Best Locomotives on the Download Station
Introduction
The railroad is a class of land transportation that is found in almost every land in the world. Railroads serve many thousands of communities, from large cities in highly adult nations to tiny villages in remote areas. Railroads bear travelers to and from neighboring communities or on trips across whole continents. They carry raw materials and farm products to manufacturing and processing plants, and they carry the finished products from those plants to warehouses and stores.
Railroads were designed to move large numbers of passengers or large amounts of freight over long distances. The railroad is the most efficient method of land transportation because it requires the least amount of fuel and homo labor and is the least damaging to the environment. Railroads conduct well-nigh 40 per centum of the total volume of freight transportation in the Us.
The world has a total of more than 738,000 miles (1,187,000 kilometers) of railroad line. Nigh all the railroad systems carry both freight and passengers. A railroad is much like a manufacturing business whose sole product is transportation service. To produce that product it requires tracks, cars, locomotives, repair shops, communication systems, and skilled workers.
From ancient times until the early 1800s, the only way to move loads overland was by using the concrete strength of people and animals. Freight had to be carried in unmarried vehicles, each pulled by one or more animals (commonly horses) and controlled by a commuter. Petty freight could exist carried, and the trip was slow, hazardous, and time-consuming.
The railroad introduced 2 innovations into land transportation. One was the locomotive, which concentrated in a single unit of measurement the pulling ability of many horses. The other, which made apply of this increased power, was the practice of linking many separate vehicles, or cars, into trains.
Underlying these two new elements was a tertiary—the track, or road of track. Today, the track is still the backbone of the railroads. It must exist strong plenty to support the weight of the trains and smooth enough to offering minimum friction to rolling wheels. Parallel rails of track perform a third and unique task: they guide the trains as the vehicles motion along the rails.
There were tracks before in that location were trains and locomotives. In Key Europe during the 1500s, short wooden tracks, or wagonways, connected mines and quarries with nearby streams. On such tracks horses drew far heavier loads than they could pull on ordinary roads. These short tramways, afterward congenital of iron, were introduced in England in the early 1600s.
First Utilize of Locomotives
In 1803 Richard Trevithick, a British mining engineer, planned and congenital a steam locomotive. His engine actually pulled a short train of cars uphill on a coal-mine railway in Wales. In the years after Trevithick'south locomotive, several others were congenital for apply on diverse British coal-mine railways.
The globe's offset common carrier railroad (that is, 1 for public use) to utilise steam power was the Stockton and Darlington in England. Information technology was designed and congenital by George Stephenson and opened for public service in 1825. In 1829, in the famous locomotive trials held at Rainhill, England, on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Rocket, built past Stephenson and his son Robert, showed its superiority as a steam locomotive. Though not the first such locomotive, it was the beginning of effective steam power. (See also internal-combustion engine; pneumatic device.)
American colonists also built short tramways for hauling stone or coal. In 1804 Oliver Evans (who had congenital an amphibious steam-powered scow with wheels) declared that he could "make a steam carriage that will run fifteen miles an hour on good, level railways." As early every bit 1812 Col. John Stevens, of Hoboken, New Jersey, began to speak for a new kind of "rail-way." He wanted 1 that would furnish long-range transportation, linking distant sections of the nation. In 1815 Stevens obtained the first lease to build a railroad beyond New Jersey, only he was unable to heighten the money needed to build it.
The first mutual carrier railroad to exist built in the Us was the Baltimore and Ohio. It was chartered in 1827 and construction started on July 4, 1828. The beginning steam locomotive to run in the United States, the English-built Stourbridge Lion, made a trial trip over the tracks of the Delaware and Hudson Culvert Company in Pennsylvania in 1829. The engine was too heavy for the track and the trip was not repeated. In the summertime of 1830 service began on the Baltimore and Ohio, with horses providing the power.
Finally, in Dec 1830 an American-built locomotive, the Best Friend of Charleston, hauled a train of cars on the tracks of the South Carolina Railroad. The new operation combined the four essentials of track, trains, mechanical power, and mutual carrier service. The railroad had come to America.
Railroads Cross the Continent
Railroads were built-in in England, a country of dumbo population, short distances, and large financial resource. In England problems were very different from those in America, which in the early on 1800s was a nation of neat distances, sparse population, and express capital. Americans had to learn to build railroads for their own country by actual experience; they could not re-create English methods.
The first American railroads started from the Atlantic ports of Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Wilmington, Delaware; Baltimore, Maryland; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia. Within xx years four rail lines had crossed the Alleghenies to reach their goal on the "Western Waters" of the Not bad Lakes or on the tributaries of the Mississippi. Meanwhile other lines had started from westward of the mountains, and by the mid-1850s Chicago, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; and Memphis, Tennessee, were continued with the E. Withal other lines were stretching westward beyond the Mississippi. An international route connected New England and Montreal, Quebec, and another ane crossed southern Ontario betwixt Niagara, New York, and the Detroit River.
During the 1850s north–south routes were adult both east and west of the Alleghenies. It was non until after the American Civil War, however, that a permanent railroad bridge (as distinguished from a temporary wartime structure) was constructed across the Ohio River.
Afterwards the Civil State of war the pace of railroad building increased. The 2 Pacific railroads—1, the Wedlock Pacific, building westward from Omaha, Nebraska; the other, the Central Pacific, edifice east from Sacramento, California—had been started during the war to help promote national unity. They were joined at Promontory, Utah, on May x, 1869, completing the kickoff rail connection across the continent.
Development of Modernistic American Railroads
Between 1850 and 1871 the United States government made grants-in-assist of vacant lands to railroads to aid the extension of lines in the Due west and South, often ahead of settlement. Almost 8 percent of the country's railroad mileage was built with the help of these land grants.
The grants were non outright gifts; in render, the railroads were required to booty authorities traffic at reduced rates. When Congress terminated this organization in 1946, it was estimated that the railroads had repaid the government almost ten times the original value of the land grants.
By 1870, when the railroad motility in the Usa was 40 years old, there were 53,000 miles (85,000 kilometers) of line. (A mile of line, or route mile, is a measure of length of single principal track, not including second and other multiple tracks, sidings, passing tracks, or yards.) Between 1870 and 1880 another forty,000 miles (64,000 kilometers) were added. The decade from 1880 to 1890 saw the near rapid expansion of American rail lines, with 70,000 miles (113,000 kilometers) added—an boilerplate of 19 miles (31 kilometers) of new railroad completed each day. Growth continued, with some other xxx,000 miles (48,000 kilometers) added in the 1890s and another 47,000 miles (76,000 kilometers) in the next decade. Past 1910 the network was largely complete and there was little further extension. In 1916 total railroad-line mileage in the The states reached its highest indicate at 254,000 miles (409,000 kilometers).
Afterward 1920, with the rapid expansion of paved roads, much traffic was taken from the railroads by automobiles, buses, and trucks, though the overall demand for railroad service remained high. As a outcome, the railroad network began to shrink equally lines that could no longer pay their way were abandoned. By the terminate of the 1980s, railroad-line miles in the United states of america had dropped to about 150,000 miles (241,000 kilometers).
Some of the lines had been built to serve mines, forests, or other nonrenewable natural resources and were abased when the resources were exhausted. Other lines had been congenital to serve an anticipated need that never materialized. Still other lines disappeared because the industries they had been built to serve entered a period of decline or relocated to other parts of the country.
By the late 1980s, American railroads had become primarily high-volume freight carriers operating on long-altitude, main-line corridors. Intercity passenger traffic had largely been taken over by automobiles, buses, and airlines. Much freight, peculiarly on the shorter distance hauls, was existence carried by trucks. Even so the full railroad freight volume, as measured in ton-miles (a ton-mile is a unit of measurement corresponding to i ton of freight carried one mile) set a new all-fourth dimension record in 1990—78 percent more than in 1960.
Building a Railroad
Before a railroad is congenital there are commonly several alternative routes to exist considered. Maps, aerial photographs, and profiles showing the features of each route are prepared and advisedly studied. Experts and then cull what they consider to exist the best route. The choice they make has much to do with the success or failure of the new railroad line.
Ane route may exist adequately level, requiring simply a few cuts through hills and fills through valleys. Such a route, withal, may crave a long tunnel to become through an intervening mountain or several expensive bridges to become over rivers. This would make it more than costly in the end than one with moderate cuts and fills all the style. Another route, though less expensive to build, may run through unsettled country. Hence it may be wiser to build the more than expensive line for the sake of the greater local business it tin can get.
The selected route is and so surveyed carefully, and building commences. Sometimes work parties begin at each finish and build toward the middle, as was the instance with the transcontinental railroad in the United states. The completed track carries trains with supplies for the structure workers. Today parties can be stationed at various points and receive supplies from other railroads already built nearby. This method gets the road finished and earning money much more chop-chop.
The starting time pace is the preparation of the roadbed. Following the stakes and plans set up past the surveyors, the working parties articulate away copse, brand cuts and fills, and otherwise fix the way. Other workers set up bridges and dig tunnels. As fast every bit the roadbed is ready, the track is laid, either by hand or past machines that feed the ties out on a chugalug and put the track in position. Working on level ground, tracklayers tin complete several miles in a mean solar day. Finally, the track must be ballasted, preferably with gravel, cinders, or rock.
In the Usa the usual practice was to build a single-track line with as few tunnels, bridges, and expensive cuts and fills equally possible. When the railroad began earning coin, short cuts, called air lines, were made to eliminate sections of winding track that were built to avert tunneling or grading. Then the track was doubled, first at portions where most trains passed and finally over the unabridged route, and thus the railroad grew into a first-grade line. This method was largely responsible for the development of great railroads in the United States. Companies congenital roads through the open frontier. Soon communities appeared along the lines, and new businesses were started. These enabled the railroads to prosper. While track undergoes constant maintenance and comeback, there has been very fiddling new structure in the Us in recent years, and information technology is estimated that the existing track organization could behave 25 percent more than traffic. In some areas, new communications and train command systems have immune the emptying of double tracks in favor of unmarried-rails operations.
From Wooden to Steel Track
The earliest track was built of wooden stringers faced with iron straps or they were made of short atomic number 26 rail fastened to rock blocks. Neither type proved satisfactory. Past 1831 a new kind of construction had been worked out by Robert L. Stevens of the Camden and Amboy, in New Bailiwick of jersey. Stevens devised the then-called "T" rail (in cross department information technology looks more similar an "I"). Its flat base could be fastened by claw-headed spikes to wooden crossties, which supported the rails and held them in line and at the correct distance autonomously.
Despite many improvements in pattern and construction, the basic track ideas of the 1830s have continued in use. Rail has changed from fe to steel and has grown in length, pinnacle, and weight and in strength, rubber, and wearing qualities. The life of crossties has been more than than trebled by impregnating them under pressure with preservative chemicals. Some are made of concrete rather than of wood. Protective tie plates between runway and necktie are in universal use in main-line tracks, and resilient pads between plates and ties are widely used. Joints and fastenings have been improved in design and strength. Along many miles of rail, joints take been largely eliminated by welding rails end-to-end into long, unbroken ribbons of steel.
In the early days, each railroad congenital its track at whatever width, or gauge, information technology pleased and then congenital its engines and cars to fit that gauge. The tracks at the Killingworth Colliery, for which George Stephenson built his start locomotive, happened to be 4 anxiety 8 inches (1.4 meters) between rail, and then Stephenson built his locomotive for this gauge. When he designed the Stockton and Darlington he made the locomotive the same width only added some other half inch (i.three centimeters) to the width of rail. This odd measurement of 4 feet 81/2 inches (one.4 meters) in fourth dimension came to be known as standard gauge.
Other tracks in England ranged between 2 and 7 feet (0.half-dozen and two.one meters). In the United States the early railroad tracks ranged from 3 to half-dozen feet (0.9 to one.eight meters) in width. This variance became unacceptable with the demand for connecting lines and through service.
Freight before long began to move longer distances and over the lines of more than one railroad. The differences in gauges forced the costly nuisance of unloading and reloading cars. Almost of the lines in the expanse between New York City and Chicago were of nearly the same gauge—between 4 feet 8 inches and 4 anxiety 10 inches (1.5 meters). Thus, in the 1860s, arrangements were made to use cars especially equipped with wide-tread wheels that could be used on any of these widths. About the aforementioned time, the motility toward standardization of the 4 anxiety 81/two inch, or Stephenson, approximate received great encouragement when the United States Congress adopted information technology for the new Pacific railroad.
By the mid-1880s there was virtually a double standard of gauge in the The states. In the N and West the Stephenson gauge prevailed, while nigh of the South used a gauge of 5 feet (1.52 meters). Starting in 1886, the Southern lines narrowed their tracks to the now standard gauge of four feet 8i/ii inches. This uniformity before long ensured an uninterrupted menses of commerce over the entire nation. Standard gauge is also used in Canada, Mexico, and Cuba, which was once linked with railroads on the mainland past freight-car ferry. No other continent has a comparable standardization, nonetheless. (See also iron and steel manufacture.)
Developing Better Locomotives
While extending their lines, railroads were also developing better locomotives, improved cars, and more efficient methods of operation. The get-go ten years of railroading in the United States saw the development of the American blazon of locomotive, the antecedent of a long and varied line of engines. The newer engines were more than powerful and could booty longer and heavier trains over longer distances than European engines.
The American blazon of locomotive was an eight-wheel locomotive with a four-wheel leading truck and ii pairs of driving wheels that were coupled by means of side rods. The addition of a third pair of driving wheels resulted in the Ten-Wheeler. Like the American, it was an all-purpose locomotive designed for either freight or passenger service.
Afterward the X-Wheeler, the bicycle arrangements of locomotives intended for different classes of service adult in different ways. In freight service, the four-wheel leading truck was replaced by a single two-wheel leading truck, creating the blazon known as the Mogul. Adding a fourth pair of drivers created the Consolidation blazon. This type, in plow, evolved into the Mikado past the add-on of a trailing axle. This axle supported the larger and wider firebox needed to meet the need for more than power. A fifth pair of drivers distinguished the Santa Atomic number 26. The use of a four-cycle trailing truck (to support a still-larger firebox) instead of a two-cycle abaft axle marked the Texas type.
Meanwhile, demands for still-greater full-bodied power brought the Mallet locomotive from Europe in the early on 1900s. The Mallet was substantially two engines under ane long boiler that supplied steam for both. The early Mallets were compounds. In them the steam was first used at high force per unit area in small cylinders and then exhausted into large cylinders where it was used again at low pressure. The need for greater speeds resulted in the simple Mallet, which used loftier-pressure steam in all four cylinders.
Rider and Fast-Freight Equipment
With the evolution of the freight locomotives there was a parallel development of passenger power. The four-wheel leading truck was retained on almost all passenger types. The add-on of a larger firebox, carried on a trailing axle, fabricated the American into the Atlantic. A similar addition to the Ten-Wheeler created the Pacific. Adding a fourth pair of drivers to the Pacific created the Mountain type. Finally, the add-on of a four-wheel trailing truck to carry a still-larger firebox made the Mountain into a type variously named but near unremarkably known every bit the 4–8–iv, with four pocket-size wheels in front, eight driving wheels, and iv small wheels behind. The iv–8–4, like the American and the 10-Wheeler, which were the mutual ancestors of all locomotives, was developed as a dual-purpose engine. Information technology had power enough for fast freight service and speed plenty for heavy passenger service.
At the same time special engines were existence developed for switching service. These did not demand either leading trucks or leading axles, such every bit were required on road engines, and did not need the high sustained steaming power that called for actress-large fireboxes. Thus the switcher type put all its weight, and hence all its driving ability, on small, close-coupled drivers.
Modifications in wheel arrangements indicate just some of the changes made in the steam locomotive. Better ways to make steam and better ways to control and use it at high temperatures fabricated possible locomotive units weighing as much as 500 tons. These giants could produce equally much every bit vii,000 horsepower and were capable of pulling mile-long trains at a mile-a-infinitesimal speed.
Use of Electrical Power
In 1888 Frank J. Sprague completed the first all-encompassing electric street railway in the United States. It was a 12-mile (19-kilometer) line in Richmond, Virginia.
In 1895 electric locomotives were introduced. These drew their ability from central generating stations through overhead wires or charged third rails. The offset use of such power was in a long tunnel under the metropolis of Baltimore; nearly of the early on uses of electricity were confined to difficult tunnel or terminal locations where steam locomotion was impractical. Central-station electric locomotion fabricated possible such developments equally the Pennsylvania Station and Grand Cardinal Concluding in New York Metropolis, the tunnels under the Detroit River, and the zones of electrified service around New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
Fundamental-station electrification has not been widely used for long distance, over-the-road service in the United States. Its main use is in areas of high density traffic such as betwixt New York City and the cities of Washington, D.C.; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; and New Haven, Connecticut. Electrified trains are, however, quite common throughout Europe.
American railroads were also electrified by the adoption of the diesel-electrical, or only diesel, locomotive. The diesel is an electric locomotive that carries its own power constitute. Thus, it needs no outside generating found, overhead wires, or third rails. The diesel was first used in switching service in 1925. In 1934 a diesel fuel engine powered one of the get-go streamlined trains. The diesel was introduced in heavy road freight service in 1941. With the close of Globe State of war II, the American railroads quickly inverse to diesel power; the changeover was completed by about 1960.
The changeover to diesel power was rapid because diesel fuel locomotives accept several advantages over steam locomotives. They demand much less maintenance, and then railroads with diesels require far fewer repair shops and maintenance workers. Diesel locomotives tin can as well commencement a train moving more quickly than steam locomotives can, and they cause less damage to the runway. In add-on, they are more flexible—several diesel locomotive units can be combined as needed under the command of i engineer.
In the years after World War 2, American railroads besides tried other types of motive power. A number of electric-drive locomotives were congenital in which a turbine, fueled by gas, oil, coal, or powdered coal, replaced the diesel engine. Diesel fuel-hydraulic locomotives, which use a hydraulic transmission instead of an electric bulldoze, were also tried. However, none of these proved to be economic or reliable.
Diesel locomotives are found on railroads all over the globe. Some of the busiest railroads, however—including lines in Europe, Russia, and Japan—apply central-station electrification. In some of the less-developed countries steam locomotives are however used.
Operating Cars in Trains
Besides track and the locomotive there is a third basic chemical element in railroading—cars in trains. In order to operate cars in trains, there must exist some means of coupling and uncoupling the cars, absorbing the button and pull of cars working together, and applying and releasing brakes. Furthermore, cars owned by different railroad companies must be able to piece of work together in trains.
Early inventors were decorated making devices for quick, simple coupling of cars. In the Us, the uncomplicated link-and-pivot coupler soon came into full general use, merely it was dangerous because a worker had to become between the cars to couple and uncouple them. In 1887 the link-and-pivot coupler was largely replaced past the knuckle-type automatic coupler, developed by Maj. Eli Janney. The basic Janney design is even so in apply today, though in a much-refined course, and similar couplers are used in many other countries, including China and Russia. To absorb the button-pull shocks between cars as they run coupled together in trains, various forms of draft gear are installed between the couplers and underframes of the cars.
In Europe automatic couplers are non widely used. Instead, cars are usually coupled by means of a paw-operated turnbuckle and screw. European cars take projecting buffers that blot the pushing shocks.
The problem of how to cease long trains speedily, smoothly, and safely was not solved until the invention of the directly air restriction by George Westinghouse in 1869. A modification of his brake arrangement, the automated air brake, was fabricated compulsory in the United States in 1893. The automated air restriction maintains constant air force per unit area throughout the railroad train. To tedious or stop the train the engineer opens the brake valve. This decreases the air pressure and applies the brakes on all the cars. The vacuum brake, used primarily in Great United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, works in just the contrary manner: increased air pressure causes all brakes to exist applied.
Operating Many Trains at Once
To safely control the performance of trains moving in different directions and at different speeds, railroads take developed intricate systems of communications and signaling. Many early American railroads were operated on the footing of a timetable organization. The table indicated when each train was due at each station and which classes of trains had the right of way over other classes. However, the timetable arrangement could non business relationship for actress trains or for delays due to equipment failure or other causes. Beginning in the 1850s, the timetable instructions were modified and supplemented past telegraphic railroad train orders, which were sent from a central train dispatcher to wayside telegraph operators, who handed them to the train crews. This timetable–train order system, which seeks to keep trains separated by time intervals, is withal in use on some low-cal-traffic lines. However, the telephone has replaced the telegraph in transmitting train orders, and on many lines orders are sent past radio directly to trains.
Keeping trains separated by space intervals, or blocks, provides additional protection against collisions. A block may exist any length from a few hundred yards to several miles. Originally, operators located at the boundaries of the blocks set signals to tell trains whether the block ahead was clear or occupied. The electric track circuit, invented by William Robinson in 1871, made possible the automatic block system, which is used today on most major lines.
The track circuit is one of the earliest examples of automation. In this arrangement, the presence of a train in a block acts on an electric current in the runway to gear up signals at to the lowest degree two blocks alee. These signals warn approaching trains. The warnings are indicated by the position of semaphores (which are now increasingly rare) or by the color or position of lights located on masts or bridges alongside or above the tracks. Thus, each train automatically operates its own warning signals and sets up its own zones of protection. Electronic enhancements of the automatic block system include cab signals, in which the wayside signals are repeated in the cab earlier the eyes of the locomotive engineer, and automated railroad train command, in which the brakes are automatically applied if the engineer should accidentally miss a stop signal. Some high-speed lines eliminate wayside signals altogether and utilise merely cab signals.
Centralized Traffic Command, or CTC, is some other system that is widely used on heavy-traffic American railroads. Under CTC each train automatically reports its position and movements by means of lights that announced on a track map in front of the train dispatcher or operator. With this information, the dispatcher tin arrange and effect orders for train movements even hundreds of miles away simply by pushing buttons.
In the 1980s computers began handling most of the routine dispatching functions, thus permitting a unmarried dispatcher or operator to oversee and directly much larger segments of a railroad. Several large American railroads began using highly centralized traffic command in which all traffic command action, covering many thousands of line miles, is concentrated in ane primal office. Late in the decade, diverse railroads began testing avant-garde traffic control systems. Some of these systems use transponders in the track to make up one's mind train location and speed, while others employ radio signals from satellites.
Railroad companies have always been eager to adopt better communications systems. They were amongst the early users of the telegraph, phone, dial-card data processing machines, and computers. In the years after Earth War Ii, most trains were equipped with 2-manner radios and then that crews could communicate with other trains, wayside operators, dispatchers, or supervisors. From the mid-20th century, high-capacity microwave radio systems were replacing lineside telephone wires. More recently, some railroads have begun using fiber-optic cables to arrange the large menstruum of data to and from powerful computers.
Classification, or Marshaling, Yards
The various systems for sending orders and information are almost intensively used at large freight terminals. Hither incoming trains are broken upwards and then reassembled into outbound trains headed for different destinations. These terminals are chosen nomenclature, or marshaling, yards. Larger marshaling yards usually classify or sort cars with the help of gravity. Incoming trains first enter the arrival yard, where the locomotives are removed. Then switch engines push the cars upwards a small-scale loma, or hump. At the tiptop of the hump, each car or group of cars is uncoupled and immune to roll down the hill into the bowl. The bowl may have as many equally 50 parallel classification tracks, each assigned to cars headed for a particular city or terminal. As each machine rolls toward the bowl, switches are thrown to straight it to the proper destination track.
To build an outbound train, a switch engine withdraws all the cars that take accumulated on detail bowl tracks and assembles them into new trains in the departure yard. Here a road locomotive is fastened and, after the cars are checked and the brakes tested, the train departs.
The performance of most advanced marshaling yards is largely controlled by computers. Information nigh incoming trains is fed into the 1000's estimator system, which produces a switch list that is then used by the person who uncouples the cars at the acme of the hump. The computer also programs the switches so that each car is automatically directed to the proper bowl track. At smaller terminals, the process of classifying cars and building new trains is done by switch engines working in flat yards, without a hump, and having petty or no electronic equipment.
In the 1980s, the employ of classification yards began to diminish because of the force per unit area of competition from other forms of transportation and the changing grapheme of railroad traffic. Intermodal trains, for example, carry cargo packed in truck trailers or marine containers. They operate to and from special intermodal yards, where the trailers and containers are transferred between the railcars and waiting trucks or ocean carriers. Such trains are not usually broken up and reclassified. Many trains that carry bulk commodities also travel directly from origin to destination.
Rider and Freight Cars
Railroads may bear passengers or freight. The earliest railroad passenger cars were simply stagecoaches equipped with flanged wheels. As well, the first freight cars were merely converted wagons. Today, however, railroads operate a broad multifariousness of cars designed for specific types of service.
Railroads offer two basic types of passenger service: commuter and intercity. Commuter service is provided for people who live in suburbs and work in nearby cities. Intercity trains usually run between two large cities, called end points, that are 100 miles (160 kilometers) or more apart. Some intercity trains may cross an entire continent on a route that passes through several countries. Some local trains stop at all or almost of the stations between the end points, but most intercity trains finish only at the larger cities on the route.
Commuter trains have coaches designed to carry equally many people as possible. Some driver coaches have two levels of seats and tin carry as many every bit 150 passengers. The coaches of intercity trains are more than roomy; they seat about 50 or sixty people and accept reclining seats for greater comfort on long trips. Many long-booty intercity trains besides accept sleeping cars, which accept small rooms with fold-downwardly beds for utilize on overnight runs, dining cars to provide passengers with total meals during the trip, and lounge cars to replenish refreshments and low-cal meals.
Freight cars tin can be classified into three basic types: the boxcar, or firm car; the open-superlative motorcar; and the flatcar. Today railroads use many variations of these basic types along with many special cars designed to carry specific types of freight.
Boxcars are used to behave merchandise or other freight that must be protected from the atmospheric condition. Some boxcars accept cushioned draft gear to protect fragile shipments from impairment during transport. Open up-top cars are used mainly to conduct minerals, such as coal or fe ore. Many take hopper doors that allow the cargo to exist unloaded through the bottom of the machine. Others are designed to be unloaded past turning the unabridged car upside down in a huge car-dumper car. Flatcars—open up cars with no side panels—can handle a broad diversity of freight, including steel beams, packaged lumber, farm machinery, long poles, construction equipment, and other large, heavy materials.
To better serve shippers and to compete with highway trucking, railroads may run special types of cars. In the United states of america, the move of highway trailers or marine containers on intermodal flatcars has become the fastest growing segment of the railroad business. Efficient double-stack trains carrying containers stacked i atop the other became widely used during the 1980s. Amongst other specialized cars are auto-rack cars, which carry up to 21 finished automobiles or small trucks; tank cars for hauling petroleum, liquid chemicals, and gases; covered hopper cars to comport grain or chemicals; and refrigerated boxcars, or reefers, to comport perishable produce.
Railroad Organization and Regulation
In the United states of america a railroad is organized much similar whatsoever other business—with stockholders, a lath of directors, and a president. In most other countries the government, rather than individual stockholders, owns the visitor.
A typical large railroad in the United states is divided into three major departments—marketing and sales, operations, and executive. The marketing and sales department works with present and potential customers to decide what rail services they might utilize and what the prices, or rates, for those services should exist. The operations department, in which the majority of railroad employees piece of work, is responsible for producing the services needed to obtain the railroad'south business concern. The executive section performs a number of functions that include accounting and finance, legal matters, public relations, management data systems—that is, computer systems—and personnel.
Although different railroads often compete with each other, they may cooperate to meet the needs of passengers and shippers. For example, through trains that may send passengers over two or more than railroads are mutual in Europe, and in North America the freight cars of any railroad can operate on any other line. Of course, standardization of track gauge is vital for this kind of cooperation, but car components, particularly brakes and couplers, must also be uniform. To attain and maintain this compatibility, railroads in Due north America work through the Clan of American Railroads. The association sets the standards for cars that are to exist interchanged among railroads. In Europe, the Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (International Union of Railways) performs similar functions.
Well-nigh of the early railroads in the world were built as privately owned businesses operated for turn a profit. Notwithstanding, they quickly became and so powerful that governments began to regulate their activities. Railroads were required to get government permits in lodge to build new lines. Soon laws in many countries began to prescribe standards for safe operation—standards that regulated signaling, brakes, steam-locomotive boilers, track structure and maintenance, and employee training and work hours. Governments besides began to regulate the financial activities of railroads. Railroads had to get governmental approving in club to set rates and fares, merge with other railroads, issue stocks and bonds, or alter train schedules.
Strict regulation was satisfactory as long as the railroads had what amounted to a monopoly in country transportation. All the same, when highway trucking, pipelines, and airlines began to take business organisation abroad from the railroads, governmental regulation prevented the railroads from responding effectively to the new competition. As a result, many railroads ran into financial difficulties. Nigh countries responded past nationalizing their railroad systems and making up the railroads' operating losses from taxation revenues.
In 1971, with the formation of the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, known as Amtrak, intercity railroad passenger services in the United States began to receive government support. Most passenger commuter operations also receive funding from u.s.a. or localities they serve. Recognizing that the freight railroads could no longer continue as private businesses under the existing governmental regulation, the United States Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act of 1980. This law reduced or eliminated much of the earlier regulation of rates and services and gave the railroads more freedom to compete with other types of transportation. (See as well arbitration; public utility.)
Railroad Modernization
Similar their younger competitors, the railroads have go specialized carriers that concentrate on the types of transportation for which they are best suited. Railroads are especially efficient at moving big volumes of bulk bolt such as coal or ore over long distances and transporting marine containers and piggyback highway trailers. Railroads are too efficient at carrying commuter passengers between suburbs and city centers and providing comfortable, fast intercity passenger services. (Encounter as well monorail; street railway; subway.)
New technologies—in blueprint, materials, and methods—have helped railroads become withal more efficient. Subsequently Globe War Two, for example, potent concrete crossties replaced wooden ties on many railroads, especially in Europe. Rail welded into long sections became the standard for well-nigh busy main lines. By the 1960s high-speed passenger trains were introduced.
Nihon's so-called "bullet railroad train" was in the forefront of the new technology. Information technology began operating on October 1, 1964, to marking Asia'due south first Olympic Games, which were held in Tokyo. The first section of the fabled Shinkansen (New Body Line, known as the New Tokaida Line) was a 320-mile (515-kilometer) stretch between Tokyo and Osaka. A 100-mile (160-kilometer) extension from Osaka to Okayama was completed in 1972, and the last segment—a 244-mile (393-kilometer) run to the Hakata station in Fukuoka, northern Kyushu—opened in 1975. Other lines, completed in 1982, radiate north of Tokyo to Niigata and Morioka. The Shinkansen was privatized in 1987.
French republic'south TGV became the supertrain of the 1970s and 1980s. It fix a new world speed record of 320 miles an hr in 1990. The newer 10-auto TGV trains are powered past front and rear electric locomotives. Computerized controls provide on-board signalization and neglect-prophylactic braking.
Some of the other countries where superspeed trains are running or planned are Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and the United States. Metroliners make daily three-hour trips between New York City and Washington, D.C.; although the trains are capable of faster runs up to 160 miles (260 kilometers) per hour, drawbacks on the existing line hold speeds to a maximum of 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour. The start major Northward American project planned was to link the Florida cities of Miami, Orlando, and Tampa, but any of several other proposed lines, including a Texas line, from Dallas to Houston, may produce the continent'southward commencement bullet train.
Several American railroads operate trains of RoadRailers, vehicles that have both rails and highway wheels. On the railroad they run coupled together in trains pulled by locomotives, then are separated and moved by highway tractors to their terminal destinations.
Among the more advanced systems proposed is the magnetic levitation, or maglev, train. Instead of wheels or steel rails, the system uses coils in the surface of the track, or guideway, to create a magnetic field that lifts the vehicles and propels them forward. By the tardily 1980s but brusk test systems had been congenital in Germany and Nihon. Successful experimental runs were first made in the early 1990s using locomotives powered by environmentally friendly natural gas. (Run across as well Brunel, Marc Isambard and Isambard Kingdom; Industrial Revolution; models and model edifice; Morgan, J. Pierpont; Trans-Siberian Railroad.)
Additional Reading
Ammon, Richard. Trains at Work (Macmillan Child Group, 1993). Armstrong, J.H. The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does (Simmons-Boardman Books, 1990). Behrend, George. Luxury Trains: From the Orient Express to the TGV (Vendome, 1982). Coiley, John. Railroad train (Knopf, 1992). Cooper, Alan. Runway Travel (Thomson Learning, 1993). Drury, George. Guide to Tourist Railroads and Railroad Museums (Kalmbach, 1990). Elish, Dan. The Transcontinental Railroad (Millbrook Press, 1993). Freezer, Cyril. Model Railroads: The Complete Guide to Designing, Building, and Operating a Model Railway (Courage Books, 1991). Jeffries, David. Trains: The History of Railroading (Watts, 1991). McNeese, Tim. America'south First Railroads (Macmillan Kid Group, 1993).
DOWNLOAD HERE
Posted by: georgeshichal39.blogspot.com
Post a Comment for "Best Locomotives on the Download Station"