The Electrification discussion

Metra Electric Rider said:

I fell down a rabbit hole earlier this week on Indian suburban rail networks and hadn't realize how early some had been electrified (Mumbai, Chennai and maybe Kolkata [can't remember exactly] ) as early as the mid-20's.

Click to expand...

Mumbai (Bombay) was (Broad Gauge) 1925 1.5kV DC 2916 25kV AC conversion completed
Chennai (Madras) was (Meter Gauge converted to Broad Gauge in the last few decades) 1931 1.5kV DC, 1967-71 25kV AC
Kolkata (Calcutta) was (Broad Gauge) 1957 3kV, 1961-64 25kV AC

Incidentally, both Madras (Chennai) and Mumbai DC system used equipment from Metro-Cammel. Initial AC equipment came from the Hitachi-Mitsubishi-Toshiba Japanese consortium and the 50Hz Group in France/Europe. Progressively Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, BEML and Jessops started manufacturing equipment in India. At present a mix of local manufacture and imports are used to meet the insane size of the demand for new equipment. Foreign suppliers include Siemens, Alstom and CRRC.

Metra Electric Rider said:

Those would make a great re-use project.

Funnily enough, if you drive on Route 12 in Indiana, you'll also see electrified railway infrastructure - coinkydink?

Click to expand...

Route 12, the insiders guide to electrified railways? Maybe.
One other thing I did not realize was that after the Milwaukee Road closed their substation, the rural electric decided they needed one there so they built a new, more modern one. Not surprisingly, I noticed the old one, not the newer one.

jis said:

Mumbai (Bombay) was (Broad Gauge) 1925 1.5kV DC 2916 25kV AC conversion completed
Chennai (Madras) was (Meter Gauge converted to Broad Gauge in the last few decades) 1931 1.5kV DC, 1967-71 25kV AC
Kolkata (Calcutta) was (Broad Gauge) 1957 3kV, 1961-64 25kV AC

Incidentally, both Madras (Chennai) and Mumbai DC system used equipment from Metro-Cammel. Initial AC equipment came from the Hitachi-Mitsubishi-Toshiba Japanese consortium and the 50Hz Group in France/Europe. Progressively Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, BEML and Jessops started manufacturing equipment in India. At present a mix of local manufacture and imports are used to meet the insane size of the demand for new equipment. Foreign suppliers include Siemens, Alstom and CRRC.

Click to expand...

With India (and SE Asia as a whole) growing by most metrics and China, Africa, South America and "the West" experiencing some serious headwinds, I am curious to see how Asia, and the world, develop over the next 20 years.

"Slowly, then all of a sudden."?

Ziv said:

With India growing by most metrics and China, Africa, South America and "the West" experiencing some serious headwinds, I am curious to see how Asia, and the world, develop over the next 20 years.

"Slowly, then all of a sudden."?

Click to expand...

Assuming we are talking about railway electrification, since the broader subject area would be way out of scope in this thread....

Generally, except for North America, so far everyone else is steadily electrifying their railroad or at least are talking about it in the context of meeting Net Zero goals. I suspect it is Canada that will take the lead in electrification, but US will get additional electrification at least in the garb of HSR.

jis said:

Assuming we are talking about railway electrification, since the broader subject area would be way out of scope in this thread....

Generally, except for North America, so far everyone else is steadily electrifying their railroad or at least are talking about it in the context of meeting Net Zero goals. I suspect it is Canada that will take the lead in electrification, but US will get additional electrification at least in the garb of HSR.

Click to expand...

Mea culpa.
Sorry.

Ziv said:

Route 12, the insiders guide to electrified railways? Maybe.
One other thing I did not realize was that after the Milwaukee Road closed their substation, the rural electric decided they needed one there so they built a new, more modern one. Not surprisingly, I noticed the old one, not the newer one.

Click to expand...

Hahaha, yes!

That's a great picture actually - probably different electric loads and needs (plus not having owned or wanting to own/maintain a brick building). That equipment doesn't - and won't last long if not used - last forever.

Ziv said:

I drive along US-12, US-89 and MT-294 from Townsend to Harlowton occasionally but I remember the first time I did and noticed a mid-sized electrical power station (abandoned) in the middle of nowhere. It is just west of the Martinsdale Colony if memory serves which is just 40 to 50 miles from Harlow but since there were only a few ranches in the area the Milwaukee Road had to build a power station in the middle of the empty quarter. That could not have been cheap.
I do not think it was a power generation plant, though I could very easily be wrong. I think it was a sub-station but it still probably cost a lot to build and maintain. I could not find the sub-station I drive by but it was similar to this photo of the Primrose sub-station.

https://historicmt.org/items/show/2216

On edit:
Ah, here it is. The Loweth Substation. 47 miles west of Harlow. The land there has a stark beauty to it. Reminds me of some of Ivan Doig's books.

Click to expand...

The 3kv DC system required closer substation spacing than modern AC systems. That's one reason that the Soviet railways were able to rely on the DC system -- substation labor was readily available.

Metra Electric Rider said:

Funnily enough, if you drive on Route 12 in Indiana, you'll also see electrified railway infrastructure - coinkydink?

Click to expand...

I assume that would be the South Shore?

Willbridge said:

The 3kv DC system required closer substation spacing than modern AC systems. That's one reason that the Soviet railways were able to rely on the DC system -- substation labor was readily available.

Click to expand...

On a system as vast as the (former) Soviet one, you have a very large scale of standardisation. The Soviets didn't do custom solutions or one offs. They went in with their cookie cutter designs and just repeated them over and over. Just take a look at their urban architecture for example. This extreme standardisation of designs and parts in substations must have enabled low costs of maintenance and repairs.

Furthermore, 3kV requires more feeder and sub-stations than higher-voltage AC. On the other hand the designs and requirements are simpler, so there may be some trade-offs here and the overall penalty not as huge as it may seem.

One place where 3kV is more questionable than elsewhere is on very long lines across essentially empty territory such as the Trans-Siberian, the BAM etc. Higher voltage AC with fewer feed-in points would have been more economic here. But then I guess the principle of a single system and economies of scale outweighed the possible temptation to do something different.

cirdan said:

On a system as vast as the (former) Soviet one, you have a very large scale of standardisation. The Soviets didn't do custom solutions or one offs. They went in with their cookie cutter designs and just repeated them over and over. Just take a look at their urban architecture for example. This extreme standardisation of designs and parts in substations must have enabled low costs of maintenance and repairs.

Furthermore, 3kV requires more feeder and sub-stations than higher-voltage AC. On the other hand the designs and requirements are simpler, so there may be some trade-offs here and the overall penalty not as huge as it may seem.

One place where 3kV is more questionable than elsewhere is on very long lines across essentially empty territory such as the Trans-Siberian, the BAM etc. Higher voltage AC with fewer feed-in points would have been more economic here. But then I guess the principle of a single system and economies of scale outweighed the possible temptation to do something different.

Click to expand...

The Transsiberian is mostly 25 KV 50 Hz now. Looks like most of the 3 KV is in pockets around Moscow and other cities such as Ekaterinberg and Novosibirsk.

BlackDiamond said:

The Transsiberian is mostly 25 KV 50 Hz now. Looks like most of the 3 KV is in pockets around Moscow and other cities such as Ekaterinberg and Novosibirsk.

Click to expand...

The Russians did not convert all legacy suburban DC systems to standard 25kV AC like the Indians did, probably because they simply chose not to invest in such, and they had more of them than the Indians did..

In India Electrification design is as standard as is track designs and layouts at wayside stations. Stations are categorized into about half a dozen categories. The huge stations are of course one of a kind, but the wayside enroute little stations are very very standardized with standardized track layout, interlocking, staffing and such. And electrification is almost cookie cutter or as close to it as you can get.

cirdan said:

On a system as vast as the (former) Soviet one, you have a very large scale of standardisation. The Soviets didn't do custom solutions or one offs. They went in with their cookie cutter designs and just repeated them over and over. Just take a look at their urban architecture for example. This extreme standardisation of designs and parts in substations must have enabled low costs of maintenance and repairs.

Furthermore, 3kV requires more feeder and sub-stations than higher-voltage AC. On the other hand the designs and requirements are simpler, so there may be some trade-offs here and the overall penalty not as huge as it may seem.

One place where 3kV is more questionable than elsewhere is on very long lines across essentially empty territory such as the Trans-Siberian, the BAM etc. Higher voltage AC with fewer feed-in points would have been more economic here. But then I guess the principle of a single system and economies of scale outweighed the possible temptation to do something different.

Click to expand...

There were times on my 2010 trip into Siberia that I thought a lot about the Milwaukee Road and its influence on what the Russians in the late 1920's called "Amerikanomania."

There was at least one non-standard transport feature in the Soviet Union -- bus shelters. It turns out that they were used as design student projects.