TrainBlog by Marcel Marchon

I meant to write an article about upcoming new rail lines that are scheduled to open in Europe this year, but I just ran across this piece by columnist Ed Perkins (written as part of a more generic travel article, so you might not have noticed the rail content …), where he sums up the most important parts quite nicely.

Rail: Focus on Europe. The Europeans remain serious about high-speed rail, and you’ll see some major improvements this year: The last remaining high-speed segment between London and the “Chunnel” will open late this year, cutting 15-20 minutes off the already spectacular rail times between London and Brussels (less than two hours) or Paris (a bit over two hours). From the new station at St. Pancras to the Continental terminals, travel will be entirely on high-speed tracks, with speeds up to 186 mph.

France will open most of the LGV Est line from Paris to near Strasbourg, with a branch connecting to Frankfurt, Germany. Belgium and the Netherlands will open high-speed links, cutting train time from Amsterdam to Paris to just three hours. Spain expects to complete most of the high-speed line between Barcelona and Madrid this year. Late in the year, Switzerland will open the new 20-mile low-level Lotschberg tunnel between Brig and Bern, cutting an hour off travel times between Italy and Germany.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to talk a lot and do little about high-speed rail. At best, we’ll see a few improved (but conventional) speeds on a few Midwestern Amtrak routes. The main improvements will be in local public transit and commuter systems — welcome, to be sure, but not a substitute.

[Quoted from Expect higher hotel rates and more hidden fees (sfgate.com)]

I also like his comment about, well, the non-existent U.S. rail program. Although there might be some good news: Apparently, Senators Lautenburg, Lott, Inouye and Stevens are planning to re-introduce the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act next week - if you support this, call your senator to encourage him/her to support this bill!

Senators Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Trent Lott (R-MS), Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
and Ted Stevens (R-AK) plan to re-introduce the Passenger Rail Investment
and Improvement Act next Tuesday.

[Quoted from an email newsletter from NARP]

There are people and organizations that think railfanning and taking pictures of trains is inherently suspicious and poses a security risk. By chance, I ran across the following statement on the website of British rail network operator Network Rail today - I think the British got it right there - there’s no reason to be scared of railfans:

Your (the Railway Enthusiasts - ed.) presence at a station can be very helpful to us as extra “eyes and ears” and can have a positive security benefit.

Quoted from Network Rail - Railway Enthusiasts

Couple more additions to the blogroll:

• Transit Sleuth (Portland area)
• Grumpy’s World (Rail photography)
• Transit Miami (doesn’t have autodiscovery for their RSS feed - that’s at http://transitmiami.com/rss.aspx)
• American Railroads
• Live from the Third Rail (Atlanta)

Let me know if you know any others that should be added to the list …

I’ve long been fascinated by urban subway/metro/underground rail systems (in my youth, I was a big fan of the Paris Metro) and lately, I’ve been watching a couple of British Rail DVDs - one of them is focused on the London Underground Metropolitan line. Here’s a couple of interesting bits of information, that I learned while watching this DVD and from subsequent reading on related web sites:

• The London Underground network reaches out into some quite rural country - one example of this is the Metropolitan line (which incidentally was originally built as a mainline railroad), which even has a single track branch. In the video, you can see the train threading through heavily wooded areas on the Chesham branch … Parts of the Metropolitan line were steam powered until the second half of the 20th century and reached even further out into rural country.
• The London Underground is electrified using a 4-rail DC system. This is quite rare and differs from the more common 3rd rail system by having a fourth center rail between the two running rails. The voltage used is 630 V DC, with the outside (3rd) rail at +420 V and the middle (4th) rail at -210 V. In some cases, where tracks are shared with regular mainline trains that use rolling stock equipped for the more conventional 3rd rail system, the outside rail will be at +630 V and the middle rail at 0 V - the difference in potential between the two rails is the same either way and the trains will work just fine.

Another peculiarity of London Underground and suburban railroading is that in some locations, you can find tracks electrified using the 3- and/or 4-rail DC system running next to tracks electrified with overhead catenary at 25 kV AC. One example of this is on the tracks out of Euston station on the West Coast Main Line.

Well, there must be other ways to finance this thing than always just by borrowing money, no? Almost everybody all around the world believes that High Speed Rail is infrastructure that is worth investing in - but in the car-centric United States, do people (or maybe I should say “the politicians”) still only believe in the “drive-and-fly”-mentality?

Sayonara High Speed Rail?

In a pre-speech briefing with reporters, the Schwarzenegger administration said that Schwarzenegger’s bond proposal would essentially max out the state’s borrowing capacity for the next decade. So what about the idea of a ballot measure asking voters to approve bonds to build a high speed rail system through the Central Valley? After all, it was supposed to have been on the ballot already, but kept getting postponed. Administration officials said today that the high-speed rail project should be derailed… again, and perhaps indefinitely.

Quoted from Capital Notes- From KQED’s John Myers: State… of the State of the State

This morning, Taiwan became a member of the growing list of countries that offer high speed rail service:

Taiwan’s long-delayed high-speed rail system debuted Friday, its 12-car caravan of sleek orange and white coaches gliding out of a suburban Taipei station right on time at 7 a.m.

[Taiwan’s high-speed train debuts after long delays (SignOnSanDiego.com)]

The operation mixes Japanese Shinkansen-type trains with European-built infrastructure - and in an ironic twist of history, the Japanese-built trains are actually operated by French and German drivers …

And a series of commercial disputes since the project began in 1980 has produced a remarkable hodgepodge: French and German train drivers who are allowed to speak only English with Taiwanese traffic controllers while operating Japanese bullet trains on tracks originally designed by British and French engineers.

[Taiwan’s Bullet Trains Can’t Outrun Controversy (New York Times)]

The new line opened amidst concerns about safety and controversy about the high cost of construction ($15 billion). Trains run on a new purpose built right-of-way stretched along the west coast of Taiwan, connecting the two main cities, Taipei and Kaohsiung, with intermediate stations at major towns and cities along the way.

Even though I had written about it earlier last year, I completely missed it when Caltrain released their “Project 2025” report, outlining a plan for the next 20 years. I haven’t read it yet, just a quick peek, but I think all their scenarios for the future include electrification and the acquisition of new modern equipment.

caltrain.com - Project 2025

Project 2025 provides a comprehensive road map of what the agency must do to continue to be a vital commuter rail system throughout the 21st century.

Download: Report (PDF, 226 KB)

Looks like I’m finding a whole bunch of new blogs early this year. One of them is not really new though - I noticed it before, because they had been linking here, but somehow I forgot to add them to my reader/blogroll. So here we go, two more additions to the blogroll here on this site:

• FRN: A blog about trains
• Coxy’s Railroad Blog

I just added the following two links to the blogroll on this site:

• Alta Velocidad Ferroviaria - [Un Medio de Transporte Distinto]: Spanish language blog about high-speed rail
• TGV RHIN RHÔNE: French blog about TGV Rhin-Rhone construction

In addition to the TGV East High-Speed line that is being completed right now and that will go in service in June of 2007, two other high-speed rail projects are currently under way in France and a couple of links for more information:

• The TGV Rhine-Rhone line, eastern branch (connection from east of Dijon towards Belfort/Mulhouse)
  Official Website of "LGV Rhin-Rhone" (French/English)
  Blog about TGV Rhin-Rhone construction (French)
• The new Transpyreneen link from Perpignan to Figueras in Spain (linking the French and Spanish high-speed systems).
  This line is built by the private TP Ferro group, so there is no official RFF website. TP Ferro does not seem to have a website. Here is the Wikipedia entry. The french version has a bit more information.

Regarding the former one, here is a PDF showing current areas of construction as of December 2006. Work had started back in July of 2006 and the line is scheduled to be opened at the end of 2011.