When 80 mph was a avarage speed for steam, Express trains hit a hundred on regular basis and Interurbans really flew like bullets across the prarrie.
Acela! Smela!
Ironically, the NYT had an article to a similar affect concerning British steam and their current opperations today.
Gabe
It is really too bad the commuter subsidization didn’t start earlier in time to save the North Shore. What would we give to be able to sit in that railfan seat at 85 mph going up the Skokie line from Demster Street to North Chicago Junction today!
I am also glad I rode a nonstop Hiawatha from Milwaukee to Chicago and remember the five minute power change at New Haven.
Then there was the Summer Sunday Only Sea Beach Express from 59th Street and 4th Avenue to Coney Island non stop and the 3rd Avenue El nonstop from 42nd to 106th Street -without the speed control signals that slow down so many express runs on the New York subway today. 45 mph on an el structure between buildings seems equal to 100 in the prarie.
I never rode the C&LE or the Indiana Railroad, but I did get something of a taste of that kind of operation on Lehigh Valley Transit’s Allentown - Philadelphia “Liberty Bell” line.
I’m not sure that 80 MPH was average for steam. 100 MPH was a big deal but really wasn’t as common as some of us would like to believe. Interurbans are similar, the really fast ones like North Shore Line, South Shore Line, Cincinnati & Lake Erie and a few others were the exceptions. The engineering standards on most interurbans were pretty low since most were undercapitalized and fast operation was just not possible.
Well, I dont know about the rest of you but I hear stories of steam runs at near 100 mph and able to do it because the hogger knows every inch of that rail and his engine. Add in some guts and glory with a iron hand on the bar mixed with a deaf ear to those who would be cowards that train got down the track very well indeed in the war years.
The differences between 100 and 120 mph really only is about a 4 miles every hour. Typical acceleration and braking on trainsets usually eat that right up.
In the Acela thread I advocated true high speed in excess of 200+
I found a record where the Illinois terminal had a collision with two of its interurbans that was so severe it actually killed 20-40 people. I know where the collission occurred and it is as flat and as open as you could imagine.
I think the Illinois Terminal fits your stereo type of your typical under-capitalized interurban. However, the only conclusion I can draw from this accident, is they had to at least go fairly fast not to have stopped in time.
Gabe
Is this what PC reporters would refer to as “numerically challenged”?
The difference between 100 and 104mph is “4 miles every hour”. I’m not exactly sure what form of dimensional analysis might even suggest a different crunching of the numbers… You might say that going 120 only gives you 20 more miles in each hour than going 100 – but by the same token, for the 900-odd miles that, say, the Weed electric railroad from New York to Chicago would have run, that additional 20mph gives you a nominal 7-and-a-half hour trip instead of a 9-hour trip…
The point that folks often miss, though, is that the energy required for those “few” extra mph is not increasing in direct proportion. There are all kinds of steam locomotives that could run quite happily at 80mph. Dramatically fewer could reach 90mph economically. Almost none that weren’t specially purpose-built will get above that 120mph figure (based on effective steam power alone) – and even a few mph above 120 starts to produce remarkably severe effects on things like guiding and suspension. (Ask the Pennsylvania T1 people!)
The same is also true in the reverse direction, for braking. This was the origin of the big push for automatic train control in the years around the First World War, when passenger trains (especially, IIRC, on the New Haven) began to get into all kinds of trouble trying to stop from 80-odd mph with increasing consist weights.
Do you have any earthly idea of what is involved,and what it costs, to build and maintain trackwork for “200+” mph speeds – whether or not running FRA-compliant trains on it – as opposed to 120mph or even 150mph standards?
mudchicken will have some words with you,
Overmod, while I trust everything you say, I thought the biggest problems with tha T1’s was that they had a nasty habit of breaking the drivers loose above 120 mph. I thought there were some issues with the poppet valves used, too.
Really, all one has to do is think about driving their car, too, and the demands put on it as speed increases. Your points can be well made with automotive technology. Almost every car made today can make 80 mph (the H1 Hummer being the only possible exception that I can think of). By the century mark, the list is getting narrower. 120+ is still pretty elite territory. 150+ takes some real moxy (the highest I’ve made in the cruiser is 147).
Braking is most certainly a critical part of high speed travel, too, as you mentioned. Think about driving your car. How far does it take to stop from 20 mph? Not very far. How long does it take to stop from 100 mph? 5 times as long? I think not.
There’s an awful lot that goes into making things move fast. And there’s a lot of potential energy built up when it happens, too. The destructive force of a train moving at 120 mph? I’d really hate to think of the mess that would be.
Chris
Denver, CO
Anyone know what the best Chicago-Milwaukee scheduled times were (HIawatha, Electroliner, etc) back in the 1930’s?
You also had a greater degree of superelevation in curves back then, when freight cars were grossed at 220k and max heights were well under 20’. As axle loadings and car capacity (via heightening) increased, superelevation had to be reduced, which resulted in lower speed limits around those curves. Add to that an increased emphasis on safety, elimination of double track in favor of single track with frequent sidings, lug happy diesels replacing high drivered steam, and the concept of warehousing while in transit as opposed to warehousing in an actual warehouse, and what you end up with is mile plus long trains of 15,000 tons of mostly low value commodities moving at a 25 mph average speed e.g. not quite compatible with time sensitive movements.
Ummmm… try telling an auto manufacturer his/her commodity is “low value.”
MC doesn’t happen to be around, so I will.
The problem with high speed, in a most global sense, is that track construction and maintenance costs go up disproportionally (virtually exponentially) for speeds above about 110 mph. With maintenance this is a BIG, BIG issue, and not just to retain ride quality, although that’s a big part of it. In layman’s terms, think about how much better the track has to be for just a safe ride at 50 mph vs. 25 mph. The train can tolerate lots of differences in gauge, alignment and cross level at the lower speed. Now, double the speed again to 100 mph. Again, the track has to get a lot better–more than doubly better because the forces are going up geometrically, not linearly. Avoiding the math, above about 110, the amount of work to keep it that way starts to skyrocket–you need very frequent alignment and surfacing, cross level becomes a serious issue, and cant deficiency (the amount of bank in the curve) also becomes a major issue. It’s no secret that the Shinkansen system puts thousands of track workers on the line every night. The old CB&Q racetrack segments used track crews devoted to just shimming the rails. In simple terms, the reason the NEC deteriorates so fast is the amount of slamming on it that the frequent high speed trains do. Now compare this to the LAX-SAN coast line segments that handle a modest number of effectively 90 mph consists, but require disproportionally less maintenance to keep the ride quality high. Same with the old ATSF racetrack.
Compare the value of a car on a $/lb or $/cu ft basis with a digital camera or an MP3 player or even a first class letter and see which is “high value”. You might be surprised.
Certainly a finished vehicle is higher value than coal, but maybe not as much as one might think.
I agree completely with drephpe and would add that the incremental approach would allow benefits to flow to the frt RRs in the form of added capacity and improved service - getting us more bang for our buck.
I don’t see much need to go back to 1935 for high-speed. How much coal would they go through just to got up to 80mph never mind 100mph? Wouldn’t increased speeds mean increased coal, water and sand refill stops?
I read here http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/ihy941205.html that the fastest time was 1:40. Over 90 miles that would be 54 mph avg.
I have an August 1946 Official Railway Guide that shows a fastest time of 75 minutes nonstop on the Milwaukee Road. I believe that this timing was maintained for several years.
When I worked the Turbo Trains the time was 1.32.
The Liners didn’t start running on the North Shore until 1941. Best time was 1.58 including the “L”, and street running in Milwaukee.
Mitch
The highest I have gone was close to 180 in a friend’s modified car. The technology required to push a pontiac that fast was pretty high. Actually just excessive camshaft timing, strong stall converter, HUGE displacement etc… At one-eighty on a normal two lane road that has no other traffic is very fast indeed.
On today’s roads 180 mph is too fast. You need to take the high speed and build it isolated from everything in the world except stations and necessary support. No one denies the technology exists Europe and Japan has done this for years.
I recall the NYC railroad mounted a Jet engine on a RDC and ran at 180 mph for a period. I dont think they wanted to do it again after that run.
Yes it is expensive. Nothing that has real value is cheap.
I second the fact that cars are “Cheap” my three cars are worth collectively less than 5,000 but feature the cruise control, air conditioning, space and other features that are “Needed” and they do the job fairly well at the speeds we run em at.
If I wanted to spend 300,000 for a specialized car that can run at very high speeds then I will have no place to run it safely. The USA would need to build highways based on the German Autobahn model and technology before I can travel regular at 150+
If I traveled to europe and rented a fast (Safe) car and ran 150+ in Germany I will have no problems at those speeds. The problem is not me being able to drive at speed. But rather the amount of “Demand” expressed by how many people are trying to get down that same highway.
Eventually things must slow down because there are too many people using the same highway.
Applied to trains, high speed rail:
http://www.newtrains.org/pages/354051/
http://www.sehsr.org/
http://www.floridahighspeedrail.org/
http://www.hsgta.com/
These are just a few sites on google that exist for highspeed rail. One is Europe, two is southern USA and the last one is a
In defense of HI2003 - While the difference between 100 mph and 120 mph is indeed 20 mph, throwing in starts and stops and the additional time needed for each means the difference in average speeds for a given trip at each speed won’t be 20 mph. I don’t know where HI2003 got the 4 mph number, but it’s probably not far off the mark for at least some runs. Of course, the number of stops, and the length of the sustained maximum speed makes a difference, too.