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| Re: PHOTOS: Edison (1140911) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS: Edison |
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Posted by WillD on Tue Feb 21 03:49:59 2012, in response to Re: PHOTOS: Edison, posted by Olog-hai on Tue Feb 21 01:44:49 2012. Electrification isn't a solution if your top speed remains down.Sure it is. An electric train will get to whatever that track speed is much faster than any equivalent diesel train. Electrification is an excellent way to shorten travel times when maximum allowable speed may be constrained by some other element. The difference can easily amount to ten minutes or more by the end of a long local run. Throughout a day of operation you're easily talking about requiring a train or two which isn't required to fill out the schedule and consequently significant savings compared to operating a schedule with diesel equipment. You can read GO Transit's electrification reference case operational plan, but suffice it to say, by simply electrifying they're looking at 6 to 15 minutes saved on most lines. Remember, NJT's supposedly doing all that with 100-mph certification on a 125/135-mph railroad Mostly because it makes it easier to run the 3900s on time if they can slip them in to Amtrak's traffic south of Rahway without throwing CTEC for a loop. And it keeps the passengers happy not to have the brakes thrown on around Metropark to poke along on the outer track behind some Jersey Ave Local. For diesels that have 3,000 fewer horses than even the ALP-44, the MP40PHs are doing impressive work. It is also quite likely that NJT has a bit more padding in their schedule than GO. If a GO train is late because another train interfered with its trip it would probably be a freight train and the delay resulting from that would be such that the railroad would be brought to a standstill by any attempt to make allowances for that occurrence. On the other hand, an NJT train will have to contend with any number of interfering trains, none of which will make the train late by themselves, but which can combine to make the actual travel time something difficult to quantify. I know I've certainly been on NEC trains which arrived at Trenton quite early. (Over on RRNET, the NJT clones insist that train length is limited by HEP requirements, with the MLVs; and shorter NJT diesel trains don't have a significant advantage over even the 12-car GO trains.) That's all fine and well, and maybe it's the official line around the office, but it certainly sounds like they both have 1 MW HEP systems. One is hard pressed to come up with a plausible reason why one 1000kw system cannot do something that the other 1000kw system can do. Further remember that the average speed of NEC Trenton locals used to be 47 mph. Sure, back in the days of 100mph EMUs, which only goes to show the value of a rapidly accelerating railcar. |
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