Rail lines on high TL worlds?

[MasterGwydion]

The CA high-speed rail project isn't a good comparison. If you are truly curious about costs look at the available info for Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern or the other publicly-traded North American railways. They are private entities that spend billions on their infrastructure every year and are profitable.

Agreed, but would they be even more profitable if they only had to maintain their trains and engines instead of thousands of miles of right-of-ways, track, switching stations, etc?

Design a fleet of 300 grav railcars and see how much that costs. Then compare it to the ability to build rail lines that can use far cheaper rolling stock (unless you are doing mag-lev). You aren't considering dwell times for these grav cars because they will sit idle while waiting to be unloaded, or loaded or to be requested. It's much more complex than you are making it out to be.

It is, but if We take into account too many of the real complexities, it will never be usable for Traveller. Also, I would, but apparently non-rail trains do not exist in the Vehicle Construction Rules and the towing rules in Traveller mean that trains cannot exist.

Not saying that there will NOT be the equivalent of grav trains on higher tech worlds. But just like water there will be many instances where it will be more than sufficient to meet the local needs, ergo it will still exist.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If we use legacy transport infrastructure.

A lot of urban development takes place along navigable rivers, so continuing to use them as transportation routes would continue, as long as it made economic sense.

The same would apply to legacy rail routes.

No legacy routes exist on a world that was colonized at TL-11.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on what they brought with them.

 

[agentwigggles]

Grav vehicles arent free of maintaince.
Why point out switch stations and not air traffic control

Most of rail maintaince is done by raill cars as they use them.
High speed rail need additional maintaince.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Grav vehicles arent free of maintaince.
Why point out switch stations and not air traffic control

Most of rail maintaince is done by raill cars as they use them.
High speed rail need additional maintaince.

All you are maintaining with a grav vehicle is the grav vehicle. It is like the difference between maintaining a semi-truck versus maintaining every road in the world. Grav vehicles use almost zero infrastructure. Switching stations are required everytime a train switches tracks. There is no such analog when no tracks exist. As far as Air Traffic Control, call it one for the whole planet. Cheap, easy, and totally automated. The even have the software written up in one of the books already. The software is famous for being overly cautious and 100% safe.

No one is using horse-drawn wagons for coast-to-coast transport of freight anymore and on a world founded at TL-11 that has since risen to TL-13, there would be no TL-8 and lower "legacy" systems.

What is cheaper? A cargo ship to ship freight across the sea or a cargo ship of the same size that runs on a track built over the ocean?

 

[Condottiere]

Now double the speed, and remove the tracks.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Now double the speed, and remove the tracks.

Hard to hit a ground animal if you aren't on the ground.

 

[Arkathan]

Hard to hit a ground animal if you aren't on the ground.

Another advantage of grav cars, bird strikes don't result in a R.U.D. of the turbine engines.

However, this does make assumptions about the size of said birds on any particular planet.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Another advantage of grav cars, bird strikes don't result in a R.U.D. of the turbine engines.

However, this does make assumptions about the size of said birds on any particular planet.

True, hitting a flying Blue Whale would ruin your day no matter what vehicle you use. lol

 

[Geir]

True, hitting a flying Blue Whale would ruin your day no matter what vehicle you use. lol

Jonah's Gravcycle?

So now that I have the right book, this whole grav train strikes me as not particularly helpful from an infrastructure side (seems like you still need a rail network):

Grav Rail Train (TL 13)
Grav rail uses weak grav modules to support the train at high
speed along the power and guide rail. At high Tech Levels,
the grav train floats clear of the rail, supported and guided by
repulsors along its length. The front and rear cars, generally
labelled ‘the locomotives’ have both gravitic lift and thrust, while
the intervening cars have only lift modules. Power is supplied
via the rail for effectively unlimited range.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Jonah's Gravcycle?

So now that I have the right book, this whole grav train strikes me as not particularly helpful from an infrastructure side (seems like you still need a rail network):

Grav Rail Train (TL 13)
Grav rail uses weak grav modules to support the train at high
speed along the power and guide rail. At high Tech Levels,
the grav train floats clear of the rail, supported and guided by
repulsors along its length. The front and rear cars, generally
labelled ‘the locomotives’ have both gravitic lift and thrust, while
the intervening cars have only lift modules. Power is supplied
via the rail for effectively unlimited range.

That is basically a Mag-Lev train that someone tried to describe using gravitic technology. Major Fail. Fusion Power is cheap, small, fuel efficient, and extremely prevalent at TL-13. Why the hell would you get power from the rails instead of just powering it from the locomotive? Why use grav at all instead of mag-lev if you are still going to use tracks. The whole point of going grav is no tracks.

I have no idea who wrote that, but they did not think the technology through very well. Why have a guide rail if you can keep the train in line with gravitics? This was just poorly written and poorly thought through all around.

 

[Arkathan]

Grav-Lev is an extension of hull grav plating. Instead of tracks, you can have a road or sorts, covered or not, with standard and non-standard containers shipped without the need for a vehicular transport. You just modulate the grav plates so that the object falls horizontally. Or, as Douglas Adams would say, throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Good for an industrial complex or intra-city hub transit. The only maintenance is the equivalence of hull plating (which over any distance is obviously NOT inconsiderable).

 

[MasterGwydion]

Grav-Lev is an extension of hull grav plating. Instead of tracks, you can have a road or sorts, covered or not, with standard and non-standard containers shipped without the need for a vehicular transport. You just modulate the grav plates so that the object falls horizontally. Or, as Douglas Adams would say, throw yourself at the ground and miss.
Good for an industrial complex or intra-city hub transit. The only maintenance is the equivalence of hull plating (which over any distance is obviously NOT inconsiderable).

Why put this on the ground instead of putting on the bottom of the "vehicle" being moved? Then you can send them anywhere with no need for any ground-level infrastructure.

 

[Arkathan]

Going into, between and through various buildings, and the lack of a need for crew, beyond maintenance and a few traffic controllers.
Large intelligent pipelines. Hard for a vehicle, easy for something like this.
As I said, long distances would be a nightmare to maintain, but as a mega-factory materiel transport system, or intra-city moving of goods or people pods, such traditional train variants reduce road and air traffic levels.

Besides, you can't deny that images of transparent tubes with huge crates and barrels shooting past like a luge isn't cool.

 

[Condottiere]

When I was living in Spring Valley, our neighbour was someone who claimed to race semis with three trailers down Arizona highways.

If you're flying, you're not a train.

You'd have to worry about about jackknifing, or even whiplashing, the trailers.

If you're travelling on the ground, you usually are only concerned about two dimensions, and with rails, one of those dimensions is pretty much insulated from a lot of mishaps.

 

[Arkathan]

This is why each "car" in a sky train needs a separate grav unit, basic robotic sensors and flocking/follower AI.
You COULD tether each one, allowing the engine to supply power to the rest of the train, but those tethers would need to be long enough to allow reaction times to avoid mid air collisions with the car in front/behind, and to prevent the cable from becoming taught during maneuvers and getting yanked out in mid air, much to the dismay of anything or anyone on the ground in the resulting "glide path."

 

[Nelphine]

Yeah, my personal thought is that you'd want 3 cars each side with grav units but the 7th in the very middle could be pulled. So either 1 in 4 but 3 with 3 extra at the end, or 1 in 8, though im not sure how the math would actually work to determine which one you'd need. And they'd have to be attached as closely as rail trains so that you couldn't have the taut/slack problem, although unlike rails, they'd be attached at top and bottom

 

[Anstett]

Polar Express and Hogwarts Express have issues with rails

 

[MasterGwydion]

When I was living in Spring Valley, our neighbour was someone who claimed to race semis with three trailers down Arizona highways.

If you're flying, you're not a train.

You'd have to worry about about jackknifing, or even whiplashing, the trailers.

If you're travelling on the ground, you usually are only concerned about two dimensions, and with rails, one of those dimensions is pretty much insulated from a lot of mishaps.

This response is too stupid to respond to. Quit being a Troll. You are not helping the conversation. Flying fantasy trains are a staple of sci-fi from before Traveller existed. Have you never seen Doctor Who?

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yeah, my personal thought is that you'd want 3 cars each side with grav units but the 7th in the very middle could be pulled. So either 1 in 4 but 3 with 3 extra at the end, or 1 in 8, though im not sure how the math would actually work to determine which one you'd need. And they'd have to be attached as closely as rail trains so that you couldn't have the taut/slack problem, although unlike rails, they'd be attached at top and bottom

They all have grav units to stay off the ground. Only the locomotives would have power generation and propulsion. The train cars would just have grav plates, which can keep everything aloft and in line, and aerofins due to the speed of the train.