Why doesn't /n/ care about the Milwaukee Road anymore? MILW's electrified route through the PNW is more relevant than ever.
>>2084828I still care.I hope MILWbro is doing well.
I never stopped caring
Is electric actually better? I notice neither Pakistan or Bangladesh will touch it in spite of India being all-electric now.
>>2084828easily my favorite railroad. If you don't already have this book get it
>>2084851Depends on lots of things. If you have frequent trains and lots of passengers, with also frequent stops in regional and suburban trains then electric is clearly better.Also the more part of a rail network is electrified the more sense it makes to electrify more of it.On the other hand, if you have mainly big freight trains that aren't all that frequent and long stretches through the middle of nowhere, then electrification probably isn't of too much value.The MILW had some sections electrified in the steam era because of steep grades and affordable hydropower. But with diesel locos that was really not very practical. They had to change locomotives and diesel locos could handle grades easily unlike steam.If it had been 100% electrified they'd probably have kept it because then you have economy of scale (mainly no changing locos). But as it was it was pointless.Btw isolated electrified sections in the mountains wasn't that uncommon in the steam era. There was something like that in Spain in Mexico, probably other places as well. But in the diesel era it's either all or nothing.
I didn't realize the Milwaukee road had electric infrastructure in the pnw or other areas how retarded am I for not knowing that :c
>>2084974PRR put up a lot of catenary of course, along with the New Haven. IC had some electrified mileage for Chicago commuter operations which is still used by Metra. N&W and the Virginian had some as well.There's also that weird little electric shortline still operating in Iowa afaik.There were a handful of terminal railroads (nominally owned by larger railroads) that were electrified to handle passenger movements in and near stations or through tunnels near stations.Of course all of the previous examples and more were constructed during the steam era to overcome practical operational problems. After dieselization and a decline in passenger rail traffic, most of them got removed because the advantages of a third rail/catenary weren't as pronounced after end of steam.More contemporary examples are BCOL's electrified line in western Canada (built in the 80s iirc) that's since been shuttered and a handful of privately operated mine shuttles that cycle coal trains to a power plant and back to the mine. I think most of those have been shut down.
>>2084933>But in the diesel era it's either all or nothing.that's not really the casemost countries have both electric and diesel mainline operations
>>2084977Deseret Power still runs, but Black Mesa and Lake Powell shut down. Regarding other Class Is with electrified sections, Great Northern also operated a portion of its operations in the Cascades with electric locomotives until the 1950s. Southern Pacific never electrified, but they were conducting electrification studies for their routes through the Tehachapis and Sierras into the 1970s. Union Pacific also constructed an electrified test track in the 1970s. The most insane aspect of the MILW roads de-electrification is that it happened during the peak energy crisis years of the 1970s when other railroads were considering electrification from scratch to cope with high fuel prices on their dieselized mainlines. The death of electrification in the PNW also doomed the Pacific Extension more generally, even though that was MILW's most profitable route.
>>2084981I meant on one particular line. The MILW had just long sections of electrified track. This is extremely impractical.Places which have both electric and diesel will practically always have full electrification along any given mainline (or a coherent portion of it) or none at all. You don't get stretches of electrified where trains need to change locos.Maybe try improving your reading comprehension you cunt.
>>2084997Well "all or nothing" could refer to both an entire railroad or a specific rail line
>>2084997>The MILW had just long sections of electrified track. This is extremely impractical.Even in the age of steam this wasn't as big an issue as you are making it out to be. One of the reasons why they never electrified "The Gap" between the two hundreds of mile long sections of the electric mainline is that they didn't really need to. The line was still profitable and the issue of changing locomotives wasn't any worse than the need to switch out steam locomotives on long runs (which is why all railroads had roundhouses across their territory). In the age of diesel this issue of electrification gaps was even less relevant since the electric locomotives and diesels were able to MU seamlessly and when they left electrified territory they just decoupled the electrics and kept going. Despite the gap in electrification the MILW's electrified pacific extension was still the fastest and most direct route through the PNW of all the major carriers operating in the region. >Places which have both electric and diesel will practically always have full electrification along any given mainline (or a coherent portion of it) or none at all. You don't get stretches of electrified where trains need to change locos.MILW had coherent electrification, particularly the route from Spokane through Washington. If MILW's electrification was incoherent then so was that of Conrail and its predecessors.
>>2085023Meant Tacoma through Washington, not Spokane. My bad!
>>2084933>>2084997except in this case the milwaukee's electrified divisions were massive, encompassing multiple crew change points and helper districts. Helpers would have been added to run through power in any case and the electrics were perfect for it. Wylie even invented a throttle device to allow head end electrics to lash up to diesel run through locos where it wasn't possible before. Read the book nyigaaaah.The best explanation for why the PE failed that doesn't involve corporate conspiracy was that the line was just too late to develop many on line customers, the hill lines had already slurped it and when they finally fully coalesced into the BN it got dire. Mil had basically no branch lines whatsoever in the inland empire whereas the hill lines and UP had a dense net covering the area from spokane to the snake and beyond. Financial studies on the electrification were actually pretty favorable; the suits were getting hard sold on diesels and didn't want to think too hard about it, a lot like tech execs today.
>>2085120Adding and removing locomotives enroute is always a time waster
