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| Re: High speed rail on the NEC-300 kmh service (614898) | |||
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Re: High speed rail on the NEC-300 kmh service |
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Posted by WillD on Fri May 9 17:00:41 2008, in response to Re: High speed rail on the NEC-300 kmh service, posted by Broadway Lion on Fri May 9 12:13:50 2008. Those big containers ride on FREIGHT TRAINS, not on HSR trains. HSR has a smaller body profile for better aerodynamics,It really doesn't. An international shipping container could fit under an aerodynamic shroud on an ICE3. There are drawings in a book published in the 1980s called "The Transportation Architecture of West Germany" of an ICE train with the passenger cars replaced by well cars. The well cars carry containers which are loaded and covered by an aerodynamic shroud in the same shape as a passenger coach. Of course the ICE 1 and ICE 2 are a bit large for international travel, but the ICE 3 could likely still work in this sort of role, even though the Germans did not pursue it. The big problem with a standard shipping container is not one of size or weight, but rather the load time. You have two to at most four guys working on each wall, and they'll need about an hour and a half to two hours to fully load a 45 to 48 foot container. Even a double ended container, with all the nightmares that creates for the load and unload processes, would likely take around an hour to fill. furthermore it facilitates interchange with air transport. But as I noted in my previous post that interchange with air transport comes at a significant cost in wasted space. The high speed rail train is not going to have the same cross section as an airliner, so any use of an airbox on an HSR train is going to result in lost volume. It is highly unlikely the package hubs and HSR stations are going to be colocated (except maybe at Ontario Airport), so you will need an air container trailer to take the airbox from the station to the package hub, and airboxes sacrifice a lot of volume in those trailers. On the HSR train itself space and weight are still going to be at a premium. Thus your best bet is probably to develop a new airbox-like container specifically for the high speed trains which can fit snugly against the wall from ceiling to floor. Then design the cargo area of your high speed train in such a way that it can accomodate both these special rail boxes as well as a few air boxes. Packages shipped through services like Next Day Air Saver, 2nd Day Shipping and so on would be unloaded from their airboxes, processed through the airhub and loaded onto these smaller railboxes for their ride on the CAHSR train. NDA Early Morning shipments and similar services would come off the plane and their airbox would be loaded directly onto the CAHSR train. That way you maximize the number of packages for lower cost services while not significantly increasing the travel time, but you also get the high value packages from one point to another faster and with less time spent at a hub. |
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