More train action than you can shake a stick at

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Fred Stiening

The blue elevated line is the Tokyo Monorail built for the 1964 Olympics

https://youtu.be/v7SIzzKa5Fo

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17 Responses to More train action than you can shake a stick at

  1. Fred Stiening says:
    July 8, 2018 at 8:51 pm

    The leftmost (East) pair of tracks are the Tokaido Shinkensen high speed rail, the most heavily used high speed line in the world

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōkaidō_Shinkansen

  2. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    July 9, 2018 at 12:24 am

    At the opposite end, are the old abandoned railroad stations, tracks and tunnel in the USA. There are some fascinating videos on youtube that railroad buffs may enjoy.

    Here are an example :

    Johnson Canyon Abandomed Railroad Tunnel – Arizona

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1brCPo_OdE

  3. Fred Stiening says:
    July 10, 2018 at 12:29 am

    In 1998, France loaned the original Statue of Liberty to Japan, and it was such a big hit that Tokyo put up their own replica in a tourist area

    https://www.gotokyo.org/en/spot/363/

  4. briand75 says:
    July 10, 2018 at 7:27 am

    Wonderful to see a great transportation implementation. Efficient and probably cost effective, my wish would be to have the camera closer to the tracks.

    • Fred Stiening says:
      July 10, 2018 at 2:13 pm

      And since Japan remembers the past, it is not dependent on oil products from the Western Hemisphere that could be embargoed. That was the same reason South Africa was running coal fired stream trains decades after most of the world abandoned them, and replaced steam with electricity on the important routes.

      The more I observe Japanese and Chinese culture, the more obvious it is how Europeans failed to acknowledge there are other cultures that were equally advanced while Europeans were obsessed with killing people who didn’t worship the right God.

  5. Fred Stiening says:
    July 10, 2018 at 5:16 pm

    If you want to locate this area, Italy Park is on the left side under the monorail and we are looking South. The main Tokyo train station is about a mile behind us. The most local trains are on the right side.

    The camera appears to be on or near the Waseda Study Overseas (WSO) Centre.

  6. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    July 11, 2018 at 8:29 am

    First there was the train. (“Bahn” in German) … Then Germany invented “Auto trains” (Autobahn) which in the US are the “Eisenhower Interstate Highway system”

    What’s next? “Flying trains”, of course.

    https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/2018/07/11/flying-trains-france-s-akka-technologies-makes-pitch-to-boeing

    The concept doesn’t make sense to me and seems to be geared more toward getting money from taxpayers. I think it makes about as much sense as submarine train for underwater travel. (Paging Elon Musk!)

  8. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    July 30, 2018 at 3:34 am

    Data you can use – “A curve that allows a train to operate at the max speed of 220 mph would have a circumference of more than 50 miles, were it to make a complete circle. Going over mountains requires deep tunnels to level out the climb so that the grades are half as steep as those on interstate freeways.”

    from http://www.marinij.com/general-news/20180729/state-bullet-train-might-not-attain-mandated-speed

    Seems to me that an “Autobahn” allowing cars to drive 150 mph would be a more cost-effective solution… especially if they were self – driving.

    You can build a lot of nice highways for $100 Billion – https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/us/california-high-speed-rail.html

    • Fred Stiening says:
      July 30, 2018 at 1:18 pm

      Actually, I can’t use that data. It has no source and was written by someone who slept through geometry class. The train is not running in a circle. The relevant measure used in engineering trains is turn radius. The allowed gradients (and freight trains) for Interstate highways is based on the horsepower needed to climb up the hill and brake going down hill. With few exceptions,freight is pulled by diesel locomotives which operate with an entirely different torque vs horespower profile, and the non-AC locomotives are seriously compromised by wheel slip.

      There will be turns tighter than the maximum speed, which can be further mitigated by banking the track and/or leaning trainsets.

      The one damning statistic is the speed requirement vs real world experience. Even so, the Japanese train operates with three different schedules. They have been building a maglev train that will be 86% in tunnels and go in excess of 350 MPH

      So ultimately what is the point? The voters voted to borrow money to build something that is not possible. Is this story laying the foundation for Hyperloop? Indicting Donald Trump? Abandoning construction? Bringing in Chinese contractors to build the tunnel? There is a story in the past few days of one of those hurriedly built bridges collapsing into a river. Fortunately the bridge was full of no vehicles on the way to the empty ghost cities.

      https://news.cgtn.com/news/3d3d414d3045544d79457a6333566d54/share.html

      And Kenya

      https://youtu.be/y6PLVN5tt0w

      • TheChairman says:
        July 30, 2018 at 4:07 pm

        Yep, some journalist got that wrong. Minimum radius is 4.4 miles (28 mile circumference) for a 220 mph curve, and that is without ‘canting’ the track/rails.

  9. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    August 7, 2018 at 8:31 pm

    Since I was a child, I always wondered “What is a shoefly?” Now, that’s to yesterday’s LA Time’s, I finally know. Unfortunately, my elementary school music teacher was about 60 back in the 60s and she is probably not reading this blog. 😉

    http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-bullet-train-delay-dispute-20180806-story.html

    Shoo fly, don’t bother me
    Shoo fly, don’t bother me
    Shoo fly, don’t bother me
    I belong to Union P.

    I feel, I feel, I feel like a Right-of-Way
    I feel. I feel, I feel like a Right-of-Way
    I feel. I feel, I feel like a Right-of-Way
    I feel, I feel, I feel like a Right-of-Way

    • Fred Stiening says:
      August 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm

      My cousin in Boston had the same question. In order to rebuild the streetcar / Light Rail on the Longfellow Bridge, they used a shoefly to relocate the tracks during the 2 year long construction project. The historic preservation types wanted the riveting to be exactly as it was done when the bridge was built using an obsolete technique that nobody remembers how to do

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