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Comment by Stevvo | Hacker News Reader

So ridiculous. Is private rail so dysfunctional that it actually makes sense to buy battery-electric locomotives in the US instead of installing overhead wires?

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It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars to string up the overhead wire by themselves, and that's using the lowest cost electrification jobs done world-wide. It would cost hundreds of billions more to actually clear bridges and tunnels for the extra height needed for catenary. Then you'd have to actually buy all of the locomotives (not even going to speculate there). And then there's probably significant extra cost in building out transmission infrastructure to the railroad tracks--I'd guess there's large slices of the West where there's nothing around nearby you could hook traction substations up to. All-in-all, you're talking about a trillion-dollar investment to do so.

At the same time... the performance benefits really aren't worth it for freight trains. Remember that diesel locomotives are already an electric drivetrain--the diesel is merely fueling a generator that's sitting on board to power the drivetrain. The big savings with electrification come with weight reduction--and with freight, the weight of the locomotive is a small component of that weight--or using EMUs that let you have every wheel being powered (and with freight cars, that's again never going to happen).

https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/crgmsa...

According to this study from 2012, the cost of electrifying railroads in California is about $4.8M/track mile, and according to google, there are about 140,000 route miles of freight rail in the US.

I'd assume that doing this in bulk might drop the costs substantially, but we're still talking about a huge network.

It's not necessarily doing it in bulk that would make it cheap, it's basically turning it into an assembly line capable of doing a small amount of miles every year for ever cheaper cost.

American infrastructure projects tend to be super big, then don't do anything for 10+ years before you kickstart everything up again. This is a fairly poor idea if you want to keep knowledge around from the last time it was done.

It's one of those things that's kind of useless if you only do a small number of miles a year though - if you don't have the ability to make the entire journey electric, you have to involve two locomotives and the cost to switch them. That might be why Battery-Electric looks good, as you only need to electrify the two stations.

Not necessarily.

Amtrak is currently investing in dual-mode locomotives: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/amtrak-sie...

My understanding of how these work is that when not connected to wires directly, a diesel generator supplies electricity instead. So partial wiring is possible with these. Amtrak has some additional constraints (they can't run diesels under the Hudson River) but to some extent a lot of freight operators have similar restrictions but deal with them differently; due to ventilation concerns, most Western mountain tunnels only permit one train in them at any given time, and the crews have to carry respirators and oxygen in case the trains stall inside the tunnel.

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Britain also has trains that do this running with a program of incremental electrification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_802

Once the electrification is complete, the equipment can be converted to full electric operation simply by unplugging the diesel generators.

It's not too hard to make locomotives that can use electric power in addition to diesel, because the architecture is already an electrical connection between the diesel generator and the wheels.

laughing / crying in CAHSR

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_High-Speed_Rail

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_California_High-Spe...

This is for yard traffic. It makes sense to me. Which part doesn't make sense to you? For ports where they are double-stacking containers onto well cars, overhead wiring would be challenging, and you still need all-new locomotives.

> For ports where they are double-stacking containers onto well cars, overhead wiring would be challenging, and you still need all-new locomotives.

That's not really a big challenge; this is something done globally on a daily basis. Typically you either have an entirely unelectrified siding and shunt in/out of it, or you have only the near end of the siding electrified and propel the cars into the siding.

No, double-stacked containers are unique to North America and nobody else does it.

India and China would both like to disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-stack_rail_transport#Ou...

The US has a much higher percentage of freight transported by rail than the EU. I would not be so dismissive of their way of operation.

Yes. Overhead wires make the value of the rail go up and so the taxes the railroads pay is more and thus it isn't worth it.

For the busy routes it would still be worth it, but the is a lot of used just often enough to not abandon the tracks rail. Electric is all or nothing (not 100%,but close) in that if even a small line isn't electric you only run diesel engines so you can run trains one that one line.

It is easier to load and unload without electric overhead.

Still if the cost of diesel went to $15/gallon the us would put up those wires, but until then diesel is cheaper. Don't forget to adjust for inflation.

maybe this is an incremental strategy plan: have battery power and future ability to also use wires, so that you can operate in situations where there is less than 100% coverage

There are around 300,000 km of active rail in the US, essentially none of which is electrified. Then there are 10s of thousands of diesel locomotives that would need to be all replaced. This would cost trillions of dollars, more than any reasonable estimate of rail revenue for the several decades. Then those overhead wires would need to be maintained, which is much more expensive than just keeping rails functional.

Aren't they diesel-electric though? It's not like a diesel engine is turning the wheels. The diesel is just power the electric motor driving the wheels, or are these not the norm?

Yes but the expensive part of the locomotive is either the diesel generator or the equipment to take power from overhead wires (on-board inverters and the pantographs). It's not generally practical to convert one to another.

There's almost certainly a power law applying to which tracks are getting the most use. If you can electrify 50% of traffic you would make a great upgrade, and it wouldn't require anything near 150,000km of track.

The operational complexity is nontrivial. You would need to attach both diesel and electrical locomotion to every train that has even a small segment in unwired territory, which would be most runs, in exchange for relatively small fuel savings.

Not sure if you realize how huge the US is, but overhead wire would be a ridiculously expensive effort for not much benefit.

UP is a freight railroad and has around 32k miles of track, and about 10k trains. Also, they need to operate 24/7 in harsh conditions all throughout the US, west of Mississippi river, so very hot and cold, mountains, desert ect.

How does the overhead wire adjust height to compensate for varying car heights in the case of double stacked intermodal cars? An overhead cable is a limiting factor.

It needs to be high enough to clear the tallest cars (plus enough distance to prevent arcing), and then the pantograph pickup on the locomotives needs to be tall enough to reach the overhead wires.

If you want to do things incrementally it makes perfect sense.

Yes. It’s much, much cheaper to carry power with you rather than electrify hundreds of thousands of miles of rail.

Indeed.

Nevermind how vastly more expensive MOW costs are for electrified lines.

This depends heavily on the density of operation; globally at least for heavily used lines the total cost of operation (infrastructure, locomotion, etc.) is much lower for electrified lines, in no small part because each locomotive needs much less maintenance.

From that regard, it's somewhat surprising that none of the busiest lines have been electrified.

The sheer vastness of rural America does not lend itself to using overhead wires. In Europe, a bout of bad weather will tear down the wires in multiple places and make the line unusable even though the tracks themselves are fine. It is always "fun" to commute after a night of heavy wind, but at least the countries here are mostly compact and the locations that took damage are close to one another, so a few crews can fix them in a day or so.

That would be much harder in the flyover country. I am not sure how the Russians keep up their Transsib line; it is long, electrified and goes straight through thousands of miles of wilderness.

My father in Belarus in eighties and nineties used to travel few times per week about 35 milles in one direction by a local electric train with overhead wires (called "elektrichka" in Russian). Not a single time the train was cancelled. Even delays more then 10-15 minutes were extremely rare including on the days with heavy snow or strong wind. Even all maintenance were done at night and never disrupted the traffic.

So if 40 years ago Soviet Union managed that, I am sure US should be capable to build electrical lines that are not destroyed by a bad weather.

We love cars, trucks, NIMBYism, and the petroleum industry way too much to ever build sensible trains in the US.

You've got that right. A sensible passenger train that runs north/south along the Rocky mountains? That would be too easy.

I though taking the train from Montana to Utah would be nice break from driving it - then I saw the only route was to go out to the coast, down the coast and back inland. What should be a one day trip takes three.

In photos from the USSR, I noticed that forests around the railway tracks are cut down in a pretty broad strip, perhaps 100 m wide?

This is an efficient countermeasure against the trees falling on tracks and taking the wires with them, but some countries aren't willing to cut down that much of a forest.

Or willing to pay so much to the current owners of land for all the miles of railways you would have to purchase to do the same here

Forestry land is really cheap.

Not in the U.S., it isn't. There's not much forest left in the interior of the country that wouldn't be snapped up for residential real state if it weren't already privately owned for logging or as National Forest/National Park acreage. Or, it's so mountainous that it would be impractical to use for railways.

Clear cutting an acre gives you about $1500 for wood that took 20 years to grow. This is not an intensive industry in terms of what it generates per acre. I don't see how you are going to have to pay a lot to keep a strip clear on either side of the railroad. $75/acre/year would seem to be enough.

https://www.forest2market.com/blog/how-much-money-is-an-acre...

That’s fair. The US South has far less expensive timberland and land in general than the West does.

Ah interesting, I was actually thinking less about the cost for the maintenance but rather the cost for land acquisition. Even with imminent domain you're going to be fighting lawsuits for years, if there's any real infrastructure built in the new area you need that's going to be quite expensive to acquire and tear down, etc. but maybe they're already zoned out from building that close to the tracks

The context up-thread is removing trees in a wider strip to avoid them falling on the cables and tracks. It's not about tearing down buildings, which tend not to fall over in the wind.

Nothing like 100 meters, more like 15-20. I guess that was based on height of trees.

Belarus doesn't get winds as strong as western Europe. Other weather is worse (heat and cold).

I think the GP comment was wrong anyway. The trains are delayed due to fallen trees and landslides much more frequently than damage to the catenary. (And neither is common enough that you'd think about it.)

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2018/01/Wind_speed...

Switzerland has some of the most extreme weather around and their lines are heavily electrified.

Switzerland is around 40,000 sq km to the US’ 10,000,000 sq km. I don’t think you understand the scale of what electrification of lines in the US would mean.

I think you're really condescending.

The relevant metric is population vs rail line length. Switzerland has 8.4M people for 5.7k miles of railway. The US has 335M people for 294k miles of railway. The difference is not too crazy. The total scale is different, but the true problem is probably something between economics and politics. My guesses would be that (1) Swiss railways are pretty much run as a public utility. (2) Swiss railways prioritize on passenger rail, which means more rail near population centers. Diesel is not ideal near population centers. (3) Electrification of rail has been a Swiss priority for a long time, so the marginal cost to add it to new rail installations is low.

Why is that the relevant metric?

That’s not the relevant metric unless you take population density into account.

It makes sense in Switzerland because of the mountainous terrain there.

Maybe improving rail emissions should be a very low priority, because:

* It's already the most CO2 efficient way to move freight.

* It's also one of the things that's going to be hardest to improve.

Little steps like considered here: battery-electric locomotives for use in rail yards-- make a lot of sense. There may be some specific rail lines that lend themselves to overhead electrification. And otherwise, maybe the focus should be on moving more goods transport to rail instead of making rail more CO2 efficient.

> hundreds of thousands

You missed the point, that those locomotives will only be used in the yard (shuffling wagons). It's not gonna work to long-haul using battery power (too low power density).

It feels like moving around a fixed urban area rather than travelling at high speed through mostly empty areas is probably the more impactful place to remove ICE engines.

Similar to how electric busses usually get assigned to the start-stop routes in the urban centres.

I wonder what the economies are of splitting the difference between total electrification and battery power.

Strategically-located sections of electrified rail to charge trains as they pass through without stopping. Retractable catenary so still compatible with existing clearances. I'm sure someone has had this idea before.

You might not need nearly so much infrastructure, but you invite bottleneck congestion.

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