Re: ?

Re: ?

14 posts before I get a response! even rbh ignored me! Thank god they start skating this month! Thanks PJ!

I think hes has his mind in over drive. And what should the bet be this year.

 

[rbh]

Re: electric trains

Electric trains or not, you're still burning coal somewhere to make the juice.

That really gets me about the masses pushing for hybrid/electric cars. Green? Sure, if you leave out the strip mining for the heavy metals used to make the batteries, and the caustic acids in the batteries, and the fact that you'll get less than a decade out of that battery before it needs to be replaced, and that it's a coal power plant making the electricity you use to charge the 'green' car...

IMO, diesel/bio-diesel is the direction we need to go.

OKEEDOKEE SMOKEY!

Lets have a little look at this, cars and batteries aside the easiest way to make power with a little foot print (except the dam or the pipeing) is hydro/run of river.
(And yes there is the spawning fish that need to be dealt with)
I would go nuke next, "BUT" the distribuitor has gotta has gotta get with the program and use the break down method for spent rods that they are using in europe
(spent fuel rods are still radio active, someone has a way of going total decay in months+- not 50.000 years)

Bio diesel??, everytime someone goes with this endever they drive the price of corn/wheat through the roof and thats were you start seeing 3 world world countries starting to get hostile due to people starting to starve.
Do not start pushing peoples buttons, it just comes back to bite ya on the butt sooner or later.


I luv coal, I just wish I could burn it like we did back in the 60's, but until they make a catalytic converter for my "coal stove" I will just keep burning seasoned wood.

 

[rbh]

Re: ?

Re: ?

14 posts before I get a response! even rbh ignored me! Thank god they start skating this month! Thanks PJ!

HEY BUD.

I seen the button pushing going on HAHAHA

YO PJ hows it going tonight wifey back from the puddle yet?

 

[soggy_feet]

Re: electric trains

OKEEDOKEE SMOKEY!

Lets have a little look at this, cars and batteries aside the easiest way to make power with a little foot print (except the dam or the pipeing) is hydro/run of river.
(And yes there is the spawning fish that need to be dealt with)
I would go nuke next, "BUT" the distribuitor has gotta has gotta get with the program and use the break down method for spent rods that they are using in europe
(spent fuel rods are still radio active, someone has a way of going total decay in months+- not 50.000 years)

Bio diesel??, everytime someone goes with this endever they drive the price of corn/wheat through the roof and thats were you start seeing 3 world world countries starting to get hostile due to people starting to starve.
Do not start pushing peoples buttons, it just comes back to bite ya on the butt sooner or later.


I luv coal, I just wish I could burn it like we did back in the 60's, but until they make a catalytic converter for my "coal stove" I will just keep burning seasoned wood.

Thats because corn/wheat is the wrong answer as well. (another beef is this ethanol thing... as it stands, without govt. subsidies, I don't think it has a chance)

Algae is an excellent possibility, and I'd love to see more funding put into that research, and if it's got to go the ethanol route, cattails are an excellent option.

 

[QC]

Re: electric trains

North America is newly awash with Natural Gas . . . as in we got lot and lots and lots and it's going to be below $2 a "gallon" for a looooooong time

 

[rbh]

Re: electric trains

Thats because corn/wheat is the wrong answer as well. (another beef is this ethanol thing... as it stands, without govt. subsidies, I don't think it has a chance)

Algae is an excellent possibility, and I'd love to see more funding put into that research, and if it's got to go the ethanol route, cattails are an excellent option.

I think you are barking up the wrong tree when it gets to fuel, electricity is great if you can afford the vehicle, "BUT"
Why in the heck do you not use the most abundent fuel around, methane/natural gas??
(if you take a bag of fresh dung and seal it, it going to off gas methane)

Coal bed
shale bed
dump/refuse areas
farms
composte

Man that stuffs everywere, even your farts will burn (don't ask me how I figured that one out!!! )

Eventually you gotta make the choice, there is only so much "sunshine" that the oil companies can pump out before it gets to the masses and all hell breaks loose.

use your eyes for learning, not your ears for listening to propaganda.

 

[mscher]

Re: electric trains

Maybe the railroads are just doing the math, to determine the building and maintaining, a nationwide trackside power grid just to run locomotives, is just not feasible and certainly not profitable.

Locomotives are already 3 times as fuel effiecient as trucks, per ton of freight, right now.

Besides, the Company I work for, sells lots of fuel oil to the railroads, so I'd have to say "watch ya talking about", to those who think electricty is a better choice.

 

[QC]

Re: electric trains

Maybe the railroads are just doing the math

Ya think?

Edit: Sorry if that sounds condescending, but there is one thing I have learned in business. Specifically, 33 years in the transportation business. Whether it is grants, or taxes, or technology, or the CEO's biases, ultimately the numbers will make the decision. If the alternative is not economically viable, it is dead . . .

 

[rbh]

Re: electric trains

One thing that I have noticed over the years is that the railroads and the power companies are very close in the fact that in larger urban areas you usually see the power companies transmission poles on an easement provided by the railways.
Out in the rurals, not so much.
If I was a power provider I think that I would help out in the infrastructure build if the railways were going to purchase my power.

 

[bigdee]

Re: electric trains

Batteries,solar, wind, bio and hydro are jut drops in the total energy demand bucket. Right now there is not a less expensive alternative to fossil fuels for transportation. Although diesel is close to $4 a gallon it is still a bargain.....what else can you buy for $4 a gallon?

 

[rbh]

Re: electric trains

Batteries,solar, wind, bio and hydro are jut drops in the total energy demand bucket. Right now there is not a less expensive alternative to fossil fuels for transportation. Although diesel is close to $4 a gallon it is still a bargain.....what else can you buy for $4 a gallon?

Short term, fossil fuels
Long term with a pay back, green technology.


if you are a end user there is no payback.

(Why do you think there are more and more wind and solar farm being built, and for that matter run of river projects were they only use a portion of the flow of water, no need for a big dam, not a big foot print on the enviroment)

 

[QC]

Re: electric trains

Right now there is not a less expensive alternative to fossil fuels for transportation. Although diesel is close to $4 a gallon it is still a bargain.....what else can you buy for $4 a gallon?

I know where you can buy natural gas at .96 a diesel equivalent gallon. Already compressed, ready for transportation

 

[bigdee]

Re: electric trains

I know where you can buy natural gas at .96 a diesel equivalent gallon. Already compressed, ready for transportation

A diesel train engine will not run on CNG and highly pressurised vessels of NG on a train would be attacked by the NTSB and federal regulations. I agree that CNG is a good alternative for fleet vehicles but it will never be practical for the average joe......imagine running out of fuel on the side of the road.

 

[mscher]

Re: electric trains

Originally Posted by mscher

Maybe the railroads are just doing the math

Ya think?

Edit: Sorry if that sounds condescending, but there is one thing I have learned in business. Specifically, 33 years in the transportation business. Whether it is grants, or taxes, or technology, or the CEO's biases, ultimately the numbers will make the decision. If the alternative is not economically viable, it is dead . . .

Speaking of math (and I'm too tired to do it) anybody figure what would it cost?

A hybrid locomotive gets around 10 gallons to the mile, or about $32/mile at todays railroad fuel oil costs.

A locomotive generates about 570K watts of power (don't know it that is constant, but say it is) at 1mph, how much electricity would it use in 1 hour and what would it cost, at todays average electricity rates?

 

[QC]

Re: electric trains

A diesel train engine will not run on CNG and highly pressurised vessels of NG on a train would be attacked by the NTSB and federal regulations. I agree that CNG is a good alternative for fleet vehicles but it will never be practical for the average joe......imagine running out of fuel on the side of the road.

1) You need to look into LNG. Low pressure, dense, already transported by rail.
2) Locomotives already do run on it.
3) I sell diesels that run on CNG and LNG (natural gas). It's what I do
4) A locomotive is not the average Joe

 

[bigdee]

Re: electric trains

1) You need to look into LNG. Low pressure, dense, already transported by rail.
2) Locomotives already do run on it.
3) I sell diesels that run on CNG and LNG (natural gas). It's what I do
4) A locomotive is not the average Joe

I appreciate the insight....I did not know there was a dense LNG or that a diesel could compress it. Now I am curious.......thanks for giving me something to research!!

 

[wajajaja02]

Re: electric trains

Electric trains or not, you're still burning coal somewhere to make the juice.

That really gets me about the masses pushing for hybrid/electric cars. Green? Sure, if you leave out the strip mining for the heavy metals used to make the batteries, and the caustic acids in the batteries, and the fact that you'll get less than a decade out of that battery before it needs to be replaced, and that it's a coal power plant making the electricity you use to charge the 'green' car...

IMO, diesel/bio-diesel is the direction we need to go.

havent been to a gas station since may, make my own bio, for my burban,vw, and lawnmower.

 

[QC]

Re: electric trains

Timely . . .

http://www.gnvmagazine.com/eng/noti...ne_locomotive_was_demonstrated_in_russia-2201

 

[rbh]

Re: electric trains

This is cool, but not on the grid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetTrain

 

[StevNimrod]

Re: electric trains

It comes down to the economics of it, and it's easy to get the costs totally wrong.

For a given level of supply, if you increase demand (by building a new system, in this case) price will increase. So on that front, you probably can't expect the current rate of electricity to stay the same after you build the infrastructure an increase demand for electricity.

The other issue is your reservation price. If you go out and tank a bunch of money building infrastructure, expect to see a bit of price discrimination. Say you're buying water from me at $1 a gallon, and I'm fine with that because it's a byproduct of an existing process. You're a captialist, so you sit down and do some math and figure out that you can use my water to make electricity. I sit back and watch you spend $10,000 building the machine that makes this thing go, and I can almost guarantee you that when you come to get water it won't be $1/gallon. The reason is simple: you just tied up $10,000 on this thing that at this point needs my water to run, and I can be pretty certain you'd be willing to pay a bit more than $1/gallon if the alternative is having a $10,000 paper weight.

As to what Bubba said about the US falling behind on innovation and technology: I think we sometimes make decisions that stifle technology because it doesn't have a face.

I have this conversation with my dad every time we go to a store that has both cashiers and automated checkout stations. He refuses to use the automated stations because he sees it as "putting a cashier out of work". I argue that it's a trade-off: the decision to "not put a cashier out of work" is actually putting an engineer out of work; and if given the choice, I see technology as the path forward and would rather keep the engineer employed. As an aside, the way those stations are set up (typically two registers for the footprint of one manned register) means that in most cases the company could afford to pay the cashier to not show up and still be money ahead but chooses not to. But when it's all said and done almost every time we make a choice, someone is better off at the expense of someone else; all too often I think we make less than ideal choices.