In message , at 11:36:24 on Sun, 10
May 2009, Andrew Heenan remarked:
Once a bit of ageing has occurred, a railway doesn't look too bad at all -
just part of the scenery. Compare a four track with overhead wires to any
motorway, and tell me what looks best.

It does depend quite a lot on whether the OHL is gantries, or masts. I
agree that the ECML doesn't look too bad, but the WCML eg around Rugby
(especially with all the "extra" high level stuff they've put in
recently) is much more ugly.
--
Roland Perry

On 10 May, 12:26, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at 11:36:24 on Sun, 10
May 2009, Andrew Heenan remarked:

Once a bit of ageing has occurred, a railway doesn't look too bad at all -
just part of the scenery. Compare a four track with overhead wires to any
motorway, and tell me what looks best.

It does depend quite a lot on whether the OHL is gantries, or masts. I
agree that the ECML doesn't look too bad, but the WCML eg around Rugby
(especially with all the "extra" high level stuff they've put in
recently) is much more ugly.
--
Roland Perry

But the ECML is notoriously unreliable as a result, whereas the
WCML ,,, oh hang on ,,,

On 10 May 2009 05:22:45 GMT, Matthew Geier
wrote:

On Sat, 09 May 2009 09:13:15 +0100, Peter Masson wrote:

"Matthew Geier" wrote

road transport doesn't have the ability to use this rather simple and
(relatively) cheap means of getting mains power in via overhead lines.

I used to enjoy travelling by trolleybus.

But has any one ever built a trolley-lorry or a trolley-car ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleytruck
The common theme seems to be mining or large-scale construction
projects.

Can you imagine a line of cars zipping down the road with a pair of
trolley poles on each ?. And the chaos when one de-wires and the driver
has to hop out and relocate the pole on the wire.

There should be more trolley buses about though.

I only lifted quoted material from the blog - no opinion in there.

David

"Mizter T" wrote in message
...

On May 9, 3:10 pm, Chris wrote:

On 7 May, 13:43, "DW downunder" noname wrote:

C. http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/60

5) "TfL would like Airtrack "to be developed in a way that is consistent
with the possible extension of some Crossrail trains to Staines via
Heathrow." [TfL response to South Western franchise specification] "

http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/1#Stations This is about Crossrail
...
This means that Crossrail would only run to Heathrow Central and
Terminal
4 - not to Terminal 5. Passengers would be able to transfer at Heathrow
Central to the Heathrow Express for free connections to T5.

Hmmm - TfL have their work cut out getting BAA / NR / DfT to take that
on board, then!!! :-)

www.alwaystouchout.comappears to be a personal blogspot, and
therefore about as reliable as this forum, which at least has some
informed people on here.

alwaystouchout was a project of a former contributor to this
newsgroup, who was most certainly a well informed person - be in
absolutely no doubt about that. However as you can see they're not
updating it any more, so the information presented on it is frozen in
time. With a project such as Crossrail, things can of course change -
look at the Thameslink Programme, where the final service pattern is
far from certain.

"Christopher A. Lee" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 9 May 2009 21:16:22 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Sat, 9 May 2009, GazK wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

IMHO It is very likely that I Kingdom Brunel would welcome
electrification. He seemed very keen to find a better, cleaner form
of motive power.

He would have insisted on using 3 phase 37.278kV* electrification at
16.25Hz fed through side contact 3rd and 4th rail - and bugger the
through
running!

* there is a logic behind this number. See if you can work it out!

Dunno, but getting three-phase power through two conductors is an
interesting idea.

... running rail(s) for the third phase. I'm not making this up, it has
been
done before, in Italy and elsewhe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway...urrent_systems

That seems a little bit ... yikes.

Thinking about it, though, it's no worse than using the running rails for
current return in a one-phase system, is it? I'm not sure why i thought it
would be.

I don't know about the Italian system but the American one had single
speed locomotives because the AC motors were synchronous.

Which didn't really matter for the slow speed freight trains in the
Cascades.

tom

1) Interesting outcome when one loco in a set failed, the other just sat
there and ground away at the rail, stationary. This was 1920s, no
headlights, the crew had no idea. Can't recall the source - a book I read
somewhere.

2) Back to the 37.278. Well 37.278/ sq rt 2 = 26.34kV ... my AC maths is
too primitive, but sq rt of 2 is a component of the reason.


David down under

"disgoftunwells" wrote in message
...
On 8 May, 10:07, wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 2009 19:19:48 +0100

Paul Terry wrote:
It would be daft to develop Crossrail in the hope that adequate battery
technology would be available by the time the trains have to be
ordered. However, battery trains have been used for suburban rail -
Dublin to Bray between 1932 and 1950. In .uk a battery MU operated
between Aberdeen and Ballater in the early 1960s, while battery locos

Probably lines with very light traffic and low top speeds.

have been used to haul engineering trains on LU in the dead of night
when the power's een switched off.

They still are AFAIK.

Although I agree with the basic premise, battery technology is becoming
increasingly impressive - parts of the new Rome trolleybus system
currently run on battery power for some miles, and Alstom's trams for
Nice also run on batteries in the city centre. These are vehicles
capable of carrying a large number of passengers in heavy traffic,
although probably not on the scale required for the far reaches of
Crossrail.

Theres a big difference between accelerating a 20 ton tram to 20mph and
a 200 ton train to 60mph quickly enough so it keeps to the timetable.
Moreover when the batteries are not being used you're hauling around
god knows how many tons of dead weight - hardly enviromentally friendly.
Plus most EMUs these days seem to be pretty lardy anyway. I suspect if
batteries were thrown into the mix axle loads could become a serious
issue.

hmm - some numbers.

E = 1/2 200,000kg x 30^2 = 100MJ = 30KWhrs.

That's about 200kg of Li-ion battery, for the energy load. But the
power requirement is much tougher - you would need some of these fast
charge batteries, which actually have less energy storage. Without
looking up the W/kg figures, I'd guess a few tons.

Hybrid technology is certainly useful for trains, but you'd probably
want to use ultra caps to capture the braking energy.



You got it, and the super caps can then be used to release the regenerated
charge to the lithium and lead based units at their life-optimising charge
rates, if it's not drawn down promptly (such as would occur at a terminal)
for acceleration. For runs beyond the range of battery-only, I envisage
using a lightweight gas-turbine genset running at its optimum efficiency -
with the batteries buffering the peaks and troughs of current consumption.
But that raises a question about fuel tanks in tunnels which have stations
..... I'm not sure where that is at today, but suspect the bureacracy would
regard it as a major no-no.

David down under

"Chris" wrote in message
...
Apologies for the length of this post, but I've chosen to answer many
posts in this one, rather than several....but there's a LOT of
misinformation in this thread!

On 5 May, 16:28, Mizter T wrote:
On May 5, 4:05 pm, Barry Salter wrote:
There have been plenty of comments on these newsgroups in the past
that getting Crossrail to Reading might not be all that it's cracked
up to be in certain quarters, what with a Crossrail train from Reading
into central London being slower that a fast non-stop service to
Paddington (where interchange with Crossrail would of course be
available).

Plenty of *uninformed* comment too, to boot - why doesn't everyone
READ the CrossRail website contents, and if you're that interested,
ensure that you attend one of Network Rail / CrossRail exhibitions???
SNIP

Would do if they mounted one in Perth, Western Australia. I might be one of
maybe 50-100 that'd come and look. Don't think my contacts at Crossrail
would entertain the idea, though

David down under

On 11 May, 17:17, "DW downunder" noname wrote:
"disgoftunwells" wrote in message

...



On 8 May, 10:07, wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 2009 19:19:48 +0100

Paul Terry wrote:
It would be daft to develop Crossrail in the hope that adequate battery
technology would be available by the time the trains have to be
ordered. However, battery trains have been used for suburban rail -
Dublin to Bray between 1932 and 1950. In .uk a battery MU operated
between Aberdeen and Ballater in the early 1960s, while battery locos

Probably lines with very light traffic and low top speeds.

have been used to haul engineering trains on LU in the dead of night
when the power's een switched off.

They still are AFAIK.

Although I agree with the basic premise, battery technology is becoming
increasingly impressive - parts of the new Rome trolleybus system
currently run on battery power for some miles, and Alstom's trams for
Nice also run on batteries in the city centre. These are vehicles
capable of carrying a large number of passengers in heavy traffic,
although probably not on the scale required for the far reaches of
Crossrail.

Theres a big difference between accelerating a 20 ton tram to 20mph and
a 200 ton train to 60mph quickly enough so it keeps to the timetable.
Moreover when the batteries are not being used you're hauling around
god knows how many tons of dead weight - hardly enviromentally friendly.
Plus most EMUs these days seem to be pretty lardy anyway. I suspect if
batteries were thrown into the mix axle loads could become a serious
issue.

hmm - some numbers.

E = 1/2 200,000kg x 30^2 = 100MJ = 30KWhrs.

That's about 200kg of Li-ion battery, for the energy load. But the
power requirement is much tougher - you would need some of these fast
charge batteries, which actually have less energy storage. Without
looking up the W/kg figures, I'd guess a few tons.

Hybrid technology is certainly useful for trains, but you'd probably
want to use ultra caps to capture the braking energy.

You got it, and the super caps can then be used to release the regenerated
charge to the lithium and lead based units at their life-optimising charge
rates, if it's not drawn down promptly (such as would occur at a terminal)
for acceleration. For runs beyond the range of battery-only, I envisage
using a lightweight gas-turbine genset running at its optimum efficiency -
with the batteries buffering the peaks and troughs of current consumption.
But that raises a question about fuel tanks in tunnels which have stations
.... I'm not sure where that is at today, but suspect the bureacracy would
regard it as a major no-no.

When Connex introduced the new trains on the South Eastern line to
Hastings, they didn't realise that the new trains, accelerating at
twice the rate of the old ones, needed twice the power. This led to
delays, whilst the grid was strengthened.

I wonder if today's solution would be to use super capacitors to
reduce peak current draw down.

A quick google gives 300W/kg for super capacitors, so 1 ton gives a
peak of 300KW.

How does that compare to a train motor?

I'm not convinced about batteries just yet. When every bus is
electrically driven, then it'll be time to consider trains.

On 5 Mai, 18:49, D DB 90001 wrote:

and then they can remove that anomaly. Talking of branches there would
still be the outstanding issue of Henley trains which would almost
certainly run under the wires in the peaks on the slows anyway,
because that branch will * never* be electrified.-

ditto for the Marlow and Windsor branches.

But wouldn't these be no brainer candidates for the much vaunted
infill alectrification scheme, if ever it takes off?

On 9 Mai, 20:36, GazK wrote:

... running rail(s) for the third phase. I'm not making this up, it has
been done before, in Italy and elsewhe

is still done on many mountain railways in Switzerland and elsewhere.