Opinions on trains and planes.

On 20 Aug 2008 10:52:35 -0800, (Eugene Miya)
wrote:

[...]

Deadhorse was mentioned (both flown and driven, let me think, 1 time
driving down, 3 times up (I am authorized to drive Univ. of Alaska
Fairbanks vehicles) making 6 round trips for 12 flights).
My 4 day lay over was to Deadhorse. And I've driven to Key West
a couple of times.

I had a job interview with ARCO on the North Slope one time in
the 1980s, and flew in and out of Deadhorse from Anchorage aaftr
flying from SeaTac to Anchorage. I had taken a couple of vacation
days in conjunction with a weekend for the trip. I got into
Deadhorse in mid-morning, and we went out to tour the ARCO
facilities, but by the end of the tour the wind had come up and
snow was blowing and we had to radio to some other trucks to come
form a caravan back to the ARCO "Hilton" (the fancy dorm they had
for the engineers). A whiteout was blowing up and I got out on
the last plane to leave deadhorse for a week.

I'm sure glad I didn't have to come up with some weird excuse for
my boss in Washington state why I was a week late coming back
from vacation.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:31:14 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:

Actually in Europe the high speed lines are in direct competiton with the
airlines and for journeys of up to 450 miles or so compete very effectively
in journey times. So much so that the train has taken more than 80% of
the business on lines like London-Paris.

You dont see that much scenery when zipping along a TGV track
at 185 mph.

From London to Paris there is no scenery, unless you enjoy
watching cars seem to creep along on a parallel autoroute.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:24:32 GMT, Stefan Patric
wrote:

Actually life was lived more slowly, then, mainly because it couldn't be
forced to move any faster, but also because money was worth more and
things cost less relative to today, only one person needed to work to
support a family well, and taxes didn't eat up 40% to 50% of your gross
income. Ah! Yes. Nostalgia.

If modern families were willing to live the same life as a family
in the 1940s or even 1950s, it wouldn't cost that much more in
inflation adjusted money.


--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

Keith Willshaw wrote:
"Tom P" wrote in message
...
Mark Brader wrote:
Tom P.:
The reason I feel safer about flying is because aircraft are
designed to be failsafe. Every part of the system is duplicated.
This is what 20th century engineering is about. Trains are a 19th
century invention, they are not failsafe, if anything breaks,
then
you have the makings of a disaster.

Arrant nonsense. Fail-safe engineering was used on trains before
there was such a thing as an airplane. Westinghouse brakes, for
one example.

You are quite correct, Westinghouse patented his system in 1872,
predating the Wright brothers invention by 30 years, but some 40
years after the development of rail systems.

So what about wheel breakages, mudslides, trees, tractors on the
tracks... we're talking about 21st century high speed trains, not
19th century.

You can only take design so far, the weather is beyond the control
of
any designer. See the number of aircraft crashes caused by bad
weather at airports. Aircraft structures have been known to fail
too, see Aloha airlines as an example or the recent Qantas incident.

I think some better examples would be the DC-10 crash in Chicago in
1979 or the China Airlines 747 in 2002, both of which resulted in
complete loss of life.


Keith

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tim..... wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
tim..... wrote:


Because I wasn't replying to that comment

I was replying to:

"Bombs on trains are no less dangerous."

And that was a response to "I don't think anyone is afraid that
hijackers will fly a train into a skyscraper",

So what

loads of people make replies to posts without reading the one that
went before

so you're still
asserting that a bomb under the tracks will kill more people than
flying airliners into skyscrapers.

Only in your tiny brain

plonk

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--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
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Hatunen wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:23:15 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Hatunen wrote:
On Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:37:39 -0500, (Mark Brader)
wrote:

Tom P.:
A train has dozens of wheels and axles. If just one of these
breaks at high speed, you're dead.

Keith Willshaw:
Nope, in most cases what happens is the train limps into the
next
station

Dave Hatunen:
Unfortuantely, history makes tthat an optimistic appraisal:

Eschede disaster

The ICE accident near Eschede that happened on 3 June 1998 ...

Unclear on the concept of "in most cases"? Keith was right. The
Eschede disaster occurred not only because a badly designed wheel
came apart, but also because of some seriously bad luck as to
*where*
it happened.

Where it happened was on a high speed train; I doubt that a train
travelling below 100kph would have had such a catastrophe.

Where in the sense of geographical location, not kind of train.
There were two failures involved, one of the wheel and the other of
the track. Both had to occur for a disaster to happen. Further,
the
train was running 200 km/hr, which is not in the domain of "high
speed rail" unless you use a very broad definition--steam
locomotives were exceeding that in the '30s and my uncle Bob, who
was retired from the Seaboard Coast Line, claimed to have run the
Silver Meteor at that speed on a number of occasions in the '30s,
'40s, and '50s.

Now how many people died on airliners that year?

I answered the question at hand" How many people have died
because of a broken train wheel.

The number of people who died in airliners is irrelevant.

If the question of whether trains are safer than airliners then it is
very relevant.

--
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--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

Hatunen wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:24:32 GMT, Stefan Patric
wrote:

Actually life was lived more slowly, then, mainly because it
couldn't be forced to move any faster, but also because money was
worth more and things cost less relative to today, only one person
needed to work to support a family well, and taxes didn't eat up
40%
to 50% of your gross income. Ah! Yes. Nostalgia.

If modern families were willing to live the same life as a family
in the 1940s or even 1950s, it wouldn't cost that much more in
inflation adjusted money.

Do you have numbers to support that?

--
--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:31:14 +0100, Keith Willshaw wrote:

"Stefan Patric" wrote in message
...


But are the majority of travelers (on the train) business travelers or
are they just average people traveling for other reasons? I think the
latter. The exception would be if the train is a commuter type where
in the morning and late afternoon most of the passengers are going to
or coming from work.


Take the Eurostar on a morning from London to Paris or Brussels on a
morning and you'll see an awful lot of people travelling on business.
The same is true on most of the high speed lines between major cities.

I can remember traveling by train as a child and much of the enjoyment
of the trip was watching the changing scenery, seeing the small, rural
communities that one would never see if flying pass by, talking to the
other passengers, playing cards or games, etc. People just lived a
slower more gregarious life then.


Actually in Europe the high speed lines are in direct competiton with
the airlines and for journeys of up to 450 miles or so compete very
effectively in journey times. So much so that the train has taken more
than 80% of the business on lines like London-Paris.

Plus, unlike airports, the train depots are in town and not a 30 minute
or more ride away. Time saved is money not wasted.

The Chunnel surely has surpassed all expectations, hasn't it?

You dont see that much scenery when zipping along a TGV track at 185
mph.

Perhaps. The closest thing comparable I've experienced was a 140 mile
per hour jaunt in a Porsche Turbo on a lonely stretch of 2 lane blacktop
in southwest Utah years ago. Scenery didn't seem to pass all that
fast. ;-)

Stef

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:20:21 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Hatunen wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:23:15 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Now how many people died on airliners that year?

I answered the question at hand" How many people have died
because of a broken train wheel.

The number of people who died in airliners is irrelevant.

If the question of whether trains are safer than airliners then it is
very relevant.

Not unless you state it as "x deaths per million passenger miles"
or somesuch.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:21:18 -0400, "J. Clarke"
wrote:

Hatunen wrote:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:24:32 GMT, Stefan Patric
wrote:

Actually life was lived more slowly, then, mainly because it
couldn't be forced to move any faster, but also because money was
worth more and things cost less relative to today, only one person
needed to work to support a family well, and taxes didn't eat up
40%
to 50% of your gross income. Ah! Yes. Nostalgia.

If modern families were willing to live the same life as a family
in the 1940s or even 1950s, it wouldn't cost that much more in
inflation adjusted money.

Do you have numbers to support that?

You first.

--
************* DAVE HATUNEN ) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *