Topic: Trains (Page 2)
You are looking at all articles with the topic "Trains". We found 21 matches.
Hint:
To view all topics, click here. Too see the most popular topics, click here instead.
๐ Wuppertal Suspension Railway
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn (Wuppertal Suspension Railway) is a suspension railway in Wuppertal, Germany.
Its full name is Anlage einer elektrischen Hochbahn (Schwebebahn), System Eugen Langen. ("Electric Elevated Railway (Suspension Railway) Installation, Eugen Langen System") It is the oldest electric elevated railway with hanging cars in the world and is a unique system.
Designed by Eugen Langen to sell to the city of Berlin, the installation with elevated stations was built in Barmen, Elberfeld and Vohwinkel between 1897 and 1903; the first track opened in 1901. The Schwebebahn is still in use today as a normal means of local public transport, moving 25 million passengers annually (2008).
The Schwebebahn runs along a route of 13.3 kilometres (8.3ย mi), at a height of about 12 metres (39ย ft) above the River Wupper between Oberbarmen and Sonnborner Straรe (10 kilometres or 6.2 miles) and about 8 metres (26ย ft) above the valley road between Sonnborner Straรe and Vohwinkel (3.3 kilometres or 2.1 miles). At one point the railway crosses the A46 motorway. The entire trip takes about 30 minutes. The Schwebebahn operates within the VRR transport association and accepts tickets issued by the VRR companies.
Due to an accident in November 2018, the Schwebebahn was closed down for nearly nine months. It re-opened on 1 August 2019.
Discussed on
- "Wuppertal Suspension Railway" | 2016-03-05 | 62 Upvotes 20 Comments
๐ London Pneumatic Despatch Company
The London Pneumatic Despatch Company (also known as the London Pneumatic Dispatch Company) was formed on 30 June 1859, to design, build and operate an underground railway system for the carrying of mail, parcels and light freight between locations in London. The system was used between 1863 and 1874.
Discussed on
- "London Pneumatic Despatch Company" | 2020-10-21 | 45 Upvotes 20 Comments
๐ Cosmopolitan Railway
The Cosmopolitan Railway was a proposed global railroad network advocated by William Gilpin, formerly the first territorial governor of Colorado (1861โ62), in his 1890 treatise Cosmopolitan Railway: Compacting and Fusing Together All the World's Continents. Gilpin named his capital city of Denver as the "railroad centre of the West".
Discussed on
- "Cosmopolitan Railway" | 2022-03-13 | 43 Upvotes 16 Comments
๐ Atmospheric railway
An atmospheric railway uses differential air pressure to provide power for propulsion of a railway vehicle. A static power source can transmit motive power to the vehicle in this way, avoiding the necessity of carrying mobile power generating equipment. The air pressure, or partial vacuum (i.e., negative relative pressure) can be conveyed to the vehicle in a continuous pipe, where the vehicle carries a piston running in the tube. Some form of re-sealable slot is required to enable the piston to be attached to the vehicle. Alternatively the entire vehicle may act as the piston in a large tube.
Several variants of the principle were proposed in the early 19th century, and a number of practical forms were implemented, but all were overcome by unforeseen disadvantages and discontinued within a few years.
A modern proprietary system has been developed and is in use for short-distance applications. Porto Alegre Metro airport connection is one of them.
Discussed on
- "Atmospheric railway" | 2018-10-14 | 44 Upvotes 11 Comments
๐ Slip coach
In British and Irish rail transport, a slip coach or slip carriage is passenger rolling stock that is uncoupled from an express train while the train is in motion, then slowed by a guard in the coach using the brakes, bringing it to a stop at the next station. The coach was thus said to be slipped from its train. This allowed passengers to alight at an intermediate station without the main train having to stop, thus improving the journey time of the main train. In an era when the railway companies were highly competitive, they strove to keep journey times as short as possible, avoiding intermediate stops wherever possible.
Discussed on
- "Slip coach" | 2015-11-26 | 39 Upvotes 12 Comments
๐ George Stephenson
George Stephenson (9 June 1781 โ 12 August 1848) was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer during the Industrial Revolution. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians as a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. His chosen rail gauge, sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", was the basis for the 4-foot-8+1โ2-inch (1.435ย m) standard gauge used by most of the world's railways.
Pioneered by Stephenson, rail transport was one of the most important technological inventions of the 19th century and a key component of the Industrial Revolution. Built by George and his son Robert's company Robert Stephenson and Company, the Locomotion No. 1 was the first steam locomotive to carry passengers on a public rail line, the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825. George also built the first public inter-city railway line in the world to use locomotives, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830.
Discussed on
- "George Stephenson" | 2024-04-28 | 28 Upvotes 5 Comments
๐ Scenery nerds and systems nerds: MIT's Model Railroad Club
The Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Historically it has been a wellspring of hacker culture and the oldest such hacking group in North America. Formed in 1946, its HO scale layout specializes in automated operation of model trains.
Discussed on
- "Scenery nerds and systems nerds: MIT's Model Railroad Club" | 2011-09-02 | 26 Upvotes 6 Comments
๐ SpรฅraKoff
SpรฅraKoff is a HM V type tram converted into a mobile bar in Helsinki, Finland. Known as the pub tram, the vehicle does circular tours of downtown Helsinki picking up passengers for a fee during summer months. It is operated jointly by Sinebrychoff, HOK-Elanto (part of the S Group), and Helsinki City Transport.
The pub tram is immediately distinguishable in the Helsinki traffic by its vivid red colour (as opposed to the normal colours, green and cream, used on the Helsinki tram network of the Helsinki City Transport), and by the destination board that reads "PUB".
It is one of the four HM V trams that remain operational in Helsinki. Two of them are museum trams, and one is used as a non-passenger carrying advertisement tram.
Discussed on
- "SpรฅraKoff" | 2023-07-23 | 28 Upvotes 4 Comments
๐ Hyperloop
A Hyperloop is a proposed mode of passenger and freight transportation, first used to describe an open-source vactrain design released by a joint team from Tesla and SpaceX. Hyperloop is a sealed tube or system of tubes through which a pod may travel free of air resistance or friction conveying people or objects at high speed while being very efficient, thereby drastically reducing travel times over medium-range distances.
Elon Musk's version of the concept, first publicly mentioned in 2012, incorporates reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors.
The Hyperloop Alpha concept was first published in August 2013, proposing and examining a route running from the Los Angeles region to the San Francisco Bay Area, roughly following the Interstate 5 corridor. The Hyperloop Genesis paper conceived of a hyperloop system that would propel passengers along the 350-mile (560ย km) route at a speed of 760ย mph (1,200ย km/h), allowing for a travel time of 35 minutes, which is considerably faster than current rail or air travel times. Preliminary cost estimates for this LAโSF suggested route were included in the white paperโUS$6 billion for a passenger-only version, and US$7.5 billion for a somewhat larger-diameter version transporting passengers and vehiclesโalthough transportation analysts had doubts that the system could be constructed on that budget; some analysts claimed that the Hyperloop would be several billion dollars overbudget, taking into consideration construction, development, and operation costs.
The Hyperloop concept has been explicitly "open-sourced" by Musk and SpaceX, and others have been encouraged to take the ideas and further develop them. To that end, a few companies have been formed, and several interdisciplinary student-led teams are working to advance the technology. SpaceX built an approximately 1-mile-long (1.6ย km) subscale track for its pod design competition at its headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
Discussed on
- "Hyperloop" | 2013-06-01 | 10 Upvotes 9 Comments
๐ How trains avoid colliding with each other
Signalling block systems enable the safe and efficient operation of railways by preventing collisions between trains. The basic principle is that a route is broken up into a series of sections or "blocks". Only one train may occupy a block at a time, and the blocks are sized to allow a train to stop within them. That ensures that a train always has time to stop before getting dangerously close to another train on the same line. The block system is referred to in the UK as the method of working, in the US as the method of operation, and in Australia as safeworking.
In most situations, a system of signals is used to control the passage of trains between the blocks. When a train enters a block, signals at both ends change to indicate that the block is occupied, typically using red lamps or indicator flags. When a train first enters a block, the rear of the same train has not yet left the previous block, so both blocks are marked as occupied. That ensures there is slightly less than one block length on either end of the train that is marked as occupied, so any other train approaching that section will have enough room to stop in time, even if the first train has stopped dead on the tracks. The previously-occupied block will only be marked unoccupied when the end of the train has entirely left it, leaving the entire block clear.
Block systems have the disadvantage that they limit the number of trains on a particular route to something fewer than the number of blocks. Since the route has a fixed length, increasing the number of trains requires the creation of more blocks, which means the blocks are shorter and trains have to operate at lower speeds in order to stop safely. As a result, the number and size of blocks are closely related to the overall route capacity, and cannot be changed easily because expensive alterations to the signals along the line would be required.
Block systems are used to control trains between stations and yards, but not normally within the yards, where some other method is used. Any block system is defined by its associated physical equipment and by the application of a relevant set of rules. Some systems involve the use of signals while others do not. Some systems are specifically designed for single track railways, on which there is a danger of both head-on and rear-end collision, as opposed to double track, on which the main danger is rear-end collisions.
Discussed on
- "How trains avoid colliding with each other" | 2021-11-10 | 17 Upvotes 2 Comments