[HN Gopher] Photos of trains in the American West (2017)
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Photos of trains in the American West (2017)
Author : Tomte
Score : 82 points
Date : 2022-08-11 14:27 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| santiagobasulto wrote:
| Is that website also hijacking your browser's history?
| forgotusername6 wrote:
| I believe so. The back button did not work for me
| racheltanks wrote:
| Beautiful pictures
| brudgers wrote:
| If you're into railroad photography, O. Winston Link is the dean
| of American railroad photography.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=winston+link&client=safari&h...
|
| _Steam Steel and Stars_ is an amazing book.
|
| https://books.google.com/books/about/Steam_Steel_and_Stars.h...
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Nice photos. I'm part of a railroading family so some of these
| look like the calendar photos that came with the annual calendars
| that employees could or did get.
|
| I'm pretty sure that the caption on the 12th photo is wrong
| though. It is captioned "Winona, Minnesota" and, being a
| geoscientist, I'm pretty sure that the photo was taken somewhere
| else. That part of Minnesota was scraped relatively flat and then
| eroded by melt-water from the glaciers in the last ice age. It is
| not covered by high mountain desert vegetation as in that photo
| but instead has lots of lakes and mixed hardwood forests.
|
| I believe that the photo comes from near Winona, Arizona. The
| mountains in the background appears to be in the San Francisco
| Peaks north of Flagstaff.
|
| Another trainspotter took this photo [0] along the same tracks
| but from a different vantage point. You can see the background is
| the same though.
|
| [0]https://www.flickr.com/photos/bb9604/27448935498/
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > It is captioned "Winona, Minnesota" and, being a
| geoscientist, I'm pretty sure that the photo was taken
| somewhere else. That part of Minnesota was scraped relatively
| flat and then eroded by melt-water from the glaciers in the
| last ice age.
|
| A minor nitpick, Winona, MN is part of the Driftless Area that
| was not covered by glaciers during the last ice age. It was
| definitely shaped by glacial meltwaters, though.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driftless_Area
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Thank you for this. I did not know that part of Minnesota and
| Wisconsin have no evidence of glaciation from the last ice
| age. I imagine then that all the landforms are related to
| outflow of melt-water from the glaciers as they receded.
|
| I appreciate that information and for anyone else interested
| in glacial landforms I found a great Story Map to shows in
| DEM models and in photos what you would expect to see post-
| glaciation. [1]
|
| [1]https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8d42e860ad0147bfac7a4
| f9...
|
| Enjoy, and learn something like I did.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| You are correct - it was taken from just off the side of the
| road at the south end of the bridge where Townsend-Winona road
| crosses the railroad tracks.
|
| You can see everything lines up on the street view, including
| the two telephone poles.
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/v53oXcHXUpU49mXr7
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Great work. I recognized the mountains since we passed
| through the area and stayed in Flagstaff for several days a
| few years ago. It is quite beautiful out there.
| joehosteny wrote:
| Nice photo of the now defunct Montana Rail Link. I always loved
| that livery.
| usrusr wrote:
| Photos of trains on comically unelectrified tracks
| bombcar wrote:
| Electrifying yards could be worthwhile, but total US fuel usage
| for trains is about 3.5 billion gallons [346] out of about 46
| billion gallons/yr [995].
|
| [346] https://www.bts.gov/content/class-i-rail-freight-fuel-
| consum...
|
| [995] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/diesel-fuel/use-of-
| diese...
| closewith wrote:
| So ~7.5%? Seems worthwhile to me.
| bombcar wrote:
| High-end estimates are $5m per mile, at 140,000 miles it
| would be $700 billion, throw in a bit more for some new
| locos (probably could switch existing somehow), cool
| trillion.
|
| Could be better spent money than other things we do.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| The far more practical method would be for trains to haul
| thier own batteries. A couple freight cars full of
| lithium would provide substantial range without
| electrifying the entire track. And trains have amazing
| potential for regeneration during braking, if one can
| find a way to do it practically.
| ehnto wrote:
| Some of the trains in the photograph use up to ~17MWs, to
| get 129MWh of batteries installed on the ground in the
| worlds largest battery array at the time, cost $90
| million dollars and while a train could certainly pull
| it, it's a non-trivial addition. That battery array
| couldn't move the train for even a fraction of some
| journeys required by train engines, so I think it's a
| non-starter economically for these cross-country
| journeys.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
| agsnu wrote:
| Not for cross-country journeys yet (at least not alone),
| but battery powered locomotives are picking up steam...
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/03/01/the-
| new-...
|
| Apparently they largely have regenerative breaking
| already but nowhere to store the energy so dump it
| through resistors to vent it as heat, if they had big
| battery arrays the savings could be significant.
| M3L0NM4N wrote:
| Solar panels on top of the cars?
| throwaheyy wrote:
| This can work for a lightweight railcar, with a lot of
| sun, but is out of the question for a freight train.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byron_Bay_Train
| CrazyStat wrote:
| The amount of energy provided by the solar panels would
| be a rounding error compared to the total needed to move
| the train. Almost certainly not worth it.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah you'd almost certainly be better installing
| electromagnets in yards to help get the train up to speed
| somehow ...
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Or we could just go back to electrification, like much of
| the Milwaukee Road had prior to the 1970s, instead of
| feeling the perpetual techie desire for new vaporware
| tech.
| bombcar wrote:
| Large American freights don't much brake if they can
| avoid it.
|
| You'd more get a benefit from using the power coasting
| down the Rockies to provide juice to climb it -
| electricification.
| daneel_w wrote:
| The train passing on a man-made land bridge cutting across a huge
| lake caught my eye, as it seems very invasive and unusual to
| divide a large portion of a lake like that. I just had to take a
| look at Google Earth, but it wasn't "Horse Thief Lake, Pennington
| County, South Dakota" like the description says.
| queuebert wrote:
| The caption for that photo says, 'Since then Lewis has
| photographed trains in spectacular US locations -- but he does
| extensive research before he goes out with his camera: "Doing
| research beforehand is important to understand what the railway
| operations are like," he says.'
|
| Oops.
| Luc wrote:
| It's Horsethief Lake in Washington. It's actually a very small
| lake by the side of the Columbia river.
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/iQragwczG8NJxKfq7
| retzkek wrote:
| The Great Salt Lake in Utah is split into two lakes by a
| railroad causeway, creating two very different ecologies with
| much higher salinity in the northern lake.
| https://www.amusingplanet.com/2014/08/the-great-salt-lakes-r...
| victornomad wrote:
| I love trains. When I went to the US I took the chance to ride a
| couple and I loved the beautiful landscapes.
|
| It's a bit sad that the whole country is designed for cars and
| trains are so limited.
| paganel wrote:
| For as much as the Americans like to complain in here and on
| reddit about their train infrastructure, imo it is still one of
| the best in the world. Yes, the big tragedy it's that is focused
| on freight transport instead of also taking into consideration
| public transport, but the good thing is that you still have most
| of the actual tracks in place and functional.
|
| Over here in Europe most of them are gone, with very exceptions
| (like Switzerland). This reddit post [1] comparing the French
| railway network in 1910 to what was still available in 2014 is
| just depressing.
|
| [1]
| https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/4be0sc/train_netwo...
| alistairSH wrote:
| I'm not sure I'd call it a tragedy, at least not when talking
| about trains across the American West or Midwest. That's an
| absolutely massive space, and outside a few cities, it's pretty
| sparse.
|
| It _IS_ absolutely a tragedy that we don't have particularly
| good rail transit from major city to major city. A proper high
| speed line from DC- >NYC->Boston. SD->LA->SF. And NYC to
| Chicago, maybe. Probably others, but those seem like they'd be
| doable and get some airplanes out of the sky and cars off the
| interstate.
| ghaff wrote:
| Northeast Corridor works pretty well as it is--and is very
| popular, albeit mostly to and from NYC as opposed to the
| entire length. The controversy around California HSR is well-
| known. And NYC to Chicago has to go through a continental
| divide so it's not clear how competitive that could be with
| flying--which it has to be if it's going to be popular with
| business travelers.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What continental divide does it cross? Chicago is on Lake
| Michigan, which drains into the Atlantic. New York is on
| the Atlantic.
| ghaff wrote:
| Basically some combination of the Eastern and St.
| Lawrence divides--mostly the Appalachians. [1] (Would
| have to look up the exact current route.) It's basically
| why the Erie Canal was built. [2] The Saint Lawrence
| Seaway goes into the Atlantic north of the St. Lawrence
| divide.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Continental_Divide
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I do not consider the St. Lawrence divide to be a
| "continental" divide, nor do I know of anyone who
| considers it to be so. It's just a watershed divide, and
| those are a dime a dozen.
|
| I can see that some people would consider the Eastern
| divide to be a continental divide, though I do not.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The Acela from NYC to DC is "particularly good." I rode it,
| and it's already popular.
|
| The others... well, check on status of the "high-speed rail"
| from SF to LA, which was going to be only twice as fast as
| driving, at most. If it ever gets built.
|
| And that's if you don't factor in getting to and from the
| train stations, since unlike Europe, most people in CA aren't
| a tram ride away from downtown.
| alistairSH wrote:
| My main issue with the Acela is it's only partially high-
| speed. It only hits top speed of 150mph on a short stretch
| between Boston and NY. And due to turns on this stretch, it
| only averages ~70mph. The rest of the line is capped at
| 135mph. Over the whole DC-Boston route, it saves about an
| hour over regular rail, but it could/should be even faster.
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the big wins of Acela was it got the route north
| of New Haven electrified which saves a good often 30
| minutes off the pre-Acela regional train run because an
| engine switch is no longer necessary even for the non-
| Acela runs. Would have been nice for Acela to be higher
| speed overall--it's usually not that practical for a
| Boston to DC run especially given that both cities have
| pretty convenient transit links to their airports.
|
| But I suspect the cost delta compared to Acela as
| realized would have been huge given how built up most of
| the corridor is. And it's still pretty competitive with
| flying unless you have an early meeting and can't/don't
| want to go down the night before from BOS/RTE to NYP.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Yeah, I'd add that in both NY and DC, the train station
| is a much shorter distance between where you're likely to
| be and where you probably want to go. Penn Station and
| Union Station are pretty convenient.
| Luc wrote:
| > This reddit post [1] comparing the French railway network in
| 1910 to what was still available in 2014 is just depressing.
|
| Well don't be depressed because that second map is obviously
| and totally wrong.
|
| It's even mentioned in the comments of the reddit link if you
| scroll down enough. The maps should actually be pretty much the
| same.
| sekao wrote:
| > the big tragedy it's that is focused on freight transport
|
| I don't see the tragedy in that. Tracks in the US are privately
| owned and freight makes them more money than passenger rail.
| Don't think we'd gain anything by artifically changing that.
| Even in Europe planes are usually faster and cheaper than rail
| when traveling between countries.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure why this would be considered a controversial
| statement. A lot of short to medium distance in Europe is
| very good/convenient by rail, e.g. Eurostar from London to
| Brussels or Paris--even if not necessarily cheaper than
| flying. But while I've taken night trains between countries,
| it was more for the experience and not to save either time or
| money.
| [deleted]
| woweoe wrote:
| The tragedy is that people who want to use the railways are
| put below freight in priority - whereas other countries such
| as Russia and India are capable of mixing both.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| If you were to make the same comparison in the US it would be
| very similar.
|
| A lot of railroads were abandoned or turned into trails. Those
| that remained were stripped as much as possible to fire sell
| assets in desperate attempts to improve the balance sheets (de-
| electrified to sell the copper, reduced tracks from 4 to 2 or 2
| to 1 to sell the rails, etc.)
|
| At least part of it is that in some US jurisdictions railroads
| have to pay property tax on their assets, which is not
| something that (usually) publicly owned roads and airports deal
| with. This is a massive perverse incentive to run everything as
| skimpy as possible to reduce the value of land.
| bombcar wrote:
| The US rail network does what it is designed to do very well -
| move absolutely insane amounts of freight (container/truck and
| bulk) relatively quickly over insanely long distances.
|
| Unless you live in or near a deep-water ocean port, almost
| everything you have went on a train at some point if you're in
| the US.
| stardenburden wrote:
| Those diesel engines are crazy strong. You feel the earth around
| you rumble when one of them rolls by.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| I used to live in Campbell, CA in a second floor apartment
| directly overlooking three railroad tracks: two for the light
| rail and one for the Union Pacific freight trains carrying
| loads from the Permanente Quarry.
|
| My dad worked for Union Pacific when I was a kid, so it was
| super fun to see their trains go by. The light rail trains
| would sneak up on you, but you could hear the diesel trains
| coming up from miles away.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Yes they are and you are right about the rumble.
|
| About thirty 30 years ago I was on a drilling rig in Louisiana
| with a geophone array deployed so that I could record the
| vibrations made by the drill bit as they drilled towards a
| potential reservoir near a salt dome. We were doing a salt
| proximity survey using the drill bit energy as the seismic
| source so that we could hopefully help steer the drill bit
| through the sediments beside the salt dome without sending it
| into the salt and possibly intersect the highest point of a
| reservoir rock at the salt/sediment interface so that
| production from that gas/oil saturated zone would be maximized
| since you are farther from the oil/water interface in the wet
| zone.
|
| Anyway, drill bits 15000 ft in the subsurface are viable energy
| sources but are very low energy. We were about 5 miles from a
| train track but every time the trains came down the line you
| could see them coming when they were miles away from the
| closest point to the arrays. The energy would start off as a
| random background noise that steadily increased in amplitude
| until it swamped everything and was clipped in the sensors and
| then as the train passed it would steadily decrease until the
| train was several miles away.
| logifail wrote:
| Reminds me of this New Scientist article:
|
| _WHAT is 27 kilometres long, cost PS700 million to build and
| can tell you precisely when trains are leaving Geneva
| station?_
| https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820060-300-the-
| part...
|
| (spoiler: the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN)
| biotinker wrote:
| There are more practical, everyday application for that fact
| as well.
|
| When I lived next to a train track, I built a seismograph to
| detect oncoming trains, and had a white noise machine that
| would ramp up volume as the train approached to prevent the
| train from waking anyone up.
| ehnto wrote:
| For reference, in the photograph of the train in Winona, the
| units are said to be the ES44DC which produce 4,400 horse
| power, or 3.3MW, and there's four of them for a total of
| 17,600hp or 13.2MW.
| rconti wrote:
| I'll be driving across the American West this week, and it made
| me wonder -- is there anything like flightradar24, for but
| trains? (I searched this in Google and got a 5 year old reddit
| post that only had resources for the UK).
|
| It would be neat, if I found a photogenic location, to be able to
| see if a train was coming along soon.
| vwcx wrote:
| Also worth seeing: two photographers followed the route of the
| old Milwaukee Road on a diesel speeder in the 1980s. The photos
| are neat: https://newwww.weedroute.com/
|
| Abandoned Rails is also a great resource:
| https://www.abandonedrails.com/
| brudgers wrote:
| Have you seen Buster Keaton's _Railrodder_? It is his last
| project and is filmed across Canada.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Railrodder
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