Rail lines on high TL worlds?

[MasterGwydion]

Why do high technology worlds have rail lines? Why pay to maintain of the infrastructure of tracks when grav-trains are a thing and have no tracks to maintain? A Grav-train is way cheaper than a traditional train track and train set up.

 

[Condottiere]

How sure are you of that?

 

[Geir]

Are grav trains a thing?
You need grav units for all of the cars, but on a train, not only can the 'motor' be remote, but the trains only need plugs to get enough power to keep the passengers comfortable. Plus weather. Depends on the world, but trains can run in windows where you won't want to be flying (maybe, most of my train riding experience is in a country where more and more of it is just tunneled through rock and not much scenery.

 

[Condottiere]

Not the part of gravitationally motivated vehicles.

Rather that they would cost less than that of rail, light or otherwise.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Are grav trains a thing?
You need grav units for all of the cars, but on a train, not only can the 'motor' be remote, but the trains only need plugs to get enough power to keep the passengers comfortable. Plus weather. Depends on the world, but trains can run in windows where you won't want to be flying (maybe, most of my train riding experience is in a country where more and more of it is just tunneled through rock and not much scenery.

Jingleswelt in Dark Nebula is described as a super-continent connected by heavy-duty rail transport using a triple-rail system on a very wide gauge. It is a TL-13 world. Why would they be using technology that is thousands of years out of date?

Hey Geir! Come here! I am opening a transport company. Go to the barn and get the mules connected to the carts! Yeah... I have trouble seeing that. This is Traveller, not Firefly. lol

Also, Grav-trains can change their routes just like airplanes to avoid weather. The ability to adapt to changing conditions, something actual land-based trains, can't really do. Unless you wish to maintain even more track?

 

[Nelphine]

I think it really depends on cost. Don't we have trains in the vehicle handbook? (I've never wanted to use them..) if the cost I'd low enough, that would be why.

 

[Micky]

yeah the obvious answers are usually the best...

it is old technology.. thus reliable in any weather, any conditions. Cost effective for moving large amounts of material or people.

Just look at the Concorde just because we could fly across the ocean in a few hours decades ago doesn't mean we did without being filthy rich...

 

[Jame Rowe]

yeah the obvious answers are usually the best...

it is old technology.. thus reliable in any weather, any conditions. Cost effective for moving large amounts of material or people.

Just look at the Concorde just because we could fly across the ocean in a few hours decades ago doesn't mean we did without being filthy rich...

That's my explanation for rail usage in the Far Future - it's an inexpensive way to move bulk shipments of materials or of passengers.

 

[Condottiere]

It's the same with roads.

Just because they cost a fortune, at this moment, per kilometre, doesn't mean they will at a later technological level.

 

[Geir]

Ship is the cheapest form of intercontinental transport and rail is the cheapest land transport (and most energy efficient), so new might be faster and more flexible, but if you're running a business and the business isn't overnight delivery, you don't want to ship by air.

Plus it's a lot simpler and lower energy to chain together a few locomotives and up to a hundred or more rail cars than it is to make a hundred flying things stay together. There wouldn't be much point in making it a 'grav train' (my brain cannot stop making that gravy train) but it could be a fleet of grav vessels flying under central control.

 

[Condottiere]

I actually have thought about this.

The problem with a fast moving grounded vehicle, is hitting something.

That's why we want to encase really fast transport in tubes, preferably vacuumed.

 

[Geir]

Of course we're assuming a world with infrastructure. If you have a frontier world with two towns a couple of thousand klicks apart and nothing but sagebrush and a few ranchers in between, then grav would be the way to go. Still not buying the 'train' concept, or maybe just being too literal. Slaved grav sleds?

 

[Technetium 98]

You assume a high-tech world started high-tech. They might have started at a TL where track was the best option they had, and stuck with it through institutional inertia and cost-consciousness. And that's not to mention resiliency or safety: a grav-train would need individual grav modules on every single car, and if even one of them fails, that train is dead in the water. A ground train just needs one locomotive, and that locomotive doesn't even need onboard power! Third-rail or overhead electrification would do just fine, and would keep that train rolling through anything shy of a total blackout. And this isn't to mention the benefits of using low-tech solutions that are easy to repair as opposed to high-tech ones that aren't.

Hell, even assuming it did start at TL13, there's still an economic argument against grav-tech. Quick cost analysis:

Assume a conventional locomotive costs around $1m, and boxcars are around $0.1m. Looking at the Vehicle Handbook, Heavy Grav costs a little over 26x Heavy Ground - knock that down to 25x to account for fixed costs. For a train 100 cars strong, you only need one ground locomotive to drag the rest, but with grav? No such luxury. So a grav train would cost you around $2.5b, whereas the same ground train is closer to... well, $11m. And, yes, you need to lay the track, but tracks can last decades with fairly minimal maintenance, and can serve practically as many trains as you can cram on there. And considering you can lay almost 2,500km of track with the money you save by going for a ground train rather than a grav train... I'm not seeing an economic argument here, bluntly.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm more inclined to think drone delivery.

 

[MasterGwydion]

$33k to 124k per mile per year. Does that sound cost efficient to you all? Maintenance costs in Traveller do not change based on TL. 1,000 miles of track costs 33-124 million a year? Where is your cost efficiency? That is only for one line who's destination cannot be changed without a massive expense of grading all of the land in between and laying the track. Are you guys crazy?

Engines? 2 to 8 million a piece. 28 million plus for a high-speed engine.

High-speed rail in California? 154 million per mile of track to build. Seriously guys?

1,000 miles of high-speed rail? 154 BILLION dollars More than a Plankwell-class Dreadnaught

 

[Nelphine]

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, but we should be doing cost analysis from the same source for grav vs rail. Where are you getting your rail costs from?

Edit: my point is a poster just before you posted FAR lower costs than you. So if you're disagreeing, that's fine, but you claimed wildly different costs without explaining why.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm not an engineer, civil or otherwise.

But you have to look at the cost factors involved, whatever they are going to be, and let's say, how the transport network is going to look like.

No one is going to build canals.

They are going to build roads.

Likely by robots, who'll also maintain them.

Road materials will likely be improved: I'm thinking, self healing asphalt and concrete.

Robot construction is likely faster and cheaper than whatever we're doing currently, by many factors.

Then we get to railways.

The routes would be prepped similarly like roads.

Then, another bunch of robots lay the rail.

Presumably, similar advancements in material science will make rail more resilient.

I'm going to guess that fusion powered trains will need much smaller engines.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Not that I'm saying you're wrong, but we should be doing cost analysis from the same source for grav vs rail. Where are you getting your rail costs from?

Edit: my point is a poster just before you posted FAR lower costs than you. So if you're disagreeing, that's fine, but you claimed wildly different costs without explaining why.

Google it. I did.

What does train track maintenance cost per mile per year? - Bing

Mit der intelligenten Bing-Suche können Sie die gewünschten Informationen schneller und einfacher finden und dabei Punkte sammeln.

www.bing.com

average cost of a high-speed train locomotive - Bing

Mit der intelligenten Bing-Suche können Sie die gewünschten Informationen schneller und einfacher finden und dabei Punkte sammeln.

www.bing.com

My guess is that he just made his up off the top of his head.

 

[MasterGwydion]

I'm not an engineer, civil or otherwise.

But you have to look at the cost factors involved, whatever they are going to be, and let's say, how the transport network is going to look like.

No one is going to build canals.

They are going to build roads.

Likely by robots, who'll also maintain them.

Road materials will likely be improved: I'm thinking, self healing asphalt and concrete.

Robot construction is likely faster and cheaper than whatever we're doing currently, by many factors.

Then we get to railways.

The routes would be prepped similarly like roads.

Then, another bunch of robots lay the rail.

Presumably, similar advancements in material science will make rail more resilient.

I'm going to guess that fusion powered trains will need much smaller engines.

You can theorize all you like, but how is it cheaper in your mind to build and maintain thousands of miles of track, than to build one train that flies?

Until Mongoose writes rules for trains and tracks and roads and such, We have only this world's data to base Our conjecture on.

 

[Anstett]

Real world example of how infrastructure needs to accommodate weather.

Buses (also known as light rail) can run in most weather up to winds of 35 mph safely. Steady wind or gusts over that you have to take it off the roads.

Fixed rail (Monorail or dual track) can run in everything plus winds up to 55 mph.

Airports get shut down at 35 mph steady winds.

That is why in Florida the railways are set to evacuate people and not buses.