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[article] Japan is inventing trains
(newatlas.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
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Hmmmm I'm still skeptical mind you, but hear me out ...
What if there's benefits to be had by the traction motors being stationary, the electrical connections being fixed instead of moving contacts (read: not 3rd rail or overhead catenary), and the simplicity of containers not being all connected for easy removal from the conveyor without disrupting the movement of other containers?
Mind you I can't imagine how this system can operate at reasonable speeds vs cargo trains that apparently hit 100km/h in Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_Freight_Trains_(Japan) ) but surely my imagination isn't good enough.
I don't think speed is the thing we need to concentrate on anymore. You could have this country spanning convayer belt essentially, and power it all with solar. Thereby reducing pollution by a HUGE amount within Japan.
And hopefully other European countries will follow. Then we'd have to deal with the beast that is North America. Large sprawling land, both in Canada, and America. Especially America would be difficult. Canada probably has an entire unused northern half. Whereas America doesn't really have much unused open space in the eastern half. And it's just sooooooo big.
I have zero faith this will ever come to America. Too much politics. Too much zoning issues. Too much distance.
But it should work great in Japan and Europe.
I won't agree or disagree with the speed comment, you could very well be correct.
As for powering by solar in Japan (and any other currently electrified system), I would guess that's easily done right now by changing how their power is generated; and that doesn't require a change in the system, just the generation. In japan around 66% of their rail is already electrified (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_in_Japan look at the summary box showing total miles and electrified miles). So I'm still skeptical that a conveyor system is the answer vs adding more electrified rail in that same strip of land and powering it with solar generation. But again, maybe there's something to be gained with such a different engineering solution per my OP.
And while you're spot on for the US (less than 1% from my google search) a conveyor won't solve it sadly unless there's something about that which makes it cheaper to deploy then adding a catenary system to our current railways.
A train sends 100 cargo boxes from town A to B in an hour. It takes 4 hours to put all the boxes in, and 5 hours to pull the boxes off the train and stack them in the yard
Conveyer sends 1 box every 6 minutes for 10 hours.
Same throughput, but one is easier to schedule workers around at both ends. I’ve never worked in a train yard or anything, don’t know how accurate my time frames are or anything, just trying to imagine what’s better about this.
Hmmm certainly something to think about. Like I said, skeptical but also asking about what I hadn't thought of [cheers]