
An 89-year-old Reinventing the Train in His Backyard - cdvonstinkpot
https://www.wired.com/story/flight-rail-vectorr-atmospheric-railway-train
======
mike47
The idea of a magnetic coupling between the engine and the passenger
compartment is very interesting. This could be adapted to use with self-
driving automobiles on highways. They could run on their own electric power
train for local journeys, then pick up a "thrust carriage" when joining a
highway. This pulls them along until their exit, when they decouple and return
to using their battery and on-board motors. The on-board motors could also
take over for short sections for example between different thrust carriage
runs.

Perhaps the thrust carriage control systems could be made smart so they
automatically maintain safe spacing between vehicles and adapt their speed to
the volume of traffic. They'd communicate with the vehicle to tell them when
the coupling was about to end so that the vehicle can engage its own drive
train to take over smoothly. Or the vehicle's self-driving systems tell the
thrust carriage how fast to go depending on the traffic conditions.

This could massively extend the range of electric cars. Burying the pipes in
the road network would obviously be very expensive, but the size mentioned in
the article (12 inch diameter) is not prohibitive.

~~~
avar
You wouldn't need a thrust carriage to get big fuel gains. It's enough that
the cars form a tightly packed line as racing cyclists do to minimize drag to
get major gains is fuel economy:

[https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-aerodynamics-affect-
fuel...](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-aerodynamics-affect-fuel-
efficiency)

~~~
mike47
The changes in fuel economy mentioned in that article don't seem that big. On
the other hand, if an electric car only needed batteries for a range of say
50km, that would be a large saving in cost and weight. The batteries are only
needed for local journeys, and the thrust carriage mechanism provides almost
all of the energy for long journeys.

It would probably require electrically driven thrust carriages rather than
pneumatic - you would need one for every car using the system. Trucks might
need 2 or 3 or more to provide enough thrust. If a magnetic coupling really
works, it would be possible to attach and detach from the thrust carriage at
motorway intersections without slowing down any more than cars do at the
moment.

~~~
quintushoratius
> It would probably require electrically driven thrust carriages rather than
> pneumatic - you would need one for every car using the system.

Not necessarily one per car. You'd probably have a chain of thrust carriages,
with maybe some spacing in between each individual carriage. One or several
cars would clump onto a thrust carriage -- there's nothing to prevent them
from being quite long.

When it's time to get off the highway there might be a hole in the clump for a
bit until someone getting onto the highway fills it in.

The one issue I see is that, in order to disconnect from the thrust carriage,
you have to have a way to do so. The logical method is to use an electromagnet
that can be powered on/off to connect/disconnect but then the car has to power
that -- and that might sap it's range a bit.

------
ricardobeat
A pilot line using similar technology was built in 1983 in Porto Alegre, south
of Brazil (I used to live there). It was deactivated shortly after, but the
elevated track still exists [1]. A new 600m stretch was built in 2013 at the
airport using updated technology and still runs today.

The same company also installed a line in Jakarta, Indonesia which has been in
operation for 28 years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway#Aeromovel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_railway#Aeromovel)

[1]
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruriak/3270276680/in/photolist...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruriak/3270276680/in/photolist-5YZ2jG-
nKkfux-kWD35z-TDdR7) [2] more pictures including the new one:
[https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=aeromovel%20porto%20aleg...](https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=aeromovel%20porto%20alegre)

~~~
curtis
This YouTube video gives a pretty good overview of Jakarta's Aeromovel:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2Zxn7ybNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2Zxn7ybNQ).
It's pretty primitive compared to VECTORR, but it is still operational (it
just runs in a theme park, though).

------
Gustomaximus
When they ask 'why has it not been this way" isn't the obvious answer 1)
Infrastructure cost. Building this vs tracks on the ground would be a
significantly higher investment. And 2) if something goes wrong with the
engine, the entire line is shut down, vs pushing a train off the track and
other trains continuing.

And I missing something but aside form the gradient capability I didn't see
much advantage presented here. And if you are going to build these atmospheric
pipes why not put the carriages inside them? I wonder if you could combine the
2. Have express trains shooting through the pipes and local/scenic trains
riding that energy on-top. Workable or not, great to see people developing
ideas!

~~~
chx
> if you are going to build these atmospheric pipes why not put the carriages
> inside them

Because when the vacuum breaks then people die if they are inside. This
happens to be one of the biggest weaknesses of Hyperloop. It's not a good
system when a failure _anywhere_ in the pipes causes a massive loss of life.
If this guy's propulsion fails then, well, the train stops gradually, not a
biggie. If air enters into a vacuum tube where the Hyperloop carriage is, the
shockwave will do something to the carriage people ride in and it won't be
pretty.

~~~
schiffern
>If air enters into a vacuum tube where the Hyperloop carriage is, the
shockwave will do something to the carriage people ride in

This is Thunderf00t's "shock wave" argument, and it has survived frequent
debunkings. Are we really so easily misled that slapping sciencey branding
behind any poorly thought out claim will cause people to repeat it as truth?

The huge thing he forgot is... _pipes are not lossless!_ A tube break would
initially cause the air to rush in at the speed of sound, but after a few
kilometers the backpressure from friction with the tube walls will slow the
air to highway speed and spread out the pressure rise. The way it works out,
if you're close enough to the breach to be killed by the pressure wave, you're
close enough that you can't stop in time before derailing.

~~~
chx
> The way it works out, if you're close enough to the breach to be killed by
> the pressure wave, you're close enough that you can't stop in time before
> derailing.

Huh? Who's derailing here? The problem is, again, that if just a seal breaks
close enough to a carriage, you are dead. This is not comparable to a
derailing which requires quite a bit of things go wrong on a normal train or
the propulsion dying in this elderly chap's magnetic train.

~~~
SolarNet
I think he meant in comparison to a train track breaking up with a high-speed
train on it. Read the sentence more carefully as a comparison against existing
train technology.

------
Animats
There's a working modern atmospheric railway, from Aeromovel, with two
installations.[1] It's a reasonable low-speed system, but hasn't sold
elsewhere.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2Zxn7ybNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM2Zxn7ybNQ)

------
Iv
What is the advantage of this over a classic electric train? Weight of the
locomotive? I think it is more than compensated by the ease of having more
than one train on a line at a given time.

An electric cable seems way easier to maintain (and repair) than an
atmospheric sealed tube.

And this has absolutely no relation with hyperloop, that solves a completely
different problem (air drag at high speed)

~~~
johnpmayer
> more than one train on a line at a given time.

Seems like the system is capable running different trains in different
sections; the pressure/vacuum system is distributed and segmented down the
length of the line.

------
GoToRO
Cool idea. The main drawback is that the train still has to push the air in
front of it so it's no better than a regular train. I think this is the main
advantage of hyperloop. Air drag is significant over 40km/h.

------
zeronight
I don't understand how you could have many trains on the same track. If one
train needs to stop then do they all stop?

I guess you could have sections every half mile or so but that sounds crazy
expensive. Putting a pump out in the middle of nowhere.

And how would train yards work? Assuming you used sections how long would they
be? 10 feet?

Cool idea though, first time I've seen it.

~~~
an_account
In train yards you could probably use electric motorized carriages pretty
easily, that could be switched to different lines (at slower speeds).

------
jk2323
I like trains. Because of different reasons, Europe and China is better suited
for trains (e.g. public transport in cities available).

What I would like to see: 1\. An inter European Rail network. Possible 4
Tracks (freight and personal.

2\. This trains should be able to connect and disconnect wagons automatically.
Hence a fast train may ride from Lisbon , 3 wagons get disconnected outside
the city in a railroad shunting yard and then continue to Madrid, the rest of
the train bypasses the city and heads to the next big center.

3\. See this technology widely used for the freight trains:
[http://www.cargobeamer.eu/](http://www.cargobeamer.eu/)

The big advantage of trains is that you can run them nuclear and with Thorium
reactors in the future.

~~~
icebraining
(2) already happens, even if it's not automatic. The train that leaves Lisbon
gets divided into two when it arrives in Medina del Campo; one part goes to
Madrid, the other to Hendaye (France), where it connects up to the TGV.

~~~
jk2323
I know. I have experienced it. But I have experienced it as an very time
consuming process. I don't see why this can't be done in an automated way,
taking minutes. Not hours.

~~~
apk17
Hours? Even back with locomotive-pulled trains where you actually had to shunt
the cars to a different platform that should be below 15 minutes, and today,
it adds less than three minutes to the train that is longer at the platform
(Ohlsdorf, Hamburg rapid transit).

Provided that both trains arrive on time.

And doing in in flight is _much_ harder (and not legally possible), but if you
would want to join/separate in the outskirts to get one into town and the
other on the bypass, just the stopping and reaccelerating will cost some
minutes.

------
pauldelany
One of the earliest working applications of this in the 19th century was very
near to where I live in Dublin:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkey_Atmospheric_Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkey_Atmospheric_Railway).
The railway was used to carry stone from the quarry (which was a few hundred
feet above sea level) to the shore a couple of kilometres away, to build what
is now Dun Laoghaire harbour.

One of the small roads near where the line used to run is still called
Atmospheric Road.

------
owenversteeg
So this looks cool, but where's the improvement here over a current electric
train car? Genuinely curious. The drag remains the same, and it's still
electric.

Hmm, actually, I just thought of a big plus: you're not moving your massively
heavy engines with you.

~~~
brianwawok
In a 200 car train, what percent of the weight is the engines? My rando guess
is 10% max. Building all this for 10% ecceciency seems rough.

~~~
ant6n
ICE 3 weighs 400T, it has 16 motors that probably weigh less than 2T each.
Overall the motores are most likely less than 10% of the weight (ICE 3 is a
very light train overall, with lots of motors, probably giving it an
unfavorable motor/train weight compared to an electric locomotive-pulled
freight train).

A bigger concern is the efficiency of transporting energy _to_ the train.
That's one of the reasons why long distance routes use overhead electricity,
because you can have higher voltage (12kv-25kv) compared to third rail
(600v-1.5kv).

This is like third rail on steroids -- lots of construction near the ground,
probably lots of energy losses all around.

Plus it's an unproven technology, with a single vendor. It'll be a hard sell.

------
curtis
This page as some videos showing the VECTORR scale model operating in various
modes: [http://www.flightrail.com/our-
prototype.html](http://www.flightrail.com/our-prototype.html).

------
doublerebel
The Wired article is devoid of media but there are a number of good videos of
the Flight Rail on their website:

[http://www.flightrail.com/our-prototype.html](http://www.flightrail.com/our-
prototype.html)

------
mirimir
Just FYI: [http://www.mtn-top-hs.org/ashley_planes.htm](http://www.mtn-top-
hs.org/ashley_planes.htm)

------
c517402
Maybe it could be used for those kiddy trains at amusement parks.

------
shamaku
As always the reason we do not have such ingenuity in the mainstream is that
the mainstream is an industry addicted to the easy profits that is essentially
big oil. Think of it what you will.

