Great issue...very informative on electrification...

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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But the discussion here is about the Trains article, not about electrification as it has often been discussed and analyzed. And the Trains article is precisely all about massive social changes needed to address a looming crisis in transportation, energy, and climate. So, I don’t think that the discussion is being cluttered and obscured by those issues.

Replacing the private auto with mass transit is definitely part of what the article advocates, along with taking the majority of trucks off of the highway. Look at the concept illustration at the beginning o

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To make even more crystal clear, this basic political agenda, which is the centerpiece of the Trains article, here is an essay written by Phillip Longman called, Back On Tracks. The author of the Trains article cites Mr. Longman who contributes some of his thinking to the Trains article. Here is the larger context of that thinking:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0901.longman.html

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[quote user=“Bucyrus”]
But the discussion here is about the Trains article, not about electrification as it has often been discussed and analyzed. And the Trains article is precisely all about massive social changes needed to address a looming crisis in transportation, energy, and climate. So, I don’t think that the discussion is being cluttered and obscured by those issues.

[snip]

First of all, I would not say that it is a hidden agenda, although the agenda might be overlooked if one were to expect the article to analyze rail electrification in a pure business sense as it usually is. And while it is true that rail is already the most fuel efficient transport means, the larger agenda is to use rail to assume most of the non-rail transportation function in the country, which is currently being performed by trucks and automobiles. Since trucks and autos are much less fuel-efficient than rail, replacing them with rail will be where the massive oil savings will result. And then by electrifying rail, even further oil savings will result. So the tree they are barking up is the right one for what they actually intend to accomplish. [emphasis added -

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[quote user=“Paul_D_North_Jr”]

Well, no one ever complained about the MILW’s or the GN’s power lines along their R-O-W spoiling the photos, did they ?

MischiefMaybe what you’re afraid of is something like this - [snipped] . . .

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Paul,

Thanks for that explanation. Sorry I misunderstood you. Regarding the Trains article being hijacked, I wonder why the Trains editors would have allowed that. The article should have been a paid political ad.

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This sorta thing comes up about every 6 months or so…

Why do the forum readers think Trains Magazine should be fair, impartial or unbiased in the articles it prints?

We tend to view it as an insider trade magazine, when it is nothing more that an entertainment magazine.

I would no more expect Train’s to have a neutral standpoint than I would expect People Magazine to simply print the facts and let readers decide.

The magazine itself has long had an affinity for electric and traction power, simply because the readers and fans have an affinity for such.

Read Jim Wrinn’s “From the Editor” column…he states outright the reason for the article.

I have not found anywhere in the magazine anything that claims the article under discussion here to be the magazines “political” position, or the contents of the article to represent the publishers personal viewpoint.

In fact, when the magazine does print articles intended to represent its viewpoints, they often say so, and make sure the disclaimer at the end of the articles points out the author is a Trains staffer.

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I don’t expect them to be impartial, but I do expect them to be honest.

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Not picking a fight here…

But why are you holding their feet to the fire for something they didn’t write?

Trains didnt write the article, Scott Lothes did…is it up to Trains to research the author’s “facts” for the article or is it up the author?

It seems there are some facts included, see page 28 and citation at the bottom of the page and page 29 top left…but the amount of truck to rail traffic switch is credited to Alan Drake of the Millennium Institute, a seriously “green” think tank.

Asking these guys why windmills, solar panels and hybrid automobiles wont really save the world is like asking NASA why we should not go back to the moon or go to Mars…good luck getting any reasonable or unbaised answer from either one.

And the volume of job promises comes from the same place, “Using dynamic simulation modeling, the Millenium Institutes Drake says his comprehensive plan for investing heavily in both railroad electrification and renewable enegry over the next 20 years could see the U.S. …”, obviously Drakes opinion, and not necessarily the authors or Trains magazines opinion, although the author wouldn’t have included it if he didnt give it some creedence.

Point is, the author is offering this not as his sole opinion, but as the opinion of the Millennium Institutes Drake…he further states “Drakes vision for the future…” clearly suggesting this is one possible outcome based on one set of numbers, not a hard or established fact of electrification.

Again, I concure the author seems to agree with his source’s estimates, or at the very least, hopes they are correct, but it is clear these numbers are the Institutes and Drakes “vision”, not necessarily those of Trains magazine or its staff.

I point this out because there is an assumption tha

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Ed,

I did go back and read Jim Wrinn’s introduction more than once, just to see how it correlates with the article. As you say, he does state outright, the reason for the article, but in my opinion, the article includes an overarching political agenda that Mr. Wrinn does not mention at all in his introduction. I suspect that he might believe that the article contains no such political agenda. Certainly these agendas are not advanced with flags and banners proclaiming them as such. It is very easy to be swept along with them without realizing it. Dan Rather would always contend that there was no political bias in the CBS news. Bernard Goldberg wrote a book about it where he explained that people like Rather simply don’t see their views on politics as political viewpoints. The just regard their viewpoint as the way things are and should be. They are not aware of an opposing point of view within a political context.

I am not saying that the magazine has broken any implied business agreement with its readers by publishing a politically motivated article. I agree that they are free to print anything they want. I also agree that nowhere does it say that the ar

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Lessee, the longest stretch of electrified track in the US was supplied with 3kVDC, so it isn’t a completely illogical choice for long distances. Capacity is limited by how close you want to space the substations.

When the Russians started their electrification, the only real choices for long distance work were 3KVDC and low frequency (15 to 25 Hz) single phase AC using AC series motors. Going with AC would have required either a substantial low frequency transmission network or many frequency changer sets. An advantage of using DC is that the line can be fed from many asynchronous power systems (not easy to do with single phase AC) while maintaining continuity of the DC feeder.

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erikem, that would be the Milwaukee’s partial electrification of its Pacific Coast/ Puget Sound Extension, yes ? Interestingly, the subject article quotes several different distances for its length: ‘‘At a combined length of 645 route-miles’’ [in the text on page 25, col. 3, 3rd paragraph]; and, 438 miles from Harlowton, Mont. to Avery, Idaho, and 225 miles from Othello to Tacoma and Seattle, Wash. in the middle of the table of ‘‘Major U.S. freight electrifications by type’’ at the bottom of page 28, which totals to a slightly different 663 miles.

Does anyone know when the Russians started their electrification ? As I understand the history of the technology, those options mentioned by erikem would have been available in about the 1895 to 1915 time frame. That would have been during the Czar’s reign and pre-Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. After that, both the New Haven and the PRR were using 11,000 volt 25 Hz AC for their initial electrified zones, so that had become a viable technology from then on. Wonder why the Bolsheviks didn’t just toss out that project as well ?

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ed, you make some good points. But a lot of that article was of the '‘If pigs had wings . . . ‘’ genre. I expect that a paid-subscription magazine with a substantial editorial staff to not just blindly publish something like that article uncritically, without any ‘vetting’ of ‘fact-checking’ or review at all. Now with the Internet and blogs, just about anyone has a virtual/ cyber- soapbox’ [soapbox] available to them to write and post/ circulate/ publish just about anything they want - which it appears that Mr. Drake has already done elsewhere. So he doesn’t need Trains to get his viewpoint out - and for that and many other reasons, Trains need not and should not take whatever and everything that is submitted and just publish it without any basic or ‘reality check’ review. [That’s what our local newspaper has turned into with the downsizing of its editorial staff. As a result, it’s both sad and funny to now see what the reporters write and gets published, and then gets jumped all over in comments about everything from spelling to grammar to locations to facts to the lack of a a decent basic report of ‘what happened’ - some have said that it’s essentially no more than a transcript of the police/ fire/ EMS transmissions that are picked up on a scanner.]

Would we accept Trains publishing lengthy articles that essentially say that the Sun rises in the west - or that Amtrak should or has secret plans to bring back steam locomotives, or that some long-abandoned branch really serves an alien spaceship landing site? To retain journalistic or even fan-level credibility - accepting just for the moment your assertion

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I figure this thread will probably be locked pretty soon so most likely I’m wasting keystrokes, but I’m amazed that the number of posters who don’t seem to understand the difference between the following arguments:

A. After reading the article the person posting does not agree with the the author’s premise… i.e it is the not the governments job to use taxpayers money to fund major infrastructure programs for the benefit of private industry.

versus…

B .After reading the article the person posting is appalled that TRAINS magazine is part of the “mainstream media” and are brainwashing railfans into supporting a socialist plot to destroy the railroad industry…

The first argument is a valid point of argument about the subject at hand and involves the political aspects of the debate and the posters political views…the second is a case of poltical talk radio call- in show style soapboxing and is why so many threads get locked and deleted lately…

My point being that it is entirely possible to debate a subject on this forum, including political aspects, without the discussion degenerating into purely partisan/ideological bickering…

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In reference to your example above:

Some of this thread is “A.” I don’t know where you got “B,” but I don’t see it here. You may be inferring it, but I don’t see it existing.

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carnej1 - I understand the difference, but prefer to focus on another view, viz.:

‘‘C. After reading the article the person posting is astounded that an article that was supposed to be about ‘electrification’ was morphed into a public transportation policy/ alternative energy production and usage advocacy piece.’’

It belongs better in the Journals of either Transportation Policy, Energy Policy, or Public Funding of Infrastructure, etc. - if there are such things - not Trains.

Further, I note that in your entire post above, the only ‘rail’ references are in your alternative B. - ‘‘railfans’’ and ‘‘railroad industry’’, 1 time each. The rest of your post seems to involve mostly political words and concepts, which necessarily - and properly - results from that nature of the original article. But if this thread gets locked - and sincerely I hope not - that’s going to happen because the original article led to polarizing politics, not the inevitable reaction to same by the members of this Forum.

  • Paul North.
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Paul North was wondering about the “square tower” visible in the background in the second photo. All transmission lines that I have seen rotate the phases every so often, and use a different style pole or tower to do this. This was very important when next to telegraph and phone lines that were sharing the same real estate. For one thing it kept induced hum low on the phone lines.

I have often wondered why they need to rotate or transpose the wires when there is no other lines near them.

Art

I

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Andy, whoever made that claim is wrong.

Your second paragraph has it right: The shipper (and behind him the consumer and/or taxpayer) ultimately pays for everything, including the overhead an

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We should have electrified 15 years ago!
Trains, April 1962 page 18
the case for electrification
( ELECTRIFICATION, “MARTIN, THOMAS M. C.”, TRN )
Why we don’t electrify
Trains, December 1962 page 40
rebuttal to
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  1. A lot of work
  2. The article looks a lot like the real job, so not much fun
  3. Trains doesn’t pay even remotely enough.

RWM

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I hate to admit it, but when I read the article I missed the hidden political agenda. I just read it as an article that was just pro-electrification. Sure, I read the numbers of jobs etc, but just past it off as numbers someone came up with. I just don’t put much stock in numbers some “expert” came up with anymore. Too often something predicted misses the mark.

Not knowing the author, I don’t know if he’s trying to push an agenda or the sources he uses were just the first or easiest for him to access. I guess I just read the article as entertainment.

I wonder if one of the negatives of electrification is that of motive power. If the class 1 railroads decided to electify, it certainly wouldn’t be their entire systems. This would require locomotives that would be useless over parts, probably large parts, of their systems. Sure, you could run a diesel under wire, even MU with electrics, but a straight electric isn’t much good without the wire. Dual powered units are possible, but the more things added, the more things that can fail. The electirc part of a unit in the shop because the diesel part is broken isn’t of much use.

To have only electric operation would require enough extra engines to cover normal and unexpected shoppings plus traffic fluctuations. Because of that I don’t think you can ever get away from needing a self-contained (diesel, CNG/LPG, million squirrels on tread mills, etc) unit. If you have to have self-contained units anyway, why go and make part of your system require something special that has no usefulness elsewhere?

It may be that any major electrification projects would result more from political decisions (uninformed though they may be) than economics.

Jeff <