Glorious NSE

I would agree with most of that - what I struggle with are the claims that this is easier and (despite little real-world experience) much, much cheaper. I can't see how they can build equivalent, but more complicated infrastructure for substantially less, which is their claim. So far, we do have working commercial high-speed maglev, which is the underlying core technology of hyperloop. Despite having off-the-peg tech, that doesn't come out substantially cheaper (in fact, it looks slightly more expensive) to construct than the HSR built in the same country, so adding the complication of putting it in a tube at vacuum to it, with all the implications of that, will certainly not make it any cheaper! Branson's in full Lyle Lanley mode, transport projects everywhere now get "we could build you a hyperloop for that...."

Anyone else think it's reminiscent of this.... https://youtu.be/mYDSdczI5ys?list=PLOYs0-h5AfPSDN06gHisyoVgYW-CiYdYl&t=76

Live and dynamic loads will only be less if the vehicle is substantially lighter - that's likely, but not guaranteed, especially as it could conceivably be a lot bigger than an equivalent rail vehicle. The cavern for the station would only be smaller if you're building your line to handle substantially less capacity than rail surely...if you built underground rail stations to take single car trains they would also be much smaller and cheaper! Okay - 2014 figures, but nevertheless: http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/sectors/why-china-can-build-high-speed-rail34socheaply7365/ That would suggest HSR ought to be substantially cheaper than hyperloop.

So the answer is to shut down 2610 miles of network (or 5220 miles if it's a continuous loop!) to fix it? Please read the question again.... Put slightly differently: Why is an elevated vacuum tube supposedly much cheaper than an elevated railway? Why is a tunnelled vacuum tube supposedly cheaper than a tunnelled railway? If putting the right-of-way into tunnel made it cheaper, surely we'd never build above-ground railways. In real life, tunnelling is more, much, much more expensive than surface construction, irrespective of how many newts are involved. * Land take for rail should be no worse, possibly even better (higher speeds logically mean larger curves.) * Whilst the train "floats", there's no such thing as zero gravity - (it still pushes down on the track with it's weight, it will still push sideways on curves) - so any structures still have to cope with and be strong enough to deal with train forces. * You do save two rails, and a copper wire, and the kit to support those. * But conversely you'd need to build your structure strongly and precisely enough to maintain a vacuum, which I suspect no current rail bridge or tunnel has to. * And you need to install a maglev "rail", and all the gear to power that. * And you need some kind of air management systems too, which aren't likely to be lightweight. Again - what magically makes it "cheaper" - if there's a way of building a tunnelled or elevated right of way for half the cost, we need to be building railways on it!

Not sure that matters, these new fangled mobile telephones seem to be popular these days. That said, I suspect you'll see more laptops out on average if you ride on a 700 than you will on a 150 half way up a Cornish branch line...

If the repaints are as quick as the 'Powerhaul' repaints have been you have nothing to worry about...

In the latter scenario don't bother hurrying, if your breathable air becomes vacuum, then 'rescue' is a bit pointless... In reality, I presume you'd have to have a way of very quickly restoring air pressure in a given section of tube, but to do that again you need airlocks.... I'm really, really sceptical of this too. What exactly makes an elevated/tunnelled vacuum tube cheaper to construct than an equivalently constructed elevated/tunnelled HSR right of way. Are we seriously suggesting that two ribbons of steel and a copper wire are the major part of the construction cost, as that's the only bit that Hyperloop won't need? If not - surely the same construction methods you'd use to build a Hyperloop for "half the cost" can be used to create HSR for less than half the cost.

So, with a 2610 mile long tube in vacuum and no intermediate airlocks, what happens when you need to send a guy in to fix the track...

They should be a prerequisite for it being taken seriously as a transportation mode....

In which case, you need to move all the trains every time you want to run one, as an energy saving idea i'm not sure that flies...

I've said it for a fair while now, a role of the DfT ought to be setting minimum standards for *all* the operators to achieve or exceed, with those standards evolving and trains being upgraded to match them when refurbed. Instead you get the ludicrous situation where it's regarded as an essential upgrade for 1980s built class 150s running through the middle of nowhere to be fitted with onboard wifi, but fitting wifi to brand new commuter trains in London is regarded as an unaffordable luxury.

Given no points (at least, I don't think so yet?) the first one can't get back past the second one when it reaches it's destination. With some tunnel beyond the stations, you could conceivably stable a second or third set, so you could flight two or more, but once your flight of multiples had run, you're restricted to running one on a shuttle until you run all of them back again... So on the Chicago-LA with two tubes example if you had serial storage for two trains behind the terminals, you could run a block of 3 hourly in the morning and evening peak, but you would be forced to drop to one every three hours between the peaks to allow the flow to reverse. That's better, but still substantially less flexible. Alternately, you could have one continuous 'circular' loop - that could have as many trains as you need in it - the downside is to move one of them you'd have to move them all! (edited for clarity)

There's more to it than that Jim, for example the Thameslink ones this thread cites has seats which comply, but with the space between the two seats removed. Effectively the seats become narrower as the space the user has when sat in them has reduced...

Yep, a 'train' of pods is plausible to increase capacity per departure, but you still hit capacity/schedule issues, due to the incredibly inflexible infrastructure. So you build a tube from Chicago to LA, a search reckons that to be 2016 miles, lets assume it hits the promoted top speed of 760mph, lets call it 2hrs 40mins, with say 20 mins each end to unload/reload up to 1000 people and their luggage - that means a max service of 4 trips per day, with no margin for error, disruption or maintenance of tube or pods. Commercially, is that going to work? You have the technical capability to do a business day trip in the other city, but in reality, the pod will only be at one or the other end at any key departure time. If there is a market for an 8am departure (for instance) for business travellers, the equivalent the other end will be a less convenient 5am or 11am... As an example, googling airline departures for direct flights tomorrow are at 0600, 0645, 0722, 0756, 0830, 0900, 0915, 1005, 1010, 1015, 11.35, 1205, 1246, 1325 (two flights at this time!), 1402, 1500, 1512, 1545, 1710, 1753, 1825, 1830, 1856, 1931, 2025, 2030, 2108, 2145 You can build two tubes, though that doubles your cost to build and to operate it, and if you can cover the overall capacity you need with one then you'd need to double your income too to cover the extra costs. If you want an hourly departure (as the airline schedule suggests for some parts of the day) then you need *six* 2016 mile long tubes, because as far as I can tell so far, you can't do points. And if you need a Chicago to St Louis connection you must build new tubes, if you need Chicago to KC, build more new tubes, if you need Chicago to Denver, build yet more new tubes.... An HSR example... HS2 will have the max capacity with two tracks of an 1000 seat train and a potential 18 departures per hour, and those trains can use just two tracks out of London, then split off to head to a wide variety of destinations. Even if the journey was just 20 minutes, a two tube hyperloop between two defined locations will only give you one departure every half hour to one location. If all journeys were 20 minutes, the equivalent capacity to HS2 would require 18 tubes. The infrastructure requirements to do more than just connect two locations with an occasional shuttle service are bonkers.

They are a direct response to the first one - packing more, thinner seats in, or making seats narrower are responses to overcrowding. The overall level of rail fares is a deliberate action of government, they have been deliberately increased to put more of the cost of the service onto the user than the general taxpayer.

Well it's a drawing anyway... At the moment the concept makes no sense, it's a huge amount of cost, complexity and risk for a minute amount of additional capacity compared to rail. When you start looking at it *beyond* making one pod do one thing at once, and you need it to handle lots of pods, connecting multiple places, all at once, you get problems that look like existing railway problems, headway, stopping distances, capacity, coping with timetables and perturbations to those timetables... Pods of 50 people or so just aren't going to work except on low capacity installations. And low capacity installations are not reasonably going to fund cutting edge tech like this.

Try lifting them out of the bodyside at a station with serious superelevation (like Bodmin Parkway) - whilst trying not to overbalance and launch yourself across the platform, and not drop yourself or your bag down the huge gap to the platform at the same time.

Not specced by the railway company...

Looking good!

Yes, I would suggest 'single use plastics' means stuff intended to be used once then be thrown away - like a plastic drinks bottle, not like a model train.

From the info there - doing an image search on 'Boyne Valley Railroad' gets you lots of images of the wrong trains in the wrong scenery.

Just done some googling - apparently bought for excursion use (along with at least one Mk1!) back in the 1970s...presumably the Mk1 was used as a coupling adapter. https://flic.kr/p/qtWGDS

Can be anything from two outers back-to-back, to sets of 10+, there doesn't seem to be a set arrangement.

If it's a blanking plug, the loco will buzz under DCC, and run silently under DC If it's a decoder, do you have access to something like JMRI? If so, pop it in and try and read it, if it's a decoder it should tell you what it is.

From memory it was only a matter of weeks between stock arriving and going into service on the GWR ones, though I guess lots of staff down here may have already been passed on HSTs and only needed to be trained on the coaching stock upgrades rather than from scratch?