Well There's Your Problem | Episode 113: Battery-Electric Locomotives
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- join us to explore the exciting future of 0-emission battery locomotives which are still entirely inferior to their hundred-year-old electric counterparts
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A 3 hour video that starts with "batteries: bottom text" and Liam sounding like he's calling in from a ham radio in the Urals is bound to be good
I love how the more the episode itself is a disaster the more excited the audience gets
@@pyrotheevilplatypus Praxis.
yeah but it's a 3 hour video that starts talking about the subject matter at hour 1.5 because of the show's penchant to start with "what is train" or whatever.
@@GretchenDawntreader hey, we forgor what a train is every couple of days, that's how Musk gets told his loop isn't retarded
@@GretchenDawntreader annnd the problem with that is....?
You sicko's finally got another train episode
Thanks for stopping by!
yes, ha ha ha, yes!
@@jamesshefchik9690 After three hours of podcasting, it's less "stopping by" and more "temporary residence"
Your presence on the pod has been long awaited, hope to see you back again soon.
@@nathaniellindner313 dw he’s just pulling over to the side for a bit so other train podcasts can pass
3 hours about trains 🥰
As a Swiss person who spent 3hrs today on trains with my bicycle to commute - so happy to see you here + so happy this pod dropped ayeee let‘s gooo
One day I can hope we would get a not just bikes 3 hour video about trains as well
Im ao excited
I know what you want. I know what you came here for. A thing you crave more then anyting else. It's a primal urge. It drives men to absurd distances, and to engage in ruthless and inhuman acts. It's a high unlike any other. Known only to those few who have indulged in it's infitite pleasures. An addiction stronger then any known narcotic, yet who's health effects are limited to occasional bouts of mild smoke inhalation. Do you known that of wich I speak?
It's trains.
Yes.
Liam, don't let the haters bully you into getting a good microphone for travel. Instead, call into the pod over single sideband CB radio skipped off the ionosphere; the audio will be dreadful and spiting the FCC with an illegal 200W linear amplifier is a bonus that seems up your alley.
Will absolutely donate tons to Patreon if it means giving Liam his own Duga OTHR array.
Can he speak to the radio through a can and string system? preferably from a tree house.
Then the next episode he will use a telegraph machine and reply to everything in very loud morse code.
-.-- .- -.-- / .-.. .. .- --
Transmitting the podcast at such high power that you can hear it in your fillings
@@95keat just keeps going backwards through history of telecommunication. Waiting for the episode where he uses signal fires.
“But why does the siding have to pass? Isn’t that a regressive expectation?”
The boys all totally missed it but I caught it and I was glad I did
Thank you for commenting this because I would've missed the joke without it
It was a brilliant line.
For those wondering about the "Dorothy Parker poem":
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
I love it. Thank you for sharing it.
Gravity still works last I checked
@@pennyfarthing5924
But what if vertigo?
First read it as 'god smells awful' and i think that works better
@@pennyfarthing5924 Nah, gravity's just a theory.
Liam is my favorite part of this podcast. Justin might be the brain, and Alice may be the soul, but Liam is definitely the heart. I'm always super disappointed when he's not in an episode to go off about shit.
ONE notable exception was ss el faro and that blessed slideshow
I'm divided between Justin and Alice. I love Polish people (so I really like Justin) but I'm gay (so I relate with Alice). Liam is just super based. He's like in his own tier. Not at the top. But a tier where he technically is at the top.
If Roz is Brains then Liam is fuckin’ *Brawn*
The guest is, ofc, a Frankenstein appendage attached nebulously but surely to the body
Liam is the heart and also the clenched fist of the podcast, ready to strike at any moment
If Liam hadn’t said anything about his mic I never would have known, it’s perfectly listenable. Way better than early episodes.
insane to me how someone can't notice how Liam's mic sounds
on a GOOD day
honestly it does a good job distinguishing everyone's voices
3 hours of Roz's special interest. Liam is holding his own because he has listened to Roz about this. Alice is burning out with all of the depressing knowledge and Alan is vibing along because he to shares this special interest
"You don't even have the capital costs and you still don't want to make them!" - Alice explaining the robber baron class since the beginning of mercantilism.
1:39:24 Ok, i propose a bonus episode where trains are compared purely on the basis of their aesthetic qualities. With categories like cutest, most badass looking, cursed, so ugly it's cute again, etc.
If US locomotives get buffers they'd look marvalous.
Seriously buffers are everything
@@davidty2006 It makes such a huge difference; it's insane. The USA tanks, for example, look so much better with a bit of paint and buffer beams.
Just put lines over the rails. The birds won't mind. I can get in some long range lines it's not a worthwhile prospect, but you can just electrify the busy lines and save the batteries for the absolutely remote areas. Same for Cars. Public transportation for all, and save cars for those who live out in the boondocks.
In fact, birds will just enjoy a place to sit
The supports for the catenary can double as the towers for wind turbines, maybe every other or every third. Connect to the grid with transformers to step it up or down and the railroads can be power companies, too.
@@Aetherometricist
We'd need to make more vawts, of smaller size. So, every catenary support.
Broadly agree but lets save some electronic cars for people with mobility issues.
@@jacobvardy Oh of course. And on the additional side, make public transit more accessible for mobility issues
Oh man, Liam's suicide joke is too real, tried twice, failed, decided I sucked at it, tried trying to make living bearable instead.
Keep it up. I don't know you, but you matter. 💜
I hope love and pease find you, friend.
Living is based keep at it
Same. Attempt 3, I decided the universe would not let me exit that way. Now I exist to spite it.
The one time Alice doesn’t come up with a “make it rigid” solution, someone replaces catenaries with an overhead third rail…
The rail *is* more rigid!
Glad to see we've returned to trains. Are we getting Italian trains next?
ansaldo breda would be a great episode. WTYP take notes
Trains are returning to their natural habitat, podcasts are healing.
Fyra Momentio
@@ronylouis0 Ansaldo Breda: Everything we build is truly a one-off!
Italian HSTs are awesome
Me as a swiss; "Wait? You have trains without electric overhead lines?" 😂
Hey now Switzerland still has a few lines without electric overhead lines. It’s called the Zurich Metro. It’s in third rail
1:09:17
"Just no-clip through the other train."
"We'll get to that."
PRECISION TIMING RAILROADING IS A PERFECTLY BALANCED PHILOSPHY
Edit: holy shit, it really is. This is something that should only work in a railway management sim.
2:26:22 I do unironically agree with Alice that there are situations where this might work. There's an all but disused train station in my town. Freight trains pass by on the rail network in the area all the time, but never stop because there isn't enough freight cargo coming in. But if all the cargo bound for my town was loaded into one or two containers (because that's just how much in coming cargo you have), instead of trucks taking it from the freight depot or wherever that stuff is unloaded, you send that one or two containers to the local station. You build a little bit of rail turning off the track at the station so they can be unloaded without blocking passage. Then you call all the mail services and companies with stuff on the containers to pick up their shit and do the literal last mile delivery themselves. Not the actual proposals on the table would be best here, but the general concept of a single car train has a limited purpose, especially in a world where trains play a much large role in commercial shipping
>>PRECISION TIMING RAILROADING IS A PERFECTLY BALANCED PHILOSPHY
Next on The Spiffing Brit...
@@SledgeOfHouseHammer that was what I was referencing. Honestly, with the way it works in practice Precision Timing Railroading could totally be an episode of his real life exploit series. He'd also be a great guest on an episode about legislation/regulation that failed because it had too many exploits, if Alice can refrain from killing him for excessive Englishness
@@SledgeOfHouseHammer We're breaking the trains in true Brit form.....now watch me freebase this Yorkshire Gold tea.
-Spiff at some point
That sounds like you need slip-coaches, but for freight.
It's "Precision Scheduled Railroading", actually.
If I may humbly submit: nationalize the railroads and treat them like the Interstate Highway System
As for hybrid locomotives - one of the electric locomotives owned by a rail infrastructure contractor has been converted to battery + overhead electric.
This allows the work train to enter track sections that don't have overhead lines yet, or ones that are intentionally switched off.
This saves on having a bigass diesel idling all day long. The battery can remain fairly small because such work trains only have to move for a minute, then sit again for 15 minutes while the workers are doing their thing, then move a bit again etc.
I have to admit: Hearing Liam's "I can't even suicide right, guess I have to keep going" bit gets to me, even though I understand that the joking-not-joking-but-am-I aspect of it probably helps him cope with it. Liam if you start to feel like you might crack, if you ever have any doubts as to what you're worth, you need to remember that you absolutely kick ass, you're funny and thoughtful and intelligent and compassionate and fuck the people who think you're a drag on this podcast. But more than that, you're an honest dedicated outspoken give-no-quarter voice for the hurt and the abused and the downtrodden and the defeated, and I'm not just talking about your godawful sports teams. We need people like you to stand up and make some noise when times are hard, and if times are only going to get harder then we need more Liam in the world, not less, regardless of how dire the future seems.
What they said. Yay Liam.
Liam, I felt that rant in my fucking soul. The "Fine, I'll stay alive if I have to, I guess" attitude has gotten me through a lot, as has an agreement with my friends that comes down to "If I have to live in this goddamn hellscape, then so do you."
Hear, hear!
Uhhhh a Liam love thread, I AM INTO IT. Whenever you finish one of those rants that are maybe-trying-to-be-funny-but-also-if-there-is-ANY-justice-on-this-planet-these-people-should-suffer, I give you a mind hug. I bet you give awesome hugs too. Yay Liam.
Yay, Liam. And you, too.
You guys missed a legitimate early battery operated standard gauge locomotive. Charles Grafton Page's electromagnetic locomotive of 1851. It was a solenoid driven 4-2-0 that ran on 100 sufuric acid filled , wet cell batteries. Incidentally, this locomotive was also trialed on the Baltimore and Ohio. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Grafton_Page#Electromagnetic_locomotive
I have a correction to make:
Around 1:41:00, Roz says that the California Zephyr only refuels in Omaha. That is incorrect (at least for the whole route). The Zephyr gets refueled during it's stop in Denver, using direct hookups to underground tanks installed during the Denver Union Station Rebuild.
As an early era Mountain Goats fan, I see no problem with Liam's mic. I say double down and record into a Panasonic tape-deck from now on.
I'm late, but I second this opinion.
THE PROBLEM ARCHIVES
3 hour pod with Alan Fisher on trains! I can excuse not having a 9/11 themed pod
9/11 episode Next week
There‘s a 9/11 reference tho, does that count?
They did 9/11, but I wouldn't mind if they did it again, I'm sure they'll do a better job.
...ah, and here's the FBI, right on schedule...
Didn't they do a 9/11 episode?
They did an episode on the World Trade Center back in 2020. The part where Roz found out Ruth Bader Ginsburg died is an all time classic WTYP moment.
The joy I feel when I see that run time poking over the 3 hour mark is indescribable.
Edit: I was not disappointed as things turned deranged.
Bottom text (it wears catgirl ears)
Edit: I dealt with my suicidal ideation by figuring "if my enemies and the universe want me dead that badly, then I'm gonna live as long as I can out of shear spite!" And by and large it's worked pretty damn well. 👍🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
Edit 2: in fairness to Seattle, while some dumbass sold our basketball team, we have replaced that with a high concentration of trans folks which is pretty cool 😃
Good for Seattle, but that still doesn’t decrease the population of uninsured psychopaths on the road there. My sister got run off the road by one. Her insurance rates went up, and he repeatedly harassed her expecting it to decrease the likelihood she would sue him. Which she couldn’t do because she spent all her money moving there. Then her trans girlfriend broke up with her so she had to move back. You know what, fuck Seattle.
@@jacobrzeszewski6527 damn man, that's some crazy shit! I hope she's doing alright these days. Insurance companies are dicks, they can f themselves.
I feel sorry for the Seattle folks.
The bottom text is ":3"
I just had a very heated fight with my girlfriend over Battery-Electric locomotives so this is very triggering for me to watch
I am envious of you having a partner who gives enough of a fuck about that topic to fight about it.
That's possibly a difficult but worthwhile gf. The kind worth going to couples counseling with, so y'all can learn to, like, relate better?
She sounds smart and passionate.
Really passionate.
😳
Like my EX wife...
How dare you flex on us with your based train gf 😤
Sounds like a keeper - hope you patch it up soon.
The real question is what side were you on?
As a citizen of the greater Seattle Metropolitan area, need I remind the Philly boys about the hitch hiking robot? We may no longer have a Basketball team but at least we didn't hate crime a robot.
thats only because it didn't make it here, it absolutely would have ended up floating in the ship canal
Canada.
Hitchbot should have known better
I do not want robots replacing the honourable job of hitchicking
"You can move to Albany for all I care"
Liam that's... grossly inhumane, and maybe even illegal to say in public. They can't even get Wegman's there, and they have to buy ice cream out of literal gas stations. Schenectady is literally rotting apart.
The big liquor store in Latham is cool though
The very word Schenectady sounds like a sort of incomprehensible disaster across several alternate dimensions of the multiverse.
Oklahoma City ain't bad... Hundreds of cannabis dispensaries and people are very nice here. Had a car rumble through the parking lot a few hours ago playing Bob Marley...feels like home.
listen, you can get ice cream at places other than Stewarts, but Stewarts ice cream is pretty fuckin' good.
also, the wegmans / golub handshake agreement is dead, now that the golub family is more or less out at the now hilariously mis-managed pricetopper32. I'd expect wegmans to start building stores in the capital region within the next decade lol.
I am in Wegmans withdrawal out here.
The only podcast in the world that almost makes you want to get into a dangerous situation so u can be swag on a safety 3rd section
I have never been in danger and this is frustrating! :p
I'm so charmed by the phrase "free-spirited trailers" in the context of this Safety Third
I've been waiting for Alan Fisher to be a guest. Hell yeah!
Right?!?! I’m so shocked it’s taken this long.
I'm not a full devotee of Mr Fisher yet. I'm in training.
What I don't understand is the railways always claim they can't afford to pay their employees or give them sane working conditions but they can apparently afford to have them sit for hours on a siding or the end of the double track. I mean if it was really scheduled but the track won't be clear along most of it for 6 hours, instead of waiting why don't they just schedule the train to leave 6 hours later so it arrives at the single track right after the other train clears the section?
I spat my drink out when I heard Alan’s voice. I was like “this is gonna get good fast”
Aww I had my "Building 7" foam finger ready for what I assumed was part 3 of the 9/11 trilogy :(
That's next week
@@Rosa-lv8yw HAHAHAHA that would be Perfect
Great episode. My dad worked as an electrical engineer for the Milwaukee Road in the 1960s. He had great stories about about how loud the giant DC circuit breakers were when they tripped. And about the geniuses who tried to steal the insulators from the lines. They’d find a fried 39 foot section of rail, little pools of molten metal in the spike holes, and a pair of smoking boots. And that’s about it.
I'm disappointed noone called out Alan for thinking the Washington Football Team played in Washington state.
Thank you for doing it!
I too was taken aback by the comment
Just for future reference, TFM stands for Trains From Mexico.
"In Mexico at Christmas, what do they break?"
"Into the U.S.A."
Roz unknowingly foretelling our future in the 21st century: "It's probably fine if you don't breath it in."
34:10 the catenary wires on the NH aren’t there anymore, but the towers still are. They look like some kind of lovecraftian dieselpunk menace looming over southern CT
So the Innsmouth people will definitely feel right at home... good.
"The governor's water"
It is the people's water.
And that should be given to the public or forcibly disabled.
Thank you for a news feed that did not start and focus on a very old lady passing away who's family is in receipt of most generous state benefit payments in the 1st world.
I don't particularly like the idea of an inherited head of state, but then I look at what happens if you elect your Head of State...
@@Eric_Hunt194 more a question about parliament vs a presidential system really, one’s way more Tammany hall type beat and the others more powers of a king but you can vote them in
@@einenglander3223 which has been done for some kings, was an elected office by way of the aristocracy. I'd guess only came up if they didn't like their current hereditary king, just vote them out and get a new one.
@@Eric_Hunt194 just think of it this way, what if the orange one had inherented the position and next up is like Donald junior and best bet is Ivanka having him assassinated and his brother and either taking it herself or using her underage brother as a puppet.
Next one will, this had to have been recorded before ol Lizzy bit the dust.
1) thank you co-host for the shoutout
2) thanks co-host for not jumping on the guest when he thought the Washington Commanders played in Seattle because I would have.
I think we've hit the technological limit for battery technology.
The fundamental problem is that batteries rely on chemical reactions in order to generate electricity, and the more energy dense the chemical reaction, the more unstable those chemicals are.
Lithium-ion battles aren't that energy dense, yet they still can produce some very nasty explosions when they malfunction.
Now imagine a battery that's 10 times more energy dense than a lithium-ion battery. Now imagine how big of an explosion that battery could produce if it malfunctioned.
It's almost impossible to make batteries more energy dense without them becoming an improvised explosive.
Until the day we learn to cheat the laws of physics, I don't think there will ever be a battery good enough for vehicles like trains, ships, and aircraft.
And you haven’t even touched on the sheer environmental destruction mining and extracting that lithium requires
@@evan12697
I know right?
It pains me to see climate activists championing batteries as an energy storage solution, and they just aren't the solution.
Batteries are terrible in large scale applications, and yet there are people who just refuse to acknowledge the down sides of batteries.
The only silver lining is that engineers and scientists will eventually in the near future "hit the wall" of practical battery technology, and they will be forced to admit "Hey, it's impossible to make a better battery, we need to do something different to stop climate change."
This is exactly what I'm thinking. I can't be certain, but something tells me that the things limiting the specific energy and energy density of batteries are the laws of physics.
Back in 2017, John B. Goodenough (one of the guys behind the first lithium batteries) and his team claimed to have invented a new glass battery that had 3 to 10 times the energy density of current batteries, longer lifetimes than current batteries, and was inherently stable or something like that (so it wouldn't explode). Unfortunately, for him, it turned out that one of the proposed mechanisms of operation (which allowed the extremely high energy densities) would break the laws of thermodynamics.
The painful flashback I had of taking an Amtrak train from Charlotte, NC to Raleigh, NC that should've taken 2.5 hours and instead took 7 hours because we had to wait for freight train to pass. The bane of my existence was taking Amtrak to school.
Thank god there's a PO box in the description, time to send an uplifting postcard to Liam covered in Thomas the Tank Engine stickers for morale purposes. At this point, I'm convinced most of us have attempted to Bad End ourselves at one point or another, if not multiple times. Life sucks, but people can be cool sometimes.
Do what I do; the depression is never enough to outweigh the uncertainty and deep existential dread of the aftermath.
Plus, literally any other choice can't go worse. Rob a bank, worst thing they can do is kill you which like, no big deal if you were going to do that anyway. Take a loan and get a flight to the Caribbean or Jamaica. Worst case you don't make it there and... again, dying is the literal last worst case scenario because anything else has that as merely the consequence of failure.
@@danielled8665Bit integer overflow
The most tech bro solution for electrifying trains
Minimise startup cost, maximise overall cost
One big electrification project that was overlooked here is the Tumbler Ridge extension of our BC Rail. They built a brand new line through the mountains, electrified it at 50kv AC, and it’s all gone now. Honestly, the sale of BC rail to CN would be a fantastic WTYP episode.
That had the same problem as all the other North American electrifications. It was a small part of a larger system. Plus it turned out that the line was never busy enough and there was enough time between trains to let the air clear up in the two long tunnels, this was the only reason the line had been electrified in the first place. CN still operates this line with diesels, and crews are required to carry respirators and portable air bottles just in case something funky happens inside one of the tunnels. Also fuck Gordon Campbell, him and his cronies should be in jail for that 'deal'.
I was born too young to hear of the scandal. And too young to understand the scandal. At a young age I fell in love with BCRail as ive always been very patriotic towards my province. when I finally grew to understand the scandal I became even more pissed. if CN was still government owned I would be fine with it. But it being a private company I am NOT fine with it. I would consider myself a activist to get BCRail out of CNs hands... And if their was enough people to support my cause I would protest outside the BC parliment... The legacy of BCRail will lost for a long time, don't get me wrong, but BCRail died to early, if it deserved to die at all.
I praise BCRail for operating commuter trains and freight trains at the same time. Them being government owned they were truely ahead of their time. I visited the Budd RDC and the GM6C 1 and 3 years ago respectively. I also really loved their roster, it was truely a mix and match of various strange locomotives, and I am all for it. If they did return, I would need them to return back to the 2 tone green with the cornflower, as the cornflower is our national flower. Though the blue dip does have similarities with the BCTransit logo (the font) and I like that. Hope you agree.
BC Rail technically was never sold, but like, a 999 year lease is basically the same thing without technically breaking your election promise.
@@howlingwolven it's a 60 year lease.
Oh. And, Liam? You are loved and needed. You might as well stay put.
2:18:07 When you've got Silicon Valley Brain so much you try and apply rugged individualism to shipping containers..
51:46
Describing the E60 as a Brick that looks good and all I can say is "Same"
21:00 One short story to add, which Alice need not read, is a incidental evolving a steam engine in a tunnel. In the November 19, 1941 Hassan Tunnel fire accident between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, northbound Southern Pacific #4193 entered the tunnel on an uphill grade. The locomotive involved was an oil-fed steam engine and had a cab-forward design (AC-8) which meant, among other factors, that oil lines ran forward of the drive wheels, and leaked onto the rails.
Part-way through the tunnel, the locomotive lost traction. There was an attempt to back out of the tunnel, but a passenger applied brakes such that the train could not proceed backwards. A fire was ignited and the train ultimately burned with loss of 5 lives, 4 injured.
>passenger applied brakes so it couldn’t go backwards
Lmao
@@deeznoots6241 Yea, for awhile most American passenger trains had the typical Hollywood style of emergency cord that ran in each car. If someone dropped there baby out a window or something, they could pull the cord which dumped the air and the train came to a stop. To recover from a emergency brake application takes time. I assume as the train started backing out, some dipspit thought the train was slipping down the grade and pulled the cord. The cord is still used, but pulling it only sounds a alarm in the locomotives cab.
" with slides" always gets a chuckle out of me
2:26, a lot of cities have residual last mile rail networks. They're in horrible shape and often the buildings they connect to are dilapidated or have been remodelled away from receiving box cars.
As always, they had a decent idea in about 1912 and modern American has fucked it up
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2:03:30 Why a mining company might be interested could be if they mine at altitude and shuttle a lot of full freight cars downhill but empty cars uphill, they could in theory regenerate most or even all of the energy from dynamic braking on the way down. I saw something like this, but with trucks, in the north of Sweden.
desperately hoping the goddamn news covers a certain person who did a certain thing in scotland that I need to hear alice scoreboard over
Guys, the issue with brazillian railroad is tied to the lobby from the automobile industry to keep people and cargo running on cars and trucks. We have some very interesting train technology (if I'm not mistaken, we can turn the train 180 on the Z axis to drop cargo like grain or ore), but trains aren't common outside commodity freight.
Which axis is the Z axis on a train? I'm pretty sure rotary dumpers have been a thing worldwide for a while
@@NixodCreations maybe the original commenter was not aware of them in other countries...can't really blame him, rotary dumpers are not common knowledge.
Roz, the F-units used generators as did all EMD products up until the GP-40 in the mid 60’s when alternators and solid state controllers were introduced eliminating many electromechanical relays.
As soon as I saw the first slide with the “batteries Bottom Text” I knew I was in the right place. Podcasters talking about podcast disasters, aka “Well there’s your problem”.
I say this with adoration of course
As a train nerd, I have to contest. At 20:00, it isnt a photo from the Southern Pacific in the Rockies, but rather from the Southern railroad. It shows a mask to protect an engineer on the CNO&TP, aka "The Rathole" line between Cincinnati and Chattanooga.
After watching the episode at least 10 times now.. I finally had to get that off of my chest. Amazing episode guys!
right in the feels Liam. I too need to turn the cynicism off lest I google putting a revolver in one's own mouth. And also, 3 attempts here too. same conclusion for me.
I fucking love you guys. you are like a stream of bat piss. a shaft of gold, when all around is dark
Funny, I just saw a debate about the problems w/ battery-electric trains on Reddit a few days ago, then this comes out. Glad to see you guys back consistently!
Sensing Liam needs some cheering up, so I'll just say that I'm really grateful for your part in WTYP, and every time there's a new Lions Led By Donkeys episode there's always a part of me that hopes you're co-hosting. Yay Liam ❤
You guys hit the nail on the head about a lot of stuff. IMO as someone who used to work in the commercial space industry, that's the next frontier for cost cutting techniques that you see like PSR, can't tell you how many times we'd have a business manager make changes to things because they're more concerned about metrics so they get bonuses. One day it could be an MBA deciding you don't really need oxygen.
1:55:12 - this reminds me of the rule-of-thumb for aircraft drop tanks in WW2. Only half of the extra capacity of the drop tanks actually extends the range of the aircraft. The other half is used just to overcome the drag from adding the drop tanks! This is why they were DROP tanks - if you don't actually drop them at the midway point, they cause drag all the way home (even though they're empty) and you get almost no extra range at all! They were usually made of paper and strictly single-use, since the fuel would make the paper go soggy after a while.
17:08 - Liam's comment about reluctant optimism is waaaaay too real
That explains why my Amtrak rides always have a few hour long stops at sidings on specifically Norfolk-Southern routes. I was only told it was because the freight lines own the rail and have priority.
1:59:53 I actually love this pantograph battery loco because it fills a transitional role. It can operate on existing lines with charging stations (like you guys mention), but you gain the ability to charge in motion when you electrify your mainline--even partially. You can also use it to deliver last-mile even after you electrify your mainlines. And, when you eventually have full electrification, you just retire the batteries to save weight. Overall, a Very Useful Engine(tm) at every stage of modernization, and every step of the way makes it increasingly affordable to keep running.
Unfortunately, nothing is as permanent as a temporary solution.
I've literally been re-watching all the train episodes the past few days and now you drop a new one with more trains. I'm happy about this.
I know I'm late to the party here, the way the Lake Shore Limited works is it comes from Chicago to Albany as a single train pulled by a diesel engine. At the Albany station, they separate the cars going to Boston and NYC, and the diesel locomotive continues on with the Boston segment. The segment going to Penn Station gets hooked up to one of the dual-mode diesels they have in Albany. It's reversed for the trains going back to Chicago, and the consist from Penn is taken off the dual-mode locomotive and hooked back up to the diesel.
I'm sure it will work the same in the future with these battery tenders.
Actually the dual-mode engines get swapped out for straight diesels at Albany for most (if not all) of the Adirondack, Ethan Allan, and Maple Leaf routes, as well as the Empire Service routes that go beyond Albany. Amtrak doesn't have that many of the dual-modes, and I think this is the only line they are required on. So it make sense they try to keep them in the area. Albany is one station all those lines stop at, and Amtrak has a decent sized yard and maintenance shop on site. So that's where they switch them out.
It's good to hear Alice plays KSP. Now I see where she gets her passion for making things more rigid. Just add some struts.
These three-hour podcasts are amazing for powering through drudge work without my brain shrivelling in my head, and learning something new along the way. Thank you for your service, comrades!
This show is genuinely educational, this has one of the best descriptions of the insanity of precision scheduled railroading that I've heard. Great job from Justin, Alice and Liam
Battery locos are helpful in container terminals where you can't use overhead wires because of the cranes
If we're talking about PSR magic, I'd like to talk about that time when EHH closed the hump at Symington yard in Winnipeg, which led to every siding capable of handling trains of decent size being occupied. There were dead trains everywhere since the crews were just constantly going over their max hours of service. Insanely efficient, huge success for PSR ! Guess what, he reopened the hump 2 weeks later.
We're still waiting for the Walker (Edmonton) one to get reopened, this terminal's been f----d ever since it got shut down. Just like when Hunter tried shutting down the Robson Sub from Redpass to Taverna, which would have created another 30 miles of single track in addition to the stuff he actually did rip up.
The reason they want their Dahir Insaat type container contraption to platoon with virtual couplers instead of actual couplers is that they want to do away with the shunting yards. And they are sort of dimly aware that attempting to de- and re-couple at march speed would be Very Bad. Obviously you can run these things without any headway, because they all brake and accelerate at the same time, and never fail to do so and rear-end the one in front of it. (If this sounds dumb, that's because it is.)
I mean in theory they could break at the same time, up until one of them fails and derails all the other trains in the middle of nowhere causing a mega large fire and no one knows until its way too big and out of control.
My inner hog oinked happily when I saw the 3 hours of slop that I could devour
So...uh...How's Franklin doing? I'm assuming anarchy is the dominant political ideology without Roz there to steer them...
I, too, miss that series. It was interesting and educational.
Thank you Liam for phrasing my grievances with the anti-headphone jack lobby so concisely and passionately
The crossover I’ve been waiting embarrassingly long for…sent from under some 1935 PRR catenary poles on the NEC
Little known problem with these is that people like to throw them into bodies of water. But, it's so annoying when tourists leave their battery trains in the gutter.
where else would i put my batteries if not the ocean?
@@Stjaernljus I believe the canonical answer for what to do with batteries from this podcast is to stuff them into socks and throw them at Philly refs
Three hours of content? Well aren't we a spoiled bunch. Thanks for the required suffering to create content, it's appreciated.
1:55:40 Yes, it's a lot of power to charge battery electric locomotives; the same amount of power it takes to run electric locomotives that run on overhead lines. Yes, batteries aren't 100% efficient, but neither are overhead power lines.
There's also some misunderstanding about locomotive weight in this video. American locomotives NEED to be heavy in order to create the amount of tractive effort they require. You even touched on this when talking about slugs: they will weigh them down with large blocks of concrete and steel where the engine used to be, in order to make them heavy enough to be useful. We intuitively think that vehicles need to be light to go fast, and this is because F = ma: for a given force, lowering mass increases acceleration. But with locomotives, you don't care about acceleration, you care about tractive effort (I mean, you need enough acceleration to get you up to speed in a reasonable amount of time, but relatively speaking this isn't as big of a factor as tractive effort is). Increasing the weight of the locomotive increases the available grip on the wheels, giving you more tractive effort and therefore more hauling capability.
Back to the matter at hand. You mentioned that the Wabtec electric locomotive is probably pretty heavy compared to a regular GEVO. They're actually about the same weight, because the rail can only support so much weight per axle. Locomotives powered by overhead lines would still need to be this heavy in order to haul the loads they need to haul, so why not fill the extra weight with batteries? With the figures in your video, it looks like Progress Rail can do about 8 to 14 MWh. Still an order of magnitude less than diesel, but good enough for switching, and it can run on overhead lines for long distance operations. You might loose some battery space due to the extra equipment needed for connecting to overhead lines, but the battery needs charging circuitry anyway so it could piggyback off of that. The eight axle shown even has a pantograph - isn't this the best of both worlds?
That said, I agree with a lot of your other analysis. The core problem isn't the technology of batteries, the core problem is mismanagement and executives prioritizing short term profits over long term success. Like PSR: a perfectly fine idea that gets unfairly blamed for issues that are instead caused by mismanagement.
The weight is a minor issue, the real issue is cost. That many batteries is incredibly expensive and incredibly environmentally damaging to produce, wired systems are cheaper and better in high traffic areas(main lines) but battery trains have their place in low traffic areas where the cost to establish a wired network is more than using batteries
Maybe Something like the IORE - which about 50t of lead on board for ballast - but 2 of them will happily haul 8000t of ore .
this podcast gets me thru the monotonous, agonizing march towards death that is my 8 to 5 job
love all of you
The key sources of power: Spicy rocks, zesty rocks, rock juice, sky breath, space fireplace, wet valley, and dirt pipes.
Nitrous oxides do form from lightning strikes. Most of it is caused by humans of course. We really messed up the nitrogen cycle but what can you do.
My dad used to work for a company making current collectors for trains. Was bought up by Wabtec and he absolutely hated them. Not as much as he hated the french though. Bane of his existence.
2:39:45
"Go Nuclear"
Hell YES!
bUt ChErNoBLe!!!!!!!!!!
@@wtice4632
The funny thing is that Chornobyl is now a very nice wildlife reserve for endangered European animals. Potchers don't go there for fear of the radiation, so you don't need anyone to keep potchers out.
I know that behind the scenes the reluctancy to invest in improvements is a profit motive thing but I think that for the public and to a certain extent politicians the thing that attracts people to battery electric trains is twofold. 1 it sounds easier and cheaper cause the average person isn’t gonna think about the charging infrastructure problem. They just think like oh we can just put the battery train on the network and we don’t need to invest any further. 2 pure aesthetics. People don’t like the look of overhead wires and so they’re bad.
Thank you so much for cranking pod you wonderful people
Edit : I am a little sad there was no shitting on the queen's demise in the goddam news and I don't use twitter so .....
The queen's demise was well-engineered.
@@Bob.martens
...If you mean she was offed, she was 96. If you mean her death was well-planned for...well,yes.
Well, the new Kill James Bond's been teased to be all about it, so 1/3....?
Love the return to train content. Would love to see a piece on Canadian Pacific's mainline hydrogen fuel cell locomotive project too (aka, the only possible direct replacement for diesel electric locomotives with none of the capital costs of catenary electric, aka the most likely choice for North American railway bean counters).
I appreciate that this three hour tour ended with a boating accident.
This was a good comment, ech to languish in obscurity…
Beast of an episode. Larry's Truck and Electric really sent me down a rabbit trail.
The other day I was talking with my boss about the state of trains in America and I couldn't help but think of this podcast when they told me they think trains should go nuclear.
Liam makes this podcast ten times better. Nothing makes me laugh harder than liam, except Liam and Alice.
There needs to be an episode on PSR and/or E. Hunter Harrison in the style of the Penn Station rant.
Unexpected WTYP and with Alan Fisher??!! This is now an excellent Monday
Finally got the train episode with Alan Fisher that I've been waiting for.
You could run one 150 train one way and two 75 trains the other, then the next day you do it the other way around. I do this in Factorio sometimes because I like overcomplicating my railways for no reason.
Hell yeah 3 hours of content to finish the workday with
"Baltimore and Ohio were the first..."
We used to be a proper country.