This video was uploaded a few days ago. A nice and brief review of the history of the Shinkansen with decent 3D rendering. The word “Envy” probably triggered some people but I think It is just a trick of “content marketing”.
When Streamliners were dying in the States, passenger service came back to the main stage in the Far East. I am never a big fan of the Shinkansen, but the success of it is really compelling; reminds me of those self-proclaimed “train of the future” and their fate. [mo]
I don’t think he’s a fan either…
They also come in handy if you have a spare bed and a hankering to run trains when you’re 10,000 miles from home.
It’s sad when two Japanese icons just can’t get along…
A little mood music?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDeU42u2s2Y
Reminds me, I was reading the guidelines for the “Great Scale Model Train Show” held in Timonium MD several years ago. There was a reminder to exhibitors that this was a train and railroad related item show. No toys, dolls, or anything else not railroad related was permitted, with one exception.
If you were modeling Japanese railroads, especially with Kato or Shinohara products, it was OK to include Godzilla on the layout!
The scary thing about this thread is that it actually belongs in the Classic Trains forum…
And I’m old enough to remember the debut of the Shinkansen back in '64.
And it is still serving it’s economic purpose 54 years later.
erikem-- No kidding! Stunning isn’t it. Hard to believe it’s old.
Have the N scale Kato bullet trains made in the 80’s, green and blue versions and it still looks very contemporary… and like the real one, it is flawless, has zipped around trouble free for 30 years. Never uncouples, never derails, defines reliability.
Penny Trains - Haha, I can understand the anger of Godzilla(ゴジラ), it probably love trains but it is too big to buy a train ticket. A Love-hate situation! Speaking of Godzilla, it reminds me of the incident of Japan Earthquake & Tsunami of 2011 ,and the “King Kong” movie of 1976. I can’t remember how many time I rewatched that movie (Another one is “The Poseidon Adventure” of 1972!) I think many forums member still remember this NYC Subway scene:
Firelock76 – Maybe they can only get along in the railroad modeling world where Godzilla is “frozen” in the plastic form : ) but if you replace the Godzilla with a fluffy cat, the result will be the same. [swg] I still remember in the 1980s when people still bought N scale railroad model of Japan or Europe for their child as a present. Almost every department store in my city still had the toy department with a rather large section selling trains toys and expensive models except brass trains.
In the Japanese department store, they displayed almost all N scale model trainset in the shop, always with a small layout in the toy department to lure the children. but I prefer the Europen and UK stream trains since I was a child. But it is hard to not admit that Kato’s products, just like many other Japan brand toys, were very well detailed. Y
The United States should have led the rest of the world in the construction of high speed rail. The gentleman who proposed and commenced to build the Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad at the beginning of the 20th Century was on the right track.
While Third World countries and Banana Republics are busy planning for the future of their citizens with modern high speed rail networks, the only thing the U.S.A. can show for itself in Century 21, is the North East Corridor and a run down wooden axle passenger rail carrier better known as Amtrak.
Dinner in the diner: Nothing beats having to get up in the middle of the night to catch a day old stale sandwich on the fly at some run down depot in the Carolinas while riding Amtrak’s tarnished stainless steel Silver Star from New York to Florida!
All aboard?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/CNY_map.png
Source: https://chicagology.com/transportation/airlinerailroad/
The Chicago-New York Electric Air Line Railroad! The straight line on the map made me drooling. A very ambitious plan from the 1900s I am sure, but it is hard to determine if it is commercially practical or not without reading the feasibility assessment of this project. Ten hours from NY to Chi-town, only Ten dollars. This project sound very promising but it also looked like something you can only f
Trinity, I hear what you’re saying, but Mr. Jones is correct, it all comes down to demand. If enough Americans wanted hi-speed rail, really wanted it, and were organized enough and vocal enough to demand it, we’d have it. But that’s just not the case.
It’s been said “This is America, we love our cars and hate everything else!” Not 100% true of course, not by a long shot, but not too far off the mark either.
My own theory is when the Boomers get too old to drive, and form a powerful voting block, then you might see some real action on truly reliable and comfortable mass transit, in addition to hi-speed (or high-er speed) trains. But not before.
Mr. Jones, I remember the SST controversy very well, I was in high school at the time, and the opposition was intense and quite honestly bordered on the ridiculous. But in the end it worked out all right. Boeing’s 747’s and 737’s turned out to be bigger money makers than the SST ever would have been.
I had a French aquaintance who flew on the Concorde once, and once only, just to say he did it. He didn’t like it at all, said an Air France 747 was a much nicer ride than the Concorde ever could have been.
A NY-Chicago “Air Line” as straight as the map showed needed to be electric, as the entire line thru western NJ, PA, and eastern OH would have to have been in tunnels to keep the grades under 1%.
Very true, Firelock76. I understand that different countries have a different pace of living. If folks in the States enjoy what they are having and don’t have the motivation to change their travel habit, they have the freedom to choose to preserve the status quo. From my understanding, it won’t be an easy task to build a HSR which will go through different states under the framework of US’s political system. But if there is strong demands, enough people willing to speak out, and the HSR itself is in the line of US’s national interests, I believe it will happen. : )
The cabin of Concorde was really like a crowded bus, I can understand why your friend didn’t enjoy the ride. SST is probably one of the few modern things which I found fascinating. I used to imagine a fantasy ultra high-speed train using the body of Boeing 2707! If the concept of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop will become a fact, I wish it will look as awesome as those SST projects. : )
http://klausbuergle.de/roemer_poster1.htm
Thank you very much, MidlandMike. That would increase the construction cost for sure. Building a tunnel is never an easy task, people will never know what kind of surpr
Was wird uns die Zukunft Neues bringen? (Aber morgen wird es vielleicht schon NICHT Wirklichkeit…)
The Boynton Bicycle Railway meets the Weems 150mph telpher in Durrenmatt’s tunnel! With 2 decks just like the world-record-holding HSR train!
Germans love their automobiles too but still use the ICE despite the many problems that Deutsche Bahn AG faces. Recent reports indicate DB trains operate some 70% on time. Many are only several minutes off schedule and others…well…
Planet Earth will be forced to Go Green but not like the fanatics demand today which is to revert to the wonderful world of cavemen who hit women over the head with a club and drag them back to their own private hole in the side of a cliff. The Flintstones had the most efficent automobile ever created by man: Footpower!
The Diesel BS today is Fake News too and if y’all think that the Greenpiece morons all walk or ride bicycles take another look.
Had America invested in HSR after WWII people would have used it to make trips between the Big Apple and the Windy City especially when Old Man Winter has closed all the highways as well as shut down airspace. It’s called insurance and is there when needed the most.
Sure beats wasting billions of $$$, thus helping increase the national debt to finance senseless wars, not to mention counting the loss of fellow Americans on foreign soil, does it not?
Ein Traum vom Fliegen oder einen endlos Abgrund stürzen?
The Boynton Bicycle Railway was another underrated project proposed in the late 1890s, just like the Weems Electric Railway. Reminds me of my fantasy when I was a child, I wanted to convert the roller coaster into public transport which can serve folks who living on the small hill and decrease travel time by 75%. But of course, as a little child, I didn’t take noise and ride quality into account! Can be solved though…[swg]
Günter Radtke’s works are amazing, I love the styling of his future. Not the future of the past I am living in. Am I the only one here stuck in Durrenmatt’s tunnel? Please rewrite the ending for Durrenmatt so that I can escape from this mortal coil!
Well said, Trinity. I wish I can make your dream come true 70 years ago, but I can only suggest you keep your dream alive at the moment. [8D] You post-war HSR idea makes me want to write a brief proposal…
Ladies and gentleman, its fantasy time! (It is a very rough draft plan, please don’t take it seriously, but I can’t resist…[:$])
…
Planned and coordinated by the US government in 1946, constructed by a consortium of PRR, NYC, N&W, CNR, GE, Pullman, Baldwin and Westinghouse, a 900-1000 miles high-speed railway (average speed =98.5mph, allowed top speed = 128mph) connecting three most important cities in the world!
(Plan A) Chicago, Fort Wayne, Lima, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C, Baltimore, Philidelphia, New York City
Peter, your link is broken.
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Many references to the Bennie Railplane, which is a rough contemporary of the Schienenzeppelin, on the Web. Here is a good introduction (1929):
A premise of the ‘grade separation’ that Bennie stressed was that the elevated track could have nearly ‘zero footprint’ by being located above existing permanent way, much as the Wuppertal Schwebebahn was built above the river.
I never look at this without being reminded of the “interurban” in the movie version of Fahrenheit 451…
Even in a fantasy we have to do effective world-building. Alternate history is a craft, not a game.
Let’s see now … your Plan A would almost presume a resumption of ‘federal control’ in WWII. How that embodied “lessons learned” from the experience in WW1, the Esch Act, and the various consolidation plans of the 1920s (including the Plumb Plan and the CN aggregation) is in itself a topic for a whole thread and an interesting story. My own approach would be that railroads were jointly agreed that very fast passenger service was not a profit center “in competition” going forward, and were perfectly happy to have passenger mandates lifted from them in exchange for operating new government-built (or government-acquired) passenger service at cost or reasonable cost-plus (this was, after all, the age of six-percent return)
There is no question that ABS would be wholly obsolete for such a line, and you would need some analogue of the French TVM system involving intelligent cab signals and proportional speed control – this having the advantage of being inherently CBTC decades early.
On the other hand, it’s lunacy to operate such a high-speed line with two-cylinder simple anything, or for that matter with steam turbines with quartered rods. It would be only a matter of time to the first awful accident, and then the second, and then here come the diesel-electrics. The future for steam would be with direct-drive geared turbines, but with some variant of Cardan-shaft drive and viscous/magnetorheological clutches to individual wheelsets, and perhaps with Bowes drive at each turbine. I would also think about incorporating effective independent-brake slip control by wheelset. There’s at least a possibility that a free-piston turbine could have been developed that would ha
