Questions tagged [trains]
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22
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How could the switch from steam to diesel locomotives be delayed 20-30 years?
In real life diesel locomotive production largely supplanted steam locomotive production in the 1940s and 1950s, and steam locomotives largely disappeared from mainline service in developed countries ...
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Train Engine Size
I've designed a world where dinosaurs have lived with humans since the advent of civilization. One thing that is key to the story is that they travel by rail a lot, mostly because that is one of the ...
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If money were no object, is there an element or alloy that would make for better train tracks than common steel?
A question that arose from here.
Say we have a planet with a different percentage of various elements than Earth, but steam train technology, and we were striving for train track longevity. Is there ...
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Is there a physical/structural upper-speed-limit to steam locomotives?
In my world (essentially playing in the late 1920's to early 30's, though with a bit of hand-waved technological and political progress), a rail line exists that spans Eurasia from Lisbon to Bangkok.
...
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Potentional ways to exploit track built for very fast & very *very* heavy trains when transitioning to high speed rail?
In this world a nation has built 2 railway networks, a smaller 3'6" gauge network & a heavier 4'8" railway network. The 4'8" network connects most of the major cities & has very ...
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Super broad gauge railway vs double wide/multi track railway
So here's the scenario, a mad scientist has just managed to take over the continent on his campaign for world domination (which continent I will leave to your imagination but for simplicity lets say ...
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How much time and distance would a maglev train take to accelerate to the top speed of 700 km/h?
So I have decided that in my story on Mars, I'll have magnetic levitation trains. Now I'm calculating travel times and, considering passenger comfort, the question is:
How quickly could a passenger ...
3
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1
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Magnetic levitation train vs ordinary train: which migh fare better in Martian environment?
I'm refining my previous question about magnetic levitation trains on Mars. In my story, set on Mars, two settlements are connected by a railway line. Currently, it is an ordinary train of the type ...
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Energy consumption of magnetic levitation train compared with ordinary train
I'm refining my previous question about magnetic levitation trains on Mars. In my story, set on Mars, two settlements are connected by a railway line. Currently, it is an ordinary train of the type ...
9
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Is there any reason a society might use electric boilers and steam engines in their trains rather than electric motors?
In an area in my world, people have discovered how to turn their aural constructs (magic stuff) into electrical supercapacitors, allowing for relatively advanced electrical technology.
Now that they ...
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8
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Most effecient way to build a steam-electric bimodal locomotive?
A somewhat significantly sized city is faced with a problem. It currently wants to reduce the smoke from the steam locomotives in the city & build more efficient & compact stations, however it ...
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Renewables on rail, balloons, ships etc.: science fiction or fantasy?
I was wondering whether it could be technically and economically sound to put renewable energy plants on rail wagons to deal with the intermittency of the sun and/or wind and/or... or to deal with ...
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Are hexagonal based tiling cities still possible?
I’m glad I could find some other people on the internet that have these kind of ideas as well. I am also in no way qualified within the field of civil engineering just interested in this specific ...
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Really-High-Speed Train for Kids
In a country where a majority of the population is children (like, for example, Niger), and where the terrain is often mountainous, engineers build a very-high speed train (say, 500-1000 km/hr), with ...
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Would a locomotive on ice (like in The Polar Express) move?
In the Polar Express film, there is a scene where the Polar Express runs off the tracks onto a frozen-over lake, which supports it and doesn't collapse even after the locomotive tilting and hitting ...
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