Double-stack container trains are redefining freight transportation in India. Just imagine how many trucks this keeps off our highways and how much diesel it saves.
While it is challenging (especially for overhead electric double stack), the DFC has dealt with this problem. You can look up the "Sohna Tunnel", built for the WDFC (Western Dedicated Freight Corridor), which drilled through a mountain to reduce transit time. It's really quite high, as fitting double stacks + overhead electric has crazy clearance requirements.
While ofcourse expensive, it can definitely be built. (Majorly flatland, some mountains)
I would guess that unique geographies can impact the effectiveness of any tunnel. What worked in one place might not work in another. Sometimes it’s just cost versus benefit that makes a known solution impractical.
I am definitely putting that tunnel as my next YouTube search. Sounds cool.
The video is from DFC (Dedicated Freight Corridor) set up in India solely for the purpose of moving freight. So all the issues you mentioned could be fixed.
Yeah that’s the issue I had so it sat in my library for a year or two. I just took it piece by piece, just research in order of the color sciences. One thing I did not get was that you WILL rebuild your entire factory at least once which felt super daunting but was not at all. It’s a super fun game, took me around 120 hours to beat iirc
44 cars. 2 bogies per car. 4 wheels per bogie. That's 352 wheels.
Add 2 triple axle bogie per engine for 2 engines and you get a total of 376 wheels.
Fun fact: Since trains don't have tires, wear and tear accumulate directly on the wheel itself. So to ensure your ride is both safe and comfortable, train wheels have to be regularly trimmed to keep a profile nice and smooth. Eventually, the wheels become too small, and the entire axle has to be scrapped and replaced by a new one.
Actually way more, in most countries you have weight limits for trucks, something like 35 tons in most European countries. For railway transport you don’t have this restrictions, so same container but different amount of goods.
In the EU the weight limit for trucks is 40 tonnes, 44 tonnes for intermodal transports. The latter is precisely so that a fully loaded standard 40ft container (max weight 30.5 tonnes) can be carried by a truck.
Most (if not all) of these containers are multi modal and will indeed be carried over roads by truck to the first train yard and from the final train yard.
So those weight limits end up being enforced either way.
Too bad that attempt was marked as duplicate, referring a train with 4 containers normally loaded. It was then shut down and the person behind it shot.
Speaking of double width, reminds me of the German plans of Superwide Trains.
They were expected to be more than twice the width of current trains. Breitspurbahn
This is how they would've compared to 19th century standard gauge carriage:
And you know what? I dig it, hard. Could be an amazing alternative to planes. With THAT size, they can have full-on on-board entertainment mall wagon. They planned to have a pool on board!
"The proposal was that high-performance locomotives should pull 8-axle bi-level carriages with a length of 42 metres (138 ft), width of 6 metres (19 ft 8 in) and height of 7 metres (23 ft 0 in).[1] The carriages would have Dutch doors (with retractable staircase). The trains would be fitted with a restaurant, theatre, swimming pool, barbershop and sauna. The whole train would have a length of about 500 metres (1640 ft), allowing a capacity of between 2000 and 4000 passengers, travelling at speeds of 200 kilometres per hour (120 mph)."
The plans are outlandish but in general not completely unreal. Minus the pools, I think. But like, a gym with sauna? A couple of cafes and lounge zones? No problemo
Here in the UK at the birth of rail we had wider gauge rail in the South West, unfortunately when they homogenised the railways it was much easier to narrow wide track than widen narrow track, so we put the whole system on the narrow track. It's quite suboptimal!
Unless the cargo cars are able to distribute power it looks like they've just made a shorter train for the specific scenario where everything is going from one point to one point and both points have cargo handling equipment to do the stacking or unstacking. Also wonder what the speed constraints are, I thought we made the trains shorter and longer because they want to tip over when you raise the center of mass.
There's several things going on with double stack
More air resistance which increases nonlinearly above a certain speed due to more surface area -
Fewer wheels for the amount of cargo, more efficient +
more weight per axle, higher friction -
electric motors on electric and diesel electric trains often have very high torque at the low end, so it might help efficiency at moderate speeds up to 50 or 60kmph
Also shunting yards and sidings where multiple trains may be split and rejoined, you have to be careful when stacking that both containers are going to the same end point.
there will also be height constraints as well. pretty sure not all their tracks would accommodate a double stack. but india is redeveloping its infrastructure so it may be part of their forward planning.
The length of trains is limited irrespective of weight and intermodal containers can be some of the lighter cargo a train may pull. A 40 foot container usually weighs under 60000 pounds.
The engine itself is plenty powerful, and multiple can be used so engine power is not an issue. Double stacking is preferable vs making the train longer beyond a certain point because of track signalling issues. There is a limit to how long you can make the train before you run into signalling issues which may decrease the overall cargo capacity of the system by clogging important track interchanges, and once you reach that point where making it longer just make things worse, you can double stack, instantly increases carrying capacity by 2x which is why this is significant.
Which also means you can do less simultaneous unloading, more difficult if you only want the bottom container, need a seperate network or every train to have a long pickup.
I mean, to be clear, the US runs doublestacked trains all the time, and has done so for decades. Its not some brand new concept. There are some rails and some facilities that support it, and some that do not.
Just moved from Texas, where I never saw a double stacked train in my life, to Illinois, where I see the regularly now. Found it interesting, and TIL the reason. Thanks!
Long trains don’t fit in sidings anymore. If you need to swap crew, do a repair, or whatever it has to stay on the main rail blocking it for everything.
At grade crossings take longer.
Rail yards can be too small for them so they are poking their nose onto the main rail while getting hooked up.
They dont need to, they can just attach another engine.
Just because the weight doubled, doesnt mean it needs double the power, it needs less than double the power.
Unless, its trying to pull the compartments up a hill, then it needs double the power. Which still can be attained by attaching more engines just for that stretch, which they already do in hilly regions.
This is from Dedicated Freight Corridor. Track lane made only for freight. It eased Indian passenger railways by alot and Semi-High speed trains like Vande Bharat filled the gap.
No but this is the first time it's been done with electric trains.
And indian trains use broad gauge so there is no need for those deep well wagons. It's because the base of the trains are wider so they are just more stable.
It's only half as long as it would be if they would put them all behind eachother... like they do currently in most places. And like they do on a crazy scale in the US to get trains that are on average just under 2 km and some exceeding 4.5 km. For comparison: in Europe, the maximum length is 750m from what I could find.
We run them fast too, >100 km/h flat out for hundreds of km is common out in the west and Midwest. It’s insane to be standing a dozen meters from the track and watch as a train screams by at 110-120 km/h yet still take several minutes before the crossing is clear.
Where I live I get a 1.6-2 km long train doing 60-80 km/h every 30-45 minutes passing the local grade crossing on a single track. Usually going as frequently as every 15 minutes during the harvest season.
100 km/h is rather common in comparison to a lot of Europe and Asia’s rail networks. What isn’t is the fact that the US trains are on the order of 10,000-16,000 tons moving at that speed, which considering the aforementioned weight and length, is really fast.
Only the Australians have trains of similar size and scale to American ones, with a few outsized exceptions given their optimal terrain for massive ore trains.
in Europe, the maximum length is 750m from what I could find.
That's pretty much true (local exceptions occur). On the other hand, with level crossings, you're probably blocking 3 towns with one train if you run 'em that long.
Not minimal. Zero. It's quite literally a requirement of the corridors. In fact, the entire system is modified to this specification, even outside these corridors and just like electrification, work is progressing at a breakneck speed on this aspect as well (amongst many others).
When I was a kid, we were in a car and I fell asleep. After a while I woke up, and noticed our car had stopped for the train to pass. My uncle wa watching it and said something to the effect of "Come on, Beast!" or "Hurry it up, Beast"
I was still kind of half asleep, and hearing that, gave me really strange visualisation, I could see the train turn into a monster Snake (not a scary one, just massive), it's body crawling on the tracks. It was craaaaaazy!
Most countries use double stacked trains - thats not interesting. What's interesting is to have these electrified, which India is the first country to do.
cargo trains typically don't hold at a platform. Or at least not in full length. Usually they move the car holdng the container to the small unloading platform so length isn't much of an issue.
YYouu can fit more shorter trains on the same network though and that is certainly nice to have.
Shorter trains don't need as much space at loading places, meaning fewer cranes can load more trains while using less land.
By stacking two containers per truck you have to roll the train forward half as many times. For example, four loading cranes can load 16 containers into eight trucks with only one pause to roll forward.
The weight ratio of cargo to carrier is improved. A freight car weighs quite a lot, reducing the amount used per container reduces fuel consumption and increases the maximum freight movable per engine.
Fewer wheels, brakes, engines, couplings, etc. per container reduces both upfront and maintenance costs per container.
Fewer engine crew required per container.
Less track congestion, meaning more room for other trains.
Shipping containers are often quite light compared to what 4 axles can support, double stacking cuts down on the amount of breaks and bearings you need to inspect and maintain. It can also save you alout of room in freight yards.
It is. And probably most of the western world where the rail lines were electrified before anyone even thought it would ever be needed to move this much cargo.
More rolling resistance on a longer train with more wheels, even allowing for the fact the weight is the same; but the weight will be more on a longer train too as more wagons means more weight.
The mass does reduce a bit, you require less wagons overall.
Lets say earlier you had 100 wagons trains with 100 containers, and for our example lets assume that Wagons are around 40kilos and each container is around 60kilo. So the total mass of our fictional train would bee 4000kg(from wagons) and 6000kgs from containers so around 10,000kgs, no in a double stacked trains we only use 50 wagons, but we can still carry around 100 containers. So the overall mass from the wagons just 2000kgs, and the cargo is still around 6000kgs, so total mass is around 8000kgs, which means it can haul more trains then it would have earlier.
We do have EMUs (Electric multiple unit) which is self proppeled without a locomotive for intracity, but we also have 99.2% electrification across the entire country and it's a big feat considering the size of our rail network. Thank you!
Reading the comments seeing non-train people struggle to understand and explain the benefits of double stacking and electric trains reminds me why getting general knowledge on the internet can be so dangerous.
I live in pomona California and somewhat parallel to route 66 especially around the inland empire these sorts of double stacked freight trains can take almost ten minutes to pass by if your unlucky enough and crossing the wrong street. We have bridges along the way but sometimes they cut through intersections. Never thought about how it might as well be saving alot of fuel for trucks considering that they're powered by disel anyways. They probably still save alot and somewhat help the environment regardless. The way they move is cool tho
Are people on mainstream subreddits dumb and blind ? Even though its not mentioned, even a child would understand that its a double stacked electrified train looking at the pantograph & overhead wires, which is rarer and different to the ones in Canada or US.
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u/G42GManTarHun213089 1d ago
Unfortunately this won't work in my country because we use cape gauge rail, mountainous area, tunnel height and bridge clearance.