TRAIN PORN!
Those of you who read my comics blog probably think they know all there is to know about me as a nerd, but really, you didn’t until this moment, when you read an entire post about TRAINS, which are awesome.
I'd marry this train, if it weren't against God's law
So, TRAINS! Hells yeah! One thing that I do for “fun” is check in every once in awhile on new public transit projects in the pipeline, because I’m a huge public transit dork, both by necessity (I don’t drive, so I actually take public transit more than most people in this country) and by choice (I love geeking out about things generally, and big machines and infrastructure projects in particular). One of these projects that seems farther along than most is SMART (can I tell you how much I hate cutesy acronyms?), which is a rail line that will be running through Sonoma and Marin counties in California. It’s sort of halfway between a light rail line (not that “light rail” has any sort of meaning outside of marketing fluff) and a commuter rail line — diesel trains, mostly single track, half-hour headways, passing through various mid-sized population centers, etc. Perhaps closer to an old-school interurban than anything else, though interurbans were generally electric, I think.
But! Here’s the exciting part. The SMART folks have are using DMU trains on the line — which is to say trains that are diesel powered all-one-vehicle thingies, rather than a locomotive with no passenger facilities pulling passenger cars with no engines. There aren’t very many DMUs in use in the US right now, but they could be huge, very quickly, because they make it super-easy to turn existing freight or disused rail lines into passenger rail transit of some sort, because all you need to do is buy the vehicles and whip up some basic stations.
Sadly, like most things that are awesome, DMUs are made by foreigners, but there are a number of foreign companies that make them, and SMART appears to have asked most of them to send in their proposals for the kind of vehicles they’d deliver if they got the contract. In the surprisingly transparent decision that prompted this post, SMART slapped all of these proposals up on their Website — or at least PDFs of their PowerPoint presentations, which had all the hot train pictures, anyway. Check ‘em out!
- Ansaldo Breda (Italians; I think I rode some of their older DMUs in Sicily, they were loud and squeaky)
- Bombardier (Canadians; is it really necessary to put pictures of your damn planes in the presentation? SMART is not buying an air force)
- CAF (Spanish)
- Nippon Sharyo (Japanese; pictured below; FRA compliant, which is HOTT, more on which in a moment)
- Siemens (German)
- Stadler (also German; PowerPoint slide about fire safety awesomely includes picture of an actual flaming train interior)
DMUs are actually really common outside North America on exactly the kind of mid-level service they want to build in the North Bay, but the tricky thing about using them here is that there are all kinds of regulations put in place by the Federal Railroad Administration that says to make trains more crash-safe, which the bulk of those foreign DMUs don’t meet. (Said regulations involve making trains much heavier and more expensive.) You’re allowed to run non-FRA compliant trains so long as they won’t ever co-exist on tracks with FRA-compliant trains — the DMU setups in south Jersey and San Diego County do this. There was one American company that made FRA-compliant DMUs, Colorado Railcar; it spent years pimping itself as the future of transit, finally got a real client, Portland’s Westside Express Service, then promptly went bankrupt while in the process of building the trains for Portland. (The Portland transit agency actually had to take control of the shell of the company just to get the three — three! — railcars it had bought.)
But! The cool kids from Japan, Nippon Sharyo, offer in their proposal to deliver FRA-compliant trains, because why not?
Coming to a real railway near you?
I imagine their bet is that more folks will be wanting these soon enough — not least Amtrak, which might find them more efficient to run on lower-patronage routes. (Rumor has it Amtrak has been pressuring Vermont to use them for its Amtrak line.) Sure, high-speed rail is sexy, but these could improve rail coverage on the existing network, which has its points.
Sort of interesting online since at least 2004.
May 26th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Josh, trains & transit rock and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re a dork for liking them.
The Baltimore Region Rail System Plan (labelled transit porn by the CityPaper) had 2 lines that would be best served by DMUs.
May 26th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
This whole time you’ve been a trainspotter?
May 27th, 2009 at 10:03 am
Houston, TX has a one-line light rail and is valiantly trying to build more. They (barely) got voter approval in a referndum a few years back and then had the “audacity” to slightly change the route. A lot of their public support evaporated. We’ll see.
In the mean time, the single street-level line is one of the most dangerous in the world. Houstonians just don’t understand this whole, “don’t turn left into the train” rule. Lots of pedestrians get hit too. Then there were the two Metrorail employees who stopped at a crossing gate, waited, waited, got out and held up the crossing gate and drove through — right into a train.
Exciting times!
May 27th, 2009 at 11:16 am
Dorky? Perhaps, but it’s dorkitude that I can support. My 5 yr old son is a train nut. I don’t just mean he has some Thomas trains he runs around the living room, I mean he has the first season of Extreme Trains from the History Channel memorized and frequently explains cantanaries and pantegraphs to little old ladies at the mall (it’s the little old ladies that make the mistake of asking him his name, not realizing what they are in for.)
If I showed him this post he would make me read it to him again and again until he could explain it to me. So, I hope you understand I won’t be showing this to him. Nevertheless, if he grows up being dorky enough to know and love stuff like this, I will be mighty proud.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:37 am
holy crap, I wish NC was shaped like a tube so we could have efficient rail (curse you CA!). I’ve never understood why trains are so underutilized in the US.
Josh, you ever been to Japan? I went there two years ago and their transport system was mind-blowing.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Josh, just to the North of you, New Jersey Transit’s River Line uses DMU’s (although NJT refers to it as light rail). Keep up the great writing!
May 29th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Pedantry:
Heavy rail – Carries both passengers and freight.
Commuter rail – Passengers only, board from platforms.
Light rail – Passengers only, board from street level.
May 29th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Uncle Lumpy — actually more complicated than that. MARC commuter rail trains share tracks with CSX freight in Maryland. Many light rail trains, or things billed as light rail, have extensive grade-separated non-street based systems.
The way the terms are generally used are actually more about the historical lineage of the tracks and equipment than anything else. Essentially, heavy rail is descended from intercity rail, while light rail is descended from streetcars. Commuter rail is a subset of heavy rail, as is freight, as are most of what people think of as classic “subways” (i.e. New York, London, etc.). Generally if something is capable of running in a street, it’s called “light rail,” even if much or most of its route is on segregated right-of-way.
DMUs throw a monkey wrench into the categorization schemes because they often run on the same tracks as freight, but can be built small enough to also run like streetcars — New Jersey’s River Line that Matt mentions is a good example of this. Usually though DMUs that can do street runnings aren’t FRA compliant and have to be separated by time from freight traffic, even if they do use the same tracks (again, the River Line uses this technique).
What’s interesting about Nippon Sharyo’s SMART proposal is that their trains will be FRA compliant, so the tracks can carry frieght trains during the day (though won’t that interfere with the SMART’s fairly ambitious half-hour headways?), but apparently will still be able to travel in the line’s street-running sections (I *think* there are going to street running sections, anyway). It’s worth noting that Nippon Sharyo also made the trains for the South Shore Line, which is descended from an interurban, a sort of third category of train that doesn’t really exist in the US anymore. Interurbans used electric streetcar-derived vehicles that were larger than contemporary streetcars (more the size of modern light rail vehicles, actually) to provide service between two close-together cities, running like a commuter train in rural areas and on the street in town. The South Shore Line for the most part looks like a regular commuter railroad now and has FRA compliant vehicles, but does stilll retain street-running sections in small northern Indiana towns. SMART will probably look a lot like that, actually, except with diesel vehicles instead of electric.
There, now THAT was probably more than you ever wanted to know, ever.
May 30th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Never realized:
(1) You’re a transit/rail buff
(2) That “light rail” is a marketing ploy, although it seems obvious once you point it out.
It’s important to rebut everywhere it appears the canard that transit is no good because it has high initial costs and its operations must be subsidized. Those are certainly true statements, but conveniently ignore the reality that the same things can be said of highways (or public schools or sewage collection or other collective necessities of industrial life). The stimulus bill offers real opportunities for rail passenger service in the US, if the roadheads at various state highway departments aren’t allowed to rake off everything for more pavement.
The South Shore was awesome–the North Shore and its Electroliners, which could go 85 mph in open country but also run on the “L” in downtown Chicago, even more so.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Aren’t you already married, Josh? What would Amber say? Is trigamy allowed in Maryland?
I am so confused.
Gosh, I like trains, though, and light rail, and stuff like that.
June 7th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Yes, Canadians have to put airplanes in our presentations. but I must agree that two whole pages is a bit much.
Yet aren’t they sexy?
August 28th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Ah,so! You LIKE trains, eh Josh? What a coinky dink. I happened to work (LOL) for a Class 1 railroad, though we don’t haul passengers. Drop me an e-mail and I’ll send you some Railroad trinkets if you are interested….,
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DEATH to TJ!