It is a jet train, rocketing down the tracks at 500 km/hour!
Unfortunately, I have seen the future because I’m living in it, and reality is…
…oxidation, flaking paint, and sagging metal.
There are days I feel like that’s a metaphor for the atheist movement. But Dana Hunter suggests otherwise. Maybe we can get this train back on the tracks.
But it’s going to take some new leadership, I think, or better yet, a great uprising.
At 500Kmh a chicken would pass from one end of the train to the other through almost anything in the way.
I’ve seen some work on using overground tubes – think the old money tubes in banks but a lot lot larger and faster! Air pressure drives and slows the carriages but also prevents them bashing into each other. Could be done very cheaply compared with Elon Musk’s Hyperloop.
I remember the turbo train that did the route between Toronto & Montreal. The train was good, the track not so much. And without a track to match the train, well, it was an experience. And eating the in-train meal was a challenge – hand to mouth coordination was borderline impossible.
madtom1999 @ 1;
If we are talking ultra fast trains operating inside tube systems, then there is the possibility of evacuating the tubes – no air inside the tubes means no air resistance to slow the trains and thus moar speed, possibly measured in thousands of kilometers per hour rather than hundreds if paired with maglev technologies.
Whether or not that is actually a good thing I leave up the reader’s discretion…
dick
Blender. Cup with lid, straw. Problem solved. :)
…
Not sure how that metaphor carries over, if at all.
Something something Rearden Metal something.
Sorry, I suck at metaphor.
Test runs of the fastest Japanese trains have managed 443 km/h. No problem with flying chickens as for all practical purposes everything inside a moving vehicle, including the air and the livestock, is stationary. They are moving at the same speed as the train and in the same direction.
Any force created by the movement is acting on the outside – hence the aerodynamic shape. Now, if you were to open a window ………
If Chicken Penetrance is not the standard unit of train speed, it obviously should be.
Chicken Penetrance is also a good band name.
Thaw the chicken.
Also, if you happen to be playing _Train Simulator_ on Steam, get the Jet Train (it’s a free add-on and I have no connection to the maker, so not spam).
I’m all about the uprising. Oh, I loves me a good uprising. Let’s take the castle gates off their hinges and burn them, turn the castles into community spaces, and let the former kings (and queen or two – does Edwina count as one of them?) look on in dismay as we dismantle the walls and let the SJW rabble in. No gods, no masters, and no more pompous Thought Leaders spitting on the peasants as they toast their sexual predator friends and themselves for being S-M-R-T smart.
They can, like America, sit in the ruins of their crumbling infrastructure and bleat about how exceptional they are, while we get on with building a better world. With awesome trains. And thawed chickens. And sippy-cups full of delicious food suitable for eating at ultra-high speeds.
I believe this is possible because I believe in the power of this horde. Y’all are awesome!
That last pic… CRH?
(They are really awesome, I caught one from Dalian to Shenyang last week. Also: the beers on board are cold, cheap and good.)
@12
Shinkansen. Beer is expensive, quality and temperature vary.
Dana @ 11
“Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willnae be fooled again! ”
Terry Pratchett, “Wee Free Men”
Leadership is a good idea. Leaders? Not so much. The real leadership is coming from the bottom-up, from lower and mid-level folks doing things at the grassroots level. The “leaders” tend to be people who like status and power for their own sake, rather than to advance the goals of us rank-and-file types.
“Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willnae be fooled again! ”
Terry Pratchett, “Wee Free Men”
I was thinking it was going to segue into
Get thee on thy knees and pray, to not be fool’d again!
Marcus @ 15
Actually, when the Terry Pratchett quote popped out of my memory, it had been modified to: nae king, nae queen, nae god, nae master. I was only when I did a web search to check for accuracy that I realized there was some connection to a Who song, which, being a musical cretin, I’d never heard. I take it that’s what you’re referring to?
I realized there was some connection to a Who song
Yes. I’m not a Pratchettian, so I hadn’t seen his version. But it sure looks like the Who song:
(etc)
What I always found interesting about the song is it’s title is “We won’t get fooled again!” but the lyrics are about praying we “don’t” get fooled again. It’s much less assertive, really.
And, of course, we get fooled over and over.
Dana
I hereby report for flamethrower duty. Fire good.
Yes … it is a sweet idea. Transport of people and, eventually cargo, that is fast, efficient, and thus cheap. A big win for everybody.
But take it from someone down here in Florida, a state with a GOP, supply-side (We will let you do it only if the existing power base can magnify their position), and known crook, for a governor, none of this is going to happen while he is in a position to say no. The federal government was going to pay to build high speed rail, positive for jobs generally and stimulating the south Florida economy. But this could also put certain powerful groups that are heavily invested in highways and cars in a less profitable situation, and might also present the government and Obama in a positive light so the project couldn’t be allowed to prosper.
Lorn @19
Yes, we’re seeing the same stupidity here in Texas. The voters in San Antonio voted against light rail a few years ago, so Mayor Castro, our county judge and the bus and transportation system tried an end-run by proposing a modern street car for parts of downtown. I’m sure that extending the rail to the airport would have been in the future.
The conservatives, backed by the oil interests caused a huge stink, but the mayor was standing strong. Then Mayor Castro left for DC (can’t blame him for bettering himself) and the new mayor promptly caved, so we have no hope of a rail system in this city. Now the county judge is in a battle to try to keep his job.
Meanwhile, some of the looniest state legislators observed this and are proposing laws which would prohibit any state funds from ever being used for any sort of rail project in the state. I’m sure that Houston and Dallas, which both have light rail services, would disagree. Austin, which has a horrendous traffic problem, is trying to get a rail system, but I worry that the conservative kooks will vote it down there, too.
I’m disabled, so I’m looking forward to moving to a city (not in Texas!) with a good public transportation system so that I can get around by myself.
I am guessing that it was unbearably loud. Jet engines aren’t known for being subtle. Or particularly fuel-efficient. For something like trains, a big, torquey, diesel engine or an electric motor really is about as good as it gets. The failure mode is also better – electric’s pretty darned good: “don’t touch that!” and diesel doesn’t tend to explode as violently as jet fuel. I would imagine a jet-fuelled train accident would have one advantage: no complaining survivors.
madtom:
“… thaw the chicken first….” (for those curious, Google “chicken gun”) Actually, that’s only 310mph, fast for a train but not insurmountable. A couple of wheel driven trains have broken this speed. Our biggest problem with passenger rail is money, mostly for infrastructure. Our tracks are not even adequate for freight rail at speeds well under 100mph.
And upgrading to high speed capable trackage would be quite an expensive project on the US’ East Coast, with densely packed areas around much of the useful Eastern route. Curves need to be more gentle, banking helps (unless you buy the tilting kind of train), and maintenance requirements are such that it would be hard for the high speed train to share trackage with low speed trains.
That said, it’s likely that as oil becomes scarcer and more expensive, a shift to electric trains will happen: it takes a lot more energy to carry a person by airliner than mainliner. We will probably see powered flight become the preserve of the very rich, while the rest of us use trains.
But even there, what chance the oligarchs – kings of ‘I’ve got mine, fuck you Jack’ – will allow their lackeys in the legislatures put forward any public money for such a frivolous thing as a high speed train. After all, if you really needed to be there quickly, you’d be rich enough to just fly. And if you ain’t rich enough to fly, then whatever you’re travelling for mustn’t be very important, right?
Pitchfork time!
Dana Hunter @ 11:
I think you get all the awesomeness this time around, Dana. And thank you, I really needed that.
Oh, those Russkies, trying all sorts of hopelessly ridiculous things.
An old jet engine is like your car, always stuck in overdrive. Really inefficient and low-torquey at low speeds. Better at high speeds, but it’s not going to get about like 30% efficiency at any sane ground speed. You really do need the electric generators and motors between the power source and the wheels, to act like a transmission, like in all diesel-electric locos.
They also mounted jet engines on the front of snowplow trucks, to act as a very expensive snowblower, literally.
Up-risin’… sounds good on paper, but (here in the U.S. of A.) think long and hard before you advocate a social breakdown in a nation with 200 million guns, but only a three-day supply of food….
Marcus@21
You may be confusing jet fuel, which is similar to kerosene, with aviation gas for piston engines, which is high octane gasoline. The latter is highly volatile. Granted, kerosene is more volatile than diesel fuel, but not nearly so much as gasoline.
I agree that diesel or electric, or both, is a better solution for trains.
No.
Just no, PZ.
A train won’t do it, cannot do it. Where we’re heading, a just and equitable future, is unexplored territory of the profoundest sort. Trains can only go where people have already been.
We’re on a rocket, one that has the misfortune to exist in an unfathomably vast universe with an absolute limit to how fast we can travel. We seem to crawl along only because the destination is so far away. And if we swerve and weave in our course, how could it be otherwise? The route is uncharted.
And here’s the thing: sometimes we have to shed parts of our vehicle. The spent and empty bits need to be dropped, despite how mighty and useful they once were. Better still, they should be thrown out back, hard, so that in the loss of them we gain even more momentum.
Make no mistake: this is a generation ship. Much as I wish it were otherwise there’s just too far to go. And one day I fully expect that a steely-eyed young crew will look at me and see that the mass I’ve inherited from growing up in an invisible stew of bigotry is too great. And you know what? I’ll watch this grand ship sail away from me, content to know that I had a hand sending it off in the right direction.
# 19 Iorn: Airlines also lobbied against high-speed trains both in Florida and Texas.
As to safety, the French TGV holds the speed record in tests of 574.8 kmh. Trains in commercial service often run at 320 kph. There is no problem walking around and eating at the cafeteria. There have be rare derailments, usually caused by someone putting something on the tracks, but the trains are designed as a unit to maintain structural solidity and to not turn on their sides. The system was started in 1981 and widely developed since.
As someone who lives in Taiwan, I can tell you that the High Speed Rail system is a boon. I live three stations away from Taipei. Despite two stops on the way and a top speed of around 300km/h, it takes only thirty minutes to make a trip that would take over four hours by car or by the regular train (TRA). On the HSR express train (Taipei-Taichung-Kaohsiung direct) it takes less than two hours, nine by car. At 300km/h, it would take only two days (including stops) for a train to cross the US.
Train speeds don’t even have to reach 500km/h for them to have more value than airplanes. As fuel prices rise, electric train travel would/will become cheaper than flight, and less damaging to the environment. More people can be hauled by a single train than two or three jumbo airliners; Taiwan’s HSR is only ten cars long and holds a hundred per car. People need to stop thinking in term of “instant results”, instant travel, and accept that long distances require a long time. National and international travel will eventually return to days instead of hours, whether we like it or not.
Another reason for more rail is freight trains. It takes a week to go from Vladivostok to Moscow, and about another week to reach London. It takes over a month for a cargo ship to make the same journey. I thought economists and capitalists liked saving money, but apparently not.
Unlike cargo ships which run on fossil fuel, trains run on electricity which is increasingly renewable and getting cheaper. Bonus: If a train derails at 80km/h, the cargo might be salvageable. If a cargo ship sinks or cargo falls overboard, it’s difficult to impossible to recover, as well as causing environmental damage. Even if a land link from Russia to Alaska can’t be built, it would still make sense to build rail and ports to the north, then shorten the cargo ship trip to a day or two instead of weeks. It means less fossil fuel used and less risk.
http://youtu.be/7ocTTkHqQcg
Ahem. Excuse the length of that.
randay @ 29:
“Airlines also lobbied against high-speed trains both in Florida and Texas.”
Yes, they did. The existing vested interests, including the people running commuter airlines that see high-speed rail as a more efficient competitor, came out in force. Consequently governor Scott, who always knows which side the butter, and money, is on rejected the project.
The divide for liberal and recent conservatives on which projects are undertaken and which are not seems to be a matter of who benefits most. Most big projects benefit major corporations in a very big way. Bechtel, Emerson and Brown & Root come to mind but the names change frequently as they merge and buy each other out. And, or course, the bankers will always get their due on every project of any size. The factor that seems to decide it is not the profits in the building and maintenance, but rather who benefits from the project itself.
Building a bridge or a highway gets a pass because, in addition to making transport easier, its main beneficiary is the existing power base who can exploit the opened areas for development. High-speed rail doesn’t because the areas are already being exploited and saving a few million people a few hundred hours each in travel time and a few dollars money going across Florida, the first phase was to go from Tampa to Orlando, aren’t seen as significant benefits to the ‘job creators’. In fact the first phase was more a testbed and engineering study for the nation to gain experience. The benefits in travel times were only marginally better than a car due to the number of proposed stops but there was a significant public benefit in safety and simply not having to drive.
The big benefit of phase one would be that everyone would become familiar with high-speed rail and the US would open up to more projects as, with experience, the cost per mile would be dropping. The other benefit would be that phase one leads to phase two, Orlando down to Miami. With that you are tapping into major corridors.
Wider plans with high-speed links between Orlando and Jacksonville, and on up to Atlanta seem to be the logical progression. Once you have a link to Atlanta opened up with a proven technology the whole route to NYC is open. But it all has to start somewhere. Contractors and regulators need the experience of going through teething, a few wrecks, the requisite number of failures and miscalculations to know what they are doing. Every technology goes down the same general path of development and failures.
IMHO rail, light and/or high-speed is the way to go. It won’t eliminate the need for other transport, particularly for shorter trips, but it has the potential to vastly increase safety and efficiency over the massive waste, financial burdens of vehicle ownership, and over 30.000 deaths a year on the highways.
# 31 left0ver1under/ France has also opted for the slowest transport. To reduce the number of freight trucks on some roads, it is going to build a canal from its existing network to connect to the network in Belgium and Holland. Canal boats can carry several truck loads of goods whose delivery is not urgent.