On Nov 29, 2011, at 10:30 AM, Bob Sullivan wrote: > Dave, > Rail trails are quite popular in the midwestern USA. > We have them in urban areas where commuter electric lines closed. > We have them in rural areas where branch lines were abandoned. > Railroads predated cars and trucks and serious roads. > After WWII, railroad traffic declined and trucks/automobiles took over. > By the 1960's railroads were looking to abandon 'branch lines' of 5-10 > miles each. > Local communities often took them over as riding trails.
Sounds familiar, we used to have branch lines going everywhere. Nowadays there's very little left. We use rail quite a bit for freight but not as much as they could. Part of the problem is that they only built a single line with a few passing lanes so they have to be careful about scheduling the trains in each direction. > Pleaase note that a 2% grade is a big thing for a railroad, so our trails are > reasonably flat. Much the same here. That's why the trains got tunnels through the alps but not the road :) The Otira Tunnel has a 3% gradient and I think they run 4 locomotives on the coal trains for that. The infamous Rimutaka Incline was 1 in 15 (6.67%) which necessitated a fell locomotive. That one's now part of a short but very nice rail trail. Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
