
Railroads beware: Technology is gaining on you - kposehn
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/railroads-beware-technology-is-gaining-on-you.html
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rayiner
Interesting thing about railroad stocks, and no doubt one of the reasons
Buffet bought BNSF, is that they own one of the most valuable things in the
world of transportation: rights of way. Is hyperloop the way of the future for
freight? If so, the railroad companies can build that out faster than anyone
else, because they've got the rights of way.

Incidentally, this is one of the things I don't get about Hyperloop versus
CHSR: there is nothing inherently cheaper about building an evacuated tube
versus putting down a few steel rails. You still need a right of way and
grade-separated crossings, and you still need to do all the
engineering/environmental work for all that and that's where the expense piles
up. You think laying some steel track down on a rock bed is the expensive
part? Now, once you have the right of way in place, that's going to be
valuable no matter what technology comes down the pike. Amtrak estimates the
cost of upgrading the northeast corridor to 220 mph HSR at $160 billion. A lot
of money, to be sure, but imagine what it would cost if there wasn't that
existing right of way from DC to Boston, through downtown Baltimore,
Philadephia, and New York, already in place! That'd be a trillion dollar
project, whether you did it with a HSR or Hyperloop or whatever.

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kposehn
The RoW is highly valuable for all sorts of stuff. Back in the day, iirc,
Qwest was owned by Phil Anshutz, who also owned the Southern Pacific Railroad.
He used the SP RoW to lay down huge tracts of Fiber, which the other railroads
copied.

They can and do run all sorts of stuff long the tracks - fiber, natural gas
pipelines, and soon high transmission power lines.

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devb
If you want to talk about "Back in the day", telegraph companies had been
running their lines along ROWs since the 1860s. They would obviously have to
duplicate ways across vast expanses of the country otherwise. In exchange,
they would leave a few conductors open for the railroads to use for their
communications.

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betterunix
I doubt that 3D printing will be a problem for railroads. You still need to
transport for the raw materials, and most people will not have industrial-
scale 3D printers in their homes (any more than they have industrial-scale
paper printers in their homes). There are also limits to what can be 3D
printed, and those limits will remain in effect for the foreseeable future --
liquids, timber, food, and so forth are not things that will be easy to print,
but they remain important and they are often transported by rail.

If anything American railroads should be rejoicing about 3D printing, as it
will encourage more domestic manufacturing and create new opportunities in
transporting both raw materials and finished products.

(Edit: I know it sounds like I am making the same argument people made in the
1960s about computers in the home. However, a key difference with 3D printing
is that the size of the printer determines what can be printed. It is one
thing to print forks, knives, and gears; it is quite another to print a car
body.)

~~~
a-priori
I'm also not sold on household 3D printers. Maintaining and operating a 3D
printer would be a hassle. But retail-level printers? That's a no-brainer. I'm
certain people would be willing to accept a reasonable mark-up to have things
printed for them.

I'm seeing hardware stores that prints all the screws and nails on-site (or at
a regional distributor, shipped just-in-time) rather than keeping inventory,
and "here's a random part that broke on this obsolete product, could you
replace it?" services.

I'm seeing furniture stores that create made-to-measure furniture of varying
dimensions or colours from a standard template to fit your room. Like made-to-
measure clothing, as opposed to bespoke (custom furniture) or off-the-rack
(furniture store).

I'm seeing motorcycle/bike/hockey helmets made to fit a person's head, car
seats moulded to a person's backside (currently only an option on super cars
like the McLaren F1), and custom orthotics that are cheap enough to become
mainstream.

I'm seeing mall photo booths that produce figurines instead of photos.

But no, I can't see people having a 3D printer in their basement to do any of
these things in their house.

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tekalon
I can see it but only with the technology changing. My husband has a 3D
printer and uses it all the time for little projects around the house. Once
the technology advances, you can have printers that are the right size and the
right interface for the common public, they can 'buy' or create a design and
have it just automatically print. Think of having toys for kids or household
products printed faster than driving to a store to get it. Right now 'makers'
are already doing this. It's not very friendly for most people, but its been
very helpful for household uses.

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nemesisj
I had a hard time reading this article without wondering if it was some kind
of spoof. The USA has the most efficient freight rail network in the world
(other countries optimise their networks for passenger), and this isn't due to
a single factor. It is never going to be under threat from the Hyperloop,
because most of the cargo carried are things like coal, raw materials,
containers, etc. that aren't sensitive to being delivered "just a few hours
faster" (or even days). Also, most of the US freight rail network is heavily
heavily optimised and drops containers off for truck haulage after
transporting the cargo to the most efficient spot on the network.

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trebor
I heard about how the modern diesel-electric trains are engineered and
wondered what I could learn from their systems, and was just about shocked. My
intent was a thought experiment on "could we build a better hybrid car?" And
the answer is a resounding yes... just look at trains.

All the research is already done, by train builders. They've done the math
that says when to prioritize amperage over voltage for efficiency, and how to
optimize various systems. And that's just one thing that I found massively
impressive. (Now if only I could find the site I read, it was impressive.)

~~~
kposehn
Find it! I'd really like to know what you found.

I've done a fair amount of research myself and have always felt the auto
industry could learn a lot from locomotive builders, especially the use of
3-phase ac traction.

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pm90
Railroads are much more valuable than most Americans can possibly imagine. And
technology will only make it more so, if sufficient people are willing to work
on it. Here are some ideas off the top of my head:

* automated trains for long distance travel, self-driving car-2-go's for short distance travel

* integrate future transport modules with the railway network and build more tracks; travel long distance on electric self-driving cars.

Of course, the main obstacle is the high initial capital investment. Here too,
anyone really serious should start small: start by helping the current rail
operators optimize freight (the real money maker); gain their confidence and
then work on a joint project on a small scale; if it works out, then expand
throughout the country.

It's painful to see that a country as large as America has such an inadequate
railroad system. But maybe it was for the best: countries like France or Japan
with an entrenched railway system will have probably have a hard time making
the switch to radical new technologies

~~~
newbie12
The main obstacle in the U.S. is that the interstate passenger rail system was
nationalized by Congress. Congress forces unprofitable long-distance routes on
Amtrak and keeps the monopoly company undercapitalized. Amtrak owns amazing
assets like the Northeast corridor rail lines, but there's almost no
innovation as the monopoly loses billions of dollars and can't really tap
private capital markets.

Meanwhile American freight rail-- totally privately owned and managed-- is the
best in the world.

~~~
oijaf888
To be fair it was nationalized in the wake of the Penn Central bankruptcy and
all of the other railroads wanting to drop passenger rail. Railroads were even
able to opt out and I think a few did for a few years but it just didn't make
sense to move passengers vs freight.

~~~
newbie12
The actual problem was the federal Interstate Commerce Commission regulated
routes and ticket prices and wouldn't give passenger rail companies the
flexibility needed to compete with cars and growing air travel. Central
planning failed and completely destroyed U.S. passenger rail.

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Anechoic
_Could such a system, on a more grand scale, replace railroads as conveyors of
passengers and freight? The vision is not new-fangled, and a modern day
visionary insists it could be a better alternative to high speed passenger
rail._

The interesting thing is that the incumbent railroads are actually in a prime
position to capitalize on this tech. The hard part about implementing the
system isn't really the technology, it's all of the property, right-of-way,
and NIMBY issues that come up. However the railroads already own property all
over the country and (for the most part) they can do what they want with it.

Everyone might be better off working together than trying to approach it
separately.

edit: beaten by rayiner

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nealabq
Driverless trucks could also be a threat/opportunity. These trucks will
trundle along at the most fuel-efficient speed 24 hours/day. Eventually they
may be able hook together on the highway, further reducing drag.

Of course trains can also become driverless and train-cars could automatically
couple/decouple, which could lead to many more trains, some with much smaller
loads. I can even imagine trucks someday with wheels for both highway and
steel-rails.

~~~
kposehn
I think that driverless trucks are a natural migration of the short-haul
model, where you have a container that hops off a train at an intermodal
facility and is driven to the customer.

Automated trains are definitely coming; look at BHP Billiton's push toward
remote train operation in the Pilbara region of West Australia.

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Spooky23
Interesting long-term issue.

I think the next decade or two of railroad history are all about moving
commodities like oil and produce. Hyperloop is all about passengers (something
the rail industry has never cared out) 3D printing requires raw materials to
print stuff, which will drive more demand for rail transport. Nothing can move
billions of plastic pellets faster and cheaper than a train.

~~~
kposehn
Well, we may find a hyperloop is better for transporting the smaller pieces of
a commodity. After all, if you can just send a crate instead of a container,
you can send to the buyer exactly what they need and nothing more. The issue
with bulk freight is once you've made the pellets, at some point they have to
be divided up.

I think something like a hyperloop will do very well for less-than-
carload/container freight, but would probably never transport the massive
volumes of bulk products (chemicals, wood, oil, coal, ore, steel coils, etc.)

~~~
Spooky23
Railroads lost 99.9% of that business 70-100 years ago.

You ship stuff that doesn't have time-definite requirements with UPS Ground or
Parcel Post. Time definite, you use an express service. If you have time
definate needs and larger quantities, you use FedEx Custom Critical, or some
LTL truck service.

Some folks today ship same-day parcel shipments via Amtrak, Southwest
Airlines, or other passenger service. That's what hyperloop parcel delivery
would compete with. It's onerous and expensive (ie. I need a guy to drive to
the station with the thing I need to ship), and only makes sense if you have
an office adjacent to the city pairs or airport. Lawyers used this service
alot pre-internet.

~~~
oijaf888
Who took that business in 1913ish? USPS was carried via rail until at least
the 50s.

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jessaustin
Trucks powered by internal combustion engines? It's not an all-or-nothing
thing; many products even today have a rail segment somewhere in their
delivery to the consumer. Even so, for rail to grow much it has to take
business from trucking.

~~~
oijaf888
There wasn't much in roads or trucks for long distance travel in the early
1900s. I believe it took roughly 30 days to do the trip across the country on
the Lincoln Highway as opposed to 7 days via the train.

I would expect if you look at the volume of freight shipped via rail vs trucks
it wouldn't be until the 1950s and the creation of the interstate system that
it really took off. Containerization in the 50s and 60s would be another big
boon to trucking.

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almost_usual
There is about ~121,800 miles of track in North America owned by CSX, Norfolk
Southern, Union Pacific, BNSF, and Canadian National.

That's about ~4.9x the circumference of the earth.

Seems like it would be quite expensive to build this new infrastructure? Maybe
if highway transportation was more fuel efficient / fast the amount of tubing
could be minimized.

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Derbasti
In contrast, Germany, a country that is roughly 1/20 the size of the US, has
about 60000 kilometers of track, or about 1.5x the circumference of the earth.

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DanielBMarkham
The hyperloop would actually be great for railroads to get involved in. They
already have plenty of straight-line right-of-ways, they have deep pockets to
finance the tech, and with the right corridor they could get into the same-day
delivery business. Perhaps even be a direct competitor to Fed-Ex.

I'm not sure the industry is ready to take those kinds of risks yet, though.
The entire hyperloop concept is great, but it's just an idea, and ideas
without any execution intelligence don't tend to do so well.

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moocowduckquack
_" If you made it to age 50, you recall department stores where clerks placed
a sales slip and cash in a cylindrical container that they then inserted into
a steel tube at the point of sale, with the container then transported by
compressed air and partial vacuum, through the maze of tubing, to cashiers
elsewhere in the store."_

Many supermarkets in the UK have these at the till.

~~~
justincormack
I have never seen one in the UK... where?

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moocowduckquack
lots of the bigger ones -
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554632/Thief-
stole-9...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1554632/Thief-
stole-90000-from-supermarket-tubes.html)

~~~
justincormack
Ah interesting, makes sense I suppose to get cash away from tills.

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Anechoic
_Take note that Musk 's Hyperloop prototype was created on a 3-D printer,_

What prototype? Did Musk actually show a model?

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ohjeez
That's far more interesting than the title would imply.

