Working rail roads and their tracks.

[the old grind]

Did someone say 'Little Joe'? This is not to scale nor is the livery appropriate, and it runs on B-B trucks vs the std 2-D+D-2 makeup, but it works on both my inner and outer lines. (Lionel O-27 & 0-31)

 

[ArlyA]

Here is a really good video about the shape of car wheels and why this work so well.

 

[oldtimer 66]

A funny railroad ballad about bathrooms. I heard this song many times at the local Ushers club. Enjoy.

 

[MossRoad]

Did someone say 'Little Joe'? This is not to scale nor is the livery appropriate, and it runs on B-B trucks vs the std 2-D+D-2 makeup, but it works on both my inner and outer lines. (Lionel O-27 & 0-31)

SWEET!

 

[ArlyA]

Here is a nice video about how steam engines work. A locale one used here to go around a short tourist track what I stopped at to speak with the volunteers there. They asked me to operate it for them so I looked it over and decided it looked to poorly serviced.

 

[bcp]

Spain officials quit over trains that were too wide for tunnels

The botched order was for commuter trains due to operate in two mountainous northern regions.

www.bbc.com

Bruce

 

[MossRoad]

Ooops.

 

[gstrom99]

I remember seeing a TV clip (Engineering Disasters?) a few years ago about rail lines in Europe (connecting two countries) that had to build a transfer station for passengers, after finding out that the two countries rail lines/tracks were not compatible. One line came in, passengers would then have to transfer to the other line to continue their journey. I looked, but can't find a link to the info...

 

[kenmbz]

I remember seeing a TV clip (Engineering Disasters?) a few years ago about rail lines in Europe (connecting two countries) that had to build a transfer station for passengers, after finding out that the two countries rail lines/tracks were not compatible. One line came in, passengers would then have to transfer to the other line to continue their journey. I looked, but can't find a link to the info...

That was to get european trains into russia which has a different gauge rail.

 

[kenmbz]

Spain officials quit over trains that were too wide for tunnels

The botched order was for commuter trains due to operate in two mountainous northern regions.

www.bbc.com

Bruce

So no money was lost just the time to get new trains? Sounds bad, but not catastrophic and the people involved resigned.

NJ transit here bought trains that were too tall and they just took grinders to them so they would not hit the tops of the tunnels. Milions of dollars in actual loss.

Then they parked a number of newer trains in the lowest railyard they have, when told Hurricane Sandy was coming. Who knows how many millions of newish rail car and engines lost (they won't say).

They built their new command center underground in a known flood zone, and for some reason it flooded. More millions.

Then they spent 200 million on exploratory funding to check viability for a new rail tunnel from NJ to NY. Repeating a study that had already been done.

No one resigned, no one got fired. A few got promoted..

Spain still has better high speed train service than the US, I know it's a small country compared to the US. but we can't even have real train service here in the North East, and our high speed trains spend most of their time going pretty slow on rails that were not designed for high speed.