My First Blog - and On Real Railroads

Interesting read Lee. Nicely done!

Lee, I enjoyed your Blog. Your comparisons between these two over time, past, present and future were spot-on.

Quanta Technology Blog, Sept 3, 2014

Following the Railroads

Interesting information from Lee Willis 

Take a look………..   http://quanta-technology.com/b.../following-railroads

Lee, seeing that you are an electrical power authority and also interested in railroads, what do you think about the prospects for new mainline railroad electrification in the USA?

I've often thought, couldn't some railroads recover a significant portion of power from dynamic braking? Especially on a run like Cascade Summit (Willamette Pass) to Oakridge in Oregon which has 40+ miles of nearly continuous downgrade averaging about 1.8%. But I can guess at some of the many obstacles, such as clearance limitations for catenary through numerous tunnels.

Many years ago, noted rail author John Armstrong had an idea for low-budget freight railroad electrification using some kind of side-wire and trolley-follower setup.

Your blog post was a very interesting read.

Art

Lee

The thing that got my attention was :

Today just four mega-railroads dominate the U.S. rail industry: Union Pacific, BNSF, CSX and Norfolk Southern. They focus on heavy industry and bulk commercial goods transportation, and are immensely profitable doing so. A fifth, all-passenger railroad, Amtrak, kept on life support by government-subsidies, staggers on with significantly reduced services - all that remains of our once glittering passenger railroad industry.

It was a interesting read.

Larry

Yes, but we've seen the mega-railroads spin off so many short-line and regional railroads. I see it as the only way the more marginal railroads could survive, by side-stepping the high cost of unionized labor.

Lee,

When are we, if ever, going to see hardening of the grid against EMP's or CME's??

It's interesting to see how legislation directs investment.  As with the railroads and the electric power grid, so it goes with the oil & gas industry.  Incidentally, most folks don't know the difference between gas and gasoline.  My career was in the oil and gas industry.  It is very cyclical.  I left it in 1988.  For, at least 10 years afterward, it was in the pits.  But, my friends that stayed with it became "kazillionaires."   The biggest boon was brought about by technology - horizontal drilling and fracking by opening up the hard sands with hydrolic force.  Another driving force was government regulation concerning common carriers - as with the electric power grids.

Lee

As far as I know GE has not found any customers for their hybrid road locomotive that features batteries to capture energy from braking.  It looks like it is just a technology demonstrator for something that doesn't pencil out, at least so far.

While the GN and Milwaukee received great train handling benefits from regenerative braking with their mountain electrifications I don't believe the economic benefit from the power was very great.  As you point out with your emphasis on a system approach, you have to time the braking of one train with the power needs of another.  That tends not to work out well when, as in the case of the GN, electrification represented just over 1% of system route miles.

Are there any contemporary examples of investor owned systems that have gained significant economic benefits by the use of power from regenerative braking?

I can't imagine power from regenerative braking being substantially recovered via a battery system on any heavy-duty freight railroad. Perhaps it has potential on transit systems, but they probably have straight-electric operation from catenary or third-rail.

My main thought was that overhead electrification could have the additional benefit to recover dynamic braking power on certain heavy-duty mainline routes with exceptionally long downgrades, like the Cascade line.

I vaguely recall some transit systems (buses?) proposing flywheel technology for energy storage and possibly recovering braking power that way. Wonder if anything came of that?

Hi Lee:

What a great blog especially for someone like me who spent his working career marketing power generation equipment to the electric power industry and his playing career as a fan of railroads of all scales!

One other analogy between those two industries is that just like steam locomotives have been replaced by diesel-electric railroad motive power, steam-based power generating equipment is gradually being replaced by natural gas-based technology, even for base load power generation applications.

Our steam turbine-generator sales people certainly didn’t like to hear me remind them of that analogy.

Regards,

Bill

Nice Read Lee, Thank You for posting it.

Well done Thanks for the link to it!