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Comment by thriftwy | Hacker News Reader

What's so hard about having overhead wires?

There's a lot of folks with a vested interest in pushing a hydrogen future (market participants who will see financial loss as fossil fuel use declines, natural gas infra, automakers who are trying to cling to non battery platforms), so it takes orders of magnitude of additional effort to bring folks back to boring, reliable tech (overhead wires or charging points) and batteries versus the "innovator hand wave" of various colors of hydrogen marketing (green, blue).

Building new catenary systems can be expensive (anywhere between $1M-$5M/mile in the US), but can possibly be avoided with batteries and charging at stations (or energy provided via rails).

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/clean-energy-green-hy...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

> Building new catenary systems can be expensive (anywhere between $1M-$5M/mile in the US)

Can you just hire Japan Rail to build it for you, then?

The problem is political dysfunction at higher levels. California tried hiring SNCF to build their high speed rail, but that fell apart because what California wanted was impossible and didn't make sense. (SNCF built a line in Morocco instead)

Is that dysfunction specific to catenary systems? Would H2 or battery-based systems be less politically dysfunctional?

It certainly seems to be at its worst when it comes to anything that involves building. So technologies that can run on existing lines without modification might find it easier to run the regulatory gauntlet even if objectively inferior. (See e.g. Los Angeles' sunshade-on-a-pole because it's illegal to build a bus shelter)

It is political, anything will have that issue. CA politically chose the route without considering geography.

> California tried hiring SNCF to build their high speed rail, but that fell apart because what California wanted was impossible and didn't make sense

The third-party claims about the SNCF proposal mutated a lot in response to evidence that seemed to contradict them, the most recent form of it acknowledging that SNCF publicly supported the CV alignment that the story says they later opposed, and also paints the opposition coming after federal funding waa committed under ARRA tied specifically to specific projects in the Central Valley alignment that SNCF America was said to have then opposed.

It's hardly a US, or a recent thing.

When the UK electrified the East Coast Mainline in the 80s, that cost an inflation-adjusted GBP 600M, for 397 route miles. At that time 1 GBP was approx 1.5 USD.

Using 1.5, that's $2.26M/mile.

PS: Even in Japan, almost all freight travels by diesel to this day... they run on separate tracks to the passenger trains, although freight in general in Japan is less important since they don't have much bulk cargo, being a major exporter of neither food nor minerals.

The only scam here is the battery train. You can simply electrify the rail lines fully and eliminate all battery needs. That is the obvious solution. At least hydrogen makes sense for rail lines with no electrification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_electric_multiple_unit

I didn't say they didn't exist. But there's very little need for them. The wiki article itself makes this pretty clear that they are rarely needed.

Overhead wires take quite a while to plan and build and for non-frequent service (1tph) and/or short trains installation costs and maintenance are quite high compared to buying e.g. BEMUs. Many of these services are shuttle runs with electrification at one or both ends and route lengths of less than 100km, so e.g. a Mireo Plus B with ~120 seats only a 580kWh battery (or less than 6 Tesla Model X batteries ) is used (https://www.vde.com/resource/blob/1979350/a41e9c3559af76fee9... page 24)

HEMUs for these types of services I don't understand. It's laudable that transit providers want to get away from fossil fuels (and putting up overhead wire is a long and arduous process, fraught with delays), but getting hydrogen today almost certainly isn't "green". Maybe "Technologieoffenheit" virtue signalling.

But looking at the plans of various german transit agencies for future service on non-electrified lines, it's pretty obvious that hydrogen has already lost for rail-based transit, with almost every tender that doesn't prescribe a technology going to BEMUs and studies showing that BEMUs and partial electrification or full electrification almost always makes more sense than HEMUs

Optimizing ecological impact of non-frequent services leads to diminishing gains. In this case, a diesel train you already have may be the best option.

BEMUs make zero sense. Just electrify the full route. You eliminate all battery related costs by doing this, nearly guaranteeing it will be cheaper in the long-run. I get the feeling that Germany is overran with "consultants" who are playing games with finances or are trying to harvest subsidies. The whole story feels like propaganda intended to defend against some kind of scam.

Interestingly, the total amount of rail is about the same for EU and US, however in the EU, 55% of it is electrified, and only 1% in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran...

What percentage of freight in either continent travels on an electric train?

Soviet Union and later Russia had entirely families of electric mainline freight locomotive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VL85

If the line is electrified then freight travelling on it will be travelling on electric trains.

The railroad network had to be rebuilt after WW2 in Europe and Japan. War can be good for something I suppose.

If by Europe you mean Germany, or by rebuilt mean maintenance, then, yes.

The level of rail maintenance in America (barely any) is illegal in the rest of the western world. Tenders for maintenance specify certain speed and safety limits that basically require rebuilding every few decades.

Only on private rail could a hedge fund approach work, where the capital of the infrastructure is extracted by way of not maintaining it, but instead slowing trains down and increasing their length to compensate for bandwidth loss.

Overhead wires have been around since the 1950s (actually the 1800s), they are old technology, everyone wants to support new technology. Nobody cares that the new is worse than the old (this is both in practice and in theory).

Maintenance/construction costs? Is my guess. I've driven lots of routes (especially rural) with Diesel trains. It's not rare (in Germany).

Probably cheaper to use batteries at this point.

Like what's the cost per mile to install overhead wires? Comments in an online magazine says $1M/mile[1]. You can buy 5-10,000 kwh worth of batteries for a million bucks.

[1] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/189389.aspx

Every train needs their own battery, all trains can use the same overhead lines. Plus, in Europe, most rolling stock is electrified anyway, and diesel units are only kept around for a handful of peripheral lines. Germans are famous for not being willing to spend anything on infra, but I'm not so sure battery trains make sense for them. On the other hand, it may make for another nice subsidy vehicle for local industry like hydrogen trains were.

The German network is only 55% electrified on a per-mile basis. France is 53%, Portugal 49%... others like Greece are in the low 30s

EU wide it's 56%, brought up a good chunk by Scandinavia and Switzerland. Italy and Spain are the only two countries in Southern Europe over 50%.

There are a LOT of infrequently used industrial lines that see no passenger traffic, and maybe only see a freight train once or twice a day, if that.

I meant lines used for passenger traffic, which this article is about.

One of the bigger issues is that it requires much more vertical clearance.

Rebuilding tunnels and bridges is expensive - tunnels especially are practically never built much larger than required. Stations, depots, carriage washers, and other related infrastructure will need to be rebuilt or heavily modified to account for the extra height of the panto, wires, and poles.

If you're building NEW track, sure, OHLE is the way to go. But there is well over 1 million route kilometers of rail in the world, and less than a third of it is electrified. Of the countries having at least 20,000km of track, only India and Japan are above 70% electrified. Cost of electrifying is estimated at at a miniumum of $1 million per track kilometer. (10 route km of a quad-track mainline would be 40 track km).

A large freight yard might be 40 tracks wide by 2 or 3km long... that's over $100m right there, and that's assuming the yard tracks are spaced widely enough, which they aren't always.

You do not need to electrify every meter of track. Trains have enough momentum that you can coast for fairly significant distances. The idea that you need an entire fleet of battery trains just for those short sections beggars belief.

An obstacle appears appears, and the train goes into emergency braking. You’re now stopped between electrified sections. It’s going to take hours to get moved, and the delays will ripple through the system.

A diesel will have to be dispatched… except it’s entirely possible it won’t be able to get you because there are trains stuck between you, and it’s not like they can pull onto the shoulder.

These sections are sometimes miles long.

A rare event. And the solution is to keep these unpowered sections short. Not spend millions on a fleet of battery powered trains.

They fall down pretty often. I commute 30 mins, and it is the main reason for cancellations.

They.. just.. fall down? Like the front fell off?

Sorry, but never heard of that here, neither for the local trams, nor the >50% electrified on rail.. it is more likely some unhappy guys cut the signaling wires. Where is that?

Sure, they do just not very often (at least not here). Out here I'd imagine worn out pantograph shoes (since most trains here don't have auto lowering pantos). Otherwise the wrong tension on the wires or pantograph at the wrong height can cause some pretty spectacular failures.

If it's happening all the time you're doing something wrong.

https://youtu.be/Ou73R_wIwiA?t=113

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YqLB-TMvhg

Oh and sometimes they fail of their own volition and sometimes due to poor quality materials.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/one-injured-after-overhead-m...

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2020/09/02/bad-splices-point-to-f...

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/muni-wires-fall-on...

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