On May 9, 3:10*pm, Chris wrote:

On 7 May, 13:43, "DW downunder" noname wrote:

C. http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/60

5) "TfL would like Airtrack "to be developed in a way that is consistent
with the possible extension of some Crossrail trains to Staines via
Heathrow." [TfL response to South Western franchise specification] * "

http://www.alwaystouchout.com/project/1#Stations*This is about Crossrail
...
This means that Crossrail would only run to Heathrow Central and Terminal
4 - not to Terminal 5. Passengers would be able to transfer at Heathrow
Central to the Heathrow Express for free connections to T5.

Hmmm - TfL have their work cut out getting BAA / NR / DfT to take that
on board, then!!! :-)

www.alwaystouchout.comappears to be a personal blogspot, and
therefore about as reliable as this forum, which at least has some
informed people on here.

alwaystouchout was a project of a former contributor to this
newsgroup, who was most certainly a well informed person - be in
absolutely no doubt about that. However as you can see they're not
updating it any more, so the information presented on it is frozen in
time. With a project such as Crossrail, things can of course change -
look at the Thameslink Programme, where the final service pattern is
far from certain.

1506 wrote:
On May 8, 6:31 am, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
07:52:16 on Thu, 7 May 2009,
remarked:

"It is proposed that the OHLE over Maidenhead railway bridge will use
masts with wires suspended from cantilevers, since these will be
visually lighter structures than the gantries to be used along other
parts of the route. The masts will however, have a significant adverse
landscape impact: they will affect important views along the river and
the character of the river corridor; they will affect the setting of the
Riverside Conservation Area; and they will affect the setting of the
listed railway bridge and the setting of the adjacent Grade I listed
road bridge.
This is a railway, not a national park - who cares what it looks like
Would you say the same about electricity pylons through a National Park?
--
Roland Perry

IMHO It is very likely that I Kingdom Brunel would welcome
electrification. He seemed very keen to find a better, cleaner form
of motive power.

He would have insisted on using 3 phase 37.278kV* electrification at
16.25Hz fed through side contact 3rd and 4th rail - and bugger the
through running!

* there is a logic behind this number. See if you can work it out!

On Sat, 9 May 2009, GazK wrote:

1506 wrote:
On May 8, 6:31 am, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
07:52:16 on Thu, 7 May 2009,
remarked:

"It is proposed that the OHLE over Maidenhead railway bridge will use
masts with wires suspended from cantilevers, since these will be
visually lighter structures than the gantries to be used along other
parts of the route. The masts will however, have a significant adverse
landscape impact: they will affect important views along the river and
the character of the river corridor; they will affect the setting of the
Riverside Conservation Area; and they will affect the setting of the
listed railway bridge and the setting of the adjacent Grade I listed
road bridge.
This is a railway, not a national park - who cares what it looks like
Would you say the same about electricity pylons through a National Park?

IMHO It is very likely that I Kingdom Brunel would welcome
electrification. He seemed very keen to find a better, cleaner form
of motive power.

He would have insisted on using 3 phase 37.278kV* electrification at 16.25Hz
fed through side contact 3rd and 4th rail - and bugger the through running!

* there is a logic behind this number. See if you can work it out!

Dunno, but getting three-phase power through two conductors is an
interesting idea.

tom

--
These spoiled youths forget that when they are shaven they look like
boiled potatoes. -- Tara Singh

Tom Anderson wrote:


IMHO It is very likely that I Kingdom Brunel would welcome
electrification. He seemed very keen to find a better, cleaner form
of motive power.

He would have insisted on using 3 phase 37.278kV* electrification at
16.25Hz fed through side contact 3rd and 4th rail - and bugger the
through running!

* there is a logic behind this number. See if you can work it out!

Dunno, but getting three-phase power through two conductors is an
interesting idea.

tom


.... running rail(s) for the third phase. I'm not making this up, it has
been done before, in Italy and elsewhe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway...urrent_systems

On Sat, 9 May 2009, GazK wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

IMHO It is very likely that I Kingdom Brunel would welcome
electrification. He seemed very keen to find a better, cleaner form
of motive power.

He would have insisted on using 3 phase 37.278kV* electrification at
16.25Hz fed through side contact 3rd and 4th rail - and bugger the through
running!

* there is a logic behind this number. See if you can work it out!

Dunno, but getting three-phase power through two conductors is an
interesting idea.

... running rail(s) for the third phase. I'm not making this up, it has been
done before, in Italy and elsewhe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway...urrent_systems

That seems a little bit ... yikes.

Thinking about it, though, it's no worse than using the running rails for
current return in a one-phase system, is it? I'm not sure why i thought it
would be.

tom

--
We want to make this easy but if you don't understand how this
works, you have no business controlling the fate of the internet. --
web2.0validator.com

In uk.transport.london Paul Scott wrote:
They'll get over it, like they did in Durham, and in Berwick. I'm sure
there are other examples people can think of around the country...

These doesn't look quite so bad...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_Panorama.jpg
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1018418
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...am_viaduct.jpg

Theo

On Sat, 9 May 2009 21:16:22 +0100, Tom Anderson
wrote:

On Sat, 9 May 2009, GazK wrote:

Tom Anderson wrote:

IMHO It is very likely that I Kingdom Brunel would welcome
electrification. He seemed very keen to find a better, cleaner form
of motive power.

He would have insisted on using 3 phase 37.278kV* electrification at
16.25Hz fed through side contact 3rd and 4th rail - and bugger the through
running!

* there is a logic behind this number. See if you can work it out!

Dunno, but getting three-phase power through two conductors is an
interesting idea.

... running rail(s) for the third phase. I'm not making this up, it has been
done before, in Italy and elsewhe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway...urrent_systems

That seems a little bit ... yikes.

Thinking about it, though, it's no worse than using the running rails for
current return in a one-phase system, is it? I'm not sure why i thought it
would be.

I don't know about the Italian system but the American one had single
speed locomotives because the AC motors were synchronous.

Which didn't really matter for the slow speed freight trains in the
Cascades.

tom

On 8 May, 10:07, wrote:
On Thu, 7 May 2009 19:19:48 +0100

Paul Terry wrote:
It would be daft to develop Crossrail in the hope that adequate battery
technology would be available by the time the trains have to be
ordered. However, battery trains have been used for suburban rail -
Dublin to Bray between 1932 and 1950. In .uk a battery MU operated
between Aberdeen and Ballater in the early 1960s, while battery locos

Probably lines with very light traffic and low top speeds.

have been used to haul engineering trains on LU in the dead of night
when the power's een switched off.

They still are AFAIK.

Although I agree with the basic premise, battery technology is becoming
increasingly impressive - parts of the new Rome trolleybus system
currently run on battery power for some miles, and Alstom's trams for
Nice also run on batteries in the city centre. These are vehicles
capable of carrying a large number of passengers in heavy traffic,
although probably not on the scale required for the far reaches of
Crossrail.

Theres a big difference between accelerating a 20 ton tram to 20mph and
a 200 ton train to 60mph quickly enough so it keeps to the timetable.
Moreover when the batteries are not being used you're hauling around
god knows how many tons of dead weight - hardly enviromentally friendly.
Plus most EMUs these days seem to be pretty lardy anyway. I suspect if
batteries were thrown into the mix axle loads could become a serious issue.

hmm - some numbers.

E = 1/2 200,000kg x 30^2 = 100MJ = 30KWhrs.

That's about 200kg of Li-ion battery, for the energy load. But the
power requirement is much tougher - you would need some of these fast
charge batteries, which actually have less energy storage. Without
looking up the W/kg figures, I'd guess a few tons.

Hybrid technology is certainly useful for trains, but you'd probably
want to use ultra caps to capture the braking energy.

On Sat, 09 May 2009 09:13:15 +0100, Peter Masson wrote:

"Matthew Geier" wrote

road transport doesn't have the ability to use this rather simple and
(relatively) cheap means of getting mains power in via overhead lines.

I used to enjoy travelling by trolleybus.

But has any one ever built a trolley-lorry or a trolley-car ?

Can you imagine a line of cars zipping down the road with a pair of
trolley poles on each ?. And the chaos when one de-wires and the driver
has to hop out and relocate the pole on the wire.

There should be more trolley buses about though.

"It is proposed that the OHLE over Maidenhead railway bridge will use
masts with wires suspended from cantilevers, since these will be
visually lighter structures than the gantries to be used along other
parts of the route. The masts will however, have a significant
adverse
landscape impact: they will affect important views along the river
and
the character of the river corridor; they will affect the setting of
the
Riverside Conservation Area; and they will affect the setting of the
listed railway bridge and the setting of the adjacent Grade I listed
road bridge.
This is a railway, not a national park - who cares what it looks like
Would you say the same about electricity pylons through a National
Park?

Once a bit of ageing has occurred, a railway doesn't look too bad at all -
just part of the scenery. Compare a four track with overhead wires to any
motorway, and tell me what looks best. And motorways will continue to chip
away at national parks and ancient forests if people continue to oppose the
much less ugly rail solutions. It's known as "Brain Free Conservation", and
has ensured that lunatic road schems STILL get much more investment than
slightly disruptive rail schemes. Go figure. No, actually, don't waste your
brain power.

And in areas where it really does matter, rail has the option of third
rail - though that can limit the service in may ways, at least until someone
applies some original thinking. Third rail outside urban areas is
technically in the dark ages, with no significant development* since about
1923, since there's been no real incentive to make that effort.

As for Brunel; while many of his schemes - including that historic bridge -
are beautiful, that was never his priority; he was single-mindedly (and not
always successfully!) intent on the best engineering solution. If we had a
few clear thinking engineers today, we'd probably not have half the problems
with lard-butt trains, wrong kind of snow, entry gates etc., as they'd have
been engineered for simplicity, not for sophistication and press releases.
Mind you, with today's micro-management from DaFT, Brunel would have
emigarted to a sane country 20 years ago.


--
Andrew


If you stand up and be counted,
From time to time you may get yourself knocked down.
But remember this:
A man flattened by an opponent can get up again.
A man flattened by conformity stays down for good.
- Thomas J. Watson Jr.

*OK, there has been some tinkering with alloys, to save money on good old
fashioned steel - but while that works on metro sytems, it has not really
helped on the main line.