I think along very flat straightaways, freight can go about 60 or 70
mph. Obviously, breaking distances with all that weight would likely
preclude anything approaching bullet trains.
We need a new freight tunnel under the harbor, however. All the
combined CSX/Norfolk Southern traffic would make running Amtrak
untenable, esp. with future projections of increases. Speed is a side-
benefit of the Great Circle tunnel (2 minute savings, I think?).
Capacity and the need to replace the B&P are the main reasons for a
new tunnel. Plus, way back in 1868, they didn't have tunnel boring
machines that now make designing a practical rail tunnel much less
problematic for Baltimore. IIRC, the grades don't allow freight to
operate at the deep bore of the passenger tunnel, so a freight or
combined passenger/freight would have to be about 15 to 30 ft below
the surface, rip out a block of Reservoir Hill and have a bridge over
the JFX! So, needless to say, getting toxic freight away from highly
populated areas and dangerous situations isn't solved by the Great
Circle freight option.
N
On Aug 10, 1:02 pm, Gerald Neily <
geraldne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Youssef, I'm no train expert either, but I think slow freight is inherent in
> the whole rail process. You've surely seen how freight cars just stand
> around the railroad yards. The whole process of assembling and disassembling
> freight trains and transferring the freight onto and off of trucks and ships
> is extremely slow. And freight trains keep getting longer. Long gone are the
> days when most freight users had their own rail sidings and got door to door
> delivery.
>
> So freight trains are just slow by nature, and make up for it by being cheap
> - and very energy and labor efficient. Speeding up freight trains would
> appear to make little difference in anyone's bottom line. Rail and trucks
> each have their own market segment, with less overlap than we're often led
> to believe.
>
> In contrast, passenger rail is a whole different thing. But even with a new
> "great circle" tunnel, Amtrak and MARC trains aren't going to go all that
> fast (+/-50 mph?), so mixing in freight trains through the city would seem
> to be a fairly decent compromise compared with how awful it is right now.
>
> PS - Sorry about the spam from Andy yesterday. He has been zapped from the
> group. I suppose the only foolproof anti-spam option Google has is to
> "moderate" first-time posters for spam. I hate to do that and create a
> time-lag for them, but maybe we should try it. Does anyone have any
> experience with that?
>