Opinions on trains and planes.

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?

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

DevilsPGD wrote:
In message Hatunen
wrote:

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:00:06 -0600, DevilsPGD
wrote:


What makes you think that check-in and security would be any less
stupid on trains vs planes?

I don't think anyone is afraid that hijackers will fly a train
into a skyscraper.

You forget, we're dealing with a culture of fear, not dealing with
actual threats.

All it would take would be to wait for one or two bombs and you'd
get
the masses ready to give up more freedoms.

Note all the airliner bombings
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0283.shtml that did _not_
result in a massive increase in security vs 9/11 that did.

And I don't see airport security as "giving up freedoms". If you do
then you're majoring in the minors.

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

J. wrote on Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:23:15 -0400:

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.

Just; the official highest speed for a steam locomotive was a special
run by the Briitish Mallard in 1938 and was 126mph or 203kph. I believe
Mallard needed repairs after the run.


--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

James Silverton wrote:
J. wrote on Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:23:15 -0400:

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.

Just; the official highest speed for a steam locomotive was a
special
run by the Briitish Mallard in 1938 and was 126mph or 203kph. I
believe Mallard needed repairs after the run.

Several German locomotives also managed approximately 200 km/hr. The
point is that 100 km/hr is pretty slow for intercity rail by any but
Amtrak standards and 200 km/hr is not an unusually high speed.

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

J. wrote on Wed, 20 Aug 2008 10:37:47 -0400:

James Silverton wrote:
J. wrote on Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:23:15 -0400:

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.

Just; the official highest speed for a steam locomotive was a
special run by the Briitish Mallard in 1938 and was 126mph or
203kph. I believe Mallard needed repairs after the run.

Several German locomotives also managed approximately 200
km/hr. The point is that 100 km/hr is pretty slow for
intercity rail by any but Amtrak standards and 200 km/hr is
not an unusually high speed.

Oh, I agree and my original question was really whether really high
speed rail could replace air travel and what speeds would be needed to
make people in the US switch for trips in, say, a 2000 km radius? The
actual times for TGV journeys going beyond France are not all that
small. It takes about 6 hours for Paris-Frankfurt.

--

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

Email, with obvious alterations: not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not

Keith Willshaw wrote:
"Hatunen" wrote in message
...
Nope, in most cases what happens is the train limps into the next
station
Unfortuantely, history makes tthat an optimistic appraisal:

Eschede disaster


Which was the exception

The ICE accident near Eschede that happened on 3 June 1998 was a
severe railway accident and the worst ever to involve a
high-speed train, as well as the worst railway accident since
modern Germany's foundation in 1949. Trainset 51, travelling as
ICE 884 "Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen" from Munich to Hamburg, derailed
at 200 km/h (125 mph), killing 101 and injuring 88.

The cause of the accident was a wheel rim which broke and damaged
the train six kilometres south of the accident site. The wheel
rim penetrated the carriage floor and lifted the check rail of a
set of points close to Eschede station. The broken-off check rail
then forced the point blades of the following set of points to
change direction, and the rear cars of the trainset were diverted
to a different track. They hit the pillars of a street overpass,
which then collapsed onto the tracks. Only three cars and the
front powerhead passed under the bridge, the rest of the 14-car
train jackknifed into the collapsed bridge.


A pretty exceptional sequence of events you'd have to say. Try
flying a 747 into a mountain as a contrast and see how many
survivors there are.

You seem to assume that simply describing the sequence of events makes
them into the condition for the catastrophe. Once the wheel broke, it
would only be a matter of time before the train derailed. At the speed
the train is travelling, it is hard to imagine how the train could
safely come to a stop - even assuming the driver was aware of what was
going on - without the cars overturning and jackknifing.



Since the TGV entered service they have been involved in a
number of incidents of wheel and bogie failure without fatalities
as well as a number of high speed derailments. The most spectacular
was the 1993 incident at Haute Picardie when sink hole 7 metres
long and 1.5m wide opened up under the track. Depite the fact that
the last four trailers and the rear power unit derailed only one
passenger was injured.

Then there was the incident when a TGV hit an asphalt laying machine
stranded on a grade crossing while doing more than 80mph

The engineer was slighly injured and no passengers were hurt

Keith


Are you trying to tell us that derailments and collisions with other
vehicles are somehow miraculously harmless events?

If so, try this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents

J. Clarke wrote:
Tom P wrote:
JamesStep wrote:
One factor that's often not considered is that around 25% of people
consider themselves nervous flyers, according to some surveys. Many
of these people would probably prefer train travel if it was
comparable to airlines in cost and time.

James

I commute regularly 250 miles inside Germany, sometimes by plane,
sometimes by rail. It is comparable in terms of cost and time - but
as
time goes by I am getting more nervous travelling by high speed
train
than by air. Trains are intrinsically less safe than airplanes for
many reasons-
- an airplane has two engines. If one stops, it carries on flying.
A train has dozens of wheels and axles. If just one of these breaks
at high speed, you're dead.

So how many people have died as a result of a single wheel or axle on
a train breaking?
Google Eschede for the worst accident in German rail history.
And have you seen those wheels and axles (hint--see
"The Island")? If not you are probably not aware that one of them can
easily be tossed right through a commericial airliner and come out
none the worse for wear. Airliners also have numerous wheels and
axles by the way, and if one from _another_ plane fails you can end up
dead--remember what happened with the Concorde?

- a plane has two pilots and a whole bunch of ATC guys making sure
you never get anywhere near anything that might hit you.

And yet there have been more than a few mid-airs, not to mention the
damn fools who choose to fly within the exclusion zone of US Navy
warships in a combat zone or drift across the border into Russia . . .

A train has
one driver and thousands of trees, animals and stupid car drivers
flashing past you just yards away from where you are sitting.

An airline pilot has to maneuver in three dimensions in a moving
medium that can if it chooses to kill any airplane. A train's
movement is constrained by the tracks. If you had actually travelled
on European high speed trains you would know that those tracks are
well isolated from stupid car drivers, trees are cut well back from
the tracks, and when a train hits an animal it's bad for the animal
and for the poor SOB who has to scraped the remains off the train but
that's about it, on the other hand planes that eat enough birds at the
wrong time go down with some regularity.

It just
takes one tree, one cow or a stupid truck driver to be just a few
yards in the wrong place, and you're dead again.

Where do you live that trees move spontaneously and of their own
volition?

Trees regularly fall onto the lines during storms here. Luckily they
usually bring down the power lines as well.

The Merry Old Land Of Oz? When has anyone on a train been
injured as the result of the train hitting a cow?

April 26 2008 four passengers in a German ICE Express injured when the
train hit a flock of sheep and derailed
Maybe if the truck
is loaded with TNT or nerve gas or nuclear waste or something it might
kill someone on board the train--do you know of any incidents in which
a train hitting a truck resulted in anything other than a smashed
truck and some scratched paint on the train?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents for a list.

And how did that truck
get on the tracks anyway? You think that the TGV has streets with
flashing lights crossing the tracks?

- a plane can stop on the runway in less than a mile.

Or spread itself over a square mile of countryside if it misses or
doesn't make it to the runway, and if the brakes work.

A high speed
train needs over 3 miles to stop from full speed. Even if the driver
can see an obstacle, he can't do a thing about it

Of course he can. He can blow the whistle so that it has a chance to
preserve itself.

And if it's not moving?


Even if you're not dead, it just takes one single stalled train
anywhere and the entire system collapses. We have had trains stalled
all night in the middle of nowhere, with no help for the passengers,
with the power lines down after a storm.

Who is this "we" and where is it that "we" have had these trains
"stalled"? We have had whole airports full of airliners "stalled" due
to snowstorms or other bad weather, and you know what, with those
planes unavailable traffic backed up everywhere else in the system.

..

Now how many people died on airliners that year?

You should bear in mind that the number of trains of the kind involved
in the Eschede accident is extremely small - less than 100 have been
built, according to Wikipedia, and the number in service with German
Rail is even smaller. Compare this with the accident rate for airliners
- 1000's of which are in service - then the numbers don't look so good
after all.

J. Clarke wrote:
tim..... wrote:
"J. Clarke" wrote in message
...
Tom P wrote:
JamesStep wrote:
One factor that's often not considered is that around 25% of
people
consider themselves nervous flyers, according to some surveys.
Many
of these people would probably prefer train travel if it was
comparable to airlines in cost and time.

James

I commute regularly 250 miles inside Germany, sometimes by plane,
sometimes by rail. It is comparable in terms of cost and time -
but
as
time goes by I am getting more nervous travelling by high speed
train
than by air. Trains are intrinsically less safe than airplanes for
many reasons-
- an airplane has two engines. If one stops, it carries on
flying.
A train has dozens of wheels and axles. If just one of these
breaks
at high speed, you're dead.
So how many people have died as a result of a single wheel or axle
on
a train breaking?
101

Try a search for "Eschede".

OK, one such failure in, well, forever. Yeah, that's real dangerous.


On a fleet of something less than 100 trains of this model. Scale it up
to the 1000's of commercial airliners and try again.

And we are not talking about one such failure. Just a few months ago
another axle broke on the same kind of train causing a derailment,
fortunately at low speed. Something to think about when you're going
300kmh. Let's see, 16 cars each with 4 axles, and two wheels per axle
makes 128 wheels, and anyone could just break..

Like I said, I feel a lot safer flying.

"Tom P" schrieb

You should bear in mind that the number of trains of the kind involved
in the Eschede accident is extremely small - less than 100 have been
built, according to Wikipedia, and the number in German
Rail is even smaller. Compare this with the accident rate for airliners
- 1000's of which are in service - then the numbers don't look so good
after all.

Let's see: Around 100 trains "of this type", and 934 McDonnell Douglas
MD 80 series ("planes of this type") in service yesterday, 933 today.
About an hour ago the pilot in Madrid obviously could *not* break.

People killed aboard "this type of plane" since 1981: More than 1,000
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_MD-82)

Don't get me wrong: I consider both air and rail travel to be a very
safe way to get from A to B. Far safer than a car, for instance.
But you shouldn't compare "This kind of train" with "any aircraft"!

Jochen