The Dinky Line actually had or envisaged to have hourly or better service so it could be justified on its own. So it is not an example of what I was talking about. The branch would have to have almost no traffic to be a good case of what I was talking about.
Some of the more esoteric connecting chords around Clapham Junction have zero passenger trains and only very sporadic freights (maybe a few dozen a year, mostly internal trains involving positioning moves for ROW maintenance equipment - and such moves are virtually all diesel powered) yet these lines have the third rail and it is powered and always on, on the odd chance that the chord is needed for some very peculiar diversion moves. Ditto for the respective signals etc.
I agree with the overall principle here. I don't think its malice but more just incompetence and people parroting one another's views. And we all know that passenger railroads (both commuter and Amtrak) are political animals and high-level decisions often get based on public sentiment rather than solid engineering considerations - which is precisely why it is dangerous to have an ill-informed populace.
Lots of really stupid and uninformed comments. For example, one person says third rail systems need to be fenced in or underground (I think they mean in tunnels) and second person replies that he takes Amtrak all the time and doesn't see any fences. What??? 1) Amtrak doesn't use third rail. 2) Lots of the NEC IS fenced and they are putting up new fences all the time. For example, the section near the house I grew up on in SE Mass never had fences until about 8 years ago, now has fences on both sides for many miles through the town I lived in.
Yeah it's the old age anti-rail reflex.
Thanks for clearing up the costs of the northern NEC electrification. The central recommendation of the Transit Costs Project is that we need more public information.
As this photo shows, the Berlin 3rd rail at the time was encased in wooden boards (I think mostly plastic these days), with only the inside surface being exposed, thus greatly reducing the risk of undesired contact. Hamburg has a similar arrangement.
The UK cost are a bit all over the place because they keep starting and stopping rolling programs. Recent projects end up being around 3m a STM if I remember right. The goal for the US should be under 1.5M a STM mile putting us right in line with most countries worldwide. The only way we will hit that is with a long term rolling program
That way there is continuous institutional learning that keeps work less costly especially the pot holing for the CAT poles.
The real cost is labor not materials. the UK cost are like 92% labor.
I'm no expert, and I've often referred to many of these YouTubers for insight only to find that many of the more knowledgeable people here think their views are largely incorrect at times. That said, I wouldn't ever really cite Alan Fisher as a big authority.
Start and stop is the worst you can do in any area. It's not just electrification, also rolling stock manufacturing etc etc. If you only place a major order once a generation as Amtrak does, the manufacturers have to re-learn skills from scratch and this is reflected in both price and design errors.
I should have captioned the first photo. I took it in 1969. The firemen were fighting a brush fire on the Reichsbahn ROW.
There were discussions later than that involving TVA, in the 1960's I think it was. They discussed with both Southern and L&N electrifying Cincinatti to Atlanta. This would have been the CNO&TP through Chattanooga on the Southern and the L&N Cincinatti Atlanta line through Knoxville. Details I don't fully recall, but it was in essence that TVA would own everything from the contact wire to the power plant and sell the power to the railroad much the same as through the meter to your house. Apparently both railroads looked at it fairly seriously but there was the issue of change of power at the ends instead of the long distance run through of diesels as commonly done at the time. Also, neither wanted to be first. I suspect not precluding ultimately doing this was part of the Southern's setting 30 feet overhead clearance in the CNO&TP tunnel rebuilds.
PRR standard catenary is already high enough to clear double stack and triple auto rack trains. NS triple auto racks run often enough on the NEC between Newark DE and Bayview MD.Seems strange to me to electrify from Richmond to Raleigh yet leave DC - Richmond as diesel because someone can't figure out how to hang catenary high enough to clear double stack trains.
