# Does California get rail electrification wrong?



## MARC Rider (Feb 18, 2022)

Here's an interesting blog post from Alon Levy:

Quick Note: California Gets Electrification Wrong | Pedestrian Observations 

Apparently, Caltrans wants to electrify trains using hydrogen fuel cell technology rather than overhead wires. From my experience, it seems that technology is not yet ready for prime time on mainline railroads. Plus, how are they going to generate the electricity to make the hydrogen? (The alternative to using electricity to generate hydrogen is to reform it from natural gas, which sort of eliminates its value as a "decarbonization" strategy.) 

I found this paragraph from the post interesting, and kind of meshes with my professional experience:



> It’s a perennial problem in the United States that rail managers and agency heads are allergic to electrification. It’s a foreign concept, literally. They don’t travel – when they do they think of it as a vacation, not as work to see how countries with an order of magnitude more rail ridership per capita do it. None of the people they know knows, either. Nor are they technically apt or curious – they come from a managerial culture in which speaking of technical details is low-prestige, and making excuses and talking about politics are high-prestige. Fresh master’s graduates in Europe know more than they ever will. They are useless, and they know it.



In a different field, I've been nosing around for consulting jobs since I retired. However, what I mainly offer is the ability to speak about technical details; It seems that the people making decisions about spending money aren't as interested in that, what they seem to want out of someone with EPA experience is internal political gossip so they can anticipate what sort of rules they will have to face. Fortunately, I recently found someone who is interested in the technical details, but we'll have to see what happens if my technical advice goes contrary to the preconceived ideas of the top management.


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## jis (Feb 18, 2022)

In general more often than not if your advice goes against what the management wants to hear you will experience what Peter (of Peter Principle fame) euphemistically calls "the Lateral Arabesque" to some suitable basement office 

As usual Caltrans is looking for the latest Gadgetware to impress themselves.  Hydrogen powered Hyperloop, here we come


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## joelkfla (Feb 18, 2022)

Considering how long it takes to get anything approved and built in CA, perhaps by the time they're ready to actually do something hydrogen cell will be a mature technology.


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## MARC Rider (Feb 18, 2022)

joelkfla said:


> Considering how long it takes to get anything approved and built in CA, perhaps by the time they're ready to actually do something hydrogen cell will be a mature technology.


Yeah, but the only way they'll have enough electricity to produce the hydrogen fuel would be to build nuclear power plants in California.  So you'd have to wait until the nukes come online. I'll leave that as a student exercise to estimate how long that will take.


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## SubwayNut (Feb 18, 2022)

I really hope the electrification of Caltrain, a mainline railroad will potentially help other parts of California see the benefits of overhead wire electrification for fast frequent electrification.


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## Cal (Feb 18, 2022)

SubwayNut said:


> I really hope the electrification of Caltrain, a mainline railroad will potentially help other parts of California see the benefits of overhead wire electrification for fast frequent electrification.


Me too. I'd love to see Metrolink electrified but it would take a lot, and they just spent millions on brand new tier-4 engines.


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## George Harris (Feb 18, 2022)

Maybe the person who wrote this should get out and look around and see what is really going on. I have no idea where the stuff in this blog came from, but it is totally unacquainted with reality. Caltrain is well under way with buying EMU's and installing overhead wire. The EMU's have been undergoing tests at Pueblo. Go to the following sites for some REAL information direct from the horse's mouth.

Amongst them, "This month, the Peninsula Corridor Electrification Program celebrated the installation of 3,092 pole foundations." and
"Our first electric trainset arrives on Caltrain property in spring, and we look forward to inviting the public to get their first look at the actual vehicles that will become the mainstay of our fleet."

I also regard his statement that, "It’s a perennial problem in the United States that rail managers and agency heads are allergic to electrification. It’s a foreign concept, literally." as completely bogus. But then what do I know? I have only worked on this stuff. Oh, yeah, foreign concept? Means these people have never visited the Northeastern US. You know, such stuff as main line Washington DC to Boston, lots of miles of commuter services out of New York City and Philadelphia etc.

Caltrain Modernization
Caltrain eNews: Approaching Milestones, All Foundations Installed, New South San Francisco Station (constantcontact.com)


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Feb 18, 2022)

> This month, the Peninsula Corridor Electrification Program celebrated the installation of 3,092 pole foundations.



Good landmark to complete, now on to the next logistical challenge. Get 3,092 poles to there assigned location, and installed.


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## George Harris (Feb 19, 2022)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Good landmark to complete, now on to the next logistical challenge. Get 3,092 poles to their assigned location and installed.


I trust you are being sarcastic. Getting poles in place and installed is the easiest part of putting up a catenary system. Getting the foundation in the ground is far more difficult than plopping the pole into place. 

As to the whole "hyperlink" concept, by the way: That thing is not science, it is science fiction. It would be far more sensible if the authors of the reports were Heinlein or Asimov.


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## Willbridge (Feb 19, 2022)

I think that hydrogen power vs. catenary discussion was in regard to the Gilroy service.
Alon Levy writes from Berlin, but has studied and worked in the U.S. and Canada. My surmise from reading other essays by him that his impressions have been particularly influenced by Boston, Chicago (including neglect of the IC Electric) and Los Angeles commuter rail operations.

In Denver we didn't drag our feet on electrification because the completed commuter rail (A, G, N-Lines) started out as planning for LRT lines. The B-Line is electric to Westminster, but it is on hold beyond there for cost reasons. Residents along that line opposed electrification because they were concerned about views.



Photo credit Svetlana Grechka.


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## Just-Thinking-51 (Feb 19, 2022)

George Harris said:


> I trust you are being sarcastic. Getting poles in place and installed is the easiest part of putting up a catenary system. Getting the foundation in the ground is far more difficult than plopping the pole into place.



Not really sarcastic, the foundation would be more work than placing poles, but the logistics of getting 3092 poles in place would be very interesting in a urban area.

Do you have complete poles trucked in on a just-in-time shipment? Where do you stage them? Do the pole get transfer to a rail based installer? How many install team are you supporting?

I definitely think get the foundation in was more challenging even if they were able to use prefab foundation. But the work of scheduling 3092 poles in a urban environment would be very interesting to me.

UP built a new HQ build in Omaha a few years back. Ever floor had false floor installed for the wires to run underneath it. The instructions were to remove your padlock while at the truckstop, then drive across the river on a certain streets. When your arrived you turn on to a side street and back into the project. Flag person stop traffic, a guy was assigned to pop open your doors while your backing in. Those floors were very heavy, and this process was repeated several times a day for weeks. Good business for us, but it was a don’t be late deliver, with your bosses looking over your shoulder type of load.


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## cirdan (Feb 19, 2022)

One of the big selling points of electrification is that you move the electricity generation gear from the train to the lineside and so reduce weight, meaning you get more acceleration for the same power and hence a faster and higher performing train.

As soon as you start installing storage or generation on the train you have given away that advantage.

Battery or hydrogen technology definitely have their niches, but it is totally misguided to present them as an alternative to electrification. At best they are an alternative for lines where electrification is not feasible. But they will always be an inferior compromise.


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## joelkfla (Feb 19, 2022)

Just-Thinking-51 said:


> Not really sarcastic, the foundation would be more work than placing poles, but the logistics of getting 3092 poles in place would be very interesting in a urban area.
> 
> Do you have complete poles trucked in on a just-in-time shipment? Where do you stage them? Do the pole get transfer to a rail based installer? How many install team are you supporting?
> 
> ...


Actually, judging by this RFW video from last November, a good number of the poles have already been installed. Caltrain said 60% had been installed as of June 2021, when they announced the delay of service start until 2024. Some are just bare poles, but the southern end appears to be fully strung except for the contact wire, and some of the others have the crossbars.


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## GiantsFan (Feb 20, 2022)

Can confirm a lot of the caltrain catenary system is up. In many places it’s 100% complete, especially in the southern sections


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## west point (Feb 20, 2022)

What problems might the various RRs think are impediments to install CAT. Any RR person who looks at the NEC can see the very complicated wire work and the necessity to rebuild the rusting poles that were buried in the soil. Is that what a new installation of CAT look like? What the New Haven = BOS and Caltrain looks like is a closer example.

What is probably the most difficult procedure to installing CAT. IMO it is the potholing for the pole supports. That became a very difficult problem for the New Haven - Bos section as there were a lot of utilities and rock for planned locations that had to be moved. Caltrain did not have as many problems but still the San Fran terminal was the last to be completed due to unannounced reasons. Now the pole supports are concrete with connections way above ground level.

Potholes on single track are a problem if the machine is track mounted which is almost a requirement at certain locations. Once the potholes are done pole installation is easy but the same problem of installation of single-track locations is still a problem. Then installation of CAT hangers and wire a RR has the same problems.

Has Caltrain ever broken out the costs of installing the CAT?


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## cirdan (Feb 20, 2022)

west point said:


> What problems might the various RRs think are impediments to install CAT. Any RR person who looks at the NEC can see the very complicated wire work and the necessity to rebuild the rusting poles that were buried in the soil. Is that what a new installation of CAT look like? What the New Haven = BOS and Caltrain looks like is a closer example.
> 
> What is probably the most difficult procedure to installing CAT. IMO it is the potholing for the pole supports. That became a very difficult problem for the New Haven - Bos section as there were a lot of utilities and rock for planned locations that had to be moved. Caltrain did not have as many problems but still the San Fran terminal was the last to be completed due to unannounced reasons. Now the pole supports are concrete with connections way above ground level.
> 
> ...



Times have moved on since the Pennsy started electrifying the NEC. The drilling of holes is a process that can be largely automated and very little pick and shovel work is needed. Buried utilities and other surprises can be detected with ultra-sound and other methods.


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## jis (Feb 20, 2022)

I have noticed that outfits like Indian Railways which have a large Office of Railway Electrification with well trained staff with great deal of field practice tends to do such things quite swiftly while turnkey projects using contractors with who knows what amount of field practice and experience stumble all over the place. Actually Network Rail in UK have arrived at a conclusion that it is better to have a standing organization for electrification that works progressively from one project to the next instead of hiring a new set of people to do each project. There is something to be said for that I suppose.


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## MARC Rider (Feb 20, 2022)

cirdan said:


> Times have moved on since the Pennsy started electrifying the NEC. The drilling of holes is a process that can be largely automated and very little pick and shovel work is needed. Buried utilities and other surprises can be detected with ultra-sound and other methods.


I spent a lot of my early career supervising the drilling of ground-water monitoring wells on highway rights-of-way that had underground pipes, telephone and electrical cables. It was really no problem at all, we just called Miss Utility before we drilled and they would send somebody out with a tricorder-like device that was able to locate the buried stuff. A little fluorescent orange spray paint on the pavement, and our driller knew where not to drill. Out of hundreds of wells, we only had one screw up, where we drilled through some telephone lines. Thank goodness it wasn't an electric cable. But because we had Miss Utility out before we drilled, we had no liability for the mishap.


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## Willbridge (Feb 20, 2022)

jis said:


> I have noticed that outfits like Indian Railways which have a large Office of Railway Electrification with well trained staff with great deal of field practice tends to do such things quite swiftly while turnkey projects using contractors with who knows what amount of field practice and experience stumble all over the place. Actually, Network Rail in UK have arrived at a conclusion that it is better to have a standing organization for electrification that works progressively from one project to the next instead of hiring a new set of people to do each project. There is something to be said for that I suppose.


I witnessed this in a street brick-paving job. In Denver's historic LoDo district it was decided to retrofit the intersections with paving bricks. The contractor took longer getting started than planned and so did not finish the project before the end of the construction season. They started over in the next year and took most of the summer to finish with new help.


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## GiantsFan (Feb 21, 2022)

GiantsFan said:


> Can confirm a lot of the caltrain catenary system is up. In many places it’s 100% complete, especially in the southern sections



I wanted to add, I think the Caltrain catenary is also constant tension! When driving by the construction in San Mateo today, I could see pulleys and weights on some of the poles.


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## George Harris (Feb 21, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> Alon Levy writes from Berlin, but has studied and worked in the U.S. and Canada. My surmise from reading other essays by him that his impressions have been particularly influenced by Boston, Chicago (including neglect of the IC Electric) and Los Angeles commuter rail operations.


The first five words of this statement explains a lot, to me, at least. My experience with working with Europe engineers, the Germans particularly is that they start from the viewpoint that Americans have nothing to teach them followed with a their way is the only way attitude. Therefore, their first thought appears to be that if what they see is different from the German standard, it is wrong. There was also a great deal of difficulty when dealing with a situation where the ingredients did not match the German recipe. As an aside, it appears that for them, and most other nationalities as well, if working on a foreign project a primary objective is to get it based on their home country standards to the greatest extent possible so as to maximize use of their home country products. 

Miss Utility: Dial 811. Yes, absolutely. It can save a lot of headaches and surprises, some of which can be deadly if the utility is gas. Our City Engineer's office has a sign up about "Dial 811" which has a last line that I suspect is different from what the law really says. It reads "Survivors will be prosecuted."

Constant Tension Catenary: That it was not done this way in a primary reason the old Pennsylvania Railroad Electrification is so complex. Constant tension is one of these ideas that once you understand the concept is blooming obvious. It removes all, and I mean all the temperature variation issues, and with that a lot of the horizontal forces on elements in the system. You just have to make sure your tensioning weights have enough travel room to cover the entire change in length of wire over the segment due to temperature variations.


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## Gemuser (Feb 21, 2022)

jis said:


> I have noticed that outfits like Indian Railways which have a large Office of Railway Electrification with well trained staff with great deal of field practice tends to do such things quite swiftly while turnkey projects using contractors with who knows what amount of field practice and experience stumble all over the place. Actually Network Rail in UK have arrived at a conclusion that it is better to have a standing organization for electrification that works progressively from one project to the next instead of hiring a new set of people to do each project. There is something to be said for that I suppose.


I see on a You Tube post [cruising the cut] that Network Rail UK also have a specilist bridge building team on this same basis. Just 7 days to built a bridge under a 4 track mainline!


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## Willbridge (Feb 21, 2022)

George Harris said:


> The first five words of this statement explains a lot, to me, at least. My experience with working with Europe engineers, the Germans particularly is that they start from the viewpoint that Americans have nothing to teach them followed with a their way is the only way attitude. Therefore, their first thought appears to be that if what they see is different from the German standard, it is wrong. There was also a great deal of difficulty when dealing with a situation where the ingredients did not match the German recipe. As an aside, it appears that for them, and most other nationalities as well, if working on a foreign project a primary objective is to get it based on their home country standards to the greatest extent possible so as to maximize use of their home country products.
> 
> ...Constant Tension Catenary: That it was not done this way in a primary reason the old Pennsylvania Railroad Electrification is so complex. Constant tension is one of these ideas that once you understand the concept is blooming obvious. It removes all, and I mean all the temperature variation issues, and with that a lot of the horizontal forces on elements in the system. You just have to make sure your tensioning weights have enough travel room to cover the entire change in length of wire over the segment due to temperature variations.



I think Alon Levy is a mathematician, not an engineer. One of the topics that he works on is the variations in construction projects around the world.

Regarding Constant Tension Catenary, the lack of it is one difficulty with trolley coach overhead. Over height trucks would crash into it in the summer and then the truckers would complain that they had gotten away with being over height the last time they came through (which would turn out to have been in colder weather).

In Edmonton winter construction was preferred, to reduce the risk of wire breaks caused by contraction at cold temperatures.




The Edmonton LRT was built with Constant Tension, but had some fixed overhead, as at this trolley coach crossing and tunnel mouth.


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## cirdan (Feb 22, 2022)

jis said:


> I have noticed that outfits like Indian Railways which have a large Office of Railway Electrification with well trained staff with great deal of field practice tends to do such things quite swiftly while turnkey projects using contractors with who knows what amount of field practice and experience stumble all over the place. Actually Network Rail in UK have arrived at a conclusion that it is better to have a standing organization for electrification that works progressively from one project to the next instead of hiring a new set of people to do each project. There is something to be said for that I suppose.



We often hear about the down-sides of burocracy but this is surely one of the up sides. Every little thing that was ever buried or built on railway land recorded in a way that is easily accessible and retrievable. This doesn't happen over night but takes decades and decades of being disciplined and following the rules.

Most of the mess on British Rail started after privatisation, when private companies were given free reign to add and modify stuff without any accountability.


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## MARC Rider (Feb 22, 2022)

George Harris said:


> The first five words of this statement explains a lot, to me, at least. My experience with working with Europe engineers, the Germans particularly is that they start from the viewpoint that Americans have nothing to teach them followed with a their way is the only way attitude. Therefore, their first thought appears to be that if what they see is different from the German standard, it is wrong.



Um, Mr. Levy is an Israeli mathematician, not a German engineer. He just happens to be living in Berlin right now. According to his bio, he also spent some of his youth in Singapore. And he got his doctorate at Columbia, in the USA, so he must think that Americans had something to teach him. By the way, he just as capable of being critical of the German public works process and transit operations as he is of any other country. My take on reading him is that he thinks that American transit managers, for various cultural reasons, don't have an interest in learning what people are doing in other countries, which is sort of a shame, since there are a lot of good ideas and practices out there outside the US. He also suggests that American top managers tend to be generalists who aren't willing to pay proper attention to the recommendations of the subject matter experts who work for them. As someone who had a 40-year career as a subject matter expert in a different field, I think he's right on target with that one.


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## daybeers (Feb 22, 2022)

George Harris said:


> Maybe the person who wrote this should get out and look around and see what is really going on. I have no idea where the stuff in this blog came from, but it is totally unacquainted with reality. Caltrain is well under way with buying EMU's and installing overhead wire.


The expert who runs this blog is just that, an expert, and does see what's going on, through the PR nonsense you quoted in the rest of your post. Yes they have all the poles installed, whoopee, they were supposed to have revenue service by now, will they have it before 2024 is over? Will the budget balloon even more than its already ridiculous proportions?

Sure, they are electrifying, but that's just one line in CA. They've had so many headaches, failures, delays, cost overruns with this that they're looking for an easier, cheaper solution. Hydrogen fuel might be that in the short-term, but for any long-term, economically viable solution, they need to suck it up and hire competent people (hint, the foreign experts Alon talks about).



Willbridge said:


> In Denver we didn't drag our feet on electrification because the completed commuter rail (A, G, N-Lines) started out as planning for LRT lines. The B-Line is electric to Westminster, but it is on hold beyond there for cost reasons


I would want any RTD projects on hold too until they can get competent people to hold to a budget and design good transit first before continuing on burning money on transit to the middle of the desert (Lone Tree City) with very little ridership.


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## Willbridge (Feb 22, 2022)

daybeers said:


> I would want any RTD projects on hold too until they can get competent people to hold to a budget and design good transit first before continuing on burning money on transit to the middle of the desert (Lone Tree City) with very little ridership.


Lone Tree advanced the money to build an extension that was meant to come much later. RTD staff (including me) recommended less costly alternatives, but it was the city's plan to attract development, just before the pandemic. One of the things we discussed is that the optics would be terrible because people would blame RTD rather than discussing the rightness or wrongness of Lone Tree's policies.

It's off this thread, but let me also point out that service to Lone Tree was cut drastically for the pandemic. Note that Lone Tree also built concrete roadways and paths for places where gravel roads would be hard to justify. This was a view from a train in 2019.


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## MARC Rider (Feb 22, 2022)

daybeers said:


> I would want any RTD projects on hold too until they can get competent people to hold to a budget and design good transit first before continuing on burning money on transit to the middle of the desert (Lone Tree City) with very little ridership.


This is just a quibble, but aren't the areas around Denver more of a short grass prairie than a desert?


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## John Bredin (Feb 22, 2022)

Willbridge said:


> Lone Tree advanced the money to build an extension that was meant to come much later. RTD staff (including me) recommended less costly alternatives, but it was the city's plan to attract development, just before the pandemic. One of the things we discussed is that the optics would be terrible because people would blame RTD rather than discussing the rightness or wrongness of Lone Tree's policies.
> 
> It's off this thread, but let me also point out that service to Lone Tree was cut drastically for the pandemic. Note that Lone Tree also built concrete roadways and paths for places where gravel roads would be hard to justify. This was a view from a train in 2019.


It's not entirely off-thread for me to note that the word "incompetent" seems to get thrown around willy-nilly, often as shorthand for "I wouldn't do that" or, somewhat less presumptuously, "I don't know why they're doing that."

Looking at the area on Google Maps, it looks like only the last two stations in Lone Tree are "in the desert" and clearly intended to be hubs of development that just hasn't happened yet. I recall photos of elevated extensions of the NYC subway in Queens going past completely undeveloped blocks in the 1910s or 1920s. They didn't stay undeveloped for long. Here's one.


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## west point (Feb 23, 2022)

cirdan said:


> Every little thing that was ever buried or built on railway land recorded in a way that is easily accessible and retrievable. This doesn't happen over night but takes decades and decades of being disciplined and following the rules.



How untrue that is. In my present town a project that had us have to do several bores under a RR track almost became a disaster. Simply there were undocumented as best as I recall 7 water lines some as small as 1-1/2 inchs, 4 gas lines. 4 sewer lines, 5 storm sewers. None of which were in casings. Will not list their present status for obvious reasons. 

someone realized that almost all crossings happened after the stock crash and great depression. That deduction happened after we received the RR drawings. of the area.


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## George Harris (Feb 23, 2022)

I will completely agree with what MARC rider says about top management. Have been on the wrong side of that one. However, as to not knowing what is going on in the rest of the world, I have seen more than once someone come in making pronouncements in a French or German accent and the managers bowing and all but kissing their feet, even when people that know their methods, plus American methods and a few other places methods tell them that there are better and more practical ways being ignored simply because it appears that we had the wrong accents so that our conclusions and recommendations based on previous experience with multiple ways that things can be done enabling development of the best way forward out of all practical possibilities.

If the "PR nonsense" is what was quoted in the first post in this thread, that was not quoted by me, but by the original poster. I stand by what I said. This Hydrogen or whatever nonsense for electrification of Caltrain was never seriously considered if even thought about. It is simply that whenever any serious rail service or improvement project is being planned or constructed all the dingbats and science fiction fanatics come out of the woodwork to tell you how it ought to be done. That sounded like what was going on here. If this was a misquote of Levy, then he or whoever knows the total can clarify. If this was his opinion, whether he was German, Israeli, or from Atlantis is immaterial, he was not being realistic in the slightest.


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## Willbridge (Feb 23, 2022)

Here are the lead paragraphs from what Alon Levy wrote in his blog:



> Caltrans has a new plan to make its intercity rail fleet zero-emission. The snag: it rejects electrification as infeasible and is instead looking for hydrogen fuel cell trains. I do not think any of the people who were involved in this study is competent enough to keep working in this field, and it’s important to explain why.
> 
> I refer readers to the electrification report we at TransitMatters put out a few months ago. It talks about the costs and benefits of overhead wire, and goes over some case studies of some electrification projects, some good (Trondheim), some okay (Israel, Denmark), and some examples of what not to do (Caltrain, Toronto). Since then I’ve seen additional data of electrification costs out of Italy, where they’re near the bottom of our range.
> 
> Our report also goes into alternatives to wire and why they’re infeasible. Hydrogen is not even remotely close. The largest order as of 2019 was 27 trains for the Rhine-Main region, each 54 meters long, for 500M€, or around 343,000€ per linear meter; single-level EMUs typically cost around 80,000€/m in Europe. It’s infant technology with wanting performance and its cost is not worth it compared with the cost of wiring the trains.



I think this thread has mixed up Caltrans and Caltrain.









Quick Note: California Gets Electrification Wrong


Caltrans has a new plan to make its intercity rail fleet zero-emission. The snag: it rejects electrification as infeasible and is instead looking for hydrogen fuel cell trains. I do not think any o…




pedestrianobservations.com


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## George Harris (Feb 23, 2022)

west point said:


> From cirdad: "Every little thing that was ever buried or built on railway land recorded in a way that is easily accessible and retrievable. This doesn't happen over night but takes decades and decades of being disciplined and following the rules."
> 
> How untrue that is. In my present town a project that had us have to do several bores under a RR track almost became a disaster. Simply there were undocumented as best as I recall 7 water lines some as small as 1-1/2 inches, 4 gas lines. 4 sewer lines, 5 storm sewers. None of which were in casings. Will not list their present status for obvious reasons.
> 
> someone realized that almost all crossings happened after the stock crash and great depression. That deduction happened after we received the RR drawings. of the area.


Did anyone tell you about railroad Valuation Maps? These are available for every mile of railroad in the United States and are normally meticulously keep current. Usually railroad companies are near paranoid about anything under or near their tracks and carefully record what it is and where it is. I have on one project seen the contractor take the copies of these maps that were relevant to his work simply roll them up and stick them in a corner of the office. As a result they were, at considerable expense, totally surprised to find embedded concrete slope reinforcement where they were supposed to excavate. It was shown on the Val map. These maps are usually are not very pretty, as unless completely redrawn the original ink on linen was done in 1917 or thereabouts with all revisions that were within the railroad right of way noted with an AFE or contract number and date. Due to their age and spending much of the early years in unairconditioned offices that were usually next to railroad tracks thereby subject to dusting with coal smoke they are anything but consistent in quality over each sheet. Also, areas outside the right of way, if shown at all usually have not been updated at all, so you are seeing what was there in 1917 or thereabouts. On one occasion when looking to do a bridge replacement survey on a branch line we could not find the small town shown on the map because it no longer existed. When we got to the location by simply walking from the nearest milepost we could find some evidence of long gone roads and buildings, but driving by on the nearest road that existed in the late 1960's, there was nothing to be seen. (AFE = Authorization for Expenditure)


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## Willbridge (Feb 23, 2022)

George Harris said:


> Did anyone tell you about railroad Valuation Maps? These are available for every mile of railroad in the United States and are normally meticulously keep current. Usually railroad companies are near paranoid about anything under or near their tracks and carefully record what it is and where it is. I have on one project seen the contractor take the copies of these maps that were relevant to his work simply roll them up and stick them in a corner of the office. As a result they were, at considerable expense, totally surprised to find embedded concrete slope reinforcement where they were supposed to excavate. It was shown on the Val map. These maps are usually are not very pretty, as unless completely redrawn the original ink on linen was done in 1917 or thereabouts with all revisions that were within the railroad right of way noted with an AFE or contract number and date. Due to their age and spending much of the early years in unairconditioned offices that were usually next to railroad tracks thereby subject to dusting with coal smoke they are anything but consistent in quality over each sheet. Also, areas outside the right of way, if shown at all usually have not been updated at all, so you are seeing what was there in 1917 or thereabouts. On one occasion when looking to do a bridge replacement survey on a branch line we could not find the small town shown on the map because it no longer existed. When we got to the location by simply walking from the nearest milepost we could find some evidence of long gone roads and buildings, but driving by on the nearest road that existed in the late 1960's, there was nothing to be seen. (AFE = Authorization for Expenditure)


Were those Valuation Maps ordered as part of the USRRA?


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## neroden (Feb 23, 2022)

US private freight railroads are notorious about forgetting that they own property where their tracks were removed a long time ago. This held up a San Diego Trolley project for over a year and held up St. Paul Union Depot work for over a year (in both cases, UP owned land that it had forgotten about but that the city property records remembered). So I'm not particularly impressed by their recordkeeping.


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## MARC Rider (Feb 23, 2022)

neroden said:


> US private freight railroads are notorious about forgetting that they own property where their tracks were removed a long time ago. This held up a San Diego Trolley project for over a year and held up St. Paul Union Depot work for over a year (in both cases, UP owned land that it had forgotten about but that the city property records remembered). So I'm not particularly impressed by their recordkeeping.


If you forget about the property you own, I guess you can be reminded when the property tax bill arrives. Of course, if they haven't paid taxes on property they forgot about, maybe the city can just seize the property in lieu of taxes.


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## jis (Feb 23, 2022)

MARC Rider said:


> If you forget about the property you own, I guess you can be reminded when the property tax bill arrives. Of course, if they haven't paid taxes on property they forgot about, maybe the city can just seize the property in lieu of taxes.


If anything, often the municipalities are equally if not more ignorant, specially in small towns. It can be quite a trip to get municipalities to take responsibility for things that they own too.


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## Bob Dylan (Feb 23, 2022)

jis said:


> If anything, often the municipalities are equally if not more ignorant, specially in small towns. It can be quite a trip to get municipalities to take responsibility for things that they own too.


Yep, lots of Small towns, especially in Rural areas, still have old records stored in musty Warehouses and Courthouses since they haven't been computerized.

Mason, a West Texas Ranch Town, had their Courthouse torched by an Arsonist, but luckily all the Records ( which dated back to the 1800s)had been moved to another site due to the Courthouse due to be Renovated soon..

There's lots of Lawsuits over property rights in Texas since our Records go back to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants.( Title Companies rake in a Fortune in the Lone Star State.)


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## George Harris (Feb 23, 2022)

Bob Dylan said:


> There's lots of Lawsuits over property rights in Texas since our Records go back to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants.( Title Companies rake in a Fortune in the Lone Star State.)


Yes! Spent 2 years working on DART planning the first go around before that round got killed politically in 1988. This was not just one party's fault. There was enough done by several parties involved that caused that death. There were several properties that were dimensioned in Spanish Varas. How long a Vara is, I do not know, nor at this late date am I sure that I spelled it right. Another fun fact: The Texas Legislature had to pass a law declaring rail transit systems as railroads for right of way purposes so that the right of way for at least one of the lines would not be lost in the process of removing a section of railroad to be used for a DART right of way. (So, what is going on with the TxHSR on this issue? Would not the same issue apply, or was this written to only apply to Dallas County?) 

As to local agencies property records, in the South many court houses were burned during the War Between the States, usually for sheer maliciousness as they were of no military significance. This has led to a lot of "who owns what?" issues in many places for over a century. This has resulted in significant right of way and other property issues for railroad that were in existence at that time. Even without that issue, on one particular survey to lay out an industrial track we found a manhole in the middle of the area the county was assisting the industry in buying. Popped the lid, and behold they had a sanitary sewer line passing under the proposed building site. At that point, we folded up our equipment and called the agency and said, you better rethink your plan. They acted surprised.


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## jis (Feb 23, 2022)

MODERATOR'S NOTE: Note even to myself, I am embarrassed to say.... time to swing back to California electrification.


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## George Harris (Feb 23, 2022)

jis said:


> MODERATOR'S NOTE: Note even to myself, I am embarrassed to say.... time to swing back to California electrification.


True. Sorry for getting so far off topic.


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