Forum: Author Hangout

You should look up the game "Rail Baron", it has about 30 railroads in the fairly early history of railroads in the USA.

We used to play that in college.

The old Comes To Pa Pa - small railroad, important connector.

Chicago got the center of the spiderweb because it was one of the early important cities that was an inland port.

If any government owned/controlled the research, there WOULD be other governments whose spies would obtain it for them.

There's a long distance between another government learning of the existence of a newly developed technology and them getting a hold of a working version of it. There's a hell of a lot of secret government research done by a lot of governments and most of it stays secret until such time as the government involved sees a need or reason to make it public.

Even when they make it public it's often soon forgotten.

During WW2 there was a multi-government intelligence gathering project started to gather signals intelligence. The project involved the USA, UK, Australia, NZ, Canada, and France. In the late 1940s it was restructured and better organised then given name of Project Echelon. The analysis of the data was done by the NSA. The project was made public in the late 1960s through a security breach. The project itself was classified as Secret with some aspects of how the analysis was done as being Top Secret. Some details of how Project Echelon worked was leaked to the public again in the 1980s and 1990s. While the existence of the project itself, and its aims, were seen as public knowledge by the year 2000 the details of how the collected data was analysed was still secret. Yet, despite the project being so well known most of the people in the USA and the US media were shocked to learn about it when some of the details of the analysis process was leaked by Snowdon. Yet all he did was make public the name of the commercial data analysis tool that was the main software being used to analyse the collected data at one level of the evaluation process.

All that hullabaloo did was show the world that the USA has some dumb traitors who don't even fully understand what the work they're doing is.

Yet, there are hundreds of other secret USA projects being worked on today that few outside of the projects know the project exists, and many others that the existence of the project is known to the governments of other countries while those governments don't know any of the details of what the project does or how it does it.

Unlike Europe, Japan, and China, the US went a different direction after WW2. For Europe, there wasn't much of a choice as large portions of their infrastructure had been bombed out of existence.

Japan was in a similar situation as far as bombing of infrastructure.

Did you miss the point about this being a century ago, when the US was part of the modern world?

The US is still part of the 'modern' world.

There's this little thing that we have here - the Eisenhower National Defense Highway System - that came into being BEFORE there were ANY high speed rail systems in existence. We have the Interstate Highway system.

We'd just seen what happens when you blow up a railroad track. Well, so much for getting goods from City A to City B, or moving troops and equipment. And we saw how successful the Redball Express was in driving supplies, even over crappy, to non-existent roads.

The OTHER minor detail - Europe has this really annoying tendency to get into a war every forty years or so. Let's not do what they're doing, because their rail network won't survive a war against the Soviet Union anyway.

We built highways and airports. And the airports are far enough from the city center that when the bombs hit the city center (because at that time, we didn't have MIRV's and such), they'd survive.

Bottom line - we built our infrastructure here expecting Europe to get into a war, and for some nukes to hit here, too. But with our Interstate Highway system, you can still get from east coast to west coast in two days simply by driving.

Uhm, it's been 75 years since WWII. And Russia is never going to bomb Europe, it's their economical life line, both in import and export.

That's TODAY, looking back. For one thing, it wasn't Russia, then. It was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Warsaw Pact, and it looked for a while like that was going to continue, NATO versus WP.

1945-49 - Greek Civil War
1948-49 - Berlin Blockade
1956 - Hungarian Revolution
1968 - Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia

Just a few examples.

There's a reason why we (the US) spent so much time working on REFORGER - Return Forces to Germany. Reforger started because of concern with us involved in Vietnam, what would happen if the Warsaw Pact invaded while we were pulling troops OUT of Europe.

It's not like we weren't involved in this little thing called the Cold War, with troops in Berlin and all along the border between East and West Germany. (Again, Berlin Blockade - the Soviet Union was NOT an ally at that point.)

The point is that no large scale infrastructure damages have been seen for 75 years.

That may be the point you're referring to, but that's not the point I'm making. What is the decision and lead time for making the actual infrastructure changes?

This isn't something that you can say on Monday, hey, this is a good idea, and have it up, running, and ready on Friday. It takes no only decades of planning, but decades to implement. We didn't go that way in the US because of what we perceived would best serve the American consumer.

Freedom to 'See the USA in a Chevrolet'.

We could consider doing it now, but you can't retro-build stuff.

Even then, future attacks will not be on rail roads or high ways. High ways in the US are just as vulnerable as anywhere else and can be damaged beyond use. No, future attacks can already be seen which target power and water infrastructure.

Our passenger rail system is a joke. Rail freight in the US works quite well and the simple fact is our rail system is optimized for freight, not passenger service.

The problem is that they charge way more for rail than is reasonable. It is literally cheaper to fly round trip from LA to NY 4 times than to travel one way by train.

And the things that would have attracted large numbers of potential riders they have all killed. Like dining service, and smoking. A lot of people stopped riding trains in the US way back in 1984 when the smoking ban went into effect.

The way I see it, it's a freaking train. Put a car in the very back for smokers. That way nobody else on the train has to deal with it, and a lot will move back just for that. Today, rail service is more like being locked up for a weekend or week. Get 15 minute stops every few hours, and the modern rail pass does not allow you to switch trains like you could 30 years ago.

The fares are not competitive with other modes of transportation, but they are not unreasonably high when compared to what it actually costs to operate a passenger rail system.

The problem is that they are working from an outdated concept of making money.

When trying to compute costs, you can go one of two ways. Either you try to milk as much as you can from each item you sell (cell phone, book, travel ticket), or you can charge less and make it up in volume. Accept less per ticket, and rely on the greater sales to make the money.

Classic case in point, look to videotapes. In the early 1980's, videos cost $80 and up. So the video rental business boomed. Then a decade later, one studio got the idea to charge $25. They made 1/4 of the money per tape, but made much more money as they sold millions as compared to hundreds of thousands of copies of the same movie.

Early cell phones were a small area, because they were so expensive few could afford them. The same with early air fares. Only the rich flew, the rest took trains or busses.

Airlines realized they could cut the price, and sell more seats. Cell phone companies dumped the expensive prices and now everybody owns one. Trains however, went in the opposite direction. Of the three ways to travel, it is the most expensive by far, but in the middle when compared to the convenience of bus or plane.

Put the pricing back where it belongs (in the middle), and more will ride it. Make less per ticket, but with more riders sell more seats. And returning features to actually attract riders.

And yes, most large transit like that relies upon government subsidies. Busses rely on the road network which is paid for by the government, and most airports are paid for in the same way. But the problem is that they are running the trains the Government, with an outdated economic model.

As I have mentioned before, you can not even take the train when traveling on the Government's dime. That to me is insane. If they own the damned system, it should be one of their first choices. "Going from Washington DC to New York or Philadelphia for government business? Take the train."

I understood the time restraint when I had to go from California to Florida for a class under military orders. But when I tried to schedule a return trip by rail (as I could take longer if I wanted), I was amazed that it was not allowed. The cost exceeded my allowed travel budget.

The US Government alone pays for almost 6,000 flights per day on average. And many could be taken off the planes and put on trains, where they are paying themselves. And with no real cost, as most trains travel at under 50% occupancy anyways.

About a decade ago I did a project on this very topic for a business class. Where our government is doing the worst because it even discourages or prohibits it's own employees from using the one system they actually own.

Throw three or four extra passenger cars on the end of the train. Minimal increase in operating cost. Now lower costs of tickets to fill the train. Operating cost per passenger will be lower than initially.

Exactly. Or hell, they do not even have to add more cars as most trains are at 50% or less occupancy. They could add another 30% riders at no increase in costs.

This is what the airline industry realized, and why they lowered fairs until they were sending full planes instead of planes with a quarter of the seats or more empty.

There are a lot of videos floating around by railfans, showing their trips across the US by train. And the thing that is most striking is how empty they were, even before COVID. That is a sign that they are charging too damned much, and lowering rates to fill more seats would not increase their costs. Two seats sold at 30% less makes you more than an empty seat at 100%.

In most countries, they are running their trains with higher occupancy because they are priced where they should be. My wife is from Argentina, and they traveled everywhere long distance by train. It was cheap, and if you were going to the next state that is how you did it.

Here, that is not done. So they run empty trains instead.

So scrap the union contracts and start over.

The main reason any government employment is problematic is that 'public sector' unions believe that they should be able to force the government to pay insanely high wages because the government can always just increase prices (raise taxes) to cover their pay. 'Public sector' unions should never have been allowed.

The average railroad wage at this time is over $65,000 a year, plus a generous benefit package. And wages and benefits is why no Government run operation will ever break even.

They all run at a loss, every single one of them. So you have to figure which solution is going to lose the least amount of money.

Taking Amtrak from LA to San Francisco costs $65 each way. I can catch a flight for $30 however. And the time is only 1 hour as opposed to 12 hours by train.

I literally could fly from LA to San Francisco for a nice meal, spend the day there, then fly home for less time and money that it would cost to just take the train there.

And even more insane, the same trip by bus is $25, and takes 6 hours. This is repeated over and over if you compare time and cost for those 3 modes of transportation. When the one system run by the government is by far the most expensive, it shows there is a problem.

Then people wonder why some of us resist the government taking over parts of our daily life. Nothing they do is ever cheaper, nothing. I could guarantee that if they gave out the contract for Amtrak and paid the company the same amount of money they spend on it now it would turn a profit every year.

If the government sold cars, they would all be like the Trabant, and priced like a Lincoln.

Until the trains get longer than the stations.

That has been solved in two ways in the UK. The most common in my experience is for passengers for short stations to be seated in a particular section of the train. But I've also experienced trains pulling into a short station, disembarking the passengers in the front carriages, then pulling forward to disembark the passengers in the rear carriages.

AJ

Until the trains get longer than the stations.

Easily solved, as others have said. All passengers only board and leave at the part of the train at the station. That was how it was handled at the Boise Union Station in the 1970's when Amtrak started stopping there again. The trains were much longer than the station platform was.

We saw this in California many times, as earthquakes have caused rail in both the Bay Area and LA add a lot more cars when bridges collapsed. They did not expand the stations, or restrict the trains to the length of stations. Just add more cars, and you left from the front.

Hell, I have even seen them use no station, simply create one with temporary buildings on the side of the rail and you got on and off from a gravel covered dirt area with generators giving lighting at night. Stations were created just like that in Lancaster, Palmdale, Santa Clarita, Acton, and many other areas. And none of the existing stations other than LA Union Station could "handle" the trains that were 50% longer than before the quake. But they all adapted just fine.

After the 1994 Northridge Earthquake they did that all over the LA area. And even the surface Metro trains will run special long cars regularly during Laker games, which are longer than the street stations can handle.

Stay in the front if you are riding from Union Station (or Long Beach) to the Staples Center, move to the back if you are going farther down the line.

Throw three or four extra passenger cars on the end of the train. Minimal increase in operating cost.

You do realize that in most cases, freight trains are slow as mud, don't you?

Not really. There is the speed at which they travel (average of 60 mph), then factor in that most can travel for longer periods of time than a single crew rotation without stopping.

Those "endurance runs" is what makes up the time during a run. You can theoretically drive from LA to New York in less than 2 days. But then you have bathroom stops, food stops, fuel stops, and rest stops. That makes it normally around 4-5 days.

Freight trains make the same trip in around 72 hours. Longer than a "non-stop" car trip, but faster than a car on a realistic drive of that distance. Most trains travel around 300 miles, then stop for 15 minutes for a crew change and go another 300 miles. In some areas they are even known to bring 2 crews, so changeover is a 5 minute stop then they move again.

I have driven the I-10 many times over the years, with the rail tracks within easy sight of the freeway from Eastern California to Eastern Texas. And I would often pass a train, then after stopping for gas and a pit stop be passing the train yet again an hour later as it did not stop.

And see that repeat over and over until I would stop for the night, and it would just keep going. Putting in several hundred more miles as I slept.

Yes in some parts they will slow down do to population (cities/towns) but in general they travel at a constant speed of 50mph (80Kph).

And that is what makes them endurance champs. Just compare it to 24 Hours at Le Mans. The average race speed is only around 125 MPH, but the drives go on and on and on for 24 hours, so winning distances in that 1 day race are over 3,000 miles.

That is longer than the distance from LA to New York, but the fact that the the drivers and crews can change and stops are for a few minutes at most, this lets them rack up impressive miles.

I have done a single "Iron Butt" ride, and will never do another. It was a competition ride round trip from San Diego to Sacramento and back. 1,000 miles on a motorcycle in under 24 hours. I did just over 700 miles my first day (San Diego to Sacramento, back down to Bakersfield), and finished it after a 6 hour overnight.

Those that do the serious rallies actually do 11,000 miles in 11 days. That is longer than going New York to LA 3.5 times, in a week and a half.