ULR - Ultra Light Railway

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Dec 2009, 07:44

Moving this from another place, http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... 06&start=0 to avoid thread hijack.

clv101 wrote:
biffvernon wrote:Why so low though? Your car is low - you don't need to stand up in it and walk around. Less materials - less weight - less air resistance - higher speed - lower centre of gravity - lower bridges.
Cars are low as they only need to carry ~4 people. They need to have a certain minimum wheelbase.

With 4 people and a that wheelbase there is room to stretch out and so the car can be low. Anything carrying more people - think people carrier, think minibus etc, is above the minimum wheel base therefore you try and make the vehicle as short as possible by going taller.

The optium design for 16 person vehicles, carriages etc, isn't a limo it's a minibus (or street car as in the photo).

What's the height for
To keep the wheelbase short and therefore minimise weight/materials ONCE you're over the minimum wheelbase.

Note some modern cars are trying to reduce the minimum wheelbase (like the Smart car) in favour of going taller. Countries with good rail systems use very tall double decker trains!

I don't think going low is the right direction for this system.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Dec 2009, 07:52

Hmmmm. There may be something in that. Should we think people carrier height rather than limo? Still can't see an argument for tramcar shape. You don't need to stand up and walk around. This new train needs to zip about at high speeds and minimise bridge heights on a flat landscape where we don't want risky level crossings.

I think we need to have Dale Vince's Nemesis in our minds rather than an old tram.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 03 Dec 2009, 09:53

The amjor drawback of tall vehicles is drag. Drag increases with cross section and the square of speed. Below about 30 mph drag is less of an issue so tall is acceptable.

People carriers have lousy mpg even for motorway cruising because they are tall.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Dec 2009, 11:28

So we want stretched versions of these, tied together to form a train.

from here and here

In case you missed it, this thread started with an idea hastily scribbled at http://www.transitiontownlouth.org.uk/ULR.html.

We'd welcome any input to make this idea go somewhere, either in replies to this thread or contact through that webpage.

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 03 Dec 2009, 12:07

Surely the biggest obstacles are acquiring land and getting the relevant permissions to do it. After doing the market research and raising the finance of course. Any sort of rail scheme will get tied up in loads of red tape, as there is a lot of regulation.

Are you talking about the trackbed of a closed railway, or a new route?

Great idea, and an interesting challenge.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Dec 2009, 12:27

Of course its a big obstacle but not insurmountable. The Victorians managed it and now 90% of the routes have nothing important on them. For sure it will involve Acts of Parliament and compulsory purchase but we are talking about a time when it is blindingly obvious that nothing much will move if it has to be powered by petrol - i.e. a totally different political climate.

Let's concentrate on getting the hardware to a believable point and worry about legislation at the appropriate time.

Post by **clv101** » 03 Dec 2009, 12:36

Did you see this post: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2736

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Dec 2009, 13:44

Thanks for TOD article link. (Who is DoDo?) The examples are all big and heavy - even the urban, road traffic compatible, ones, and therefore expensive, cf. the Edinburgh tram.

Still, it would be good to gather net resources on the topic together so if anyone spots an article that might be relevant to the future of light railways...

JohnB · Post by **JohnB** » 03 Dec 2009, 17:47

Have you seen the Parry People Mover? They actually exist, rather than developing a new concept.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 03 Dec 2009, 18:01

Thanks John. Interesting, though so very 20th century. Light weight it certailny isn't, with half a tonne of steel just in the flywheel. Still there's things we can learn from it. There's the 30 second at the station charge up concept, though in this case it's to spin up the flywheel instead of charge the battery.

fifthcolumn · Post by **fifthcolumn** » 03 Dec 2009, 22:17

The thing is about this one biff, though I agree that from a scientific perspective it's a done deal (light rail is very efficient and can be electric), there are pretty heavy duty bureacractic hurdles to jump through, since even though it's "light" it's still a big infrastructure upgrade.

It's also not going to cover everywhere because it's still much more expensive than what I consider to be the best option:

I maintain that the most doable solution is to go for electric buses and just upgrade the existing rail lines to electric. That way we have the "last mile" covered in most places.

In any case, the focus here is only on passenger transport and while that's a big part of our transport network it's only one part.

The other part is logistics and light rail doesn't cover that at all.

Sure we can (and SHOULD) upgrade the major rail links to electric but we must also take care of the last mile there too. And for that, similarly to electric buses, we should use electric trucks.

We have several solutions for tractors. We can go electric, we can go bio-diesel, we can go ammonia powered or we can go natural gas powered.

I think that's the three major parts of the transport network covered. We can ignore aeroplanes since even in a market environment they have barely been able to subsist so if most airlines tank all we're missing is salads flown in overnight. We can still get 3000 mile salads on refrigerated ships if we think we absolutely need them.

I strongly believe that if we have these three areas covered, we can allow market forces to take care of the car fleet since people will have the option of converting to electric cars (when/if they become available) and for those who choose not to, they can still get to work or the shops.

Pepperman · Post by **Pepperman** » 19 Jan 2011, 07:51

A stretched version of that is pretty much this.

biffvernon · Post by **biffvernon** » 19 Feb 2011, 17:42

Thanks for that link Pepperman - sorry but I had missed it earlier.

Yes, this is the closest thing I've seen to my idea from somewhere significant.

The Delft technology university has a high reputation.

Pepperman · Post by **Pepperman** » 19 Feb 2011, 19:09

The infrastructure issues surrounding light rail are significant. For long distance travel it would be better to have some sort of highly efficient coach operating on dedicated lanes - it'll be much more flexible and just as quick. How about paving some of the branch lines closed under Beeching even??.

For urban transport I'm a fan of PRT in front of light rail and it's finally seeing the light of day at Heathrow T5 and Masdar which is nice.

In terms of linking vehicles together, there's been some interesting noise about vehicle platooning lately. I think it might prove challenging to get buy in on the technology though.

cubes · Post by **cubes** » 20 Feb 2011, 13:45

Pepperman wrote:The infrastructure issues surrounding light rail are significant. For long distance travel it would be better to have some sort of highly efficient coach operating on dedicated lanes - it'll be much more flexible and just as quick. How about paving some of the branch lines closed under Beeching even??.

To me, that sounds like a good idea. I know a lot are now used as footpaths/cyclepaths though.