I’m always impressed with how railroad engineers laid out their ROW to minimize grades and curves, and to some extent, to keep a grade somewhat constant, avoiding up and down hills. What I don’t understand, is why highway engineers, who came along a couple of generations later, seemed to have overlooked a lot of what the railroad engineers knew. A case in point: in western South Dakota, there is a section of I-90, from Reliance, to Murdo, about 56 miles, that is very hilly. We are talking about some big hills. Truck speed is generally about 50 mph going up towards the crest of some of the hills, and 85+ going down to the bottom of the next one. If the road had been built 1/2 mile north, the grades and hills would have been cut in half. Had it been built 1 mile north, it would have been right on top of the Milwaukee Road line,along Medicine Creek, that probably had a less than 1% grade.
Why did the highway builders of the 1960’s ignore the work of the railroad builders of the 1880’s? Another good example is at Chamberlain, where I-90 and The Milwaukee Road both cross the Missouri River. The railroad follows American Creek east, at a grade that I don’t think ever required helpers. The interstate goes up something like a 7 1/2% grade.
I can find lots of examples where the railroad far outdid their highway counterparts, and with a lot simpler tools to boot. Why the difference?
Money is one reason. It’s far cheaper to grade a road that “follows the lay of the land” rather than make the cuts and fills necessary to reduce the grades. Another reason is the cost of the right-of-way. State highway designers look for the cheapest land first, not the most efficient routing. Railroad designers, on the other hand look for the most efficient route (lowest grade-cheap to operate, most often the more expensive land costs) first, and then settle for the cheaper land (less dirt work-more grade-more costly to operate), if they have no other choice.
Don’t forget the cost of bridges in comparision to the cost of track laid on grade. You can build a lot of track on the ground for the cost of even a small bridge. That will also figure in where a road or track will get built.
A one other reason is performance of the vehicles involved. IIRC a locomotive can only pull 1/4 of the tonnage on a 1% grade it can pull on level ground. Cars are way overpowered in comparison. Trucks somewhat less so.
Mike’s response is very accurate. One other thing is the railroad company benefits from the expense of building a more efficient route. Since highways are publicly owned, users that pay the expense of using a less efficient route so the state has little reason to pay more to benefit users. If trucking companies had to pay for their own routes, they would have an incentive to build a more efficient route.
A lot of times the highway engineers did learn from the railroad builders. Whenever I travel down a secondary state highway, I often notice a railroad ROW (usually abandoned-sob!) paralleling it for some miles. My guesstimate is that from the late 20’s to about WWII, many state highway systems were being upgrade from simply paved versions of the original “farm to market” wagon trails to relocated vehicle roadways that were meant to connect towns. Often the railroad had the most practical route to do just that, so the highway was often laid out right next to the tracks. Of course, this is most likely to have happened where there are no major obsticles like rivers or hills that would have caused the surveyors to reconsider the grades or bridge & tunnels structures needed.
The Interstate System allowed up to 7% grade and a curvature designed for 70 mph give or take a little bit. A 200 Horsepower car weighing 1 ton has no problem with these parameters.
A adequately powered big rig will also have no problem on the road except a few places where the gradient is severe. But that is where Professional Drivers come in.
Parts of the Interstate System such as the PA Turnpike is built on old railroad rights of way with impressive results. The rest, well they put it where they put it.
Here in Arkansas we have a fight going on because a group wants a interstate like connector road “Here” while a housing subdivision does not want it “Here” because of the noise, visual pollution (WOW… are we getting that bad?) and anything they can think of to prevent having it 20 yards from their bedroom window. They say how about moving it “Over there” “There” might be swampland incapable of supporting the road without 5 times the budget and the powers that be twist in agony trying to get the durn thing built. All of the options are within a few miles of each other. Add property owners facing the thought of Emninet Domain or similar action jumping into the fight.
The world turns. If I remember I-70 in Colorado, they built it around a species of trees that were on the endangered list. Other sections are basically uphill, down hill and turn over sideways with back and side roads/routes even more spectacular. As in 1000+ feet drops on this side and sheer rock wall on that side.
The Dakotas are beautiful but they do have the badlands and the earth up there is really hard to work with without building tons of bridges, fill and cuts and other budget gobbling, schedule destroying items.
The thing is built. If the car is not capable of maintaining speed in good conditions perhaps it’s time to trade it in for a more powerful vehicle. Or specifying equiptment that are designed for the problem. A big Cam 4 350 horse desiel will wheeze and fall down on a simple 4%
Glad you brought that up. It is so often that one see’s a road parallel a rail line, that I’ve often wondered which came first.
I suppose the answer varies from instance to instance, I know that in the case locally many such highways are built over what once were native American foot paths that eventually evolved into plank roads, then later asphalt etc …so it would probably be a safe bet to assume the RR elected to parallel the roadway in such instances.
Probably also a safe bet that some instances of parallel roadways are evolved artifacts of the construction of the rail line itself , service roads left behind from the original line construction.
It is a shame that so many of those old lines are abandoned now.
Also remember that even a double track railroad has less roadbed width compared with a 4-lane Interstate so perhaps there is less moving of dirt to get the required cut and fill.
Were not interurban lines built more like highways going up and down the contours of the land? I am thinking the South Shore line looks like this. Electric-powered MU cars are perhaps more like trucks if not cars in the power-to-weight department. Keep in mind that a 3500 lb Ford Taurus is no more than about 40 HP at highway speed unless you want it downshifting every time it encounters a hill – the 200 HP rating of the 24V motor is only when revved to the redline. When you consider the 20 HP needed to maintain highway speed, the Taurus in top gear has a similar power-to-weight as a Silverliner MU car.
Isn’t the TGV built more like an interurban line in a kind of roller-coaster profile while the Shinkansen is much more highly engineered like a steam railroad? I believe the philosophy behind the TGV is that you need so much power to accelerate and maintain speed that some rolling grades aren’t going to matter much and can save a lot of construction cost.
Hmmmmm, must be a regional difference. Because my observations are that today’s railroads are constrained by routes and alignments from the days of yore that limit speed and capacity compared to modern highway construction. That is the 1880’s vs 1980’s comparison - most of what we drive today for intercity travel is rather recent, while most of what the railroads use for intercity travel is rather ancient by today’s standards. This today vs yesterday engineering comparison is most evident in the mountainous areas of the country, where most trucks can still attain 65 mph rather easily, while the corresponding railroad is worming along at 20 mph.
Think of it this way - when was the last time a train passed you while you drove parallel on the highway? Out on the prairies, yes it can happen where railroads are able to meet the 79 mph max while you are maxing at 70 mph. In the more mountainous areas, you still are cruising at 70 mph while the trains are struggling to keep up with the bicyclists. It isn’t just hp to tonnage ratios at work there, it’s the acceptance of 16 degree curves and 2.2% grades from a hundred years ago that limit speed, whereas if that same railroad were to be built from scratch today along the same corridor, the engineers would probably try and keep curvature under 10 degrees and grades under 1% to maintain a higher sustained speed.
Back in the 1880’s, 25 mph was considered fast for any mode, and the rail lines were engineered with this incredible speed in mind. Times have changed, highway travel got faster with subsequent engineering improvements to allow higher speeds through rough country, but railroads were still stuck with their 1880’s alignments. When was the last time a railroad made major engineering improvements to their alignments to keep up with the times?
I look at the old Route 40/48 in Western Maryland that provided a link to Morgantown. What a mountain road that was. Since they opened I-68 with new bridges etc to bridge some of the highs and dug down thru the lows it’s so much better.
The New River Gorge in West Virginia was a 40 minute run from one side of the river to the other until that new bridge was built. Guess where the railroads went.
Ah but our friends “across the pond” in the UK have Mr. Brunel’s Great Western Railway that, IIRC, was built with alignments capable of speeds that weren’t actually used until the high speed trains of the late 20th century-over 100 years after being laid down!
As a matter of fact, in the 70s and 80s, CP Rail made a large number of major improvements that ranged from wider curves to multi-million dollar stretches of new main line track (Including the nearly 9 and a half mile long Mount MacDonald tunnel) that I would think meet your criteria.
Back to my S.D I-90 example: the highway engineers could have located the interstate there almost anywhere except where the Milwaukee Road tracks were actually occupying the real estate. Rather than locate the highway 1/2 mile north or south of the railroad, to eliminate 1/2 the grade they got; or even right next to the railroad, and have virtually no grade, they chose to be 1 mile south of the railroad line on a very hilly route. One would have to believe that the workers building the hilly interstate roadway must have shaken their heads, when they looked at the near level rail lines only a mile away.
Would you be thinking of “Spy Run Avenue” that ran next to the old fort?
One other point about highway locations. A large number of US highways ran parallel to railroads because of the Post Office. They improved a lot of existing roads. Mail ran in RPO’s on the railroads for a long time. In earlier times these highways were referred to as US Mail Routes. The mail slowly moved to trucks (which ran anytime) from trains (which ran on a rigid schedule). While not a direct cause and effect, they are related to the death of the passenger train and the abandonment of many lines.
And what is CP’s average velocity today compared to pre-Mt. MacDonald?
Yes, we have occassionally witnessed a major alignment improvement project with railroads - Cascade Tunnel and Chumstick Canyon (GN), Mt. MacDonald (CP), Latah Creek Bridge (BN), Alameda Corridor (BNSF & UP), etc. - but nothing that can be comparable to turning a 1940’s US Highway route into a 1970’s Interstate Highway route. In the mountainous regions of the US, the advent of the Interstate Highway System and modernized US Highways has basically doubled the average velocity of vehicles over that of the old US Highway System.
The railroads for the most part continue to operate over a system designed during the days of mule team scrapers. Not suprisingly, average railroad velocity is roughly the same today as it was 50 years ago.
It is somewhat ironic that the move toward maximum ton/miles by railroads has stymied any chance for true velocity improvements. Today’s diesels can be combined with hp/t ratios that would allow nominally weighted trains to fly over 3%+ grades that once brought steam to it’s knees. Thus, some of those mountain lines constrained by cur
In the case of the Connecticut Turnpike, now I-95, the railroad- specifically the New Haven RR- carried most of the construction materials direct to the build site. This was considered a good thing for the railroad, which had freight problems, and good for the State of Connecticut. For a while there you could race commuter trains into NYC on the Turnpike… not now.
Dave, it is almost all about hp/ton ratios. You are comparing a passenger car, which most mid size autos have around 100hp/ton, to a train which in the most overpowered case has around 15hp/ton.
You’re forgetting the BILLIONS of dollars the Federal government poured, and contiunes to pour into the Interstate Highway system.
It all comes down to the dollars, Dave. Corporations, unlike the Feds, don’t have a bottomless supply of them.
Although, I hate to admit it, I have two examples from the East that both support and contradict your point regarding railway alignments. Both of these routes were laid out in the early days of railroading, by visionary engineers. Other then clearance improvements, they have remained vitually unchanged for over 150 years.
The PRR’s mainline across Pennsylvania is a largely waterlevel route, and concentrates it’s assault on the Allegheny Mountains in one short section. This foresight allowed the PRR, and later Conrail and the NS to run top speed (albit with helpers over the toughest section) the entire length of the main line.
NYC’s main across New York was and could still be the fastest route between New York and Chicago, not counting terminal dwell. Not that CSX’s operating practices allow for it, but the route can move freight between New York and Chiago, faster then the Interstates. In it’s dying days, NYC put up stiff competition to the truckers.
Maybe someone could comment about the RR’s ablility to acquire land easily in the 19th century, while interstates highways met much resistance due to more developed and productive land.