Aloha
Eric,
Someone else will have to answer the details here. I do not know. I have never even seen an Acela in the flesh, having left the northeast before they began running. My understanding is that the tilt can not be used between New Haven and New York because of very close track centers. There are likely other areas as well, maybe a lot of them, since most of the northeast corridor has track spacing that would be considered substandard based on the current practices of any railroad in the country. I would be very surprised if the allowed difference would be as much as 25 mph.
Aloha
Does the AEM7 develop 6000 continuous and 9000 peak hp. that is the rating for the G? What I do like about the AEM7 is they are dependable motors moving lots of people on rails,
I'm not the best expert on this, so if someone knows better please feel free to correct me.
I'm guessing here to say that it's peak hp, but I honestly don't know. All I can say is that OTOL reports the AEM-7's hp as 7,000. But I don't know if that's continous, peak, or both.
What routine maintenance happens on this track and overhead power system? Don't the ties and the rails have a finite life? Would it be possible to move some of the tracks over a couple feet while replacing parts of the tracks, or is there some system for inspection that only replaces lengths of a couple hundred feet at a time? (I'm also thinking of how, in Massachusetts, the policy is that when highway bridges over tracks happen to be rebuilt, they're built with 21' clearance to allow double stack container cars. The system isn't really compatible with such tall cars yet, because about 1/6 of the bridges are still too low, but that will eventually address the issue without incurring a huge cost all at once.)
How much will that cost? (I assume it's cheaper than saving five minutes on the southern part of the trip?)
The GG-1 had a continuous rating of 4620hp and a short-term maximum rating of 8500hp at about 65mph. The AEM-7 continous rating is about 5000hp with a short-term maximum rating of 7000hp. Those numbers are somewhat higher with the 20 or so AC traction rebuilds.
But I was under the impression that senators only show up at work in Washington something very roughly like half the number of days of the year that the average American worker shows up at his/her job, and that there's an expectation that senators will spend some time in their home state talking with the lobbyists employed by the largest businesses in their state, or something like that. That's not quite the same as commuting to work every single day.
True, but it's a huge difference over maintaining a second residence inside the Beltway, which almost every congressman/senator does. And commuting on the order of 50-100 days a year for that distance, by Acela, is certainly noteworthy.
I don't have "clear evidence", but I've read multiple articles which state clearly (and which quote Biden as saying) that he goes home every night to Delaware to be with his family, a commitment he made as a single father to young children after the death of his wife decades ago, and has kept since. Given that the Acela isn't likely to be *more* expensive than a senator-worthy hotel room inside the Beltway, I'd believe him (and don't see his choice to be unreasonable). It certainly wouldn't work for any Senator not from Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, or NoVa/Richmond (by Regional) and maybe Charlottesville (Crescent), though.
The "which is faster, airplane or train" question has been around a lot longer than I thought, I discovered yesterday! The best train photograph I've seen in quite a while:
1931. There weren't so many rules then! Also, stunts like this would sort of fall into the "airshow" category, I think. Railroads did lots of crazy things back then, like tug-a-war games where two locomotives would each try to drag the other one across a bridge.
It was a far, far, far, far less regulated world. My father, single and adverturesome in the late 1920's obtained a pilots license at about the age of 20. My mother talked about him taking her up when they were dating, this would be late 1930's, and doing loops and acrobatics over the Memphis riverfront. That would be in sight of downtown. But then the Stearman biplanes that were the primary training aircraft in WW2 had a top speed of about 75 mph (don't remember exactly) and a stall speed of under 40 mph. The only instrumentation was a level bubble and a compass. No radio. He instructed primary in WW2, and later flew transport, being considered overage for combat. They did their instruction from cow pastures, literally. I asked him once what the base airport they used (Jackson TN) had for navigation aids at the time, and his answer was, "a wind sock."
h34r: h34r: h34r:
Well, to pull things slightly more towards topic... we had our races on this side of the pond, too, between the PRR and NYC, New York to Chicago. Slightly more regard for safety, perhaps, and I think a lot more for comfort (though that was as much Pullman as the railroads). But it was still all about making the run in under 20 hours... under 19 hours... under 18 hours... pushing for 17 hours... the trains timed to enter the "racetrack" parallel main lines into Chicago at almost the same time... The drive for improvement seemed much, much stronger when there was another railroad to compete with.
Still off-topic! Not sure the comments about comfort are fair, but certainly the case that speed limits were interpeted liberally! The LNER East Coast line limit was 90mph when the high speed services were introduced in 1935. However on the inaugural run, a maximum speed of 112mph was reached - the driver claimed the speedo on his A4 Pacific only indicated 90!! On this run, the train covered 27 miles in 15 minutes at an average speed of 108mph!
Amen to that, man. I realize it's pie in the sky talk to an extent (heck, what isn't these days, short of pondering minor timetable changes and track work detours), but on cool, sunny weekend days, as I daydream walking the dog, it's not too hard to imagine High Speed running up and down the eastern seaboard from DC to Atlanta and from DC to Miami.
EMUs probably also mean that the coaches now have to meet locomotive inspection requirements. On the other hand, with the way the Acela coaches are attached to the locomotives, I think locomotive maintenance effectively requires pulling the whole trainset out of service. (I think I read somewhere that the TGV has articulated, semi permanently coupled sets of coaches, but there are traditional couplers attaching the locomotive to the rest of the trainset.)
Did he have anything to say about what Congress has been saying about this idea? There is an FRA loan program, but I don't think it's currently big enough to pay for something like this...
