Why? Why have electric lines been abandoned?

I didn't cite any particular study--and you didn't either. Your paper isn't connected to Ohio State University in any real way, other than the fact that it apparently was written by a student at that school.

Your link doesn't track back to a scientific study--it is apparently a policy paper assignment used as an example for a college level writing class. It is not a peer reviewed study in any way, shape or form, and the source material isn't referenced specifically. We don't even know if the student passed or flunked the assignment

The paper is apparently also extremely dated--the sources cited all date to 1997 or earlier, which makes the paper useless for drawing any conclusions about electrical power generation in the US in 2014.

The paper also doesn't address any specific electric vehicle in relation to the conclusions drawn. The paper itself is not dated, and we aren't even sure about who authored the paper. 

The paper may be valid for teaching students about writing, but it is useless otherwise.

Before you lecture me you should examine the information that YOU POST as evidence for a conclusion. Posting this drivel as "evidence", and trying to make it sound like it is special by intimating that it has some sort of gravitas because of an extremely tenuous connection to Ohio State University makes you look disingenuous, easily duped, or flat out silly depending on any particular reader's evaluation of your intentions.

Jeff C

Whoa fellas!

It appears we are being poisoned by toxic smug emissions.   

It is time for a breath of fresh air.

Hybrid and electric cars are technically interesting.  Their purchase price vs fuel cost savings often do not pencil out.  A comparison of air quality vs conventional cars gets murky when considering not just power plant emissions but the metals mining and refining required to manufacture batteries.

The success of hybrid and electric cars in the marketplace has as much to do with an old automotive selling point as any technical merit.  Whenever Toyota sells a Pious they are selling image just as much as Chevrolet does with the Corvette.

Freight railroads can not get very far selling image.  They have to deliver transportation for a price.  Electrification is hugely expensive.  It could offer savings over WWI era steam power.  As steam locomotive technology progressed the cost advantages of electrification on many lines was reduced.  When Diesel-Electric technology matured there was no longer any reason to spend millions string up extension cords for locomotives.

Railroads that electrified some freight lines in the early 20th century did only a few things.  Some, including the GN and N&W, removed their electrified segments.  Others went bankrupt.  Their lines went to government passenger agencies like the New Haven and Pennsylvania or were abandoned like the Milwaukee.

Electrified freight remains common in Europe.  But a much higher percentage of surface freight moves by truck in Europe than in North America.  That is because North American freight railroads are so much more efficient than those in europe.

Ted,

I hope you see this. I would like to discuss with you a layout plan for me and I have left you a message on your website. Could you please contact me via either phone number or email address I left you?

Thanks.

Dennis Kwasny

Dennis

I just spoke with Dave and told him that you sent him an e-mail.

You stated many studies bear out your point and yet you provided none to back your position. I at least found a paper and who it was written by is not the point, it had references cited at the bottom. Your attempt to trivialize and marginalize someone who does not agree with you smacks of the the tactics of Saul Alinsky, if you can't use facts you can be little your opponent. I could have called you a tree hugger, a burned out ex-hippie, leftist liberal but I didn't altho you claimed that I could be seen as easily duped, silly or disingenuous. You're reaction to my post was way over the top and nowhere near a reciprocal response, I am not easily duped or silly I look at things from a logical practical point and then make my decisions and if I feel I'm being BS'd I will call you out on it.

Jerry

By 1950 only 1.3% of the  US class1 railroad trackage was electrified.

Most of that on PRR. Conrail eliminated the catenary on their right a way because it was cheaper and more expedient to purchase diesels.

I think you are asking the wrong question.

Nope..seems like a perfectly fair question to me...when you have ridden an electric

interurban out to Viking bural mounds at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden, sorta in the

boonies, and interurbans have disappeared here, but electric lines run hither and

thither in Europe, there must be some reason they have vanished here.  I read an

article once claiming the electric lines disappeared in Calif. because GM wanted to

sell busses and tire companies wanted to sell tires, so they lobbied against them,

but that seems too unlikely to me.  Cost had to be the factor.

I was addressing the elimination of catenary on class 1 railroads. You certainly have a good point when it comes to interurban trolleys and that is a real shame on us.

It is a real credit to Philadelphia the PRR and Reading Railroad electrified commuter rail lines still exist and are run by SEPTA.

Dear Colorado Hirailer - The conspiracy with GM and Firestone tires to eliminate interurbans was no myth. The case went to the supreme court. You can research this by googling "Nation Cities Lines". The consortium purchased light rail lines throughout the United States, deliberately reduced service, allowed the cars to become filthy (in some cases makiing them filthy), and got kickbacks from politicians to purchase bus replacements. They bought functioning efficient trolley and interurban  transit lines all over the United States through leveraged buyouts at pennies on the dollar, and promptly ripped up the tracks to sell the real estate. The participants are all dead now. Their bodies should be dug up and displayed in gibbots, like the old-time pirates.

As someone once said, the NCL conspiracy did little to hasten the demise of non-affiliated operations. 

By the 60's ANY transit operator would have been begging for a public buyout  such as a government-funded authority, to operate their systems given the outmigration of cities as well as the growth of the private automobile.

With that said, this is one of the more plausible explanations for the Milwaukee not investing in electrification.

http://www.trainweb.org/milwaukee/article.html

I for one still maintain that the monies spent over the past number of years on "stimulus packages" would have been better spent upgrading the electric grid as well as funding mainline electrification projects for BOTH freight and passenger service.   

I suspect that this didn't happen because of the reality that the generating capacity of so-called "green" power is simply not sufficient to "power" the increasing electric demands of the United States in the 21st century without massive increases in efficiency or forced conservation measures.

With that said, the PRR, RDG and New Haven catenary has served the northeast well for 75 (or however many) years. 

Like any economy of scale, if it were more widespread some of the costs of electrification would certainly come down. 

Hot Water,  I'm not trying to be confrontational (since I'm certainly EE or MechE) but exactly how are diesels more efficient than electric locomotives?

I'm not questioning initial capital outlay, which would come down if there were more of a demand thus more off-the-shelf production of electrics.  Diesels currently win here.

I'm talking about HP per kW of electrics versus HP per gallon of diesel for two comparable frieght locomotives.   

Originally Posted by Rule292:

Hot Water,  I'm not trying to be confrontational (since I'm certainly EE or MechE) but exactly how are diesels more efficient than electric locomotives?

I was wondering the same thing. I wasn't sure if he meant that diesels were more efficient at delivering goods since they can go pretty much anywhere or if he was trying to state that diesel electric engines were more efficient than electric engines in terms of energy used.

It has long been an established fact within the industry, that by the time the power losses from the generating plant to the locomotive are factored into the unbelievably high cost of electrification and straight electric locomotive cost, the latest, computer controlled diesel electric locomotives are the most cost effective AND the most efficient at the wheel/rail interface, i.e at the coupler.

For high speed passenger trains Electricity makes sense and electricity makes sense when used with high efficiency motors. Average speeds of high speed rail using overhead power in Europe and Asia are in 150-180+mph zone. For freight nothing beats the old workhorse diesel for shear tractive effort and brut pulling power. The big issue here in the USA is the cost of implementing high speed electric passenger trains, the cost is in the Billions.

You have certain parts off the northeast corridor that can not support high speed with the current curves and rail infa-structure in its current state.

With that said, the PRR, RDG and New Haven catenary has served the northeast well for 75 (or however many) years. 

The New haven Catenary has been operational since 1907. The system has been upgraded over the years and Amtrak has extended the electrification from New Haven to Boston. The PRR catenary into NY Pennsylvania station came about about 1934 or so. 

I think many of these electrifications came about because circumstances that dictated it, ie in NYC, the need for smoke free power forced the electric solution at the turn of the century. The PRR was a slow starter but the work to convert to overhead 11,000volt catenary system came about after third rail running was installed on segments of the railroad. The PRR probably did the most to adopt electrification on the system converting the Northeast corridor from NY to Washington DC and extending it to Harrisburg before calling it quits. The heavy capital costs of the electrification going west of Harrisburg could not be sustained by the reduced revenue the railroad was earning during the depression years.  PRRs approach to power supply was to self generate and transmit with company owned HV transmission, something Amtrak is still doing today although no longer 100% of requirements .

Actually, we are discussing the WRONG thing here.  The traction motors of an electric or a DIESEL-electric are both getting power from some sort of ELECTRIC current.  The discussion is really about how the electricity is getting to the traction motors in the first place.  The diesel-electric is really the "turtle" concept:  you are taking everything with you, including the power plant!

The only diffence over the vears with traction motors is the move from DC to AC.  Even in that case one can build a straight electric with AC motors.

Can’t Electric Locomotives be appropriately ballasted to give those advantages that Hot Water thinks these diesel locomotives produce, at the coupler? I am from India & we have Electric Freight AC locomotives for heavy freight that had concrete ballast strategically placed (usually over the trucks) to improve the tractive effort. Besides unlike the diesel locomotives where the engine is 1 indivisible mass that limits where it can be positioned on the frame., the systems on an Electric Locomotive (except for the main transformer) could be repositioned so that the ballast / weight is installed where it has the greatest benefit to the tractive effort.

Hot Water, electric locomotives also have these superior computer controlled systems that you claim these diesel locomotives to have.

As to diesel engines being somehow more efficient than electric locomotives, I don’t believe that is universally true. If that were the case, every house should have their own super-efficient computer-controlled diesel generator instead of relying on an electric grid as communities typically do. Maybe if you like to live away from anybody else with no cost effective access to the electric grid, then you may operate your own diesel generators like some islands in the Caribbean.

These are again just my opinion.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

Hi,

You're asking the exact same question I was asking.

I can understand transmission losses of electricity from power plant to substation to catenary/feeder affecting 'efficiency"

What I can't understand is how a modern six-axle diesel locomotive would be less efficient if it's diesel were replaced with a step-down transformer that received it's power from catenary. 

Where in India are you from?  I work with many folks from India, from Punjabi to folks from Madras and Bangalore.  One apprenticed in a "roundhouse" in India Railways.

Rob,

I was expressing my opinions. I shouldn’t have begun the previous post as a question. Here is an article that Dr. Janis Vitins from Bombardier Transportation presented at the Freight Transport Technologies Symposium last year.

http://www.aqmd.gov/tao/Confer...17_JVitins_print.pdf

He compared the current North American 6-axle diesel-electric freight locomotives to Electric Freight locomotives around the world, including my favorite, the LKAB IORE in Sweden which I had in HO-Scale. Since he is from Bombardier who is well known for its Electric locomotives, his presentation attempts to promote electric locomotives. But it does answer your question if diesel-electric locomotives are more efficient than electric locomotives just because the diesel-electric locomotives have the diesel engine on-board. The answer is “NO”.  Quoting Slide “7” on Page 2 of the above file, “The starting tractive effort of a locomotive is determined by the axle load and the choice of maximum adhesion coefficient. – It is NOT specific to the locomotive type, electric or diesel-electric”

I interpret this presentation as saying that if you choose the right gearing in the axle, have the right axle loads & adhesion factor, you could use electric freight locomotives instead of diesel-electric freight locomotives. I would like to remind the readers that these US freight locomotives that you seem to admire so much are diesel-electric, not diesel-mechanical. Unlike most of the cars you drive, there are no shafts, connecting the engine to the wheels. So the transmissions of power / torque to traction motors in the axles in these diesel-electric locomotives are the same as the transmission of power / torque to traction motors in the axles of the electric locomotives.

Dr. Janis also proposes a way to convert existing 6-axle diesel-electric freight locomotives to Electric Freight locomotives or use a locomotive like the IORE that has 49” wheel diameter (allowing a larger traction motor on the axle) instead of the 42” wheel on current diesel-electric freight locomotives.

I was from Madras (now Chennai) in India. I rode electric trains to school since I was 9 years old, then to college & later to work in India. So I got to experience electric trains for 14 years. I have been living in the US since 2001. I came here to get my Master’s degree & after graduation I worked for 3 years at Toyota in Engine Research & the next 4 years at Caterpillar in diesel engine design. After Caterpillar acquired Electro Motive Diesel (EMD) locomotives, I moved to the Electric Drivetrain group developing electric drivetrains for large mining trucks. When the mining industry wasn’t doing well, I was involuntarily reassigned to the cabs area in Caterpillar & now I am designing cabs for Caterpillar machines.

Unlike many of my colleagues who have spent most of their career in 1 division & hence developed deep expertise in a specific product, I have changed jobs every few years that let me experience different areas within Caterpillar but I am not an expert in either electric drives or even engines. Someone on this forum with more knowledge might disagree with my conclusions. Hence I would like to reiterate that these postings are just by opinions.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

Hmmm...with credentials like that, I'd think Mr. Rajan would be hard to refute.  The

question then becomes availability of very cheap electric power, such as water power,

and the construction and maintenance cost of electric lines, which the Pennsy once

vetoed west of Harrisburg.  Are electric generation and transmission installation and maintenance costs cheaper than vanishing fossil fuel diesel costs?  Before fossil

petroleum fuels became grossly overpriced, electric lines were considered more costly, apparently, but now?  Total, overall cost is the question, or is it another "Firestone and GM" sales job?

Fallacy. Many companies got rid of streetcars because buses were cheaper and easier to maintain. New York,Washington and Los Angeles are good examples.

The biggest advantage of conventional buses over streetcars and trolley buses is the ease of changing routes.  With buses you simply tell the driver where to go.  With the other two use have to change the infrastructure (tracks and wires) to change routes.

Stuart

It has long been an established fact within the industry, that by the time the power losses from the generating plant to the locomotive are factored into the unbelievably high cost of electrification and straight electric locomotive cost, the latest, computer controlled diesel electric locomotives are the most cost effective AND the most efficient at the wheel/rail interface, i.e at the coupler.

Naveen

Hot water is not saying that electric locomotives suffer from poor adhesion compared a diesel-electric.  What he is saying is that the thermal efficiency (heat energy of fuel burned vs. work at the coupler) of a diesel-electric locomotive is as good or better than a system requiring a fossil fueled power plant, electric transmission system, catenary and an electric locomotive and the diesel-electric costs less.

Fallacy. Many companies got rid of streetcars because buses were cheaper and easier to maintain. New York,Washington and Los Angeles are good examples.

Even the transit agency in Seattle recently considered abandoning DC powered trackless trolleys (electric buses). New electric buses are very expensive ($1 million+ each) and the power system is costly to maintain.  Public perception, political pressure and tax payer funding has kept them going so far.

It is hard to find many for profit organizations that have stayed with straight electric power.

As far as the demise of the streetcar goes, I would suggest you read the history rather than try to write it.  There is a lot written on the subject. Some of our street railway systems should have been modernized rather that abandon.  We are now rebuilding some of these systems at a very high cost.  LA is a good example of where streetcars are being rebuilt.  In my opinion it some of it should be rebuilt as heavy rail, not light rail, as light rail does not have the capacity and is too slow to attract all the riders that heavy rail would.  LA is gun shy after their experience with building the red line, but it has turned out to be a huge success.  Then there is always the cost.

As for the efficency of diesel electric versus straight electric locomotives, this depends on local conditions.  Here in the west the power grid continues to grow to meet new demand.   With open transmission wires, as more power is needed the voltage is increased to get more current to flow.  The wire gets so hot it sags into trees and sets them on fire. At the present time only about half of the power generated gets to customers that need it.  The rest is lost as heat in the transmission and distribution systems.

Locomotive efficiency is the comparison of the amount of energy used to generate the power compared to the energy produced at the coupler. Effeiciency has nothing to do with the type of fuel used to generate the energy or the cost of that fuel.  While the inefficiency of the electrical grid continues to increase due to increased demand and more distant power plants, the diesel engine efficiency continues to improve, the relatively new computer controlled fuel injection system making a big difference.  In the diesel electric locomotive this power is generated only a few feet from where it will be converted to energy at the coupler, saving all those transmission and distribution losses.   It is no surprise that diesel electric is now as efficient as straight electric. 

Adheison is a little more complicated that the previous poster indicated. Maximum adhesion is archived with some controlled slip. This was fairly difficult to accomplish but US locomotive manufactures mastered this.  I watched a CP loaded grain train start west bound at the Mount Mac Donald tunnel, after the ventilation doors open.  I was toward the middle of the train where there were four unmanned helpers.  The engines started to throttle up, the air brake release came at about notch four.  The train started to move about notch five.  All the wheels on all four helpers were turning about 15 percent faster that rail speed.  It was amazing to watch this very heavy train start moving on this steep grade, and these helpers being operating remotely.  A few minutes later two more helpers pushing on the rear came by, but by now the train had picked up some speed and there was less slip. 

Colorado Hirailer,

I just went back & read your initial posting & regarding the higher maintenance costs of electrified Catenary or Overhead Contact Systems (OCS), there must be ways to minimize the service interruptions caused by ice storms. Since I have never worked in that industry I am not sure what those measures are but here is a video of my favorite IORE locomotives running with the pantograph moving along a frozen OCS. You can see & hear the sparks as they move under those frozen lines but they still move.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq6dkIDuX1A&list=PL3FEC3FA82CD2AF03&index=5

Since a portion of the electrified routes that these locomotives operate are above the Arctic Circle, the OCS is designed with those severe conditions in mind. Also I have read that in the last few years the infrastructure (bridges & track) in Sweden & Norway that these Iron-ORE trains use have been steadily upgraded to allow axle loads similar to those seen in US freight railroads.

But as many others have said before I do agree that it is unlikely that we could see electric freight trains in the US. While there are efficiency advantages in getting the power to electric locomotives from an electric grid & there are lower maintenance costs for electric locomotives (fewer parts relative to a diesel-electric locomotive & no 6-month oil-change), the advantage is not that great to offset the higher initial costs of the OCS. With the electric locomotive technologies that I am aware of I don’t see a similar situation as when railroads replaced steam with diesel power. Most of the newer technologies like the latest invertors & DC – AC traction are also being used on diesel-electric locomotives. Also railroad operational improvements like longer sidings allowing longer train sizes requiring fewer crew (per train weight) compared to European trains & larger loading gauge allowing the use of bigger freight cars with more payload & twin-stack container trains make US railroads very efficient if not more efficient than European railroads & so there may not be much incentive to invest in OCS for electric locomotives.

When I was referring to it being more efficient to get power to the locomotive through an electric grid, I was referring to the options of multiple energy sources like coal-fired stations, natural gas powered stations, nuclear, hydro-electric or wind, through a national electric grid on a much larger scale compared to having 1 engine in each locomotive (like a house depending on the electric grid instead of having a full-time power generator) & the capability to feed power back into the grid while braking instead of wasting it through friction & heat. So theoretically an electric locomotive going uphill could get the extra power as needed from the OCS instead of always carrying a larger diesel engine on board (unnecessary / extra weight on flat terrain) or having to use helper-locomotives for these situations. The electric locomotive going downhill, using regenerative braking could feed back the energy to the grid to be used by an uphill bound train or for any other residential or commercial purpose since it is electricity. I said theoretically because the electric grid has to be modern to accept power back from the OCS. I remember reading about OCS in some hilly regions (not sure which country)  that were tied to electric grid were not modern enough to receive power back from the OCS & so the electric locomotives also dissipated the dynamic-braking energy as heat through the resistance grids on-board the locomotive like diesel-electric locomotives. Unlike the comparison between trolleys & buses, the trains always require special right-of-way (with tracks) & so freedom of movement for electric locomotives are not as limiting as in trolleys over buses. With technologies like “Last Mile” that are being developed or like the NJ Transit’s newest dual-mode locomotives, locomotive manufacturers are looking into making electric locomotives favorable in portions of a railroad not suited for electrification like low-usage lines or in container terminals, provided there is an OCS on the high-usage main lines.

If I were to speculate the emergence of electric trains for freight in the US, I imagine a railroad like the Montana Rail Link moving trains across a continental divide like the Mullan Pass with steep grades, long tunnels & with a higher traffic to make use of all the advantages the electric locomotive and OCS provide over a diesel-electric locomotive. Something like the obsolete Milwaukee Road electrification but with modern electric traction technology.

As with the previous posts, these are just my opinion.

Thanks,

Naveen Rajan

The only difference between a modern Diesel Electric locomotive and a modern Electric locomotive is the source of the electricity.  The same AC induction traction motors can be used on both and the same control systems used on both.

In the electric scenario the cost is in the maintenance of the electrical transmission to the locomotion.  In the diesel electric situation it is the maintenance of the diesel prime mover and it's distributed electrical generation system.

Also, one needs to consider the life cycle costs of the fuel required to generate the electricity.  Coal is by far the worst polluter and there are both tangible and intangible costs associated with that but otherwise has the least cost per kWh generated.  Nuclear has the least pollution cost but otherwise the highest cost per kWh generated.  Oil, gas, solar, hydro and wind fall somewhere in the middle.  Hopefully we will get over our silly paranoia over anything nuclear and start looking into LFTR reactors seriously.

The generation losses for transporting centralized generation are offset on the one hand by the inefficiences of all forms of internal combustion generation.  For example, my Volt goes about 40 miles on 13kWh of electricity and 40 miles on a gallon of gasoline.  But that gallon of gasoline contains 33.7 kWh of energy.  So in the later case 20kWh of energy is lost in heat and resulting effluent.  On a pure cost basis that 13kWh of electricity costs me $0.50 but that gallon of gasoline costs me $3.75.

Lithium batteries are very environmentally friendly, especially if renewable energy is used both to refine the lithium and create the batteries and to recycle the slag back into new batteries.

On the west coast very little electricity is generated with either coal or oil. Distribution capability in California is getting more critical by the day given the pathetic state of the electrical grid and California's distaste for allowing any new or additional generation capability in the state other than renewables.  About the brightest star on that horizon is the climate change resulting drought causing reconsideration for additional water storage which would have the side effect of making more hydropower available at the same time.