North Carolina Intercity Rail Transit

[mallguy]

I was just reading the Southeastern NC Passenger Rail report from 2005 and read this interesting paragraph:

NS running passenger trains? As anyone heard anything of this nature before? I thought they wiped their hands of this business decades ago.

NS got out of the passenger business in the late 1970s but as the company obviously knows how to run a railroad, it's considered operating (i.e., providing crews for) trains under contract to governmental entities that subsidize the operations. The government would pay NS to provide the crews and run the trains, but I'd figure that the name on the rail cars would be Amtrak or whatever brand name NC decides to have for its trains, and I wouldn't think that a typical rider would be able to tell that NS was operating the train, just as a commuter train passenger probably can't tell that a private operator is operating the train. NS has been in talks about doing such a thing for some proposed lines in Georgia, and a variety of private companies are commuter train operators around the US.

Not the same as NS operating its own passenger trains, under the NS label or brand, and for its own profit (or loss).

In the 1970s the Delaware & Hudson Railroad ran an intercity passenger train (I think what became today's Adirondack) under contract to New York State, but the railroad kept its own name on the train cars. I don't think NS would go that far.

[mallguy]

Just bought a Washington to Charlotte ticket on the Amtrak Carolinian. I calculated the average speed for that part of the route- 43 mph. High-speed rail is a LONG way off.

[burt]

Travelers on The Silver Star in and out of Raleigh, beware:

http://www.timesdispatch.com/cva/ric/news....06-02-0068.html

[burt]

A story in the July issue of Trains Magazine says that CSX has plans for massive changes in its Washington to Miami route. It calls for 4-tracking between Washington and Richmond and triple-tracking from Richmond to Miami. It would also close or bridge more than 1,700 crossings.

It's dependent, of course, on Federal approval and funding.

[orulz]

CSX's plans are their proposal for the USDOT's Corridors of the Future program.

For the rail-based proposals from the Southeast, see the FRA's Southeast Railroad Corridor page.

NCDOT and VDRPT collaborated to write a proposal for the DC-to-Charlotte HSR corridor while CSX submitted their own proposal encompassing the A- and S-Lines along the I-95 Corridor from Washington to Miami.

According to this report CSX's rail proposal for the I-95 corridor, a 100% highway-based proposal from all the state DOTs along the route, and another proposal from the I-95 Corridor Coalition are still in the running for the I-95 corridor; the SEHSR proposal from NCDOT/VDRPT is not, most likely due to its limited, two-state scope.

[sax184]

Everything on this page other than SEHSR is an exercise in fantasy. SC is indifferent to rail and GA actively works against it becoming more effective. Until one can get to Florida without going through those two states, all this stuff is merely talk. VA and NC are spending real dollars on environmental work for SEHSR, and for improvements in their state-specific sections of the corridor.

[JeffC]

orulz: so I read your thread linked to the train message boards, and I still don't understand...why in the world was infrastructure destroyed in the 1950s when they pulled up the 2nd set of rails in so many places? couldn't afford to maintain it? didn't think usage supported double tracking? This is the craziest thing I've ever heard.

[mallguy]

orulz: so I read your thread linked to the train message boards, and I still don't understand...why in the world was infrastructure destroyed in the 1950s when they pulled up the 2nd set of rails in so many places? couldn't afford to maintain it? didn't think usage supported double tracking? This is the craziest thing I've ever heard.

Yes- improvements in train signaling and operations allowed higher traffic per line; in addition, freight trains are less time-sensitive than passenger trains (some freights don't even have schedules), so with the demise of passenger trains around most of the US, additional lines were redundant and cash-strapped railroads didn't have the money to keep more lines than absolutely necessary. This is coming back to bite them as now there isn't enough traffic capacity for the freight business, and especially not enough to run both freight and passenger trains, which have different track needs.

[Raintree21]

Rail transportation experts from around the world were at Catawba College in Salisbury today discussing the future of hydrogen powered rail lines according to News14.

More information about hydrogen rail lines can be found at www.hydrail.org.

[sax184]

Rail transportation experts from around the world were at Catawba College in Salisbury today discussing the future of hydrogen powered rail lines according to News14.

More information about hydrogen rail lines can be found at www.hydrail.org.

This is a solution in search of a problem. Hydrogen is not a new source of energy, it is an energy carrier, just like electricity. With the French running trains at 357 mph using the best available HSR construction techniques, the hydrail stuff is re-inventing the wheel for no purpose.

The world already knows how to build outstanding rail systems in the world with tremendous performance that are not dependent on oil or its byproducts for propulsion. In the USA, we simply choose not do those things.

[vitaviatic]

Everything on this page other than SEHSR is an exercise in fantasy. SC is indifferent to rail and GA actively works against it becoming more effective. Until one can get to Florida without going through those two states, all this stuff is merely talk. VA and NC are spending real dollars on environmental work for SEHSR, and for improvements in their state-specific sections of the corridor.

For the purposes of connecting up with Atlanta and Florida, it may be fantasy. But (and I've brought this up before on the TTA blog) if available funds can be commingled from SEHSR and local funds for corridor improvement, then there isn't any reason this can't speed up the process of connecting Raleigh to Charlotte and Richmond. Provided the entire program doesn't collapse under the federal budget meltdown, matching funds are stated in black and white, and both NC & VA would do well to concentrate the funds there. It's much easier to build the SEHSR corridor out, and have more intensive local services piggyback on that, than to build several local ops over freight tracks or system specific lines, then try to overlay a high-speed system across those. It's also much more politically advatageous to seek funding for a project for North Carolina than for ones labeled Raleigh, Charlotte, etc., etc.

This is a solution in search of a problem. Hydrogen is not a new source of energy, it is an energy carrier, just like electricity. With the French running trains at 357 mph using the best available HSR construction techniques, the hydrail stuff is re-inventing the wheel for no purpose.

The world already knows how to build outstanding rail systems in the world with tremendous performance that are not dependent on oil or its byproducts for propulsion. In the USA, we simply choose not do those things.

I understand your argument about the French achieving gran vitesse with conventional tractive power, but the big problem is still there. With diesel, you will always have an operation that will be prone to fuel spikes and big budget surprises as compared to a refinable gas (vapor, as opposed to gasoline that is). A proprietary biofuel operation would solve that, but remember how wildly popular that idea was when I submitted it (har, har). Electricity, for all of its merits, is very labor intensive to maintain, difficult to provide over long distances for concentrated uses, and also subject second-handedly to fuel spikes. When a substation has to be cut-out for maintenance or during problem occurances, you invoke power restrictions, and thus service delays. Metroliner/Acela works well enough, but that is a super high-dollar operation that due to its market can support the high operating costs.

If you think about it, a locomotive provides probably the optimum study environment for hydrogen fuel-cell technology. Just from a cost-per-unit standpoint it makes much more sense than a car, aside from the fact that a locomotive is already a hybrid, operating from electric traction motors, needing only a change of initial propulsion. They are running these guys in Pueblo at the test facility, and so far as I've heard, no major issues yet.

All in all, I think that selling new rail services to the general public based upon an improved technology, with semi-predictable expenses, would be much easier. And as was the case (somewhat) with Sacramento and light rail, if you're the first into a new technology, at least in your neighborhood, you might end up with the manufacturing plant for the thing.

[monsoon]

..... Electricity, for all of its merits, is very labor intensive to maintain, difficult to provide over long distances for concentrated uses, and also subject second-handedly to fuel spikes. .....

I simply don't understand how you can say that since electrical distribution over power lines is 100+ year old technology, is extremely efficient for moving energy, and extremely low labor to maintain.

You seem to ignore issues with hydrogen with your arguments but lets summarize them again:

1. As mentioned above, it is an energy carrier. You have to burn fuel to produce it. The only cost efficient technology for creating large mounts of hydrogen these days, is, yes, creating it from oil. Thus it is just as vulnerable to fuel spikes that you fault for electricity and diesel.
   
2. Hydrogen is a very immature technology. They don't have the technologies down to distribute and implement on a large scale. Because of that, the labor costs for hydrogen are going to be very high for the forseeable future.
   
3. Hydrogen is a very dangerous substance. It burns extremely fast and once a hydrogen fire starts there is no stopping it until it burns out. This is a significant safety issue that has yet to be worked out.
   

Any project that would look to hydrogen to for rail propulsion is simply going to fall on its face. At least here in NC, they need to focus on using conventional technology that is at least to 21st century levels. Maybe in 50 years a replacement might come along but I personally don't think it will be hydrogen based. My guess is train propulsion will still be using electricity because you don't have to move the weight of the fuel, and the fuel source is very flexable unlike fossil fuels or exotics such as hydrogen.

[sax184]

Ultimately, as hydrogen and electricity are both energy carriers rather than sources, many of their benefits are the same:

They can be created from multiple sources. Hydrogen can come from electrolosys of water or natural gas, electricity can come from, well, just about anywhere, including wind and solar.

A test track out at Pueblo and the mature technology that existing technicians can regularly service in the field are two very different things. Hydrogen power does not make the SEHSR more likely to get built; in fact, it probably lowers the chance of attracting private bond market funding for a portion of the project since it is an unproven propulsion driver.

From the speed/acceleration point of view, the line is mostly limited by curvature and shared freight operation, not propulsion technology. NCDOT is already studying the right technology for original deployment, that being diesel-powered trains on conventional tracks. In the future, electrification may make sense.

The other stuff (hydrogen/maglev) is just a distraction.

[vitaviatic]

I simply don't understand how you can say that since electrical distribution over power lines is 100+ year old technology, is extremely efficient for moving energy, and extremely low labor to maintain.

You seem to ignore issues with hydrogen with your arguments but lets summarize them again:

1. As mentioned above, it is an energy carrier. You have to burn fuel to produce it. The only cost efficient technology for creating large mounts of hydrogen these days, is, yes, creating it from oil. Thus it is just as vulnerable to fuel spikes that you fault for electricity and diesel.
   
2. Hydrogen is a very immature technology. They don't have the technologies down to distribute and implement on a large scale. Because of that, the labor costs for hydrogen are going to be very high for the forseeable future.
   
3. Hydrogen is a very dangerous substance. It burns extremely fast and once a hydrogen fire starts there is no stopping it until it burns out. This is a significant safety issue that has yet to be worked out.
   

Ultimately, as hydrogen and electricity are both energy carriers rather than sources, many of their benefits are the same:

They can be created from multiple sources. Hydrogen can come from electrolosys of water or natural gas, electricity can come from, well, just about anywhere, including wind and solar.

A test track out at Pueblo and the mature technology that existing technicians can regularly service in the field are two very different things. Hydrogen power does not make the SEHSR more likely to get built; in fact, it probably lowers the chance of attracting private bond market funding for a portion of the project since it is an unproven propulsion driver.

From the speed/acceleration point of view, the line is mostly limited by curvature and shared freight operation, not propulsion technology. NCDOT is already studying the right technology for original deployment, that being diesel-powered trains on conventional tracks. In the future, electrification may make sense.

The other stuff (hydrogen/maglev) is just a distraction.

When it comes to actually fleshing out the vehicles for this or that project, depending on the timeline involved, it probably will end up being a conventional locomotive set. I have just stated a case here for keeping options open, as well as your mind.

I'm sure there was more than one guy in a late 1800's bicycle shop who was getting ridiculed by the masses for trying to put a motor on the thing. "Hey buddy, that gasoline is dangerous! It could catch fire while you're driving! And, oh, by the way, a lot of the stuff your automobile needs, well hey, they don't mass produce it yet. You know. Motor oil. That kind of stuff. And gasoline! Well, that's very hard to produce! It has to be refined, then transported, then sold every twenty miles to be effective..."

I don't mean to be condescending here, but sometimes you have to see things from outside your own time and space confinements. These technologies will work, they are working, and they are slowly acquiring funding, albeit in their nearly gestational stages. Will they be "off-the-shelf technology" within three years? Most likely not. But if the discussion here is about a project with a minimum 5-year buildout (more likely 8 or 9), then I think at least the prospect of alternative propulsion should stay on the table. Nobody said (especially myself) that the drawing board should be cleared and an infant technology taken on for final design!

Electricity is over two hundred years old. Hasn't changed much. Simple as hell to fire across the Kansas prairie in an AC transmission line. But you seem to equate plugging in a home appliance with running trains on it. It ain't that simple. First you have to convert the 13k AC off the grid into 900 DC. For that you have to build a substation. And since DC doesn't go very far without dissipation, you have to build one at least every one to two miles. An industrial AC breaker, a DC breaker, a transformer, negative return, and four feeder breakers (assuming you're running dual trackage). Not cheap to build, and not cheap to maintain. Lightning strike and BOOM!, thar she goes. Insulators get blown and the system grounds out. Pantographs get loose and drag down a catenary wire. Stuff happens.

Electricity works great on short, localized systems. Where modest manpower can ride herd on things. It's environmentally more inert, and less polluting. However, if you're gonna wire it up the whole 140+ miles to Charlotte, or 400+ to Atlanta, yet try to get by on a traditionally-sized freight rail maintainer staff, well -- just let me know where to send the CARE package to while you wait for your electric train. Unless you're absolutely sure that you are going to get Northeast-quantity ridership, subsidies, and farebox recovery to support legions of maintainers, then I would say stay conventional, and keep my eye on what's going on over in the nerd shop.

By the way, something else you have to keep in mind. T-man made a reference to "service in the field". Power units are normally about 85 to 90% serviced in the shop, over a pit, surrounded by tools. Substation maintenance and service is always in the field. I'd rather have to service a dead power unit that can be pulled back to the roundhouse, than have to load up four or five trucks with five square meters of hardware and tools and shlep thirty, forty, or fifty miles with it just to get started. A well-run system will have redundancy built in, w/ a second motor to pull the dead one in, or at least tractive power on standby at strategic points to make the road call.

One last point. New technologies breed their own technical support. If a fuel cell locomotive operation came into being, there will be someone there to carry the ball for it. I've been various sectors of transportation for over 25 years. I can tell you that training and expertise in these fields (especially in the rail sector) are come by rather organically. They don't teach this stuff in your local college. At best the new tech comes in with the core basics of science, and gets trained in the specifics on the job. Often as not, the guy or girl comes in with little or no knowledge. Familiarity breeds skill, and fuel cell will be no different. You may have to pay them more for their niche specialization later, but if they are saving you overhead, then who cares?

Soon you guys will have your own local laboratory open in Charlotte. You'll be able to see firsthand the gifts and the limitations of the electrical genre of railroading.

Edited August 24, 2007 by vitaviatic

[monsoon]

Even though you made a very long post on the history of electricity (and BTW I am an electrical engineer) and chastised us for not having an open mind, you did not address any of the issue that we brought up about the use of hydrogen suggested by you. Why don't you try to actually address the points we made?

I stand by everything I said about it and suggest that in regards to having an open mind, the most important thing in getting a transit project off the ground in North Carolina in any kind of reasonable time, is that one has to be realistic. There are not going to be any hydrogen power trains running around NC in the forseeable future.

[vitaviatic]

I stand by everything I said about it and suggest that in regards to having an open mind, the most important thing in getting a transit project off the ground in North Carolina in any kind of reasonable time, is that one has to be realistic. There are not going to be any hydrogen power trains running around NC in the forseeable future.

I think the only requisite to having an open mind is to consider options to the preexisting paradigm, not necessarily caving in to fad technologies. Now read your last sentence. I think you just proved my "chastism" to be correct, even though it wasn't meant that way on my part.

OK metro, so with your credentials, I assume that you understand the dynamic problems of long-distance electric trains that I am speaking of. Would you care to refute them? If so, please feel free. I will respond in kind, given the opportunity. All should take note that my admonitions against long-haul electric trains were financial, as opposed to technical. Sure it can be done, but at what price? If I am indeed advocating against a potential piece of work for you then I am sorry. But as you stated the importance of realism yourself, considering the labor requirements of covering 100+ substations -- doesn't that sound highly impractical and unrealistic to you, and a serious impediment to starting transit?

As for speaking upon fuel-cell development, I am not a chemist, so I am probably not qualified to put forth an academic argument for the thing. Hydrogen has an atomic value of 1. It is unstable. Which makes it a great vehicle for energy transmission. Most of the problems with hydrogen have been with containerization and environment, all of which can be controlled, as it has been done for nearly a hundred years with gasoline -- another highly unstable substance. My references are not to having all of the answers for this technology, but alluding to the fact that, as with all active scientific pursuits, problems with fuel cell will be catalogued, addressed with research, and eventually solved. If fuel cell propulsion doesn't hold up to scientific scrutiny for some reason (maglev, and its outlandish electrical requirements being an example) it will be debunked and set aside. In the meantime, no harm looking at it, right?

I will do you one better than opine on it, though. Since I am in the neighborhood of NREL, Pueblo, and Vehicle Projects, I will try to procure some data on the prototypes from local sources. It may not be tomorrow, or even next week, but I will do so, and post the results here, or at least link them up.

[monsoon]

I refuted them above in regards to your claims that hydrogen would solve all these issues when it obviously won't. When you decide to actually address what I have posted then I will have the discussion with you. A discussion on the use of electricity on it's own to power trains is beyond the scope of this topic and is a distraction from what you claimed in the first place. If you really want to have a discussion on electric power for trains, then please start a topic in the Urban Transit section of UrbanPlanet.

Otherwise it's pretty obvious that you are trying to avoid having to address what you posted about hydrogen.

[vitaviatic]

This about as much information as I can find that isn't protected as proprietary.

http://www.fuelcellpropulsion.org/

Fuel Cell Locomotive PPT Presentation

If, in fact, this were such a feeble idea, I don't think that you would have the kind of signatories to the thing that there are. I don't think that it is a waste of time to consider anything, at least to the point of insertion at a later date beyond initial startup. I can tell you that for what NC needs, either a conventional diesel trainset, or something along the lines of this technology is appropriate. Anything involving a Euro-style electric setup will not financially survive. Yes, it works famously in Europe, where double-digit percentages of the total transportation budget get devoted to rail. Here in the US, where the budget allotment for passenger rail is in the micro-fractional percentages, it won't fly. Where electric service is available now, mainly the Northeast Acela corridor and parts of Pennsylvania, it was installed many, many years ago with capital costs long since retired. Even so, the operating costs of these lines are still quite high, and sustainable only based on the strength of the Northeast market. Any Sunbelt train service is going to have completely different market dynamics (that is to say, weaker revenues), given the demographics of the place.

If you can change the political mentality of your region, and actually create the political wisdom of a European-level investment in passenger rail, then by all means go for electric. I wish you Herculean luck in that feat.

I haven't had the chance to talk to these guys yet, but I'm hoping to. If in fact they will, and I come by more info, I will post later.

[Raintree21]

There is an interesting article in today's Charlotte Observer. The state-owned N.C. Railroad Co. has started showing up at people's businesses that abutt the railroad and is demanding that property owners sign leases and pay rent and administrative fees to the railroad. Apparently, the railroad has a 200 foot right of way that has never really been enforced that dates back ~200 years when the state first built it. However, it has often been misinterpreted to be ~100 feet or completely left out of property negotiations and many owners bought land without knowing about it. Now there are two "property owners" of the same land.

[Creasy336]

The NCRR has big plans and needs it's space .

[Creasy336]

Yeah actually this story came out about 3 to 4 years ago in the Burlington Times News. The NCRR must be increasing efforts to get people to pay for the use of their land (land either they didn't know about or care about until recently). I do feel sorry for the property owners who "own" the land adjacent to the tracks, but I have to percieve this similar to a highway project. Anytime people buy a house located to a busy/important street their is always the possibility you'll lose land due to widening, sidewalks, turn lanes etc...

[DB78]

Not sure if this necessarily belongs here, but next month there is to be a summit with leaders from across the country, on high speed rail for the East Coast held in downtown Raleigh. October 22nd.

http://www.pr.com/press-release/52784

[ChiefJoJo]

Didn't see this posted: NCDOT purchases Goldsboro's Union Station. It's not been used for passenger rail since 1968, but it'a terrific example of the architecture of the turn of the century. According to the NCRR, Goldsboro was the site of the first shovel of dirt in 1851 that became the North Carolina Railroad from Goldsboro (now Morehead City) to Charlotte.

It will be restored and used for a future multimodal center--potentialy on a SE NC Passenger Rail line from Raleigh to Wilmington (see dashed green line below). Refurbishing these old rail stations is one of the better inititives that the DOT has undertaken recently.

[Creasy336]

Great News. Hopefully we do see the Raleigh to Wilmington Line in the future. The Goldsboro station would also work well if the NCRR, the State, and local goverments get Triangle commuter rail from Goldsboro to Burlington. This station would be perfect for a commuter/inter-city rail. I wonder what the area around the staion looks like.

Edit: In the article it mentions the possibility of passenger rail to Morehead City...I found that interesting though I don't see that happening any time soon.

Edited September 29, 2007 by Creasy336

[rooster8]

The fact that NCRR owns the tracks to Morehead makes such a connection maybe a bit more feasible than it would be otherwise. It would be cool to have a summertime train originating in Raleigh.

Edited September 29, 2007 by rooster8