The #1 comment in here is that the US should use catenary (aka overhead contact line, trolley wire, etc) cables to electrify it’s freight rail network like many other countries (India, China, Russia, etc) have. Definitely read through the other comments but want to pin a response to this. 1. In contrast to countries like India and China, US freight rail is not owned by the government. The US government cannot simply decree that all freight rail act in unison and string up catenary. Given that there are dozens (hundreds?) of railroads that operate through and between the US, Mexico, and Canada, it would be extremely challenging to get the thousands of stakeholders to agree to completely change the way the network operates. 2. For overhead catenary, the US has a unique bug… tornadoes and high winds. The US experiences an order of magnitude more tornadoes (1,000+) each year than any other country, making overhead catenary cables a major vulnerability if they were to be implemented. This is not a problem that India, Russia, China, or Europe really have to deal with. India had four tornadoes last year. 3. As the person behind this video I do not have an opinion on whether the US freight rail should run on diesel, batteries, catenary, horses, or bananas. Batteries and hydrogen are highlighted because that is where industry money is flowing. No executives at any of the railroads, or equipment manufacturers, are talking about or putting money towards third rail electrification or catenary. The other popular question... can trains switch engines at the California border? Technically, this infrastructure could be built. But when California adopts new emission standards there are 18 other states that usually adopt them as well, some in an almost automatic process. These are known as Section 177 states. So in effect, when this policy goes into action, it will likely be implemented in these other states. California will not be the lone state banning diesel engines. As a rail executive you would know this, and you would therefore not build out infrastructure to switch engines, you would skate towards where the puck will end up.
"No executives at any of the railroads, or equipment manufacturers, are talking about or putting money towards third rail electrification or catenary" because the industry avoids spending any money on infrastructure like the plague. They value running bulk products without guaranteed schedules, because that's what maximizes shareholder value, hence the disaster which is Precision Scheduled Railroading, which like the Holy Roman Empire is neither precise nor scheduled and is barely considered railroading. As I've said elsewhere, catenaries work and have been shown to work for over a century, while these other technologies you highlight are at best pipe dreams, especially when considered within the timeline mandated by California. Here's a good youtube video from the Well There's Your Problem Podcast (a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides) that goes over the disaster which is American Freight Railroads: ua-cam.com/video/jNkYNjADoZg/v-deo.html
@@musicandefy It really all has to be one or the other, catenary or third rail. Third rail would eliminate--to a degree--the tornado/wind problem but it still introduces a significant vulnerability to needing running electricity. Look at the Texas area right now and all the power outages they're having, if freight rail were electrified it would all be down in those areas right now, just totally stranded. Texas is a good example of the overall electric problem because it has extreme weather--prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, and heat--but is also the US state that has the most freight rail traffic.
@@musicandefy Third rail has 2 problems. (1) Since it is at ground level, it is dangerous to both trespassing wildlife and humans (2) it has a limited voltage and current capacity. It is ok to use in protected subway tunnels running light weight subway trains, but it it be useless to power large freight locomotives, which need 3.5 million to 4.5 million watts *each* to run. Freight trains in North American can weight over 20,000 tons and run at 50 to 70 mph. You need a massive amount of power for this and you are not getting that to work through a 3rd rail setup.
What people don’t understand is that modern locomotives are HYBRIDS! A diesel engine powers an electric generator with then powers the locomotive! That’s why they are so fuel efficient Edit: ok well not actually hybrids they still operate in a electric-diesel combination
Exactly. They’ve been that way since day one. Also I would say they are very fuel efficient mostly because they have steel wheels rolling on steel rails. Low coefficient of friction
Technically, they are NOT Hybrids. They just convert the mechanical energy of the diesel engine to electrical energy to power the traction motors. But, I get your point.
@@ellisjackson336 Hybrids by definition have a battery storage capacity that also allows regeneration from braking. Diesel-Electric locomotive have neither feature. Instead of using a purely mechanical transmission, they just convert the mechanical power into electrical power to power traction motors. This is the preferred way to do it for heavy equipment. The very largest mining trucks use the same system. The AC induction motors used to power the axles are virtually indestructible compared to a complex mechanical transmission.
@@markantony3875 I figured that the reason would’ve been due to no regenerative braking sending energy back into batteries. Probably because the tech for rechargeable batteries was not there yet when diesel locos were invented in the early 1900s. I’ve always known that they don’t use a mechanical transmission, although there have been some small switcher locomotives that do. Plus considering all of the weight that trains move, it would be a bit infeasible to use a mech transmission. One traction motor weighs 14000 lbs.
India has already reached 95% electrification of its railroads. They use overhead wires to achieve this. In the US, only 1% of mainline railroads have overhead power. This is an absolute joke. In the long run, overhead power lines are the only option if you are serious about replacing diesel on railroads. The American railroads have absolutely no intention of getting rid of diesel. All this talk about hydrogen and battery trains is just a tax dodge by the railroads.
India's rail is state owned and operated, making it much easier for India to decree it's rail be electrified. With the thousands of rail stakeholders in the US, the size of the network, and that it connects with Mexico and Canada, electrifying via something like catenary is a virtual impossibility imo. Someone will say the railroads should be state owned then, and well, that's a totally different type of argument. And one I don't think gets anywhere.
@@Maxinomics I don't know, I think it gets a lot further than a battery locomotive. No idea where you got the 800 mile range figure from. Even battery multiple units (with much more space for batteries than a loco-hauled train) in use right now for passenger transport are short range, and usually rely on being on the wires for most of their journeys.
800 miles comes from the specs from the BEEs that are being tested today. But, I''ll be the first to admit, that is a true best-case scenario. And as an EV owner, I don't think I've ever hit the best-case scenario for my vehicle. On the other hand though, adding battery capacity to a train that hauls heavy cars as it's job isn't particularly complicated. The complicated part is ensuring reliability, sourcing the batteries at reasonable cost, and providing charging infrastructure that doesn't disrupt rail operations. What a lot of the comments on these videos tend to assume is that it's my opinion when I say battery-electric is next, but that's not my job. I'm relaying what the railroads and OEMs are saying and doing. OCLs aren't in any conversation, hydrogen is a distant second to battery-electric engines (BEE). There are multiple pilot programs for BEEs. Is it going to come to fruition? That's less of a certainty, but that's the path being traveled first.
@@Maxinomics Look at germanys train network. It used to be all private companies. They built a train network with all different operators and track gauges even. However a lot of companies were able to get to an agreement to built overhead wires and have standard gauge on their network. And btw. have you heard of dual mode locomotives? Existing locomotives (at least a large percentage) is already diesel-electric. Essentially they use their engine as a generator. If you only built overhead wires in california, that would already be a huge win for everybody, since from there on you can expand the network bit by bit with dual mode locomotives.
Gonna refer back to this comment… “What a lot of the comments on these videos tend to assume is that it's my opinion when I say battery-electric is next, but that's not my job. I'm relaying what the railroads and OEMs are saying and doing. OCLs aren't in any conversation, hydrogen is a distant second to BEEs. There are multiple pilot programs for BEEs.”
I'd like to point out if the railroads don't strike a deal with the state to get the law revoked, they might just throw up wires to the border of California and never fully electrify the mainline. Simply adding an electric on the front and using the previous engines traction motors would be far easier. This practice has existed for decades as many railroads swapped electric power for steam or diesel at points along the mainline, PRR at Harrisburg, NYC outside of the city, MILW at Chicago, etc.
As part of the inner circle, we both agree that railroads are greedy bastards. What you said is the most plausible course of action if California enforces this.
@@train7163 Greed has nothing to due with it. The cost to electrify the lines would be so high it would only make sense on the heaviest used main lines. Branch lines and the short line smaller railroads would be abandoned due to the cost to upgrade. Thus California would only increase carbon emissions as more freight would have to move on trucks on overloaded highways. The other effect is California would only loose more jobs due to some rail dependent factories moving to states where railroads could serve them. The rural farming areas would also hurt if the smaller railroads were not available to move their products to the main line railroads terminals.
Some people don't remember that the Milwaukee Road Railroad was one of the longest electricafied Railroads in America. Most of it's power was generated in the upper northwest rockies to power their 🚆.
@@WAL_DC-6B Many don't know that the electric engines, nicknamed "Little Joe's " , were built for the Russian Railroad 🤔 for the then President Joseph Stoland. Then the cold War started and were never shipped. The Milwaukee Road got them for pennies. One remains on display at the Lake Shore Historical Society in North East, Pennsylvania. Hope this helps 🙏 ☺.
@@richardbause2453 According to the book, "The Electric Way Across the Mountains" (2nd ed.), General Electric offered all 20 "Little Joes" to the Milwaukee Road for 1 million dollars in 1948. The Milwaukee initially hesitated as at the time it was even considering eliminating all electric operations and dieselizing instead. A "Little Joe" was also tested on the Milwaukee, and it did not quite perform as GE said it would. In the meantime, the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad and Paulista Railway of Brazil each respectively purchased 3 and 5 of the "Joes." Finally, the Milwaukee decided it indeed wanted the engines. But by now only 12 were left and the Milwaukee had to purchase the remaining units from GE in "as-is" condition for the original 1 million dollars that could have bought them all 20. The Milwaukee Road put the "Joes" into service starting in the Fall of 1950.
@@WAL_DC-6B Cool, thanks 😊. We'll head to The Lake Shore Historical Society in North East,Pennsylvania to start putting wire up across Pennsylvania and New York State 😄😁.
I mean, there's obvious third option; electrification of rails. It has all the benefits; unlimited range, higher power, no emissions. Also hybrid-solutions are an option, where there's small battery for last mile or shorter non-electrified sections, but mainly using overhead lines.
@@Maxinomics Nothing forces to electrify everything in one go, some not at all. First within California, then mainlines connected to California. Then selected mainlines elsewhere. Lightly used have no need to be electrified at all. It would be just like every other country with rail.
@@Maxinomicsperhaps you could make a calculation of this option as a follow up video. I also think it would be cheaper to use/implement existing technology than waiting for new options to emerge.
@@jaketus I see your point, I just think about it from the standpoint of the railroads and how complicated those network/schedules are and think it's one of those things that seems quite simple at first but quickly becomes a nightmare on implementation. Especially across dozens of private rail companies operating in three countries. What I'm trying to convey in this video isn't my opinion--I don't have a dog in the fight on how the network is electrified, that's not my thing. This is what's happening in the the US rail industry, what's being talked about on conference calls, industry conferences, etc. Railroads and OEMs are making moves forward with battery-electric engines, they are not talking at all about catenary or any other from of electrification.
@@Maxinomics ok but this needs to happen anyway. Buying trillions of dollars of batteries that will need to be replaced every 10 years is not feasible. Catenary electrification is what is needed and I imagine we will see tri-parallel locomotives that have a smaller diesel engine, a battery for hybrid operation, and a pantograph for electrical pickup. Weight is not a concern because locomotives need tons of weight anyway to achieve traction, and often even add weight ballasting for this very purpose. Time and time again it has been made clear that the numbers just dont support electrification. Look up Alan Fisher's video on why battery electric locomotives are foolish. Hybrid battery/ diesel / electric? Not dumb at all. The technology for all this very much already exists, we just need to give the rail companies an impetus to do it and this is it. And yes, 160k miles of electrified track is not some extreme thing. Europe did it with fewer resources, so can we. Tired of the "oh the same rules don't apply here" argument lol. Not even 50 years ago the Milwaukee Road the Penn Central had electrified main line freight lines. I will say it again, it needs to happen eventually, we might as well start catching up now.
There is another option you are forgetting. The railroads just dont do it and stop their trains outside of California. Back when PTC was about to be mandated by law before eVerything was installed, the class 1s quit accepting some hazmat loads at interchange, forcing the governent to extend the time railroads had to install PTC. California ports will come to a halt and the federal goverment will have to step in to stop an economic crisis from happening, and the railroads have their way.
My thoughts exactly, It's all about profit for the class 1's and especially the class 3's. This will kill those smaller railroads that rely on California. But, also knowing the Class 1's they will just be like "Meh, Just bring us your goods on truck to Nevada or New Mexico." or they will just open a new port in Oregon or Washington
There are already ports in Mexico with major investor backing gearing up to bypass West Coast U.S. and Canadian government and union bllsht. Trains will take it from there.
I think you're utterly delusional and stupid. California has the 5th largest economy in the world AS A STATE. Why would a profit-motivated company abandon the thing that literally keeps it alive? Have you never heard of electric trains?
I'm not arguing that it's a bad idea, in fact I think it's likely going to be a big part of the move to BEE, but most likely not directly at the locomotive as we see in light rail across most installations. I suspect that what we will start seeing is stretches of 100 miles or so every 500 miles of rail, where "Battery Cars' will raise a catenary to an installation of overhead power that will be used to recharge the batteries. The aim won't be to bring them to 100%, more likely they will aim to bring them to about 80% of capacity from hopefully not below 20%. Eventually these cars will have traction motors that will run directly off the batteries on board, but be controlled by lead locomotives in much the same way that locomotives today often have mid-line locomotives for distributing the power load over the length of the train. Long term we may see the lead locomotive simply become a control cab. Longer term fewer of the battery cars will be needed as more and more catenary drive power units are added to the mix along with more miles of overhead line. The problem I believe most rail is looking at is that since there isn't an overhead power system in the US that is used for heavy rail, and especially not for the lengths of trains they are running today, they look at putting that infrastructure in and maintaining it, as an added expense that they don't want to pick up, especially as none of their current set of locomotives can make use of it. Yes we have had electrified rail for heavy rail in the past, I believe that the MIlwaukee Road line through Montana was electrified, but I'm pretty sure that any locomotives from that era wouldn't qualify under California rules, if only because of their age. If any were still viable, I'm pretty sure that they might get an exception, but I'm pretty sure all of them were junked. I'm guessing however that the 'stopgap' measure is going to be making use of sidings outside of the state of california to stage locomotives that can be used to move single or dual engine pulled sections into California. This won't be an easy help for remote power locomotives in a train, that's going to require more engineers, more engines, and more time for each train to hook up and swap out locomotives. I don't see that as being a good solution, even short term. Especially with all of the effort that the railroads have been making to cut down on the number of crews that get deployed. Long term, yes the overhead power solution is likely to be the solution, it's just bridging the decades between when the restrictions go into effect, and when the facilities and locomotives are available and in deployment. Mean time I suspect we're going to see a lot more container ships going to the port of Seattle.
@@sophiamhartsfield I feel like people who always preach that forget that A) the power still has to come from a source, one that probably isn't green. B) there used to be several major electrified freight railroads in America. The technology predates diesel electric locomotives. Namely, Pennsylvania Railroad, Virginian, and the Milwaukee Road. Funnily enough, none of those railroads are around, and they or their successors removed the electrification. Interesting how that works out huh? Edit: I also want to add that freight railroads only contribute 0.5% of pollution in America. The EPA themselves have said that electrification is effectively pointless for this reason.
If this becomes federal, Hundreds of smaller railroads are going to go belly up. This is such a horrid policy and will be horrendously expensive. The only way I see this working is a nationalized railroad and the closure of all private roads, but, look at how well that worked with Amtrak...
@@mr.sir. Conrail worked for a short time and in a small area, sure shared assets still exist but in the us at least nationalized anything isnt sustainable just due to how us Americans are and how independent we like to be.
The reason why Amtrak failed is because they didn't nationalize the rail. Private companies still own the rail lines and SHOULD give Amtrak the right of way, but they don't. Nationalized rail would probably fix a lot of the issues we are currently seeing with rail, where the rail companies are racing to spend less money by neglecting employees and track maitenance
Electric locomotives powered by overhead electric lines are the cheapest and most efficient option for moving railroad freight. They don't need to carry hydrogen tanks or batteries which reduces the load being carried by the train which does not earn it money.
‘Cheapest?’ Do you know how many billions upon billions the railroads would have to invest to electrify when they barely want to pay for upkeep of their infrastructure and equipment?
Mainline railroad infrastructure and equipment is in better condition than ever, but it is a low margin business and that kind of major capital upgrade is not possible.
@@stir-fryblobbut at the same time if no trains are running in California that means they would need to truck them in means 1 truck for 1 intermodal container rather than one locomotive for 100 intermodal containers at the least and that's with a modern locomotive, so if something like this were to happen trucking is WAY more fuel costly than the trains and thats not getting into cars fuel
Just consider, the cost of these new traction engines (if they don’t just convert some engines to use catenary only in California) is coming directly from consumers in the form of shipping costs. Most food goods are transported on rail at one point or another, during the production of food.
That's nice, one problem I can see. One really huge problem I see is, California's electrical grid is seriously out dated, if it can cause a fire that turns into a huge wild fire then it's time to upgrade you electrical grid. Cause it is not good enough handle charging cars let alone semis and now you want trains on batteries. Forget it, until you upgrade that entire system you can take trains off the list.
@@WAL_DC-6BIt will never happen. Nearly every ounce of them is insanely toxic and nobody wants to even rebuild them because the transformers alone have huge amounts of PCB oil. Then there's asbestos, beryllium, etc.
@@WAL_DC-6B Besides the question of the steel structure starting to fail the transformers on the GG 1 used a toxic oil to cool them. So even though there are several saved GG 1’s they will most likely never run under their own power again. Not to mention they were only able to operate over the old Pennsylvania Railroad electrification system. Most modern systems use higher voltages and different AC electric cycles.
@johnchambers8528 Do a modified restoration. Classic exterior with modern electrical and electronics system & multiple voltage overhead pantograph. With using modern electrical and electronics, you use a lot less space compared to what the older electrical systems used inside the GG1 locomotive and with modern updates you can keep maintenance way down and provide a fully climate controlled cab for the operators. Maybe even fit in a bathroom onboard in one of the noses of the GG1. Also, have modern updated controls in the cab and Positive Train Control installed. Also, have it built to be a large battery electric locomotive like EMD's Joule Battery locomotive but also have the modern ability to run on multiple overhead catenary voltages or just on battery power alone. As well as have controls to run in multiple unit operations with other passenger and freight diesel electric locomotives. Run on point at the front of the train and be able to go anywhere. It's doable, it just takes money and support. 😊
@@johnks6733 electrifying the US Rail system would require doubling the electrical grid, including the number of power plants a transmission lines. Same would be if you tried to have only all electric vehicles. It's just not feasible. "Dirty Nuclear", lol. Nuclear is probably the only real solution to clean AND stable electrical grid.
@@lylestavast7652nah, you can’t be that dense 😂 lol. If you get your electricity from fossil fuels, then all of the “betterment for the environment” goes out the window. It’s like “look at my electric car, 0 emissions” ( while the fact that lithium and rare earth mining is actually some of the worst mining in the world, or the fact that most electricity is still fossil fuel operated). lol 😂
If you have any clue the amount of energy that is used on a mainline train going hundreds of miles a day then you would understand that battery locomotives are a total joke. Half the train would be battery cars. completely ridiculous.
Tje only time a battery locomotive makes sense is if it was an industrial engine, a locomotive that moves a couple cars a day and barely leaves the site or yard. For long distance locomotives it just ain't economical
Catenaries are a great invention you know.. Trains could even be hybrid. Run on wire parts of the time and run on battery/hydrogen the rest of the time. My country recently introduced hybrid catenary/diesel trains on streches previously only served by pure diesel. Bigger, faster, more comfortable. ua-cam.com/video/ZLRwjieJJtg/v-deo.html Quality trains built by Stadler. In my country the big city ferries have been converted to fully electric as well. These are quite big passenger ferries ua-cam.com/video/7bwLhe3NJi8/v-deo.html
There is a decent potential for hybrid locomotives. I know a guy working in an iron mine. Apparently they did the numbers and found that by adding a modest sized battery to their ore trains they could roughly half fuel consumption. Mostly because the mine is a above sea level and the distance isn't terribly long, so the train descends to the port fully laden, and climbs back up empty, leaving huge potential for regenerative braking. Off course, what they really wanted was overhead grid power. That would be way cheaper and easier. But the mining company doesn't operate the rail network, just the ore trains. So diesel hybrid came up as the next best thing that could be done with only minor redesigns of their current diesel electric locomotives. They also looked at options for full battery electric, but that would either require a ridiculous charging rate to keep up with the current quick turnarounds, or major redesigns of their loading and offloading infrastructure to give battery trains time to sit and charge at currently achievable speeds.
The reason many of those lawsuits against California were unsuccessful in the past was because the protections of Chevron Deference. With Chevron Deference no longer existing I think you may see a lawsuit over it that may be more successful.
A modern locomotive now currently makes around 500 miles per 1 gallon of diesel for one ton of freight, a intermodal railcar can weight around and I could be wrong but is around 100,000-200,000 pounds each train is around 150-200 for a mainline so you do the math on how fuel efficient a locomotive now is
Don't forget that CPKC have already made a small handful of hydrogen-powered locomotives that, as far as I know, are operating successfully in road service up in Canada. The main issue, though, as the video suggests, is the current lack of infrastructure to support these locomotives and transporting hydrogen to such facilities to refuel these locomotives, so as of yet they only operate in a small area. The concept is there, they just need to figure out how to implement the support infrastructure. I don't think large-scale electrification is an option. Our energy infrastructure is probably already near its limit and despite how "green" energy has become more of a focus in recent years it still isn't nearly as good at producing energy as fossil fuels nor so far is it nearly as cost-effective given the amount of energy it produces versus the amount of energy actually required. The electricity to run said electric railways has to come from somewhere and until we figure out how to make "green" energy more efficient and cost-effective you'd have to go with fossil fuels or build more nuclear power plants, but everyone is apparently scared of the work "nuclear" because they immediately think of bombs and the Chernobyl meltdown despite the fact that 1) Nuclear power plants are not stationary nuclear bombs and are actually much safer than other types of power plants and 2) Chernobyl was a freak accident in the technologically-lacking and backwards-thinking Soviet Union - nuclear energy safety has come a long way since then.
I have heard talk about moving the line into Mexico, to port locations one in the gulf of mexico and the other on the pacific side of Baja California and just by pass california all together. Basically cutting california out of the system
All that is needed is for California to electrify their tracks with overhead electric lines, and train engine owners to add the catinaries, transformers and power control units to enable their trains to switch from diesel to electric when they enter an electrified track area. This is already being done in other countries.
"all that is needed"... that's a lot that is needed. Especially for an industry that is not owned by the government in the US, as opposed to countries like India.
Other countries arent a total capitalistic shit show. It’s costing the California taxpayers 300 million per mile for the “new” State sponsored high speed rail corridor and has gone what? 40 miles? Not to mention almost 100% of the states rail is privately owned by BNSF or Union Pacific.
yankeesforlife24 No other place has the rail freight market share that North America does, nor the low prices for rail shipping. Europe is clogged with trucks compared to the U.S. because of bureaucratic bllsht.
Dual mode locomotives have been around forever and are a joke. They cost 3X, are expensive to maintain, and have had a history of operational problems.
That is correct but they had to retire due to the cooling oil in their transformers. Also you have to build out the electric wires and substations to feed the electric into the wires. Most people also don’t realize two dams were built on the Susuquanaha river to add electric generation to help supply power to the electrified rail lines when the Pennsylvania Railroad built the electrification for their main line. Does California have the spare electrical power generation to be able to power a full statewide mainline railroad system? Most likely not.
@@pootispiker2866 Yes I do! Trains regardless of fuel are the most energy efficient mode of transportation. The problem with using electric powered trains is the expense to build the substations and wire instillation needed to run it. It is only economical where there is very heavy freight or passenger train traffic. That is why you usually only see it where there is a lot of commuter trains in passenger service. In the east where you mentioned the GG1 is a system that was built by the Pennsylvania and New Haven railroads and the final section to Boston was built by Amtrak. Conrail the government sponsored freight railroad shut down the electrified routes that they first operated and changed to diesel engines due to the economics of being able to run through the old electrified territory with diesel engines instead of having to change to electric engines for only part of the trip. You also have to have the electric grid have available power to run the trains. When the Pennsylvania railroad electrified its lines two hydro electric dams were constructed to help power the system. So electrification is not a simple solution to reduce emission’s to run the trains.
Honestly I say challenge the regulations as being a threat to the economy, also challenge the clean air act for giving California the power to decide these things without giving anyone else any say. Zero emissions is not an option, railroads don't even change motive power when a train is handed off to another railroad, and complete electrification is impossible, and batterys are nonviable for anything more then industrial use or just getting a train thru the tunnel to Penn Station in New York City.
All that's going to happen is that trains will change engines before entering California. And yes, they can do that with just a few miles of new sidings. That will increase costs but won't lead to the replacement of engines.
The entire rail network does not need to be electrified, just the rails in California, the diesel can be disengaged and shut down and input power brought in from rails or overhead, this will still require new engines a bit longer and heavier to accommodate the new equipment but doable and cheaper than all the other solutions.
You mean economically or environmentally worse? Because if we're talking about emissions, electric locomotive powered by coal power plant is slightly less polluting than diesel one (and I guess that California uses mostly gas and renewables, with a little bit of nuclear to generate electricity).
@thelloydersvk5068 I'm saying that Cali doesn't have the electrical output to support electrifying. They already tell people to limit when they charge their EVs. Lol And you're telling me that a diesel ELECTRIC locomotive somehow pollutes more than a coal power plant that burns train loads of coal? HAHAHAHAHAHA. Oh, and by the way, I do have a bridge for sale if you're interested.
Exactly. However, a modest battery could be useful for regenerative rather than dynamic braking. it would reduce the energy required by the train, as well as allow continued operation if the catenary goes down, or, if there are gaps between lines.
Restrictions on interstate commerce are problematic. RR have no clear path to electrical power, which works on very. Dense lines only. Moreover even if alternative power was available the huge and very short term investment would make the transition impossible. Another example of activists and politicians demanding technological change that is not feasible
Very dense lines only? Someone better tell literally all of Europe and Siberia! They'll be so mad when they find out their electric trains do not in fact work.
1:47 - this photo is of downtown Los Angeles, specifically the intersection of Fifth Street and Grand Avenue, looking south from Grand. The Los Angeles Public Library, downtown branch, will be built on the southwest corner of this intersection and in 1991, the Gas Company Tower will be built on the northeast corner of this intersection. The Biltmore Hotel can be seen in the background on the south east corner, and still exists today. Likewise, the Edison building on the northwest corner still exists as shown, including the handrail following the sloped sidewalk.
South Africa has electric locomotives. Problem comes in if the electricity supply system crashes. Then those trains will stand. Also, we have a lot of catenary theft and that is a major headache.
isn't it cheaper in the long run to electrify the main lines with overhead wire? I mean electrification has huge advantages compared to non electrified lines.
Yes, but railroads have adopted the quarterly profits accounting practice, and the cost of the dedicated infrastructure installation (a one time cost) and maintenance (wear and tear on the cables and catenaries, as well as training up new maintenance crews for the new locomotives) won't show a profit in the next 90 days. Keep in mind that what the railroads call rail maintenance in the USA would be considered criminal in Europe. Deregulation has that effect at times.
@@RNMSC wow. I didn’t know the US railroad is so blind. 90 day of profit for an zero emission and vastly more powerful rolling stock is something they should strive for. I mean an electric locomotive could reach powers of up to 10.000PS which would also eliminate the need for a lot of locomotives as you don’t need 4 or 5 for a heavy train. But if the government would fund such an upgrade it could be possible for the US to go full electric.
@@MrLOLCraftLP1 Horsepower is useless if you don't have tractive effort, and US locomotives have the most. Electric locomotives are lighter without purposely ballasting them and even if you do, you'll still need more than one because you have to distribute the power throughout the train. Obviously, electrifying the railroad means provide electricity, and if it isn't green, you accomplished nothing.
The problem here for North America is (1) The grid does not have enough current capacity to power the railroad industry and (2) The cost of installing 50,000 volt overhead powerlines above the rails and (3) Once 1 and 2 are solved, we will need a massive increase in power generation capacity. The typical modern diesel-electric locomotive in North American service can produce 3.5 million watts of power continuously. Multiply that by the 10's of thousands of locomotives in use daily, and you need a massive amount of power to run the railroad industry across North America. The locomotive issue is relatively simply to fix. Diesel-Electric locomotives *are* electric locomotives that carry their own power plant. Just replace the diesel engine/ traction alternator with a step down transformer, add pantographs on top of the locomotive to contact the overhead lines and bingo, you have an all electric locomotive with no need to replace the entire locomotive.
Then why did you elect presidents who blew off maintaining our infrastructure to go to stupid wars like Vietnam and Iraq? If we had anybody but Reagan we would be well past this issue. What a shit for brains take you had.
This is the stupidest decision ever made by so-called “environmentalists” It is a golden handout to the trucking industry, which is far less efficient, far more environmentally destructive, and far more costly to the public than railroads. If California regulators had any sense they’d stop this asinine idea right now, and instead look into funding electrification and technology transition.
0 emission at the point of use, not 0 emission at the point of energy production. Considering the waste of lost electricity in transporting it to the point of use, this is horrible for the environment. But coal companies will love this. We also don't have the electricity production to support homes and industry right now. Thats why we have rolling brown outs. This is what happens when people who don't understand science make decisions based on popular ideas that are not feasible.
Overhead electrified rail is like metric; most of the world does it this way therefore USA will have to do it some different way which doesn’t make any sense.
Either way, we need to have the ability to operate these trains independently of using just electricity. Redundancy and Wartime considerations demand such.
@@pootispiker2866 We always take Wartime factors under consideration. It's almost like our entire interstate system and other works expressly have that as a cornerstone of design consideration. It's almost like War is one of the primary providences of the government and one of the reasons (primary reason) that the State enjoys a near monopoly on Force (Violence).
I wonder how long that's going to work, considering the fact that there have been a substantial number of arial copper mining operations collecting high tension power lines in various parts of the country. Not making the news all that much these days, but since large stretches of these have network fiber infrastructure attached to the static lines, and I've worked with carriers of various longhaul data carriers over the years, I assure you that it's still an issue in many places. I have little doubt that this is going to be an issue on freight line rail lines in remote parts of the country.
@@RNMSCTrans Siberian Railroad has been using these wires in Siberia for many years. Also, you should visit one of these rail lines going in and out of California. You would be shocked at how busy they are, night and day. Listen to the video, count the numbers, and then figure out how many trains per hour.
@@jacobpfeifertrains1998 Much less expensive than developing technologies that may never be feasible and certainly aren't going to be available in time
I can’t wait until my electricity goes off on a 100* day because the grid can’t keep up. I think the Companies need to build power plants first before anyone even discusses this. Or is the tail going to wag the dog as usual ?
I still feel that this regulation will either be rescinded or overturned by federal legislation. The clean air act is only a law. It could be amended at any time by the majority of congress and presidential approval. Also California needs to realize they are now the main point of entry for imports and exports of rail based intermodal freight but railroads can use other ports outside California. Either in other western states or Mexico or Canada. Just look at the recent merger of Canadian Pacific and Kanas City Southern. The main reason for the merger was to provide seamless rail service between Canada, United States and Mexico. Union Pacific which also has major California routes also has been investing in upgrading Mexican railroad lines. Canadian National also has made arrangements to improve service between the three countries as well as having great port connections on the gulf coast of the United States. So if California does succeed in implementing these regulations on train engines there are ways to bypass the state and still get business done.
I'm thoroughly surprised that you only have like 1.6k subscribers on this channel. Your content and presentation is great. I'm looking forward to seeing more from this channel!
Instead of or in addition to fighting, the railroads need subsidiaries building mini-nuclear plants near major rail lines, so there is power available to re-charge all the locomotives. Suggest going with the Thorium molten salt versions. In many places you can grab a chunk of dirt and it will have Thorium salts in it. A little purification and it is ready to run a reactor. Drawbacks are minor and if they get out of whack, you just pull the freeze plug and let the molten salt out and it stops reacting almost instantly.
What a stupid and wasteful idea. We already have a power grid. Your dumb idea would waste billions that we could put into that for upgrading to handle rail traffic.
When California decides to set an emission standard above federal standards California has to submit a waiver request to the EPA and the EPA has to sign off on it. But the EPA has denied just one of these requests and that denial ended up being reversed a year later. I don’t have an exact count on how many waiver requests California has submitted, but it’s somewhere between 50-100.
@@Renzel_NYC with that being said there are a lot of ways to look at this. Some of which: - How do the railroads fare? - What’s the profit look like for the train manufacturers? - The charging and grid infrastructure has to be built by someone. - How much tighter does this make the battery supply chain and where are the bottlenecks? Bottlenecks tend to move prices dramatically. - how is the additional electricity generated?
Where would you put the overhead catenary? Many of the current rail lines had their tracks LOWERED to allow double stacked container cars to travel through them. These HIGH voltage catenary lines would need lots of clearance above the double stacked cars. Existing bridges and tunnels do not offer the proper clearance to allow this. Using a 3rd rail is not an option due to all the grade crossings, and the general public safety issues of high voltage electric. Also, many rail lines run through very remote areas of the country where there is not the electrical infrastructure available to supply the required power. All new transmission lines would need to be constructed to supply this power, as well as building the catenary system. Great Northern had several miles of their line electrified going through the Cascade tunnel. Train had to stop and swap locomotives at each end of this electrified line. There are reasons why this was eliminated.
The most cost effective solution will be a hybrid locomotive. Use diesel up to the cal border and switch to either batteries or third rail/ catenary power.
It not just RR's that need to follow this rule but trucking also. Maybe construction equipment also, on and on. I believe the mayor of Boston, Mass has said that no government construction can be done with diesel equipment. Let see how far that goes with electric powered construction equipment not even available yet.
Can a state regulate the railway. I thought that the US railway was totally regulated by the Federal government. For example, in Dallas they passed a law that a railroad couldn't block a crossing for more than 10 minutes, or they could ticket the engineer. This law ment nothing because they couldn't regulate the federally controlled railways. Doesn't the same thing happen for California and this law.
Years ago California banned railroad refrigerator cars that were using two stroke diesel engines to power the refrigeration plant. That stuck so I would say the answer is yes.
What the hell? I run my HO Scale model layout in Newell, CA to Klamath Falls, OR. Now I got to worry about this in the next 10 years! LOL. Great, there goes my budget for the decade!
Locomotives are not all diesel. The only thing the large diesel does is turn an equally large traction alternator to produce 3.5 million watts of electric power. The rest of the locomotive runs just like an all electric locomotive.
Don't forget dual-mode locomotives already exist on passenger rail in New Jersey and New York - they can simply acrivate a third rail or pantographs and switch off the diesel engine and vice versa.
Over head wires are incompatible with most of US trains are double stacked intermodal containers. The other issue is California can’t even maintain its own power grid as it is without electric trains
@@danielcarroll3358 No they don't. It's just a "show off". The "indian" trains are NOT well cars so the pantograph is sitting WAY HIGH to the point it loses tension to holding to the wire. Since North America uses well cars, the pantograph is still low and thus holds strong tension.
There are several other states that generally say, "California rules seem better than the standard federal rules, let's go with them." And they do. These states are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. The courts have ruled that they have the power to make that choice. State's rights and all that.
@@danielcarroll3358 this is exactly right and what I point out when viewers on short-form have suggested railroads will just build yards outside of CA and switch. That would work but only if others states don’t then adopt the standard, and other states will adopt the standard. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there are a few states that have legislation that automatically adopts CA emission standards
@@Maxinomics There is a DOE website that lists the states that have adopted the California ZEV, LEV and ACT standards: afdc.energy.gov/laws/california-standards#/tab-zev
@@danielcarroll3358 That also means they have the right to rescind that decision. If they feel it will hurt their economy and tax revenue I am sure they will not adopt the California railroad rule.
One thing this video forgot to mention about california's law is allowing Dual mode (electric and diesel) locomotives in California, but they could only be run on electricity within the state of Califoria. Several Amtrak state-run services like Virginia have purchased Dual-mode Siemens charger locomotives for their opperations in the future. However, these are passenger locomotives hauling up to 8 cars at a time and proabably wouldnt be sufficent for frieght rail unless they signifigantly decrease the number of cars or increase the number of locomotives
@@nicholasmarshall9128 If the railroads got serious and selectively only electrified their heavily used freight lines they could use duel powered engines like Amtrak and commuter railroads use today. The existing engines can haul many more cars than the do now. Also freight trains even on the main lines do not run as fast as passenger trains so they have the horse power to pull much more freight cars than passenger cars. But if necessary I am sure the manufactures of electric or electric and diesel duel powered engines could be built to handle even heavier trains. Also extra engines could be added if necessary just like today when you see long freight trains.
The results just came out: for the seventh year California has the fifth largest GDP in the world. And now that companies are requiring workers to come in to work, the population is growing again.
1) Railroads operate on small margins. This legislation will push freight toward big rig trucks. 2) If shipping out of CA becomes more expensive, some ships will be diverted to Canada and Mexico and trains will come in from those countries. 3) Either way, products are going to get more expensive. This will affect the lower income groups to a greater extent than mid and high income groups. I think we need to realize that politicians are not experts, but a class of people who parasitize the rest of us.
Why is no one figuring in the environmental impacts of building 3 years worth of Tesla’s batteries at once. Think about all that mining…. An F150 lightning takes about 160k miles to become “carbon neutral” assuming it makes it that long without ever needing the battery replaced or repaired. Now…. Graph that out with TRAINS. Diesel-electric hybrid is the best tech we have over all. It should be a crime that no one builds a 2cylinder turbo diesel car where the diesel is just a generator for the battery that powers the electric motor. But I guess no one gets rich off a 150mpg diesel Camry the same way they had to black ball the fantastic diesel VW’s. ( I hate VW’s and I don’t even like diesel engines, but facts are facts”. Toyota please build a Chevy volt with a 2cylinder diesel lol
Could rail companies stack their trains with an electric engine and a traditional engine? They could then use the electric engine to traverse California, and then use the diesel to cross the country. It would still be expensive to run two engines, but running a smaller electric engine for a short time would likely save money over building one that could do both jobs.
What about overhead wire electrification mixed with a battery locomotive? Charge on the go for the sections that don’t have wires yet or can’t. They can also put power back into the grid when braking if the battery is full.
It's much more complicated than it seems. There's about 140k miles of track, the amount of wire that would have to be run is enormous. And that's before you get to bridges, overpasses, desert, tundra, connecting to the grid. The maintenance and upkeep is then added to that. Just an enormous lift.
That has been done on railroads in the past for Freight its just more expensive compared to running diesels here so it never made strides other than a few exceptions. That is however the only real answer to solving this problem at least in California. There are too many factors and gradients in play on most routes for them to use unproven technology on high revenue runs. I would guess there is a high chance they electrify only in Cali and then as soon as they are over the border they swap to a diesel. There is no chance BNSF or UP would do more than the bare minimum to operate within the regulations.
@@igneousmoth4329 there's a comment from @danielcarroll3358 in here that does a good job highlighting why swapping could be more difficult than it may appear on the surface
@@Maxinomics well for a decent amount of traffic into Cali, it takes either BNSF or UP via Nevada or Arizona to other markets in the midwest or hotshots to an interchange to NS or CSX. Arizona and Nevada are typically too middle of the road for it to matter and the states after for UP at least on their Overland Route are Utah, Wyoming, a tiny bit of Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. Even then if the only state that did something was Illinois it would never be economical to change out the entire fleet. If this assumption is incorrect on my behalf, the guarantee I will make is that BNSF and UP will do whatever is the cheapest option for them even if its not the best option.
We also don't have enough resources for all those batterys, complaining about the distance is just procrastination and you guys not wanting to spend a few bucks for the future. @@Maxinomics
Surely there is an intermediary step. As people have pointed out, trains are already diesel electric hybrid engines (the technology was developed during the First World War, at the time to hide the movement of trains from arial observation). So modern trains don't need new electric engines, only the thing that powers them. A battery for a locomotive doesn't have to be aboard the locomotive, it could be on a separate car that was nothing but a big battery on wheels, much like the coal cars of the steam period. When those battery cars ran low you would just swap them out for a fully charged battery car and take the discharged car to be recharged. That way you could continue to use older engines until they are replaced anyway. They could even keep their diesel engines as an emergency back up.
California can pass laws but there are limits on what they can expect as a reply. These battery and hydrogen locos you talk about are mostly experimental not practical prototypes ready for near term implementation into actual working models. The hydrogent world has been talked about for about as long as cold fusion and very little has come of either. Most market hydrogen is made by stripping the carbon out of natural gas, a by-product of that process is CO2, isn't that what we don't want and what are we going to do with it? Industrial scale means we're we're going to need millions of gallons of diesel substitute daily just to keep the rails in CA running, the other process, electrolysis, based on an experiment we've seen in Junior Hi science class, when scaled up to real world requirements requires massive investment in producer plants and they in turn need massive amounts of electricity that currently isn't available on the CA grid, considering the development time for such things, won't be available for the next decade into the future even if decisions are made today. The most likely alternative is the electrification of existing main railway lines with replacement of diesel locomotives with electric models something the locomotive industry already makes although in relatively small scale in the US and Canada. Rail electrification currently costs about ten million per mile and while much of it is easy from a construction standpoint there are barriers such as bridges and tunnels with ceiling hts. less than that required for high voltage overheads, all of the power need for this must come from somewhere and the CA grid doesn't have it. Battery locos will have the same problem as heavy duty battery trucks, limited range and long (very long) recharge times and just like everything else we're talking about will need very large amounts of grid electricity that is not currently available nor will it be at the dates proposed. Some railroads in the US converted to electric power back in the 1920s, then it was an economical alternative to steam power as a practical locomotive diesel hadn't been developed by that time. By the end of WW2 the diesel had come of age and the economics were so good that the railways could not resist replacing steam. Diesel engines were cost competitive with steamers, reduced fuel costs by half, even more reductions in maintenance, and double or triple the availability for operation. For the US and Canada, countries where diesel was both cheap and plentiful, this was the logical answer. Europe and Japan didn't have the oil resources and chose to replace steam with electric, the UK, with lots of domestic coal, chose to hold off and continued to build new steam power thru the 1950s and didn't seriously start using diesels until the '60s along with electrification of several main lines. Much of the railways systems in Europe center on passenger operation with freight secondary, the railways were socialized and passengers vote, freight doesn't vote. This isn't the case in the US and Canada freight votes with revenue. China and India both continued using steam power long into the twentieth century since they both have ample domestic coal and low labor costs, both counties had a strong industrial base for producing good workable steam locomotives. More recently both countries have realized their need to upgrade their railway transport infrastructure as their economies grew and both chose the path of electrification as the solution. The incentive for this was not pollution but rather the need for expanded capacity and efficiency and both power their rail systems with grid power that is mostly produced by coal fired generating stations with a significant input of nuclear power and hydro but very little renewable power. I don't believe the figures for India's electrification exceeding 90%, hell even Switzerland is not there nor does it aim to get there. India has many thousands of miles of branch railways and specialized lines running into the mountains or for industrial purposes that are still running on steam power. The other alternative for the railroads is to end service east of CA and put all of the traffic onto the highways via trucks and busses. Most of it is container anyhow and Amtrak cross country trains are big losers anyhow.
Hasn't Germany binned the idea of hydrogen trains as being too costly to run. I am a bit surprised about the issue of copper required in new trains... the old trains have both motors and generators/alternators stuffed with copper. No change there then. And so it comes down to overhead wires which are widely used across the world. And where they once needed to be continuous for the whole route, mixing OLE and batteries gives you the ability to run a cost saving hybrid system. OLE is in use in the North of Norway/Sweden and across Spain and Northern Africa and works in all temperatures and weathers. It is possible to install OLE quickly using factory trains which drill foundations, install the supports and pour concrete doing miles of work a day. Only where you have other structures or underground drains as we do in the UK are things slowed down.
Green bulshit!!THey will never beat the diesel engines.Just they will add Hydrogen fuel system and that's it!!Battery loco is absurd only for shunting!!
Batteries make sense as part of a Hybrid setup. Hybrid meaning diesel, electricity delivered by catenary though a pantograph, or, battery. If California puts up catenary lines like passenger trains, the trains can shut down their diesel engines while in California, then revert to diesel where there is no catenary. Being able to store electrical energy rather than waste dynamic brake energy as heat, can greatly reduce fuel consumption, thus reduce emissions, without any significant changes to the existing diesel engines. Remember, locomotives are already electrically driven!
The Federal Government will not allow this to happen to the railroad industry. The rail traffic and import/export port access is simply too important to the national economy. Congress can remove California's ability to regulate vehicle emissions in general, or specific vehicle such as locomotives, any time they want. California will have no choice other than to comply with the wishes of Congress.
Should make them hybrids, they already have a decent sized generator, just add three more locos with only battery cells. Three and three for long haul locomotives
the easiest thing is to just electify them like Europe, electric trains are far more powerful than diesel and cajon pass where trians mostly climb or slide down long inclines can be one area to get power
It's funny how USA does everything and anything to avoid stringing the wire up the track like the rest of the world. FWIW the current U.S. locos are ballasted to a degree that they could be retrofitted with a pantograph, transformer and have their current motors fed from the overhead wire.
@Maxinomics investing in a new type of fuel would probably be cheaper for the industry long term then investing in an entirely new fleet of engines and training an entirely new generation on how to maintain that fleet since the old generation only knows how to maintain diesel engines. Despite the fact that electric locomotives have been around for over a century the knowledge of how to actually maintain them is honestly still not widely available, at least in the us since their not widely popular here.
@@alphonsotate2982 Actually no. Everyone has been commenting that we came through this extended heat wave in great shape. The only places with blackouts have been in far northern California to prevent forest fires. And that problem is slowly being solved by undergrounding of power lines.
i really love the word just...just wake up and think about what you said. how many miles of track? how much steel for supports, how much cable to carry the power....
The 2 mile long freight trains running through here everyday will not run on batteries. We will have to plant nuclear power plants everywhere to supply the electricity for all of the dream transportation. Solar and wind is okay for your personal home, but still to expensive even then.
Theres a small number of points where rail crosses from California to other states , so it wont be impossible to build rail yards to swap in or out electric trains instead of diesel, Hybrid battery / overhead charging is an option , Ie , in areas where its cheap to build overhead lines , you charge the smaller batteries from a catterny ,
California Government forcing its hand on key logistical industry to change, the consumer is the one in the end that gets sticker shock. American diesel freight trains are one of the most efficient and effective methods of transporting large amounts of freight on land, which is cleaner and more cost effective than a fleet of semi trucks. Modernization and Innovation are key to the rail industry, but radical government intervention can cause high transportation costs, higher maintenance costs, lowering efficiency, all for negligible reductions to carbon emissions.
Uhh that's interesting news. I am not sure, why they get a stricter timeline than trucks (no NEW trucks on Diesel after 2035, but old ones still allowed if I read this correctly) But this could be big for global development of long range battery/hydrogen trains. If it's electric they will still charge via overhead line, so no time is lost right? Still sceptical on anything hydrogen, the efficiency is suboptimal and the industry to do so at this scale doesn't exist yet and would have to be developed, but at least the number of refuelling points would be small with railroads (compared to hydrogen trucks or long dead hydrogen cars).
The models going into testing are not equipped to charge on-the-go i.e. via catenary wires. They are much more the electric vehicle model, run the battery, plug it in, charge, run the battery, etc.
Really, the US just doesn't get railways.. they could have electrified large portions of the network decades ago. That would have reduced the burden of having to electrify an entire system all at once. In other parts of the world, they have electrified almost entire continental railroads. I think the most efficient and best long-term effort would be to electrify the major rail corridors.
The #1 comment in here is that the US should use catenary (aka overhead contact line, trolley wire, etc) cables to electrify it’s freight rail network like many other countries (India, China, Russia, etc) have. Definitely read through the other comments but want to pin a response to this.
1. In contrast to countries like India and China, US freight rail is not owned by the government. The US government cannot simply decree that all freight rail act in unison and string up catenary. Given that there are dozens (hundreds?) of railroads that operate through and between the US, Mexico, and Canada, it would be extremely challenging to get the thousands of stakeholders to agree to completely change the way the network operates.
2. For overhead catenary, the US has a unique bug… tornadoes and high winds. The US experiences an order of magnitude more tornadoes (1,000+) each year than any other country, making overhead catenary cables a major vulnerability if they were to be implemented. This is not a problem that India, Russia, China, or Europe really have to deal with. India had four tornadoes last year.
3. As the person behind this video I do not have an opinion on whether the US freight rail should run on diesel, batteries, catenary, horses, or bananas. Batteries and hydrogen are highlighted because that is where industry money is flowing. No executives at any of the railroads, or equipment manufacturers, are talking about or putting money towards third rail electrification or catenary.
The other popular question... can trains switch engines at the California border?
Technically, this infrastructure could be built. But when California adopts new emission standards there are 18 other states that usually adopt them as well, some in an almost automatic process. These are known as Section 177 states. So in effect, when this policy goes into action, it will likely be implemented in these other states. California will not be the lone state banning diesel engines. As a rail executive you would know this, and you would therefore not build out infrastructure to switch engines, you would skate towards where the puck will end up.
What about 3rd rail like Subways? Could that be an alternative in tornado prone areas?
Awesome video btw, very informative and factual.
"No executives at any of the railroads, or equipment manufacturers, are talking about or putting money towards third rail electrification or catenary" because the industry avoids spending any money on infrastructure like the plague. They value running bulk products without guaranteed schedules, because that's what maximizes shareholder value, hence the disaster which is Precision Scheduled Railroading, which like the Holy Roman Empire is neither precise nor scheduled and is barely considered railroading.
As I've said elsewhere, catenaries work and have been shown to work for over a century, while these other technologies you highlight are at best pipe dreams, especially when considered within the timeline mandated by California.
Here's a good youtube video from the Well There's Your Problem Podcast (a podcast about engineering disasters, with slides) that goes over the disaster which is American Freight Railroads: ua-cam.com/video/jNkYNjADoZg/v-deo.html
@@musicandefy It really all has to be one or the other, catenary or third rail. Third rail would eliminate--to a degree--the tornado/wind problem but it still introduces a significant vulnerability to needing running electricity. Look at the Texas area right now and all the power outages they're having, if freight rail were electrified it would all be down in those areas right now, just totally stranded.
Texas is a good example of the overall electric problem because it has extreme weather--prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, and heat--but is also the US state that has the most freight rail traffic.
@@musicandefy Third rail has 2 problems. (1) Since it is at ground level, it is dangerous to both trespassing wildlife and humans (2) it has a limited voltage and current capacity. It is ok to use in protected subway tunnels running light weight subway trains, but it it be useless to power large freight locomotives, which need 3.5 million to 4.5 million watts *each* to run. Freight trains in North American can weight over 20,000 tons and run at 50 to 70 mph. You need a massive amount of power for this and you are not getting that to work through a 3rd rail setup.
What people don’t understand is that modern locomotives are HYBRIDS! A diesel engine powers an electric generator with then powers the locomotive! That’s why they are so fuel efficient
Edit: ok well not actually hybrids they still operate in a electric-diesel combination
Exactly. They’ve been that way since day one. Also I would say they are very fuel efficient mostly because they have steel wheels rolling on steel rails. Low coefficient of friction
Technically, they are NOT Hybrids. They just convert the mechanical energy of the diesel engine to electrical energy to power the traction motors. But, I get your point.
@@markantony3875 is that not what a hybrid does by definition? Or is there another reason why they are technically not hybrids?
@@ellisjackson336 Hybrids by definition have a battery storage capacity that also allows regeneration from braking. Diesel-Electric locomotive have neither feature. Instead of using a purely mechanical transmission, they just convert the mechanical power into electrical power to power traction motors. This is the preferred way to do it for heavy equipment. The very largest mining trucks use the same system. The AC induction motors used to power the axles are virtually indestructible compared to a complex mechanical transmission.
@@markantony3875 I figured that the reason would’ve been due to no regenerative braking sending energy back into batteries. Probably because the tech for rechargeable batteries was not there yet when diesel locos were invented in the early 1900s. I’ve always known that they don’t use a mechanical transmission, although there have been some small switcher locomotives that do. Plus considering all of the weight that trains move, it would be a bit infeasible to use a mech transmission. One traction motor weighs 14000 lbs.
India has already reached 95% electrification of its railroads. They use overhead wires to achieve this. In the US, only 1% of mainline railroads have overhead power. This is an absolute joke. In the long run, overhead power lines are the only option if you are serious about replacing diesel on railroads. The American railroads have absolutely no intention of getting rid of diesel. All this talk about hydrogen and battery trains is just a tax dodge by the railroads.
India's rail is state owned and operated, making it much easier for India to decree it's rail be electrified. With the thousands of rail stakeholders in the US, the size of the network, and that it connects with Mexico and Canada, electrifying via something like catenary is a virtual impossibility imo.
Someone will say the railroads should be state owned then, and well, that's a totally different type of argument. And one I don't think gets anywhere.
@@Maxinomics I don't know, I think it gets a lot further than a battery locomotive. No idea where you got the 800 mile range figure from. Even battery multiple units (with much more space for batteries than a loco-hauled train) in use right now for passenger transport are short range, and usually rely on being on the wires for most of their journeys.
800 miles comes from the specs from the BEEs that are being tested today. But, I''ll be the first to admit, that is a true best-case scenario. And as an EV owner, I don't think I've ever hit the best-case scenario for my vehicle.
On the other hand though, adding battery capacity to a train that hauls heavy cars as it's job isn't particularly complicated. The complicated part is ensuring reliability, sourcing the batteries at reasonable cost, and providing charging infrastructure that doesn't disrupt rail operations.
What a lot of the comments on these videos tend to assume is that it's my opinion when I say battery-electric is next, but that's not my job. I'm relaying what the railroads and OEMs are saying and doing. OCLs aren't in any conversation, hydrogen is a distant second to battery-electric engines (BEE). There are multiple pilot programs for BEEs.
Is it going to come to fruition? That's less of a certainty, but that's the path being traveled first.
@@Maxinomics Look at germanys train network. It used to be all private companies. They built a train network with all different operators and track gauges even. However a lot of companies were able to get to an agreement to built overhead wires and have standard gauge on their network. And btw. have you heard of dual mode locomotives? Existing locomotives (at least a large percentage) is already diesel-electric. Essentially they use their engine as a generator. If you only built overhead wires in california, that would already be a huge win for everybody, since from there on you can expand the network bit by bit with dual mode locomotives.
Gonna refer back to this comment…
“What a lot of the comments on these videos tend to assume is that it's my opinion when I say battery-electric is next, but that's not my job. I'm relaying what the railroads and OEMs are saying and doing. OCLs aren't in any conversation, hydrogen is a distant second to BEEs. There are multiple pilot programs for BEEs.”
I'd like to point out if the railroads don't strike a deal with the state to get the law revoked, they might just throw up wires to the border of California and never fully electrify the mainline. Simply adding an electric on the front and using the previous engines traction motors would be far easier. This practice has existed for decades as many railroads swapped electric power for steam or diesel at points along the mainline, PRR at Harrisburg, NYC outside of the city, MILW at Chicago, etc.
As part of the inner circle, we both agree that railroads are greedy bastards. What you said is the most plausible course of action if California enforces this.
Greed is good. People complaining about greed are usually actually upset you won't give them some.
@@train7163 Greed has nothing to due with it. The cost to electrify the lines would be so high it would only make sense on the heaviest used main lines. Branch lines and the short line smaller railroads would be abandoned due to the cost to upgrade. Thus California would only increase carbon emissions as more freight would have to move on trucks on overloaded highways. The other effect is California would only loose more jobs due to some rail dependent factories moving to states where railroads could serve them. The rural farming areas would also hurt if the smaller railroads were not available to move their products to the main line railroads terminals.
Some people don't remember that the Milwaukee Road Railroad was one of the longest electricafied Railroads in America.
Most of it's power was generated in the upper northwest rockies to power their 🚆.
I remember the Milwaukee's electrification from a trip I took as a kid in 1968 to Montana, Idaho and Washington state.
@@WAL_DC-6B
Many don't know that the electric engines, nicknamed "Little Joe's " , were built for the Russian Railroad 🤔 for the then President Joseph Stoland. Then the cold War started and were never shipped.
The Milwaukee Road got them for pennies.
One remains on display at the Lake Shore Historical Society in North East, Pennsylvania.
Hope this helps 🙏 ☺.
@@richardbause2453 According to the book, "The Electric Way Across the Mountains" (2nd ed.), General Electric offered all 20 "Little Joes" to the Milwaukee Road for 1 million dollars in 1948. The Milwaukee initially hesitated as at the time it was even considering eliminating all electric operations and dieselizing instead. A "Little Joe" was also tested on the Milwaukee, and it did not quite perform as GE said it would. In the meantime, the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad and Paulista Railway of Brazil each respectively purchased 3 and 5 of the "Joes." Finally, the Milwaukee decided it indeed wanted the engines. But by now only 12 were left and the Milwaukee had to purchase the remaining units from GE in "as-is" condition for the original 1 million dollars that could have bought them all 20. The Milwaukee Road put the "Joes" into service starting in the Fall of 1950.
@@WAL_DC-6B
Cool, thanks 😊.
We'll head to The Lake Shore Historical Society in North East,Pennsylvania to start putting wire up across Pennsylvania and New York State 😄😁.
I remember 👍
I mean, there's obvious third option; electrification of rails. It has all the benefits; unlimited range, higher power, no emissions. Also hybrid-solutions are an option, where there's small battery for last mile or shorter non-electrified sections, but mainly using overhead lines.
The effort this would take is just enormous. 160k miles of track across three countries owned and operated by dozens of different railroads.
@@Maxinomics Nothing forces to electrify everything in one go, some not at all. First within California, then mainlines connected to California. Then selected mainlines elsewhere. Lightly used have no need to be electrified at all.
It would be just like every other country with rail.
@@Maxinomicsperhaps you could make a calculation of this option as a follow up video. I also think it would be cheaper to use/implement existing technology than waiting for new options to emerge.
@@jaketus I see your point, I just think about it from the standpoint of the railroads and how complicated those network/schedules are and think it's one of those things that seems quite simple at first but quickly becomes a nightmare on implementation. Especially across dozens of private rail companies operating in three countries.
What I'm trying to convey in this video isn't my opinion--I don't have a dog in the fight on how the network is electrified, that's not my thing. This is what's happening in the the US rail industry, what's being talked about on conference calls, industry conferences, etc. Railroads and OEMs are making moves forward with battery-electric engines, they are not talking at all about catenary or any other from of electrification.
@@Maxinomics ok but this needs to happen anyway. Buying trillions of dollars of batteries that will need to be replaced every 10 years is not feasible. Catenary electrification is what is needed and I imagine we will see tri-parallel locomotives that have a smaller diesel engine, a battery for hybrid operation, and a pantograph for electrical pickup. Weight is not a concern because locomotives need tons of weight anyway to achieve traction, and often even add weight ballasting for this very purpose. Time and time again it has been made clear that the numbers just dont support electrification. Look up Alan Fisher's video on why battery electric locomotives are foolish. Hybrid battery/ diesel / electric? Not dumb at all. The technology for all this very much already exists, we just need to give the rail companies an impetus to do it and this is it. And yes, 160k miles of electrified track is not some extreme thing. Europe did it with fewer resources, so can we. Tired of the "oh the same rules don't apply here" argument lol. Not even 50 years ago the Milwaukee Road the Penn Central had electrified main line freight lines. I will say it again, it needs to happen eventually, we might as well start catching up now.
There is another option you are forgetting. The railroads just dont do it and stop their trains outside of California. Back when PTC was about to be mandated by law before eVerything was installed, the class 1s quit accepting some hazmat loads at interchange, forcing the governent to extend the time railroads had to install PTC. California ports will come to a halt and the federal goverment will have to step in to stop an economic crisis from happening, and the railroads have their way.
My thoughts exactly, It's all about profit for the class 1's and especially the class 3's. This will kill those smaller railroads that rely on California.
But, also knowing the Class 1's they will just be like "Meh, Just bring us your goods on truck to Nevada or New Mexico." or they will just open a new port in Oregon or Washington
There are already ports in Mexico with major investor backing gearing up to bypass West Coast U.S. and Canadian government and union bllsht. Trains will take it from there.
Honestly this is probably the only option. 0 emissions = 0 economy
@@MilwaukeeF40C that and east coast ports will take up the different
I think you're utterly delusional and stupid. California has the 5th largest economy in the world AS A STATE. Why would a profit-motivated company abandon the thing that literally keeps it alive?
Have you never heard of electric trains?
Overhead electrification time >:3
As the folks at Well There's Your Problem are wont to point out, we've had the technology to do this for a century - it's called a catenary
@@TheSquire06 precisely
I'm not arguing that it's a bad idea, in fact I think it's likely going to be a big part of the move to BEE, but most likely not directly at the locomotive as we see in light rail across most installations. I suspect that what we will start seeing is stretches of 100 miles or so every 500 miles of rail, where "Battery Cars' will raise a catenary to an installation of overhead power that will be used to recharge the batteries. The aim won't be to bring them to 100%, more likely they will aim to bring them to about 80% of capacity from hopefully not below 20%. Eventually these cars will have traction motors that will run directly off the batteries on board, but be controlled by lead locomotives in much the same way that locomotives today often have mid-line locomotives for distributing the power load over the length of the train. Long term we may see the lead locomotive simply become a control cab. Longer term fewer of the battery cars will be needed as more and more catenary drive power units are added to the mix along with more miles of overhead line.
The problem I believe most rail is looking at is that since there isn't an overhead power system in the US that is used for heavy rail, and especially not for the lengths of trains they are running today, they look at putting that infrastructure in and maintaining it, as an added expense that they don't want to pick up, especially as none of their current set of locomotives can make use of it. Yes we have had electrified rail for heavy rail in the past, I believe that the MIlwaukee Road line through Montana was electrified, but I'm pretty sure that any locomotives from that era wouldn't qualify under California rules, if only because of their age. If any were still viable, I'm pretty sure that they might get an exception, but I'm pretty sure all of them were junked. I'm guessing however that the 'stopgap' measure is going to be making use of sidings outside of the state of california to stage locomotives that can be used to move single or dual engine pulled sections into California. This won't be an easy help for remote power locomotives in a train, that's going to require more engineers, more engines, and more time for each train to hook up and swap out locomotives. I don't see that as being a good solution, even short term. Especially with all of the effort that the railroads have been making to cut down on the number of crews that get deployed.
Long term, yes the overhead power solution is likely to be the solution, it's just bridging the decades between when the restrictions go into effect, and when the facilities and locomotives are available and in deployment.
Mean time I suspect we're going to see a lot more container ships going to the port of Seattle.
@@sophiamhartsfield I feel like people who always preach that forget that
A) the power still has to come from a source, one that probably isn't green.
B) there used to be several major electrified freight railroads in America. The technology predates diesel electric locomotives. Namely, Pennsylvania Railroad, Virginian, and the Milwaukee Road. Funnily enough, none of those railroads are around, and they or their successors removed the electrification. Interesting how that works out huh?
Edit: I also want to add that freight railroads only contribute 0.5% of pollution in America. The EPA themselves have said that electrification is effectively pointless for this reason.
@@Amigafur THE COST OF ELECTRIC WAS TO HIGH INFERSTRUCTOR MATANANCE THEY EVENTUALY WENT TO DIESEL
If this becomes federal, Hundreds of smaller railroads are going to go belly up. This is such a horrid policy and will be horrendously expensive.
The only way I see this working is a nationalized railroad and the closure of all private roads, but, look at how well that worked with Amtrak...
You just described how Marxism can subvert a free economy. Atlas Shrugged
Knowing how California is politically they probably see this as a complete win-win….
Remember Conrail
@@mr.sir. Conrail worked for a short time and in a small area, sure shared assets still exist but in the us at least nationalized anything isnt sustainable just due to how us Americans are and how independent we like to be.
The reason why Amtrak failed is because they didn't nationalize the rail. Private companies still own the rail lines and SHOULD give Amtrak the right of way, but they don't. Nationalized rail would probably fix a lot of the issues we are currently seeing with rail, where the rail companies are racing to spend less money by neglecting employees and track maitenance
Electric locomotives powered by overhead electric lines are the cheapest and most efficient option for moving railroad freight. They don't need to carry hydrogen tanks or batteries which reduces the load being carried by the train which does not earn it money.
‘Cheapest?’ Do you know how many billions upon billions the railroads would have to invest to electrify when they barely want to pay for upkeep of their infrastructure and equipment?
Mainline railroad infrastructure and equipment is in better condition than ever, but it is a low margin business and that kind of major capital upgrade is not possible.
@ogjkJust like how there's no sunk cost for diesels? Nope, there's no need to replenish oil, rebuild massive engines, FUEL. Nope, that's all free.
No need for a ruling. The railroads should simply continue to use diesel locomotives. What will California do? Stop their economy?
It’s California when have they ever made a good decision
@@caseihpopperdid you not just listen to how CA’s regulations helped push for better car emissions and unleaded gas? 2:33
@@stir-fryblob Obviously not. California bashers are probably living in states that are net-negative economically and needs CA money to prop them up.
@@stir-fryblobbut at the same time if no trains are running in California that means they would need to truck them in means 1 truck for 1 intermodal container rather than one locomotive for 100 intermodal containers at the least and that's with a modern locomotive, so if something like this were to happen trucking is WAY more fuel costly than the trains and thats not getting into cars fuel
Probably use electric trains like the NEC does. Are you Amish and have never heard of such a thing?
The railroads already are fighting the railroad engine law.
This is gonna fail so hard
I see another huge price hike for products to help pay for this. When people can’t afford to buy things then there will be zero emissions.
Both have been tested this year and failed horribly
as a railfan this is a massive W
@@Lordbillystrainsfacts
@@Lordbillystrainsas a railroader this is a massive w
@@manuelmontemayor4824 fr
What are the two companies testing this in the us?
Just consider, the cost of these new traction engines (if they don’t just convert some engines to use catenary only in California) is coming directly from consumers in the form of shipping costs. Most food goods are transported on rail at one point or another, during the production of food.
EPA has been sued by the truckers... I'm pretty sure the diesel regulations were lifted for railways too
¡VLLC!
California currently doesn't have the grid to handle electrifying rail. More likely shipping lines will divert to other more friendly markets.
Yeah, like Texas.
Mexican ports!
Thank God (and Teddy Roosevelt) for the Panama Canal.
That's nice, one problem I can see. One really huge problem I see is, California's electrical grid is seriously out dated, if it can cause a fire that turns into a huge wild fire then it's time to upgrade you electrical grid. Cause it is not good enough handle charging cars let alone semis and now you want trains on batteries. Forget it, until you upgrade that entire system you can take trains off the list.
Because diesel locomotives definitely don't regularly catch fire in catastrophic manners. Right. Moron.
GG1's: Am I a joke to you?
EXACTLY! Electric engine have been around since rhe 1920s, if people picked up a Bloody history book they'd know that.
It'd be nice to get one of the remaining ones in a museum operational again.
@@WAL_DC-6BIt will never happen. Nearly every ounce of them is insanely toxic and nobody wants to even rebuild them because the transformers alone have huge amounts of PCB oil. Then there's asbestos, beryllium, etc.
@@WAL_DC-6B Besides the question of the steel structure starting to fail the transformers on the GG 1 used a toxic oil to cool them. So even though there are several saved GG 1’s they will most likely never run under their own power again. Not to mention they were only able to operate over the old Pennsylvania Railroad electrification system. Most modern systems use higher voltages and different AC electric cycles.
@johnchambers8528 Do a modified restoration. Classic exterior with modern electrical and electronics system & multiple voltage overhead pantograph. With using modern electrical and electronics, you use a lot less space compared to what the older electrical systems used inside the GG1 locomotive and with modern updates you can keep maintenance way down and provide a fully climate controlled cab for the operators. Maybe even fit in a bathroom onboard in one of the noses of the GG1. Also, have modern updated controls in the cab and Positive Train Control installed. Also, have it built to be a large battery electric locomotive like EMD's Joule Battery locomotive but also have the modern ability to run on multiple overhead catenary voltages or just on battery power alone. As well as have controls to run in multiple unit operations with other passenger and freight diesel electric locomotives. Run on point at the front of the train and be able to go anywhere. It's doable, it just takes money and support. 😊
The biggest question, where is all this electricity going to come from?
My question is why do you think that's a problem ?
Coal fired power stations? no to dirty
Nuclear power stations? Not in my back yard
@@johnks6733 electrifying the US Rail system would require doubling the electrical grid, including the number of power plants a transmission lines.
Same would be if you tried to have only all electric vehicles. It's just not feasible.
"Dirty Nuclear", lol. Nuclear is probably the only real solution to clean AND stable electrical grid.
@@CJ-jo6doThen double the fuсkiиg electrical grid you ponce. We should have done it 40 years ago but we were too busy cutting taxes for the rich.
@@lylestavast7652nah, you can’t be that dense 😂 lol. If you get your electricity from fossil fuels, then all of the “betterment for the environment” goes out the window. It’s like “look at my electric car, 0 emissions” ( while the fact that lithium and rare earth mining is actually some of the worst mining in the world, or the fact that most electricity is still fossil fuel operated). lol 😂
If you have any clue the amount of energy that is used on a mainline train going hundreds of miles a day then you would understand that battery locomotives are a total joke. Half the train would be battery cars. completely ridiculous.
Tje only time a battery locomotive makes sense is if it was an industrial engine, a locomotive that moves a couple cars a day and barely leaves the site or yard. For long distance locomotives it just ain't economical
@@joshuahill6994I could see a use case for something like this.
Catenaries are a great invention you know.. Trains could even be hybrid. Run on wire parts of the time and run on battery/hydrogen the rest of the time. My country recently introduced hybrid catenary/diesel trains on streches previously only served by pure diesel. Bigger, faster, more comfortable. ua-cam.com/video/ZLRwjieJJtg/v-deo.html Quality trains built by Stadler. In my country the big city ferries have been converted to fully electric as well. These are quite big passenger ferries ua-cam.com/video/7bwLhe3NJi8/v-deo.html
This. Just use overhead lines and skip the lithium mining and efficiency losses.
There is a decent potential for hybrid locomotives. I know a guy working in an iron mine. Apparently they did the numbers and found that by adding a modest sized battery to their ore trains they could roughly half fuel consumption. Mostly because the mine is a above sea level and the distance isn't terribly long, so the train descends to the port fully laden, and climbs back up empty, leaving huge potential for regenerative braking.
Off course, what they really wanted was overhead grid power. That would be way cheaper and easier. But the mining company doesn't operate the rail network, just the ore trains. So diesel hybrid came up as the next best thing that could be done with only minor redesigns of their current diesel electric locomotives.
They also looked at options for full battery electric, but that would either require a ridiculous charging rate to keep up with the current quick turnarounds, or major redesigns of their loading and offloading infrastructure to give battery trains time to sit and charge at currently achievable speeds.
Then the stuff can't be delivered then don't deliver to the politicians people wake up
Building railyards just outside of California along each of the 14 lines and switching locos would surely be cheaper
The reason many of those lawsuits against California were unsuccessful in the past was because the protections of Chevron Deference. With Chevron Deference no longer existing I think you may see a lawsuit over it that may be more successful.
A modern locomotive now currently makes around 500 miles per 1 gallon of diesel for one ton of freight, a intermodal railcar can weight around and I could be wrong but is around 100,000-200,000 pounds each train is around 150-200 for a mainline so you do the math on how fuel efficient a locomotive now is
Don't forget that CPKC have already made a small handful of hydrogen-powered locomotives that, as far as I know, are operating successfully in road service up in Canada. The main issue, though, as the video suggests, is the current lack of infrastructure to support these locomotives and transporting hydrogen to such facilities to refuel these locomotives, so as of yet they only operate in a small area. The concept is there, they just need to figure out how to implement the support infrastructure.
I don't think large-scale electrification is an option. Our energy infrastructure is probably already near its limit and despite how "green" energy has become more of a focus in recent years it still isn't nearly as good at producing energy as fossil fuels nor so far is it nearly as cost-effective given the amount of energy it produces versus the amount of energy actually required. The electricity to run said electric railways has to come from somewhere and until we figure out how to make "green" energy more efficient and cost-effective you'd have to go with fossil fuels or build more nuclear power plants, but everyone is apparently scared of the work "nuclear" because they immediately think of bombs and the Chernobyl meltdown despite the fact that 1) Nuclear power plants are not stationary nuclear bombs and are actually much safer than other types of power plants and 2) Chernobyl was a freak accident in the technologically-lacking and backwards-thinking Soviet Union - nuclear energy safety has come a long way since then.
I have heard talk about moving the line into Mexico, to port locations one in the gulf of mexico and the other on the pacific side of Baja California and just by pass california all together. Basically cutting california out of the system
All that is needed is for California to electrify their tracks with overhead electric lines, and train engine owners to add the catinaries, transformers and power control units to enable their trains to switch from diesel to electric when they enter an electrified track area. This is already being done in other countries.
"all that is needed"... that's a lot that is needed. Especially for an industry that is not owned by the government in the US, as opposed to countries like India.
Other countries arent a total capitalistic shit show. It’s costing the California taxpayers 300 million per mile for the “new” State sponsored high speed rail corridor and has gone what? 40 miles? Not to mention almost 100% of the states rail is privately owned by BNSF or Union Pacific.
yankeesforlife24 No other place has the rail freight market share that North America does, nor the low prices for rail shipping. Europe is clogged with trucks compared to the U.S. because of bureaucratic bllsht.
@@MaxinomicsAnd batteries solve this how?
Dual mode locomotives have been around forever and are a joke. They cost 3X, are expensive to maintain, and have had a history of operational problems.
Let’s just ignore the highly successful pantograph GG1 locomotives of the east that lasted from like the 40’s until the 80’s
That is correct but they had to retire due to the cooling oil in their transformers. Also you have to build out the electric wires and substations to feed the electric into the wires. Most people also don’t realize two dams were built on the Susuquanaha river to add electric generation to help supply power to the electrified rail lines when the Pennsylvania Railroad built the electrification for their main line. Does California have the spare electrical power generation to be able to power a full statewide mainline railroad system? Most likely not.
@@johnchambers8528I don't think you realize how little energy it takes to move a train, but go off.
@@pootispiker2866 Yes I do! Trains regardless of fuel are the most energy efficient mode of transportation. The problem with using electric powered trains is the expense to build the substations and wire instillation needed to run it. It is only economical where there is very heavy freight or passenger train traffic. That is why you usually only see it where there is a lot of commuter trains in passenger service. In the east where you mentioned the GG1 is a system that was built by the Pennsylvania and New Haven railroads and the final section to Boston was built by Amtrak. Conrail the government sponsored freight railroad shut down the electrified routes that they first operated and changed to diesel engines due to the economics of being able to run through the old electrified territory with diesel engines instead of having to change to electric engines for only part of the trip. You also have to have the electric grid have available power to run the trains. When the Pennsylvania railroad electrified its lines two hydro electric dams were constructed to help power the system. So electrification is not a simple solution to reduce emission’s to run the trains.
Honestly I say challenge the regulations as being a threat to the economy, also challenge the clean air act for giving California the power to decide these things without giving anyone else any say. Zero emissions is not an option, railroads don't even change motive power when a train is handed off to another railroad, and complete electrification is impossible, and batterys are nonviable for anything more then industrial use or just getting a train thru the tunnel to Penn Station in New York City.
All that's going to happen is that trains will change engines before entering California. And yes, they can do that with just a few miles of new sidings. That will increase costs but won't lead to the replacement of engines.
The entire rail network does not need to be electrified, just the rails in California, the diesel can be disengaged and shut down and input power brought in from rails or overhead, this will still require new engines a bit longer and heavier to accommodate the new equipment but doable and cheaper than all the other solutions.
Without nuclear power plants, electrifying trains is even worse. Lol
California can't even keep its power gid on now without rolling brownouts.
You mean economically or environmentally worse? Because if we're talking about emissions, electric locomotive powered by coal power plant is slightly less polluting than diesel one (and I guess that California uses mostly gas and renewables, with a little bit of nuclear to generate electricity).
@thelloydersvk5068 I'm saying that Cali doesn't have the electrical output to support electrifying.
They already tell people to limit when they charge their EVs. Lol
And you're telling me that a diesel ELECTRIC locomotive somehow pollutes more than a coal power plant that burns train loads of coal? HAHAHAHAHAHA.
Oh, and by the way, I do have a bridge for sale if you're interested.
If were talking electric, overhead power is the way to go, not the dumpster fires that are battery-electric locomotives.
Exactly. However, a modest battery could be useful for regenerative rather than dynamic braking. it would reduce the energy required by the train, as well as allow continued operation if the catenary goes down, or, if there are gaps between lines.
@@vincentrobinette1507 You do make a good point
@@vincentrobinette1507 Locomotives with overhead wires can have regenarative breaking too.
Restrictions on interstate commerce are problematic. RR have no clear path to electrical power, which works on very. Dense lines only. Moreover even if alternative power was available the huge and very short term investment would make the transition impossible. Another example of activists and politicians demanding technological change that is not feasible
Very dense lines only? Someone better tell literally all of Europe and Siberia! They'll be so mad when they find out their electric trains do not in fact work.
1:47 - this photo is of downtown Los Angeles, specifically the intersection of Fifth Street and Grand Avenue, looking south from Grand. The Los Angeles Public Library, downtown branch, will be built on the southwest corner of this intersection and in 1991, the Gas Company Tower will be built on the northeast corner of this intersection. The Biltmore Hotel can be seen in the background on the south east corner, and still exists today. Likewise, the Edison building on the northwest corner still exists as shown, including the handrail following the sloped sidewalk.
South Africa has electric locomotives. Problem comes in if the electricity supply system crashes. Then those trains will stand. Also, we have a lot of catenary theft and that is a major headache.
California can't regulate interstate commerce.
isn't it cheaper in the long run to electrify the main lines with overhead wire? I mean electrification has huge advantages compared to non electrified lines.
Yes, but railroads have adopted the quarterly profits accounting practice, and the cost of the dedicated infrastructure installation (a one time cost) and maintenance (wear and tear on the cables and catenaries, as well as training up new maintenance crews for the new locomotives) won't show a profit in the next 90 days. Keep in mind that what the railroads call rail maintenance in the USA would be considered criminal in Europe. Deregulation has that effect at times.
@@RNMSC wow. I didn’t know the US railroad is so blind. 90 day of profit for an zero emission and vastly more powerful rolling stock is something they should strive for. I mean an electric locomotive could reach powers of up to 10.000PS which would also eliminate the need for a lot of locomotives as you don’t need 4 or 5 for a heavy train. But if the government would fund such an upgrade it could be possible for the US to go full electric.
@@MrLOLCraftLP1 I'm not saying your wrong, just that I'm talking about people with that variety of mindset.
@@MrLOLCraftLP1 Horsepower is useless if you don't have tractive effort, and US locomotives have the most. Electric locomotives are lighter without purposely ballasting them and even if you do, you'll still need more than one because you have to distribute the power throughout the train. Obviously, electrifying the railroad means provide electricity, and if it isn't green, you accomplished nothing.
@@gsf_ryder Ballast = Batteries
The problem here for North America is (1) The grid does not have enough current capacity to power the railroad industry and (2) The cost of installing 50,000 volt overhead powerlines above the rails and (3) Once 1 and 2 are solved, we will need a massive increase in power generation capacity. The typical modern diesel-electric locomotive in North American service can produce 3.5 million watts of power continuously. Multiply that by the 10's of thousands of locomotives in use daily, and you need a massive amount of power to run the railroad industry across North America. The locomotive issue is relatively simply to fix. Diesel-Electric locomotives *are* electric locomotives that carry their own power plant. Just replace the diesel engine/ traction alternator with a step down transformer, add pantographs on top of the locomotive to contact the overhead lines and bingo, you have an all electric locomotive with no need to replace the entire locomotive.
@@markantony3875 See note one and two and three on why that is not a solution.
Then why did you elect presidents who blew off maintaining our infrastructure to go to stupid wars like Vietnam and Iraq? If we had anybody but Reagan we would be well past this issue. What a shit for brains take you had.
This is the stupidest decision ever made by so-called “environmentalists” It is a golden handout to the trucking industry, which is far less efficient, far more environmentally destructive, and far more costly to the public than railroads. If California regulators had any sense they’d stop this asinine idea right now, and instead look into funding electrification and technology transition.
Tbf even if California fully electrified, the freight companies would still run under the wires on diesel power
With California stupid emission rules even the trucking industry is going to leave
The trucking industry is under similar rules with similar time lines.
The mandates have killed off most owner operators, it is a big ass regulatory entry barrier gift to big companies that can afford it.
Then they'd better start building powerplants,like they're goin out of style.
0 emission at the point of use, not 0 emission at the point of energy production. Considering the waste of lost electricity in transporting it to the point of use, this is horrible for the environment. But coal companies will love this. We also don't have the electricity production to support homes and industry right now. Thats why we have rolling brown outs. This is what happens when people who don't understand science make decisions based on popular ideas that are not feasible.
All you need is to change ports like HustonTX or port of Everglades Tell CA to take a flying fu_k!
Overhead electrified rail is like metric; most of the world does it this way therefore USA will have to do it some different way which doesn’t make any sense.
Either way, we need to have the ability to operate these trains independently of using just electricity. Redundancy and Wartime considerations demand such.
@@darklelouchg8505When has the US ever faced wartime?
@@pootispiker2866 We always take Wartime factors under consideration. It's almost like our entire interstate system and other works expressly have that as a cornerstone of design consideration.
It's almost like War is one of the primary providences of the government and one of the reasons (primary reason) that the State enjoys a near monopoly on Force (Violence).
@@darklelouchg8505 I guess your cousins will be setting off landmines any day now.
...or they could just string up catenaries...
I wonder how long that's going to work, considering the fact that there have been a substantial number of arial copper mining operations collecting high tension power lines in various parts of the country. Not making the news all that much these days, but since large stretches of these have network fiber infrastructure attached to the static lines, and I've worked with carriers of various longhaul data carriers over the years, I assure you that it's still an issue in many places. I have little doubt that this is going to be an issue on freight line rail lines in remote parts of the country.
@@RNMSCTrans Siberian Railroad has been using these wires in Siberia for many years.
Also, you should visit one of these rail lines going in and out of California. You would be shocked at how busy they are, night and day. Listen to the video, count the numbers, and then figure out how many trains per hour.
Any Idea how expensive that will be?
If you run overhead lines you won't be able to run trains along the Gulf Coast for 2 weeks after every hurricane.
@@jacobpfeifertrains1998 Much less expensive than developing technologies that may never be feasible and certainly aren't going to be available in time
I have to wonder what if up and BNSF just decided to abandon the port of LA infav of Portland Seattle and Vancouver.
UP and BNSF have tracks in the pacific north west and CN and CPKC have the remaining track rights
I can’t wait until my electricity goes off on a 100* day because the grid can’t keep up. I think the Companies need to build power plants first before anyone even discusses this. Or is the tail going to wag the dog as usual ?
I still feel that this regulation will either be rescinded or overturned by federal legislation. The clean air act is only a law. It could be amended at any time by the majority of congress and presidential approval. Also California needs to realize they are now the main point of entry for imports and exports of rail based intermodal freight but railroads can use other ports outside California. Either in other western states or Mexico or Canada. Just look at the recent merger of Canadian Pacific and Kanas City Southern. The main reason for the merger was to provide seamless rail service between Canada, United States and Mexico. Union Pacific which also has major California routes also has been investing in upgrading Mexican railroad lines. Canadian National also has made arrangements to improve service between the three countries as well as having great port connections on the gulf coast of the United States. So if California does succeed in implementing these regulations on train engines there are ways to bypass the state and still get business done.
There are big automated port developments going on in Mexico too, the California port unions have been resisting automation. Fckm.
I'm thoroughly surprised that you only have like 1.6k subscribers on this channel. Your content and presentation is great. I'm looking forward to seeing more from this channel!
Technology means increase in cost of cargo aka consumer pays
Instead of or in addition to fighting, the railroads need subsidiaries building mini-nuclear plants near major rail lines, so there is power available to re-charge all the locomotives. Suggest going with the Thorium molten salt versions. In many places you can grab a chunk of dirt and it will have Thorium salts in it. A little purification and it is ready to run a reactor. Drawbacks are minor and if they get out of whack, you just pull the freeze plug and let the molten salt out and it stops reacting almost instantly.
What a stupid and wasteful idea. We already have a power grid. Your dumb idea would waste billions that we could put into that for upgrading to handle rail traffic.
When California decides to set an emission standard above federal standards California has to submit a waiver request to the EPA and the EPA has to sign off on it. But the EPA has denied just one of these requests and that denial ended up being reversed a year later.
I don’t have an exact count on how many waiver requests California has submitted, but it’s somewhere between 50-100.
Which stocks would you recommend
@@Renzel_NYC Not my style
@@Renzel_NYC with that being said there are a lot of ways to look at this. Some of which:
- How do the railroads fare?
- What’s the profit look like for the train manufacturers?
- The charging and grid infrastructure has to be built by someone.
- How much tighter does this make the battery supply chain and where are the bottlenecks? Bottlenecks tend to move prices dramatically.
- how is the additional electricity generated?
The thing with railroads is they can just pay the fines. They already do it when blocking passenger trains. It doesnt effect them.
Where would you put the overhead catenary? Many of the current rail lines had their tracks LOWERED to allow double stacked container cars to travel through them. These HIGH voltage catenary lines would need lots of clearance above the double stacked cars. Existing bridges and tunnels do not offer the proper clearance to allow this. Using a 3rd rail is not an option due to all the grade crossings, and the general public safety issues of high voltage electric. Also, many rail lines run through very remote areas of the country where there is not the electrical infrastructure available to supply the required power. All new transmission lines would need to be constructed to supply this power, as well as building the catenary system.
Great Northern had several miles of their line electrified going through the Cascade tunnel. Train had to stop and swap locomotives at each end of this electrified line. There are reasons why this was eliminated.
India has successfully done electrified doublestack trains. They just use taller pantos. Next bad-faith argument, please.
The most cost effective solution will be a hybrid locomotive. Use diesel up to the cal border and switch to either batteries or third rail/ catenary power.
It not just RR's that need to follow this rule but trucking also. Maybe construction equipment also, on and on. I believe the mayor of Boston, Mass has said that no government construction can be done with diesel equipment. Let see how far that goes with electric powered construction equipment not even available yet.
Can a state regulate the railway. I thought that the US railway was totally regulated by the Federal government. For example, in Dallas they passed a law that a railroad couldn't block a crossing for more than 10 minutes, or they could ticket the engineer. This law ment nothing because they couldn't regulate the federally controlled railways. Doesn't the same thing happen for California and this law.
This is the angle railroads are attacking this from, interstate commerce
Years ago California banned railroad refrigerator cars that were using two stroke diesel engines to power the refrigeration plant. That stuck so I would say the answer is yes.
toddsilk8153 Big changes coming for California's bllsht.
@@MilwaukeeF40CIf you say so, weirdo.
What the hell? I run my HO Scale model layout in Newell, CA to Klamath Falls, OR. Now I got to worry about this in the next 10 years! LOL. Great, there goes my budget for the decade!
oh hey, someone else modeling in my territory 🎉
Just cut of freight services to California then they will start begging for their diesel locomotives back
You didn't listen to the first minute of the video, did you?
All electric- not long lasting, less efficient, and generally stupid
All diesel- longer lasting, very efficient, and badass
Change my mind.
Locomotives are not all diesel. The only thing the large diesel does is turn an equally large traction alternator to produce 3.5 million watts of electric power. The rest of the locomotive runs just like an all electric locomotive.
Don't forget dual-mode locomotives already exist on passenger rail in New Jersey and New York - they can simply acrivate a third rail or pantographs and switch off the diesel engine and vice versa.
Good luck with the zero emissions on the railroads making the supply chain slower.
Strange that other civilized countries in the world are able to electrify their lines... Hell when even India manages to do it...
Just have the San Andreas turn Nevada into oceanfront property already.
Over head wires are incompatible with most of US trains are double stacked intermodal containers. The other issue is California can’t even maintain its own power grid as it is without electric trains
India runs double stacks under catenary.
@@danielcarroll3358 No they don't. It's just a "show off".
The "indian" trains are NOT well cars so the pantograph is sitting WAY HIGH to the point it loses tension to holding to the wire.
Since North America uses well cars, the pantograph is still low and thus holds strong tension.
TLDW: We really just need catenary electrification for our train network...
There are several other states that generally say, "California rules seem better than the standard federal rules, let's go with them." And they do. These states are Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. The courts have ruled that they have the power to make that choice. State's rights and all that.
@@danielcarroll3358 this is exactly right and what I point out when viewers on short-form have suggested railroads will just build yards outside of CA and switch. That would work but only if others states don’t then adopt the standard, and other states will adopt the standard.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there are a few states that have legislation that automatically adopts CA emission standards
@@Maxinomics There is a DOE website that lists the states that have adopted the California ZEV, LEV and ACT standards:
afdc.energy.gov/laws/california-standards#/tab-zev
Railroads are also governed federally not on the state level.
Sorry Cali
Virginia shtcanned that sht. All of those states have lackluster investment attractiveness for that kind of sht.
@@danielcarroll3358 That also means they have the right to rescind that decision. If they feel it will hurt their economy and tax revenue I am sure they will not adopt the California railroad rule.
One thing this video forgot to mention about california's law is allowing Dual mode (electric and diesel) locomotives in California, but they could only be run on electricity within the state of Califoria. Several Amtrak state-run services like Virginia have purchased Dual-mode Siemens charger locomotives for their opperations in the future. However, these are passenger locomotives hauling up to 8 cars at a time and proabably wouldnt be sufficent for frieght rail unless they signifigantly decrease the number of cars or increase the number of locomotives
@@nicholasmarshall9128 If the railroads got serious and selectively only electrified their heavily used freight lines they could use duel powered engines like Amtrak and commuter railroads use today. The existing engines can haul many more cars than the do now. Also freight trains even on the main lines do not run as fast as passenger trains so they have the horse power to pull much more freight cars than passenger cars. But if necessary I am sure the manufactures of electric or electric and diesel duel powered engines could be built to handle even heavier trains. Also extra engines could be added if necessary just like today when you see long freight trains.
So when Californias economy collapses....What then ?
The results just came out: for the seventh year California has the fifth largest GDP in the world. And now that companies are requiring workers to come in to work, the population is growing again.
Elon musk go to texas. Your source @@danielcarroll3358
Ok boomer
Watch them fall
Maybe they'll break away, and drift far, far out to sea.😂😂
1) Railroads operate on small margins. This legislation will push freight toward big rig trucks.
2) If shipping out of CA becomes more expensive, some ships will be diverted to Canada and Mexico and trains will come in from those countries.
3) Either way, products are going to get more expensive. This will affect the lower income groups to a greater extent than mid and high income groups.
I think we need to realize that politicians are not experts, but a class of people who parasitize the rest of us.
Why is no one figuring in the environmental impacts of building 3 years worth of Tesla’s batteries at once. Think about all that mining…. An F150 lightning takes about 160k miles to become “carbon neutral” assuming it makes it that long without ever needing the battery replaced or repaired. Now…. Graph that out with TRAINS. Diesel-electric hybrid is the best tech we have over all. It should be a crime that no one builds a 2cylinder turbo diesel car where the diesel is just a generator for the battery that powers the electric motor. But I guess no one gets rich off a 150mpg diesel Camry the same way they had to black ball the fantastic diesel VW’s. ( I hate VW’s and I don’t even like diesel engines, but facts are facts”. Toyota please build a Chevy volt with a 2cylinder diesel lol
Just electrify the railroads? Overhead wires don't need massive amounts of lithium..
Could rail companies stack their trains with an electric engine and a traditional engine? They could then use the electric engine to traverse California, and then use the diesel to cross the country. It would still be expensive to run two engines, but running a smaller electric engine for a short time would likely save money over building one that could do both jobs.
What about overhead wire electrification mixed with a battery locomotive?
Charge on the go for the sections that don’t have wires yet or can’t. They can also put power back into the grid when braking if the battery is full.
Man California is just isolating itself more and more.
Why don’t the freight railroads consider overhead catenary wires?
It's much more complicated than it seems. There's about 140k miles of track, the amount of wire that would have to be run is enormous. And that's before you get to bridges, overpasses, desert, tundra, connecting to the grid. The maintenance and upkeep is then added to that. Just an enormous lift.
That has been done on railroads in the past for Freight its just more expensive compared to running diesels here so it never made strides other than a few exceptions. That is however the only real answer to solving this problem at least in California. There are too many factors and gradients in play on most routes for them to use unproven technology on high revenue runs. I would guess there is a high chance they electrify only in Cali and then as soon as they are over the border they swap to a diesel. There is no chance BNSF or UP would do more than the bare minimum to operate within the regulations.
@@igneousmoth4329 there's a comment from @danielcarroll3358 in here that does a good job highlighting why swapping could be more difficult than it may appear on the surface
@@Maxinomics well for a decent amount of traffic into Cali, it takes either BNSF or UP via Nevada or Arizona to other markets in the midwest or hotshots to an interchange to NS or CSX. Arizona and Nevada are typically too middle of the road for it to matter and the states after for UP at least on their Overland Route are Utah, Wyoming, a tiny bit of Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. Even then if the only state that did something was Illinois it would never be economical to change out the entire fleet. If this assumption is incorrect on my behalf, the guarantee I will make is that BNSF and UP will do whatever is the cheapest option for them even if its not the best option.
We also don't have enough resources for all those batterys, complaining about the distance is just procrastination and you guys not wanting to spend a few bucks for the future. @@Maxinomics
Surely there is an intermediary step. As people have pointed out, trains are already diesel electric hybrid engines (the technology was developed during the First World War, at the time to hide the movement of trains from arial observation). So modern trains don't need new electric engines, only the thing that powers them. A battery for a locomotive doesn't have to be aboard the locomotive, it could be on a separate car that was nothing but a big battery on wheels, much like the coal cars of the steam period. When those battery cars ran low you would just swap them out for a fully charged battery car and take the discharged car to be recharged. That way you could continue to use older engines until they are replaced anyway. They could even keep their diesel engines as an emergency back up.
California can pass laws but there are limits on what they can expect as a reply. These battery and hydrogen locos you talk about are mostly experimental not practical prototypes ready for near term implementation into actual working models. The hydrogent world has been talked about for about as long as cold fusion and very little has come of either. Most market hydrogen is made by stripping the carbon out of natural gas, a by-product of that process is CO2, isn't that what we don't want and what are we going to do with it? Industrial scale means we're we're going to need millions of gallons of diesel substitute daily just to keep the rails in CA running, the other process, electrolysis, based on an experiment we've seen in Junior Hi science class, when scaled up to real world requirements requires massive investment in producer plants and they in turn need massive amounts of electricity that currently isn't available on the CA grid, considering the development time for such things, won't be available for the next decade into the future even if decisions are made today. The most likely alternative is the electrification of existing main railway lines with replacement of diesel locomotives with electric models something the locomotive industry already makes although in relatively small scale in the US and Canada. Rail electrification currently costs about ten million per mile and while much of it is easy from a construction standpoint there are barriers such as bridges and tunnels with ceiling hts. less than that required for high voltage overheads, all of the power need for this must come from somewhere and the CA grid doesn't have it. Battery locos will have the same problem as heavy duty battery trucks, limited range and long (very long) recharge times and just like everything else we're talking about will need very large amounts of grid electricity that is not currently available nor will it be at the dates proposed. Some railroads in the US converted to electric power back in the 1920s, then it was an economical alternative to steam power as a practical locomotive diesel hadn't been developed by that time. By the end of WW2 the diesel had come of age and the economics were so good that the railways could not resist replacing steam. Diesel engines were cost competitive with steamers, reduced fuel costs by half, even more reductions in maintenance, and double or triple the availability for operation. For the US and Canada, countries where diesel was both cheap and plentiful, this was the logical answer. Europe and Japan didn't have the oil resources and chose to replace steam with electric, the UK, with lots of domestic coal, chose to hold off and continued to build new steam power thru the 1950s and didn't seriously start using diesels until the '60s along with electrification of several main lines. Much of the railways systems in Europe center on passenger operation with freight secondary, the railways were socialized and passengers vote, freight doesn't vote. This isn't the case in the US and Canada freight votes with revenue. China and India both continued using steam power long into the twentieth century since they both have ample domestic coal and low labor costs, both counties had a strong industrial base for producing good workable steam locomotives. More recently both countries have realized their need to upgrade their railway transport infrastructure as their economies grew and both chose the path of electrification as the solution. The incentive for this was not pollution but rather the need for expanded capacity and efficiency and both power their rail systems with grid power that is mostly produced by coal fired generating stations with a significant input of nuclear power and hydro but very little renewable power. I don't believe the figures for India's electrification exceeding 90%, hell even Switzerland is not there nor does it aim to get there. India has many thousands of miles of branch railways and specialized lines running into the mountains or for industrial purposes that are still running on steam power.
The other alternative for the railroads is to end service east of CA and put all of the traffic onto the highways via trucks and busses. Most of it is container anyhow and Amtrak cross country trains are big losers anyhow.
Hasn't Germany binned the idea of hydrogen trains as being too costly to run. I am a bit surprised about the issue of copper required in new trains... the old trains have both motors and generators/alternators stuffed with copper. No change there then. And so it comes down to overhead wires which are widely used across the world. And where they once needed to be continuous for the whole route, mixing OLE and batteries gives you the ability to run a cost saving hybrid system. OLE is in use in the North of Norway/Sweden and across Spain and Northern Africa and works in all temperatures and weathers. It is possible to install OLE quickly using factory trains which drill foundations, install the supports and pour concrete doing miles of work a day. Only where you have other structures or underground drains as we do in the UK are things slowed down.
Green bulshit!!THey will never beat the diesel engines.Just they will add Hydrogen fuel system and that's it!!Battery loco is absurd only for shunting!!
Batteries make sense as part of a Hybrid setup. Hybrid meaning diesel, electricity delivered by catenary though a pantograph, or, battery. If California puts up catenary lines like passenger trains, the trains can shut down their diesel engines while in California, then revert to diesel where there is no catenary. Being able to store electrical energy rather than waste dynamic brake energy as heat, can greatly reduce fuel consumption, thus reduce emissions, without any significant changes to the existing diesel engines. Remember, locomotives are already electrically driven!
@@vincentrobinette1507 Hybrid locos yes ,but not completely battery driven!!
What about overhead wires? For example, Switzerland has over 99% of all railways electrified this way, and also one of the best trains in the world.
Rail sidings to swap power at the CA border would be cheaper than changing the entire nationwide fleet.
The Federal Government will not allow this to happen to the railroad industry. The rail traffic and import/export port access is simply too important to the national economy. Congress can remove California's ability to regulate vehicle emissions in general, or specific vehicle such as locomotives, any time they want. California will have no choice other than to comply with the wishes of Congress.
Congress gave California the power in the first place
@@Maxinomics What Congress gives, they can just as quickly take away and California can do nothing about it.
Revocable.
As a non US-citizen it’s a joke to see the US is even discussing this. Do some overhead wires and the jobs done ✅
Most hydrogen does NOT come from electrolysis it mostly comes from much dirtier sources typically involving natural gas and steam.
Should make them hybrids, they already have a decent sized generator, just add three more locos with only battery cells. Three and three for long haul locomotives
the easiest thing is to just electify them like Europe, electric trains are far more powerful than diesel and cajon pass where trians mostly climb or slide down long inclines can be one area to get power
It's funny how USA does everything and anything to avoid stringing the wire up the track like the rest of the world.
FWIW the current U.S. locos are ballasted to a degree that they could be retrofitted with a pantograph, transformer and have their current motors fed from the overhead wire.
The really simple solution would be to use bio-diesel, as the diesel engine was originally made to run on peanut oil.
Where are we going to get that much bio-diesel? Bio-diesel actually has been mentioned by a couple rail CEOs, the problem is availability.
@Maxinomics investing in a new type of fuel would probably be cheaper for the industry long term then investing in an entirely new fleet of engines and training an entirely new generation on how to maintain that fleet since the old generation only knows how to maintain diesel engines. Despite the fact that electric locomotives have been around for over a century the knowledge of how to actually maintain them is honestly still not widely available, at least in the us since their not widely popular here.
@@Maxinomics according to usda.gov 15% of corn is exported.
Biofuel is responsible for rainforest destruction.
Biofuel subsidies and mandates are responsible for rainforest destruction.
Sorry to say but you forgot Siemens they do build an electric engine now , yes they are smaller (Amtrak uses them) and they need overhead or 3rd rail
this stupid, they could just put up overhead wires like what every country has been doing for decades. how is this even an issue
money's an issue
California is having brown outs all ready now tack on rail electricity load
@@alphonsotate2982 Actually no. Everyone has been commenting that we came through this extended heat wave in great shape. The only places with blackouts have been in far northern California to prevent forest fires. And that problem is slowly being solved by undergrounding of power lines.
i really love the word just...just wake up and think about what you said. how many miles of track? how much steel for supports, how much cable to carry the power....
How did India and China manage to do it? @@scottersandman6408
The 2 mile long freight trains running through here everyday will not run on batteries. We will have to plant nuclear power plants everywhere to supply the electricity for all of the dream transportation. Solar and wind is okay for your personal home, but still to expensive even then.
Theres a small number of points where rail crosses from California to other states , so it wont be impossible to build rail yards to swap in or out electric trains instead of diesel,
Hybrid battery / overhead charging is an option ,
Ie , in areas where its cheap to build overhead lines , you charge the smaller batteries from a catterny ,
All the railroad has to do is stop operation....shit will fall aprart and the state will beg the railroad to run their dirty diesels again lol
It does not take “minutes to fill a diesel tank” each locomotive talks around half an hour is everything goes well. Just stick catenaries up.
Battery probably is not a solution because of the added weight and those batteries will degrade anyway in max 10 years of daily use.
How about how batteries just love cold weather?
California Government forcing its hand on key logistical industry to change, the consumer is the one in the end that gets sticker shock.
American diesel freight trains are one of the most efficient and effective methods of transporting large amounts of freight on land, which is cleaner and more cost effective than a fleet of semi trucks. Modernization and Innovation are key to the rail industry, but radical government intervention can cause high transportation costs, higher maintenance costs, lowering efficiency, all for negligible reductions to carbon emissions.
Uhh that's interesting news. I am not sure, why they get a stricter timeline than trucks (no NEW trucks on Diesel after 2035, but old ones still allowed if I read this correctly) But this could be big for global development of long range battery/hydrogen trains.
If it's electric they will still charge via overhead line, so no time is lost right?
Still sceptical on anything hydrogen, the efficiency is suboptimal and the industry to do so at this scale doesn't exist yet and would have to be developed, but at least the number of refuelling points would be small with railroads (compared to hydrogen trucks or long dead hydrogen cars).
The models going into testing are not equipped to charge on-the-go i.e. via catenary wires. They are much more the electric vehicle model, run the battery, plug it in, charge, run the battery, etc.
Deisel electric locomotives will always be around or hopfully hydrogen converted equipment.
Really, the US just doesn't get railways.. they could have electrified large portions of the network decades ago. That would have reduced the burden of having to electrify an entire system all at once.
In other parts of the world, they have electrified almost entire continental railroads.
I think the most efficient and best long-term effort would be to electrify the major rail corridors.