I guess the basic shell is ok enough, if you assembled it properly (Which M-K didn't.). And, of course, the fairly standard trucks aren't much of a problem. Everything else is over-complicated, messy, proprietarily designed, difficult to maintain, with a good deal of plain old thoughtlessness.
I think our goal should be to minimize the total number of dollars we ship out of the country, and if we have to choose between un-Americian rail cars and un-American petroleum, we're probably better off with the former.
Patents last a bit less than 20 years. I believe that means that any patents on the Amfleet and Superliner I equipment, at least, have expired.
Patents and Copyright on design are two very very different things. One can last forever.
Yes, they are different. But frj1983 brought up patents, not copyright.
It is either trademark or copyright, but one lasts for the entire life of its creator +70 years and designs are copyrighted.
Trademarks are pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. The most a trademark might let Bombardier do is prevent some other company from calling the car an Amfleet or a Superliner. But a trademark by itself would not prevent another company from building an identical car and calling it something else.
Given how our rail car isolationism has given us a proven track record of building world-class passenger rail cars at a profit... sorry... it's one thing if you're talking about a large order to amortize the NRE costs, but wasting gobs of cash just to meet a made-here requirement for a few dozen cars is silly.
Is this real? (I honestly don't know, but I'm skeptical). How much better do FRA cars actually perform in real-world situations? If it's better, how much does each life saved cost? At some point (7 to low 8 figures) the you start throwing away money.
It is very real. Look at the pictures of the Metrolink wreck and you see one very crumpled up car, to approximately 1/3 of its volume. Same is true for most crashes of American equipment. You see dented and crumpled cars. Look at the pictures of the ICE cars at the Eschede, Germany wreck, and you will see that a number of the cars turned into piles of componenets because they literally unzipped along their seams. The costs and difficulties are not near what the Euro car manufacturers would have you believe from thier propoganda.
What propaganda? (serious question). If they're claiming their designs are safe enough, are they wrong?
You missed my point. My point was that several of the cars involved in Eschede CAME APART ON IMPACT. If you look at pictures of the accident you will see separate sides, tops and floors/undercarriages. A car that will do this under any circumstances does not meet US safety requirements for crashworthiness. The result of these instant disassemblies was a considerable increase in loss of life. As to the vehicle weight issue, I would not hold up the Acela as best practice for compliance with FRA requirements or anything close. In fact, the whole power cars plus unpowered coaches set up is the wrong answer for high speeds, as adhesion decreases with speed and the need for applied power increase with speed, so that you need heavier and heavier power cars as speed increases to keep the adhesion / power need curves from crossing, and additional weight is the WRONG ANSWER. An EMU set with the same passenger capacity could achieve the crashworthiness strength and be much lighter even if nothing else changed.
One thing I'd like to see is a proper corridor service developed around the very populous regions currently served completely inadequately by the Piedmont, Carolinan and Crescent. With four extra trains every day, one could run a local service every two hours, serving a few more places, between Raleigh and Greensboro, and a daytime service linking New York and Atlanta, leaving New York about 7am and arriving in Atlanta around midnight.
Yes, at 23,000 feet radius, 200 mph, the combined SE plus unbalance would be 6.96 inches. However, . . .
My point was really more of the general idea that FRA standards are probably excessive. Perhaps the ICE1 car design is flawed, but would a FRA compliant car do that much better at 125mph (w/o any engine to pad it)? Probably so, but how much? Have there been any crash tests to provide data for the FRA standards, and does the FRA provide cost justification behind them? (not a rhetorical question)
Besides, since it has been way more than 17 or 20 years since those Patents were granted. they have all expired anyway
So then the result or the Metrolink crash applying your criteria would suggest that the Hawker-Siddley designed bilevels used by Metrolink and a host of other commuter operations in the US also do not meet the crashworthiness requirements of US then? Afterall the first car did open up like a tin can, didn't it? Inquiring minds want to know. Per your criteria then a car is supposed to maintain structural integrity even if a whole bridge collapses onto it? Could you please point to somewhere in the FRA regulations which says anything like that? Thanks.
I am going to try this one more time, and this is the last as far as I am concerned:
I think the value to each individual personally is if you or a loved one is in that .87 per biilliion that didn't need to die????
Sentiments like that, while perhaps heartfelt, only serve to lessen overall safety. A life may be priceless, but lives have a monetary value, and statistical safety must be evaluated in a cold-hearted manner.
More than happy to. Everybody is getting tied up on the difference in speed / the presence of the bridge, etc. The whole point is that on impact the current eurocars will come apart. Even at Chase, MD, which was comparable in speed the cars did not come apart. There was probably almost no difference in mass of the object hit between three stopped diesels at Chase and a two lane overpass at Eschede.
