Hot oot iron horse Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/122/06/46/6382724/me-2000-jun1.pdf by guest on 03 October 2021 Attempts are under way to bring U.S. rail service into the 21 st century. By Henry Baumgartner, Contributing Editor HE ERA OF H IGH-S PEED rail transportation may be and its cousins in Europe, which can have speeds on the decades old in Japan and E urope, but only this order of 200 mph, but w hich require dedica ted ultra­ T year, with the imminent debut of Amtrak's Acela straight track to be laid expressly for the trains of great Express service, is this innovation due to arrive in the speed. Clearly, there is some catching up yet to be done. United States, or at least the Northeas t Corridor. Even A range of initiatives that may spark further advances in then, the fas test trains, which will go about 150 mph, the U.S. rail system are under way in the United States w ill be no match for the TGV (train Cl gra l1de vitesse) and abroad. Amtrak's new Acela Express is scheduled to go into service this summer in the Northeast Corridor. It is expected to achieve a speed of 150 mph . 46 JUN E 2000 MECHANICAL ENGINEER I NG The lines of development being pursued in the railroad industry fall under two main headings: high-speed ra il, based on tradi­ tional "steel-on-steel" technologies, and maglev, which is short for magnetic levita­ tion. The U.s. Government is currently funding research into both fields under a 1998 law known as the Transportation Eq­ uity Act for the 21st Century, or TEA-21 for short. This includes $22 to $25 million per year in "real money"-authorized and appropriated-for work on next-generation Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/122/06/46/6382724/me-2000-jun1.pdf by guest on 03 October 2021 high-speed rail. WORKING ON THE RAILROAD "The most likely way to see high-speed rail is by upgrading existing routes to make pos­ sible higher speeds and service levels," said Robert J. M cCown, director of technology development programs in the Office of Railroad D evelopment at the Federal Rail­ road Administration in Washington. In the early 1990s, there were plans in Texas and Florida to bring about TGV-type high­ speed service, which involved laying the Freshly arrived at Philadelphia's Penn Coach Yards, the Acela Express power car is unwrapped dedicated, ultrastraight track that such trains and inspected. The covering of the nose has been pushed up, revealing the engine underneath. require, but those initiatives were aban­ doned as uneconomical. For the foreseeable future, it eluding Portland, Ore., Seattle, and Vancouver, B.C.; a seems, high-speed rail in the United States will have to Southeast Corridor from Washington to Charlotte, make do with the same old tracks that everybody else-in­ N .C., and a Gulf Coast Corridor between Atlanta and cluding commuter and freight service-uses . This rules New Orleans. In m any cases, said McCown, the states out TGVs, but a lot still can be done v"ith an upgrade. have formed coalitions to sponsor efforts to bring these Some of the increase in speed realized by the new Acela services to their areas. These projects follow the same Express, in fact, comes finn completing the electrification model as the Northeas t Corridor, using the old tracks, of the track. Until this year, trains had to switch to diesel sh ared with freight trains. Electrification of these tracks, locomotives for the stretch from N ew Have n, Conn., however, is generally considered impractical. to Boston. Already Amtrak's M etroliner service in the Northeas t Corridor reaches speeds up to 120 mph, and TURBINE POWER electrification and other track improvements on that line M cCown identified four areas important to this effort in have allowed Amtrak to introduce an upgraded service, which work was progressing: motive power, train control with refurbished versions of its regular cars traveli ng at systems, grade crossing ha zards, and tracks and structures. speeds of 110 to 125 mph, which it calls Acela Regional. To deal with the problem of motive power where elec­ This is not regarded as being high-speed rail, properly tricity is not provided, two new systems are in the works. speaking; the term "accelerail" is sometimes used for this The Federal R ailroad Administration, or FRA, is in a so rt of service. But in other parts of the country, such public-private partnership with a U.S. subsidiary of speeds might well quality as high-speed rail. Certainly, a Bombardier Inc. of Montreal to develop and demon­ jump in speed from 80 mph to 120 mph is no trifle. strate a high-speed nonelectric locomotive (NEL) pow­ Amtrak, which hopes its new high-speed service will ered by a 5,000-hp turbine. According to Daniel Palardy, finall y nudge it into the black, has ambitious plans to project and engineering manager for Bombardier Trans­ start high-speed services in other areas of the country. portation on this program, the locomotive is the fossil The U.S. D epartment of Transportation has designated fu el version of the Acela Express power car, designed and several corridors where economic factors and local polit­ built by a consortium ofBolTlbardier and Alstom of ical support seem to indicate a chance of success. These Paris. Alstom is also cooperating with Bombardier on inelude Los Angeles to San Diego, as well as the San the NEL prototype. The NEL has the same platform, the Joaquin Valley from Bakersfield to Oakland, in Califor­ sam e trucks, the sam e basic structure (including crash­ nia; several Midwest corridors emanating from Chicago, worthiness components), and a similar exterior, and will notably ones to St. Louis and Detroit, but also to Cincin­ be capable of achieving the same 150-mph top speed, nati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Omaha, St. Paul, Minn., even on nonelectrified track. T he small size and weight and Carbondale, Ill. ; a Pacific N orthwest Corridor in- of the turbine (compared with a diesel engine) helps to MECHANICAL ENG I NEE RI NG JUNE 2000 47 Downloaded from http://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/memagazineselect/article-pdf/122/06/46/6382724/me-2000-jun1.pdf by guest on 03 October 2021 To make high-speed rail possible in areas where rail tracks are not electrified, Bombardier has designed the NEL, a fossil-fuel version of Amtrak's Acela. keep the weight down, which will result in lower track ing speeds on lower-speed track. T his means, Palardy maintenance costs. The power from the turbine output noted, that if you want to run a service that connects feeds into a gearbox that provides it to two ac alternators, with, say, the Northeast Corridor, you could come in at which in turn feed into the electric traction system. A lower speed and once on the corridor go as fas t as an high-speed generator being developed under another electric train. The prototype is now being built and FRA program may be installed and tested in the proto­ should be ready for initial static testing by this summer. type locomotive in a later phase. Farther in the future is the Advanced Locomotive A lot of effort has gone into designing the NEL to oper­ Propulsion System, or ALPS, being developed at the ate at high cant defi ciency (up to 9 inches compared with Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas only 3 to 4 inches for most North American locomo­ in Austin. This system also uses a 5,000-hp gas turbine, tives) and to impart low dynamic vertical forces to the but here it is directly coupled to a high-speed (15 ,000- rail. High cant deficiency capability permits operation at rpm) generator. In addition, there is a very large energy­ higher speeds through curves . For high-speed service, storage flywheel connected to a high-speed motor/ standard track would need to be upgraded, but until that generator. John Herbst, the project manager, explained happens, the locomotive could still be used at less excit- that if the locomotive needs extra power, say to acceler- ate or to climb a hill, it can pull an additional 51.lnl"$ 51eel 3,000 hp from the flywheel for three minutes. " er.,nlalnm.ntStruclur. 5~tlonary When the engine needs to slow down, it feeds Composite Liner power from the traction motors back to the fly­ wheel. The flywheel also levels out the load on Magnetic the turbine to reduce thermal cycling and extend Rlldla/S.sring turbine maintenance intervals. T he turbine-driven generator feeds ac power, rectified to dc, into a dc bus. This is connected to a set of bidirectional power converters. One of these provides variable-frequency ac to the traction mo­ tors on the axles-a configuration similar to that of a diesel electric locomotive. Another bidirection­ End TOUChdown S.arlng al power converter is connected to the flywheel­ driven motor/generator to allow power transfer to Compos/ls Rotor and from the dc bus. Size, weight, fuel, and main­ tenance economies are said to be impressive, and To store energy for extra power needs, the Advanced Locomotive Propulsion System being the engine should be capable of 150 mph. developed at the University of Texas uses a large flywheel, seen here in a sectional view. Train control, the second of McCown's priority 48 JUNE 2000 MECHANICAL ENGINEER.