My takeaway was the opposite. A hundred years before this, a different group was stuck in the same pass, and couldn't get help for 4 months. This situation resolved in 3 days, and there was no cannibalism. When something similar happened to an Amtrak in 2019, it only took a day and a half, and people still had access to Twitter the entire time. Not to diminish the suffering, etc., etc., but it seems like there's cause for optimism when it comes to technological progress.
Shouldn't have happened and they got help from some indigenous people that have been surviving there for quite a bit, I reckon - which tells me that people could survive then in those conditions.
As far as I get from the article they didn't call for help for two days trying to free the train with other trains, and the train was stuck in there in the first place because the staff saw a wall of snow and tried to plough through.
I don't know if those were or are standard practice but it sounds like guests got somewhat close to suffering pretty serious consequences for it.
Avoiding cannibalism is nice but also a pretty low bar to clear
Yesterday was the first day of in person exams at my employer (a large University) and we got reports that a key system wasn't working, the students were not able to take one of the exams on offer that morning as instead a "User friendly" something-went-wrong-tell-a-grown-up message appeared.
We didn't know, but in fact this bug could have been fixed by (temporarily) removing a single line of code from some server software, maybe 5-10 minutes to implement, test and ship to production under emergency conditions, then an afternoon of paperwork. However our early attempts to diagnose tickled a different bug making it seem hopeless, and so effort focused on manually tweaking the configuration of every single exam computer across the entire physical estate, which took maybe half an hour or more.
The bug could also have been worked around, with insight, by a single SQL query, taking maybe 10 seconds to write and execute. The software would still be broken, but those students could have taken their exam which is what mattered.
But we soldiered on with plan A. And that worked, it was just much slower. If it had taken a whole day I'd like to hope we'd have re-evaluated instead.
An exam being postponed is pretty drastically different as a worst case scenario than hundreds of people ending up frostbitten or worse
Large cities do not, these days, as a general rule, more or less just spontaneously burn down; the LA fires are driven by extreme weather conditions, and even then have not caused remotely the sort of destruction that you used to see from big urban fires.
LA - 500 sq miles. The Palicades Fire is 37 square miles. With other fires it is smth like 55 and it is still not done.
>the LA fires are driven by extreme weather conditions
yes, sounds very familiar - in USSR we had a saying "suddenly came winter" explaining all the societal/economical/etc. failures there
I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later (aside from the life-threatening storms, of course). The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!
More on topic, I was surprised to read:
> When the steam generators’ water tanks ran dry, heat disappeared, too.
Weren't there surrounded by frozen water? Is there any reason snow couldn't be used in an emergency to heat the train?
I don't think people ride the California Zephyr to get from Chicago to the Bay Area as quickly as possible. Most of us spent as much time as possible in the observation car marveling at the Rockies and Sierras.
Of course they don't. It's too slow. Our rail shouldn't be as bad as it is.
I love that trip, and I've taken it more than twice, oohing and ahhing all the way, but I do not need it to last as long as it does.
1. The volume of snow to be collected would have been significantly greater than the resulting water.
2. Heating snow at elevation requires more energy.
3. Perhaps getting snow into the steam generator wasn't so easy.
Yes, dependent on the nature of the snow but a broad idea is that if you want a litre of water, you need five litres of snow.
Show them the airplane that gets them to the same destination in a couple of hours vs days
Longer term Airlines got a lot better and a lot cheaper worldwide at roughly the same rates because things like fuel economy and engine maintenance timescales skyrocketed.
>...Every serious study of airline deregulation in the intervening years has found that travelers have indeed benefited enormously. As we documented in our 1995 Brookings book, The Evolution of the Airline Industry, airfares, adjusted for inflation, fell 33 percent between 1976—just before the CAB instigated regulatory reforms—and 1993. Deregulation was directly responsible for at least 60 percent of the decline—responsible, that is, for a 20 percent drop in fares. And travelers have benefited not only from low fares, but from better service, particularly increased flight frequency.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-fare-skies-air-transp...
A 20% drop on its own is 20%, but if prices fell 33% it requires a separate 16.25% drop not a 13% drop. Meaning deregulation was responsible for 55% of the total decline for the numbers to work out.
PS: If they’re confused or lying in just that blurb I’d question the rest of their analysis.
My general feeling is always that if someone is going against the consensus of the experts who have studied something (whatever the issue is - it could be climate change or GMO food or effects of airline deregulation or whatever) I think the burden of proof is on the person who claims the experts are all wrong.
33 * .6 = 19.8
33 * .4 = 13.2
1 - (19.8 / 100) = 0.802
1 - (13.2 / 100) = 0.868
0.802 * 0.868 = 0.696136
(1 - 0.696136) * 100 = 30.38% discount not 33%
I’m not sure if I should applaud the blazing disregard for people’s intelligence or appreciate that it works.
If anyone is reading this thread, it illustrates a problem common in on-line discussions. Someone will make a big claim that contradicts the consensus of the experts in the fields who have studied the issue. (I have found that when discussions touch upon economics, it is virtually guaranteed, but it happens in many areas.)
Someone then points out that if the person is correct and the consensus position of the experts who have studied this issue are all wrong, the burden of proof is on them. The original poster won’t try and do this but will instead try to come up with a reason that those who devote their careers to actually studying these issues can’t be trusted or are incompetent, etc. Unfortunately, at this stage, the person is usually even more entrenched in their personal pet theory. They usually aren’t so blatant as to say “Either they are utterly incompetent or lying.”, but that is where we are.
I can point to plenty of research that says otherwise, but when you quote someone saying 1 + 2 = 4, they don’t merit a more comprehensive rebuttal but to simply point and laugh.
The guy being quoted presumably came up with numbers from thin air which is why they both don’t make sense and don’t line up with actual research.
Regulators didn’t set floor prices to wildly unreasonable levels. So yes, it did modestly lower prices and service quality because airlines now competed in different ways. But we’re talking the difference in the cost of an inflight meal etc not some wildly different number. For that you needed wildly more efficient aircraft from other companies.
Post regulations we also got lots of bankruptcies and bailouts which shifted costs from consumers to taxpayers.
I have tried this.
Snow is not very dense. A lot of snow makes a very small amount of water. Quite an astonishingly small amount of water
I expect the steam generators were quite thirsty, I do not know.
That's why currently running steam engines are better off with diesel pushing them: https://youtu.be/12Zpb0Yh-sM
This was mostly a power problem. UP 4014 had a small steam turbogenerator atop the boiler to power lights and such. Now it has three such generators, and there's enough electric power to run auxiliary equipment.
UP did a serious rebuild on the Big Boy, to original main-line standards. Many parts were fabricated from scratch. It's ready for regular use for decades. Most heritage railroads lack the resources for such major overhauls.
Here's the first test run with no Diesel, in May 2024.[1]
The much bigger issue that steam is massively less dense that liquid water: roughly a 1:10 ratio. Loading up 10x more snow than you need water is no small task.
This is similar to heating systems installed in skyscrapers of the period (I'd definitely recommend this video if you haven't seen it https://youtu.be/nkgM0qCy5o4?si=46vNv6aaoYHcDO2l).
After the steam condenses the water in a skyscraper is trivially returned to the boiler (by gravity). However, on a train I suspect they run it as a total loss system and the condensate is simply discharged when it reaches a trap.
This whole system is relatively low pressure and, more important, low velocity so it's unlikely it would have caused an immediate issue (the train would obviously have required work before going back into service in any case).
I think the problem is more likely to have been an inability to collect enough snow to make a meaningful amount of water, in addition, it would likely have needed to be liquid to introduce it to the boiler, you can't just shovel it in.
For the water:steam ratio, obviously it's an expansion and I think it's around 1:1,600. Steam wants space.
I mean, this is largely a product of the US's general disinterest in and underinvestment in passenger rail; with a modern high speed system it'd be about 10 hours.
10 hours is _probably_ too long to be particularly useful, mind you; people would just fly. The sweet spot for high-speed rail is more in the 5 hour and less range; at that point when you factor in the faffing around involved in getting to airports, going through security, the inevitable delays etc, the train is still faster.
The longest high-speed route in the world is about this length: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing–Kunming_high-speed_tra...
The Chinese route you mentioned does not need to go through one of the largest mountain ranges in the world. It's also at least 15-20% shorter than the distance from Chicago to SF, and experiences much less elevation change over the course of the journey. And the wiki article claims it "averages 10.5 to 13.5 hours", so there is a huge amount of variability in time to travel on that route.
Yeah, I think it depends on how many stops it calls it; there are a few different services on that line. While it's a high speed line they're mostly not classic express services and actually have quite a few stops. I'd expect a notional Chicago->California high speed line would have fewer. A journey with no stops at all at 300km/h (ie high standard high speed rail, but not absolute state of the art) would be 10 hours; any stops would add a bit.
> And you can't factor time spent getting to airport and not factor time to train station
As a general rule, airports are not hugely conveniently located. Normally intercity rail in big cities will depart from a central train station, which usually will really be quite central, and will be linked into all the other transport. You get there, and walk onto the train, and you're done.
The airport will _never_ be central, for obvious reasons, and if it has a rail line at all, it will likely be a single line, usually relatively infrequent, and, for some reason, with the airport end almost always extremely inconveniently located (this seems to be a law of nature). You'll want to get there at least an hour in advance, and the plan will likely be delayed at least somewhat on both ends. At least one queue will be involved. On the other end, you will then make your way slowly into the city.
When I'm traveling in mountain snow, I'm always very neurotic about prep. AWD or 4x4, water, chains, food, emergency kits, etc ... I always assume I could be stuck for 24 hours or more.
In the meantime, I am constantly shocked by how many people make this trek with little or no respect for how deadly snow can be. The worst of it is when it puts others in danger: I'll never forget seeing a front-wheel drive sedan repeatedly driving up, then slipping back on a steep hill, while a line of 20 cars waited behind it.
Part of it is just not knowing (I grew up in the east coast), but part of it is just human nature to not understand some things to be inherently dangerous. Snow and cold looks so serene, but cold in it's various forms has killed many more people than heat.
I'm amazed at how many people make this trek during a snowstorm. I get that some people have family, work or other obligations and have a strong reason to make the trip, but most are just going up to ski.
It's just not that deadly. Literally, people don't die in snowstorms on the 50 or 80. I can't find record of any weather related automobile deaths. I'm sure it must have happened, but not in recent history.
Certainly travel in these conditions is not without risks, but I'm pretty sure the bigger risk for the day is on the slope. People get carried off in stretchers every day from every resort.
Which is not to say that everyone should do it - be equipped, have snow driving skills, and be prepared for the worst (stuck for many hours, which can happen). But don't overstate the risks or be so priggish (new word of the day) about the people who take them.
I used to think of American passenger train travel as this romantic affair until being similarly stranded in an Amtrak the Cascade's for 24 hours with no cell or heat back in 2019 (thankfully no carbon monoxide poisoning either.)[1]
Now I say leave the rails to freight. 500tmpg is a pretty good multiple over sending things via truck and about 14x more efficient than sending the same weight in passengers. Despite common ignorance, our freight rail is the best in the world.
[1] https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2019/02/am...
It's a real shame that the USA has yet to develop decent passenger trains.
European rail travel is mostly small-town-to-city (for commuting) and city-to-city, mostly when the cities aren't that far apart (a few hours at most).
International travel in Europe is much less common than interstate travel in the US, mostly because of the language and culture barriers, so most trips people take are in the same country. Our countries are far smaller, and the major cities of each country are far close to each other than the major cities in the US, so trains make sense.
Trains in Europe mostly replace cars, NOT planes. It's just that a lot more travel here can be done by car/train in a reasonable time.
To an average European, SFO to LAX by train would be just about bearable, depending on country and train speed. Anything much farther than that would probably be a flight.
Train travel works well within some countries (a decade ago, I took a train from Rome to Venice and back for a 1 day conference - driving would have been around 6 hours each way), but for international travel it's usually not worth it. You are also dealing with different ticketing and scheduling systems, not to mention theres a bunch of big mountains in the middle of Europe meaning it's geographically hard to cross.
Europe is a large place, but my experience in Western Europe is that people absolutely travel by inter-city train between countries when the journey time is 3 hours. More than that and flying starts to be favoured.
Driving isn’t really an option for these journeys because the trains are so much faster than cars. A 2 hour train journey would take 4+ hours by car.
I took a first class trip in Italy recently. Food was fine and it's Italy, but those seats were very comfortable!
Perhaps both regions should look into doubling their rail networks.
The US prioritizes freight on its rail network, the EU prioritizes passenger service.
There is no "rail network" about which the US (through some political process) makes decisions about prioritization.
There is a freight rail network, and there is Amtrak's rails between Boston and DC. That's it. We're not prioritizing freight, the network is owned by freight companies.
Also, with regards to percentages, this is the wrong comparison. The numbers you need (which I could not find) are what percentage of cargo travels to within Nkm of its destination by trail in the USA, where N is the typical value for Europe. We have substantial freight hauling in the US because of long distance journeys. The last Nkm is generally done by truck. In Europe, there is much less long distance freight hauling, and much more hauling that takes place under the Nkm "limit", ergo more is done by truck.
Every train journey is planned in advance, so that each block of rail is reserved for a specific train and only that train. When those reservations are made, Amtrak trains get priority over freight trains. However, in recent decades the average length of the freight trains has increased greatly. This results in trains that are too long to fit on any of the sidings. This means that it is possible for a freight train to be in a place where it cannot pull into a siding and allow an Amtrak train to pass or overtake it. The law simply does not anticipate this scenario, and it cannot force the freight companies (who own most of the track) to extend their sidings to accommodate the larger trains or to change the length of their trains. I believe that the FRA has tried to resolve this for some time, but unsuccessfully. At this point it will take either a big lawsuit or an act of Congress to fix the problem.
It should also be noted that if an Amtrak train is forced to stop and wait on some other train, that this does not delay the Amtrak train. The stop is part of the train’s schedule so while it makes the trip longer it doesn’t make the train late.
On the other hand, an Amtrak train that is _already_ late loses its reservations and therefore could get delayed even more by freight trains. No guarantees though; sometimes they make up time simply because there are no freight trains in the way.
The Biden administration did begin to take steps to enforce the law in this area, but I think it did not get very far and will almost certainly cease in the new administration.
Most of the midwest is empty, same with other states.
You have very dense areas in the east coast, which already leverage a large train network. In the west coast, Oregon and WA already have trains connecting their largest cities (Portland/Seattle/Vancouver).
California has caltrain, and internal city trains. In the USA, for passengers, it makes much more sense to fly than trains, the infrastructure costs and time costs of trains vs planes don't make sense.
Most of the Midwest has the same functional density as Europe. Indeed, if you overlay a map of France on the Midwest, with Paris centered on Chicago, you'll find that there are cities of comparable sizes at comparable distances.
The Great Empty largely exists only on the plains and the mountainous west, where all but the most ardent fantasists concede that no passenger system is viable. But most of the population in the US lives in or near a city that would have viable high-speed rail destinations!
There certainly are stretches in the US that aren't worth covering by train, but as you say most people don't live there, and the proportion who do live there is really tiny.
A lot of the time people seem to think the end to end travel need to be viable, and ignore that if the service is regular enough, plenty of pairs of towns along the route will contribute to demand.
"You're going to have to rent a car" is a statement about historical US development patterns and political/economic decisions, not any sort of inevitable or immutable state of nature. As such, it is subject to change. It hasn't even been a century since flying around the country was an option (and for many, not even a half century), if you need a reminder that things can and do change ...
There is a separate problem that bus transit in the US is almost invariably horribly laid out, but that has more to do with the US being culturally incapable of planning transit well, and especially the US being incurious about how transit works in places where it does work. Essentially, there's a blind spot (even among transit enthusiasts, annoyingly) that assumes that transit on anything less in scale than Manhattan is infeasible, so transit planning is equated with Manhattanization where it doesn't need to be.
We already did this at least twice during the 20th century, first with invention and production of automobiles, and then again with the combined hit of the interstates and aviation.
>In the USA, for passengers, it makes much more sense to fly than trains
You don't live in the midwest I take it. It makes more sense to drive than to take a flight that passes you through one of the airline hubs for most every trip that is less than 400 miles.
The rectangle defined by Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Des Moines is about as densely populated as most of Europe. Ditto for a triangle like that in TX, and another polygon with one vertex in Atlanta.
The east coast train network is not "large" given the population size. It consists of a primary line (Amtrak), and very little else given the population living with (say) 200 miles of that line.
Ditto Caltrain, which compared to European service for similarly populated areas is incredibly limited. The line between Portland and Vancouver may yet see the sort of service you'd expect on that route if you were European, but it does not have it yet. The trains are relatively infrequent, and not very fast. Let's not talk about the customs/border situation either.
A neat video - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iSe1izplce0
EDIT: Seems to be more detail (and better pictures) here:
http://cprr.org/Museum/Stranded_Streamliner_1952/index.html
(tiny link from the article, easy to miss)
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Yuba+Gap/@39.2821017,-120....
Publisher's page: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780805083293/thewhitecascade...
WorldCat page: https://search.worldcat.org/title/150384796?oclcNum=15038479...
I've had several near escapes through the pass. Following the semi's in their treads saved me in a little 2WD car.
Two rescuers died while attempting to reach the stranded passengers.
If they had enough diesel to keep it going.
The diesel heats the water instead of "wood/coal"?