Railroads! Why is it that America can't seem to keep up with the rest of the developed world when it comes to non-tire riding ground vehicles? Our trains are way slower and crash more often than anybody else's. America must be a common punch line amongst European and Eastern railroad engineers! "Remember Li Lee who flunked out of train school? He is head of engineering at Amtrak now! HAHAHA!"
Really, its not the fault of American rail engineers, it's mostly politics and money. A good example is 2008 financial collapse. If I may digress:
Way back in the early years of the Obama administration, when the economy was still sliding into the ditch Bush had driven it into, the Republicans managed to thwart all efforts to start an infrastructure improvement program. The idea was to kick start the economy by putting idle hands to work. The fact that the infrastructure really needed some major work made it a no-brainer.
So we learned that there is something lower than no brains. The condition became known as Obama Derangement Syndrome as the Republicans consistantly opposed everything Obama favored, no matter how dire the need or even if it had originally come from a Republican source.
Anyway, it's ancient history now. The economy slowly crawled out of the muddy ditch (a little tidbit of news you'll never hear on Fox), but here we are in 2015 with bridges, roads, dams, power grids etc. still in a general state of decrepitude.
Now it seems that with the economy in good health, at least from the money shuffler's perspective, infrastructure improvement is not a political football so maybe we can get on with the work.
End of digression. Back to trains!
The design of railroads is a minor pet peeve of mine. Not just American, but all steel wheeled 2 rail train systems. Even as a kid playing with my toy trains, I'd think 'that seems kinda crazy' about the comically disproportional width of the tracks to the locomotives and cars.
I'm sure I will be called an idiot by engineers for this, but I know I'm right: Brakes for trains that match the mass and speed requirements.
Any vehicle that's likely to encounter unforeseen obstacles should be able to stop in a reasonable distance to avoid a collision. ESPECIALLY vehicles that can't change direction! 200 ft maximum from 70 mph.
Currently it takes something like a mile to stop a fully loaded freight train. Ridiculous! Probably the young whipper snapper engineer trainees think of this every time there's a fatal accident and the senior engineers call them idiots and go back to designing a louder horn.
I don't know what the original idea with the 4 ft wide tracks was, but 10 ft wide x 20 ft tall trains need to have tracks AT LEAST 12 ft wide. As with a lot of the foolish Earthling foolishness, it's probably tradition, in this case going all the way back to the 1804 Penydarren Tramroad. You'd think that sometime soon after, some genius railroad engineer would think 'wider = less tipping over and killing everybody!'
https://www.youtube.com/...
It may be a moot point now that maglev trains are practical. I don't know. I suppose it depends on cost per mile. Is it so much more expensive to lay rails 12 ft apart instead of 4 that you may as well spend a little more and go maglev?
