A monster is born in high speed rail.

Nooooo, noooooo, noooooo. Let it die please!!![:(!]

https://www.ktre.com/2023/08/09/texas-central-amtrak-seek-partnership-high-speed-rail-project-stakeholders-react/?emci=095aff22-6d38-ee11-a3f1-00224832eb73&emdi=b00c9a1a-8838-ee11-a3f1-00224832eb73&ceid=2199905

This will be a bigger financial disaster than the California project. The Texas Central team is incompetent and has proven it over and over again. Adding Amtrak to the mix guarantees a bigger fiasco.

They should sell the rights to Brightline, in my view and abandon the Japanese high speed train as a bad idea.

Yeah, if you want to build an actual high speed train, why would you want the Japanese involved.

Bring in Brightline with their 110 mph diesels and pretend it’s fast.

Japanese trainsets, Spanish management of operations and now Amtrak as a Business Partner. What could go wrong there? Oh forgot to say you have another local government agency planning the Fort Worth to Dallas leg, which it sounds like they want to use but not necessarily pay for.

Pity the sarcasm is wasted on the naysaying crowd.

Brightline is PRIIA-compliant and hence its equipment is qualified to 125mph (which I believe they expect to reach regularly on the new Orlando line). The difference between 100mph and 125mph is simply the use of two locomotives instead of one on the same consist.

It could be argued that 125mph peak with only the one stop near College Station is a good-enough start to operations on the higher-speed graded line. The PRIIA equipment would also simplify the ‘turn’ if it has only station dwell in Dallas (something that has been mentioned as a problem for the new Amtrak service across from Meridian), and this might simplify the logistics involved with shuttling some of the trains through to Fort Worth.

To me there would be advantages in using more Avelia Liberty sets, similar or identical to those Amtrak bought for the NEC, to operate this service if it comes to be electrified. It may be that Amtrak makes some of them available as they realize their speed capacity will likely never be used effectively on the NEC. Pity there is no equivalent to Rep. Harley from the area who could arrange for a 220mph-capable version of Harley’s Hornet!

I thought the difference between 110 mph and above was that nose connected traction motors were only good to about 110 mph, and faster speeds would need shaft drive.

The greater need for better passenger rail service in Texas is along the I-35 corridor between DFW and San Antonio. It is one of the most congested roadways in the United States.

Improved passenger rail service along the I-35 corridor could serve Cleburne, Hillsboro, Waco, Temple, Round Rock, Austin, and San Marcos as well as the end points. These communities are too close to make flying an attractive alternative to driving; they are just right for improved passenger rail service.

The Texas Central proposal for a high-speed railway between Dallas and Houston is a bad idea. The only intermediate community that it would serve is College Station. The estimated cost has ballooned to approximately $40 billion before any dirt has been turned.

The planned Texas Central route would gobble up acres of productive farm and ranch land. The DFW to San Antonio corridor could use existing rights-of-way, which could be double tracked and upgraded for top speeds of 125 mph. Think Brightline! Upgrading existing rights-of-way probably would cost less than a high-speed line built from scratch.

The original Texas Central plan failed because

You cant’ build a railroad through ranch/farm land? Nonsense!

It wouldn’t be a large issue if Texas Central was more accomodating vs telling people it has eminent domain so they can’t do anything about it.

The landowners have a legitimate complaint about Texas Central building a grade seperated and electrified right of way through their land. So to break it down for you grade seperated means elevated or on an embankment which is impassible without a underpass or overpass. Texas Central is resisting both. So it is only giving compensation for the right of way itself while destroying the ability of the farm or ranch to be used via reasonable operational costs. If it was your land you would scream too. Because the route is planned to be nonstop the ranchers whose ranches are really being destroyed as a going concern see no real benefit to them of this mode of transportation they will be unable to use because the train will not stop anywhere near where they are living.

With all of the complaining by these landowners, I really need someone to explain how an 80+ft wide ROW will “destroy” someones probably huge ranch. Farmers and ranchers seemed to have found ways to adapt when highways were built in the past

It can certainly destroy parts of a farm/ranch. Old roads were laid out on a grid that conformed to land boundaries. Modern freeways also tend to severly affect adjacent farm/ranch land, especially if the ROW crosses at an angle. Efficent till patterns are eliminated. Access is limited between the two sides. Center pivot spray irrigation systems are destroyed. Farming/ranching is a shoestring operation, and small changes in operation difficulty can be the final straw. Every year there are less farms. And this is just what I have observed, and I am not a farmer.

The plans call for the tracks to be much more difficult to cross than a highway.

If the farm has this track go through it, it is virtually impossible for the farmer to reach some of his land without going miles to reach some kind of crossing. Because of the elevation of the tracks, these crossings would have to be expensive overpasses or underpasses, with the railroad not contributing anything to building those structures.

The resistance to this railroad is not due to some farmers or ranchers who are anti-trains.

As has been stated, the group planning this railroad tried using a sledgehammer approach, and then the group is amazed that landowners are upset.

The days of 100 acre family farms are long gone. Corporate farms are often over 10,000 acres. They can afford an underpass as they are maybe getting aid from the USDA.

Even Family Farms are nowhere near 100 acres. I follow two families on their YouTube channels - one has 2800 acres and the other 10K acres. Farmed by the families with supplemental labor as necessary - and a lot of high efficiency high tech machienry.

In my local area, today I observed that the nearest corn field has been harvested. Other fields of corn and soybeans still await harvesting.

Corporate farms are not what it sounds like. In this state, 99% of farms are corporate farms. 97% of those corporations are owned by a singe family. They are family farms that are incorporated for tax, liability, and inheritance issues. The entire stock of the farm is owned by the single family.

Farms are large. Over the years, as one farmer dies or moves to town, a neighbor will buy or rent the farm. By financial necessity, a farmer could not survive farming only 100 acres. It’s not unusual for a single farmer to farm over 2,000 acres. One family in my area farms 15,000 acres.

These are not some big, nameless, evil corporations.

They could not afford to build an overpass or underpass without selling most of the land.

I don’t know where you live, but in rural Illinois, a 10,000 acre farm is big business even owned by one very well-off family.

Father and two grown sons farming 10K acres in Montana

Farms - that making money - anywhere in the country are multi-million dollar undertakings once you add up everything required to do the job. Tractor(s), plow(s), planter(s), weed sprayer(s), Seed, Combine/harvester(s), On Farm storage, truck(s) to move crop from field to storage/market, computers to keep track of the operation, computer applications to enhance the operation of all the tractor/implement packages.

Back to the point, the Texas railroad planners went about the situation without knowing the people.

These people are living and farming land that has been in their family and is their family’s business for usually more than a hundred years. For this railroad to come in and say they’re putting in a track that will go through your land, we’ll pay you for it but not pay for any crossings, and if you don’t like it, we take your land legally, was completely the wrong way.

If the company had planned better, proposed routes that better avoided conflicts, and stopped talking about eminent domain, they may have had better success.

What is the tag line from the old Purolater oil filter commercials

“You can pay me now, or you can pay me later!”

Totally agree. They wrote the book on horrible community relations and horrible PR. What other company does anyone know of where the entire Executive team bails all in a short period of time and whomever is left doesn’t answer the phone or respond to the press. Never seen that before anytime in my past.

Then the whole Amtrak announcement of late, whomever at Texas Central that responded to it…crummy job with not much meat to it.

The whole concept of a Japanese train that apparently the Japanese do not want to take any risks as the primary lead finance…then lets hire the Spanish to operate it. No real up front definition of how Amtrak will contribute to the project as far as funds, etc. It just looks like a fiasco, looking for a future date to happen.

I guess it could be a little worse, they could have picked the Talgo.

Have to hope Brightline can prosper and grow. Looks to me that much of the taxpayer largesse available will be eaten up by research consultants.