Let us not conflate two distinctly different operating environments. You’re not gonna pull your train into a rest stop to top up the charge because of a traffic jam. You are gonna build out your infrastructure to support whatever energy source you use. And, you’re gonna schedule your movements to most efficiently use that infrastructure. They go hand in hand (I know, I know… railroading and long term thinking are currently mutually exclusive). You’ll probably hang onto some internal combustion diesel locos for those “just in case” whoopsies that’ll happen before reliability gets into the high percentiles.

The flip side to all this, which has been lightly touched upon in this thread is the amount of energy it takes to produce current, functional green tech. Net zero greenhouse gases is currently a tough nut to crack. But we’ll get there or better someday, somehow or another. Or not, but at our peril.

I’ve dispensed with the popcorn - I’m pounding ribs, beans and tater salad! Woot!

Long distance electric locomotives need no more than a fleet of battery tenders at the servicing terminals. The harder or longer the pull, the more fully charged tenders added behind the locomotives.

Regarding trucks, there are lots of 18 wheeler runs that never leave the local area. At work, every day we were visited by 18 wheelers from the local steel supplier, the local food supplier, and national freight haulers (who all transferred to short haul trucks at the nearby dispatching center). No reason for any of those trucks to run on diesel. Same goes for UPS and Fed Ex delivery trucks that spend all night at the warehouse.

Well, the Space Shuttle also had re-usable rockets, so it's not like Musk invented the idea. Also, there is 40 years technology advancement between the Space Shuttle and Space X. Whether NASA could have developed the same, I don't know. Space X exists because of government funding.

But that does not negate your general point, that technology improves over time and overcomes legacy challenges.

This question was raised in a number of news stories in the winter of 2021-22. The bottom line answer was the electric vehicle also had very low consumption in a traffic jam, so the fear of going dead was not realistic. One of the major papers had a story where the reporter purposely spent the night in their electric vehicle in the driveway, to see what the power consumption and risk was. He made it through the night just fine.

In all this discussion of electric vehicles and the application of battery technology to rail applications (and amazingly almost no complaints about thread drift) I'm simply amazed that nobody has even mentioned the Pop Up Metro experimental operation at the East Broad Top...

Some 2,000 miles west of here, massive forest fires have been underway for some time. The sky is hazy here, the temperatures are likely about 10C cooler than usual, and the air positively stinks. There are also forest fires some 1,500 miles east of here.
A couple of natural events have grossly over-powered all the green/marxist ideology about saving the planet with battery vehicles and climate change activism.
That ruthless old bitch, Mother Nature, has proven, once again, who rules the global climate.

Those local trucks maybe home on a daily basis however they're still going anywhere between 300 to 400 or more miles a day. I hauled nursery stock in the spring for 3 years in Illinois all over the Chicago area and on an average day doing 5 drops for Jewel and other stores I was running about 350 miles a day but still going back to the nursery for the next day. Same thing hauling grain or in harvest season 300 400 miles a day running grain but still back to the terminal at night.

WOW. My interpretation of what you wrote is that climate change Activision Is Bad... Perhaps I'm wrong.


I live in upstate Pennsylvania, USA. The smoke from the eastern Canada fires - can you really deny the wildfires are this bad because of how dry the forrests are & that is caused by climate change? - is so bad that I can't see the hillside less than a half mile away. Even when I lived in an larger eastern seaboard city before the EPA Clear Air rules took effect, the air was NEVER this bad. I, like my neighbors, chose to stay indoors today, even though the temperature and humidity are excellent.

Try this interpretation:

Mother Nature is Beating You Upside the Head Repeatedly with a Louisville Slugger. Stop dumping CO2, Methane and other climate changing gasses into the air.

Brian

Before Kelly's commnt, I thought of the olden days when there was a coal wharf every 50 miles or so.

What it did was remind me of Curtis Publishing's fleet of electric trucks that ran from 1912 to 1964. They resembled passenger station baggage trucks with a flat deck, a small cab at one end and a battery deck under the cargo deck. Add spoked wheels with solid rubber tires.

https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2018/0 ... tric-truck

They used lead-acid batteries (Electric Storage Battery was in Philadelphia) and when they came back at the end of the day, crews changed the batteries for freshly charged ones.

A fresh tender full of electrons sounds like a plan.

Phil Mulligan

Disneyland's Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland used battery tenders.

You are wrong.
We should not waste and abuse nature. I grew up on a farm 70 years ago. We wasted little. We grew our own food, and made as many of the things we needed ourselves. We didn't have a lot of money, but had good lives with a strong family. I still lead a fairly frugal life. It pains me to see the waste from all the silver spoon socialists and environmentalists. I don't appreciate these sanctimonious and hypocritical green/marxist assholes.

There was a cartoon at the start of covid. It showed a reporter interviewing an Old Order Amish fellow. The reporter asked if his community was terribly concerned about covid?
The Amishman replied, no, 'cause ve dont haaave the tee vee! There were forest fires and natural calamities before Al Gore and Justin Trudeau were conceived. Can one believe those type of people as they burn Jet B Kerosene by the tonne to spread their hypocrisy and enact laws that effect us all?

At my age, I should be able to work for maybe five more years and have enough set aside to keep from living on the street like so many of the dispossessed and ignored today because their way of life, as working people, has been destroyed. Spare a thought for those folks as you drive by in your government subsidized EVs. Maybe even toss out a few coins at the Christian Missions that provide these people with food and warmth.

My work and hobby are connected to internal combustion engines. I will probably live long enough to see coal completely banned. Hopefully, I don't live long enough to see gasoline and diesel outlawed, although that might happen sooner than later, given the vile and contemptable people who want to see that happen.

For the preservationists, learn to enjoy painting and polishing all your static displays. Gather up some high-quality films, so you can show people what those artifacts used to do, what they sounded like, and how they made good-paying jobs for thousands of people.

I wouldn't think that 350 miles range on an electric 18 wheeler would be out of the question. Plus, in city traffic, every time the driver steps on the brake, he is "putting gas back in the tank".

If you read the whole thread you would know that " Plus, in city traffic, every time the driver stepson the brake, he is "putting gas back in the tank" is illegal.

I'd like you to think about the folks who want be able to have their children to live without a five hundred year storm every two or three years.

I don't believe they are vile or contemptible.

Lots of folks are able to "do their own research" thanks to the Internet and find out just how much the fossil fuel industry has spent in cash dollars and PR Media buys and renting politicians. Seriously, did you not know that the fossil fuel industry predicted with Amazing Accuracy where we would be today back in the late 60's & early 70's?????

Sure perhaps an abused domestic spouse may go overboard in claiming vengeance, but can you blame them???? If I was smacked upside the head every time I entered my partner's room I would . . . (Explicitive Deleted)

I realize that your tribe may not allow empathy for folks that have a different point of view.

Brian

Must have missed that one. How can regenerative braking be illegal?