#RailNatter​

[@stevieinselby]

The dinosaur skeleton at Cincinatti terminal is the remains of someone waiting for their train...

[@devinfaux6987]

My apartment has a good view of the tracks that the Cardinal takes on its way in and out of Cincinnati. On nights when it comes through heading east, it's scheduled to arrive around 3:30 AM. I once spotted it sneaking into town well after 8 AM, roughly 5 hours late.

[@AlRoderick]

They were going to go visit their friend Sue in Chicago.

[@martinfaland7819]

Justin: “there are no domestic locomotive manufacturers in the US” Me sitting in the now wabtec engine plant (formerly GE) that is very much still in business and building locomotives: “well damn guess my job dosent exist”

[@Spanderson99]

Regarding carload freight: The Canadian National collective agreement still has something about employees being entitled to one free boxcar to move their possessions when they’re transferred to another location. I doubt anyone has used this in the past 40 years, since the infrastructure for carload freight just isn’t there anymore. I asked my rules instructor about this, and he had a story about desperately trying to prevent his boxcar full of furniture from being sent over the hump in Winnepeg. I no longer work for CN, but I’d really like to see someone try to do this today just for the heck of it.

[@BravoCharleses]

Gentlemen, this is very fine work. Thank you.

[@INEEDCAFFEIN3]

Well I enjoyed listening to this while the US was/is? Exploding

[@eleSDSU]

27:58 Oh yeah, I remember those, the only time I got late to school in my life was because one of these monsters was rerouted through the center of Buenos Aires and wrecked havoc, it just went on and on....forever...

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

Gareth, it occurred to me whilst reading Rail Engineer how would the USA go about decarbonising their rail network? It seems they are wedded to diesel and the routes are so long. As an aside I was amazed when I tried to catch a train from Oklahoma to Dallas a while ago just how 'rare' passenger services are and even the guards on the train were amazed when I said I was going by rail rather than car and how frequent and common intercity routes are in the UK (I know the distances are much shorter!). It was actually quite hard to get a ticket too as even a quite major town had an unmanned station and no ticket machine. It meant I had to have a phone call with the ticketing agency and when they asked me for my billing address they were amazed that it was in the UK!

[@unkleoo]

I guess one 'problem' is that because of the huge freight engine & train sizes they are massively fuel efficient - so unless electricity gets really, really cheap there is less incentive to find that capital investment (which in the US I would guess would come from the commercial banking sector rather than government borrowing, so the financing costs could make any financial return on investment even less attractive ?) .... this is interesting on the fuel efficiency p25--p26 www.ugpti.org/resources/reports/downloads/mpc13-250.pdf

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

@@unkleoo thanks - that's a very interesting point and does put a different light on things. I was always amazed by the length of the freight trains out there (and how slowly the passenger trains traveled as they went over so many at-grade crossings!)

[@stevieinselby]

Electrification should make a lot of sense for trains running that kind of crazy distance ... just think how much diesel you need to haul 10,000t for a thousand miles ... the weight of it, the volume of it, the time needed to refuel.

[@AnthonyFrancisJones]

Oh, I forgot to say that when these incredibly long freight trains caused a wait at a level crossing, I remember people stopping their car engines and getting out and having a brief picnic by the roadside - it just seemed normal out there. Spiral tunnels in west Canada was amazing too to see the freight train go round and over itself it was so long!

[@eleSDSU]

4:08 Roz is looking really slim here. Great show guys, Gareth + Roz = great, Gareth + WTYP = amazing!

[@devinfaux6987]

Compared to some of the other stations discussed, Cincinnati Union Terminal was basically unlucky. It was built a decade or two later than many of the others, right in time for the Great Depression to hit while it was still under construction. I'm pretty sure that the only time it was used to its full capacity -- 216 trains a day -- was during World War II. For a few years in the 80s it was also used as a shopping mall, before conversion into a museum. It's actually multiple different museums in the same building; the two wings on either side of the rotunda are the Natural History Museum (with the dinosaur skeletons) and the Cincinnati History Museum (which has a very nice O-scale model of Cincinnati at various stages in its history). They even have the old station control tower set up as a railroad museum.

[@Acela2163]

So, on the topic of speed, while the 79MPH rule applies to both Passenger and Freight trains, I'm not aware of any railroads that allow freight trains to travel at those speeds. The rules vary between railroads, but generally Intermodal/autorack trains are permitted to travel at higher speeds than the rest of the traffic that runs over US rails (excluding passenger trains of course). For example, the BNSF Needles subdivision is fitted with the ex-ATSF cab signals Justin mentioned, and between Daggett Junction and Hector, CA, the speed limit is 90MPH for passenger trains and 70MPH for Freight trains. As far as I know, 70mph is as fast as BNSF allows freight trains to travel, and I believe the other Class I's are even slower (I think CSX is restricted to 60, and UP to 65). Even then, not all freight trains are allowed to travel at those speeds. Now, I don't work for the railroad, so this is just what I've managed to piece together as an enthusiast. If anyone who works for the railroad wants to chime it, by all means please do. I believe on BNSF rails, Intermodal and Autorack trains are allowed to travel at speeds of up to 70 mph. Other types of freight are restricted to 55MPH unless they meet 2 criteria: 1. All freight cars in the consist are loaded. If there is even One empty car, they are restricted to 55 2. The train is less than 80 tons per operative brake (TOB). This ensures that an emergency brake application will stoop the train in a given distance. All loads and less than 80 TOB? Good for 70. Otherwise, the train is restricted to 55. Similar rules apply, but often to lower speeds, such as on CSX, where the speeds are 60/50, instead of 70/55. Passenger trains may run up to 79 without Cab Signals, and with them they're mostly limited by the operating speeds of the rolling stock. Amtrak's Superliners are limited to 100MPH, and the Amfleet/Horizon coaches as well as the Viewliner sleeping cars are good for 125. The GE Genesis locomotives that make up the bulk of their fleet are good for 110, while the new Siemens Chargers are rated for 125. Again, I'm just a railfan, not an expert by any means, so if anyone reading this works for the railroad and knows differently, please correct me.

[@ashermil]

This episode changed my life.

[@packr72]

Amtrak pre pandemic had 4 round trip trains between Chicago and St Louis. That route is also supposed to be 110mph but PTC issues mean it’s at 79 for now. Also the Texas Eagle runs over those tracks 3x a week.

[@eurocityboysimulations7667]

Cool episode! Just for the record, Europe has hump yards too. DB still has six or seven (they even built a new one in Halle a few years ago) and SNCF has four or five (I think). There might be some others ones. Wagon load traffic is still very much a thing over here.

[@1RandomToaster]

The Dash Nine is the himbo of locos and I love him.

[@stevieinselby]

Who would ever have thought that a RailNatter and DoNotEat01 mashup would go on for a long time 🤣. This is what we're here for!

[@unkleoo]

Containers, containers, containers, containers, more containers, containers, containers. *other freight cars are available but who cares - more containers please. yum, yum love to move em.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

not so great for grain, or minerals, or the entirety of Maine's seed potato crop

[@genoobtlp4424]

The first gen acelas look as loco hauled as a first gen ICE, yes, loco but fixed formation you can only take apart in the depot. The new acelas appeaar to be basically TGVs, which is also technically loco hauled but also an EMU outside the depot…

[@mattthelombax]

I thought the Amtrak logo was rolling fields and plains. Train goes across country sort of vibe.

[@VirtualJMills]

1:44:40 -- The font is a SEGA homage.

[@gdrriley420]

We had EMUs, Amtrak just had some bad experiences with the ones they got handed and now refuse to buy them agian. Metroliners, the 160mph brick with a slightly angled face. Denver and rio grande ran fast short freights in the 80s, when they bought SP the practice didn't get pushed to SP :( while the NEC is nice the 3 California state supported lines run along some beautiful places while being in the top 10 most busy routes on amtrak. Its been talked about and we had the chance in the 90s and didn't take it but we may end up buying most of the track they run on. Right now the Surfliner spends most of its route miles on county own track. Theres a single line we need to buy then it could spend its entire time on state owned rails.

[@atn_holdings]

the US rules because because vast swathes of it look completely empty but are actually owned by the most litigious people on earth, who will go all the way to the supreme court to contest a single eminent domain order and make you pay one million dollars in lawyer fees for every linear inch of new track ROW. As opposed to France, where the TGV planners had the luxury of using compass and rulers on a topographical map and dealing with the details later