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 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-09 02:03pm 

There are research projects looking into long-distance cables. They still have less efficiency than we would like, but we are (slowly) getting there.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-09 08:12pm 

Perhaps you need to re-read that fragment again? Israel isn't on European mainland, which should have been suggested even by route proposed ('shortcut' by Crete, which happens to be opposite side of Cyprus than Israel). European mainland would be tip of Greece, which even on your map is about as far (or further) as closest corner of Libya.



All you need it a few thousand km of room-temperature superconducting cable. That's what is usually used in these "designs", which, for obvious reasons, doesn't exactly make them them feasible. You could do it with classic electric systems, but it would murder the economic side of things (as of now).

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-09 09:17pm 

The Alameda Corridor serving the Port of Long Beach with four tracks can theoretically handle over 150 trains per day of around 50 cars each, four TEU per car. That's enough to unload one of the worlds largest ships per day, which is non trivial. Of course its nothing like what the Suez canal could handle, and China is unlikely to fund more then two tracks, but that isn't really the point since low priority traffic can always just go around Africa. While no container ship is too big for Suez, yet, lots of them are too big for smaller European Ports, which means unloading a big ship in the Red Sea and reloading onto smaller ships in the Med can have certain advantages. The Chinese are pretty set on a railroad to bypass Panama for more or less the exact same reason though to a more pressing degree. This then turns into lower unloading costs at the end destinations because the smaller ports charge less to attract traffic and usually but not always have easier times dispersing the cargo.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 03:18am 

Yeah, in the US; due to the lack of LOADING GAUGE limitations, we can run our shipping container cars with 3 or 4 TEU per loading well. The only limitation is how heavy the track is (hence 3 or 4).

List of North American Stack Cars

The Mainstay of the US doublestack car fleet is the Maxi-Stack IV, which is an articulated three segment car with three wells and is 204 feet (62.17m) long.

That means you can put 4000 TEU (Skoga's example) onto a North American Container train only about 68,136 lineal feet long (20,765~ m).

Additionally, North American railroads run really long trains. US trains are limited to 3,658~ meters total train length by FRA regulations; while the Canadian Pacific is running 4,200m long double stack container trains using distributed power locomotives via the magic of wireless.

The USSR did a 6.5 km long coal train test in 1986, with distributed power as well.

So a single ship would only need about five unit trains to unload it if we went by Canadian practices.

The entire Suez of fifty ships a day could be handled by just 250 unit trains in a perfect world.

I'm not quite sure how to calculate the maximum capacity of a railroad subdivision to carry cargo per amount of trackage; I know that Sea Skimmer has found US Army field manuals to do just that.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 03:34am 

It doesn't really make sense to assemble giant trains for short distances as crossing Israel would be. Such trains start and stop slow, and you need huge rail yards to put them together. Unless you had a container port which had a several kilometer long pier, which is plausible but not in Israel (you might actually run out of coastline around Eliat) its likely going to be more trouble then its worth for loading and unloading. The rail yard limits are why trains on the Alameda Corridor are usually only about 50 cars.

If you simply want bigger trains, no real limit exists except the yards and even that can be bypassed by breaking up the train while still on the main line track so it can park on several different sidings. Union Pacific ran a test train that had about 300 container cars over 5km long a few years ago, and IIRC the world record still is an Australian coal train over 7km long with both diesel and electric locomotives. If you wanted to be insane enough and had no grade crossings it'd almost be plausible to just completely fill a trans Israeli railroad track with an endless train that moved slowly. You'd keep splitting cars off at each locomotive on the front, and keep splicing on groups of cars led by a locomotives to the rear.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 08:49am 

If you have to study the possibility of using rail, in this day an age why not try to make a "rail treadmill" that continuously load & unload container by using roboticized cranes & autonomous motorized train cars fed by a third rail ?

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 09:14am 

Of course, you could make such a system with an idling rail where the containers are loaded, and then accelerated and fed into a ring of fast-moving cars on the main track. Just like a normal rail-road station.

Trying to make that an autonomous system would make each car very expensive (I doubt something like this exists), the whole system must be able to feed the whole track with enough power to make it work, and service issues increase exponentially. Such systems usually aren't employed in such a size. In a warehouse, you can manually remove the blockage, and most items won't take damage if they bump into each other - it is much less fun if you need to remove a similar blockage of train cars in the middle of a desert.

And most harbours are closing in on full automation, already, with the operator only supervising the machine.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 09:38am 

Well, instead of train cars in this case make it an 8/10-cars train that take less than 20 minutes to load, and have the locomotives automated. Have all the cranes and locomotives "piloted" by a central system to avoid the "jamming" events that could come from an asynchronous, distributed system.

For the power problem on the railways, well, it'd the same as with a normal electrified line, only that instead of having the electricity fed by an aerial cable, it'd be a third rail (allowing stacking as many containers as you want on a car). I guess you'd have one electrical transformer for each 3~5 kilometres of track.
For security reason (because of the third rail and because there would always be trains on the track), you'd want to totally isolate the railway lines from the rest of the country. This could cause problems, locally, as the country would be cut in two except for some passageways under the line.


I know. This is in fact why I'm making this "proposal", because I know we already have most of the necessary industry to achieve something like what I'm proposing (or something close to it, at least).

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 11:03am 

This is why I love SDN. When the threaddrift really kicks in it's like watching a coven of mad scientists at work...

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 02:02pm 

Third rail is kind of a non starter for heavy freight, the feasible voltages are far too low for efficient energy use and the required electric motors are too big. Even if each train is small, the problem of energy consumption still affects the entire system based on the actual tonnage moved. Transformers spaced that closely would also just be very expensive outright. I see no reason not to use overhead wires anyway, you can always use those new hybrid diesels in the rail yards or even battery powered slugs if you really wanted. Since Israel just found a shitload of natural gas, its always possible to convert diesels to run on natural gas, using a slug as a tender for the big gas tank, or just make the entire system run on natural gas turbines using that new Russian locomotive powered by a Tu-160 engine.. though IIRC natural gas is still a lot more expensive then the crap fuel you can burn in a diesel.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 05:18pm 

How bad would the temperature difference during the day be for operation? I believe you could keep the overhead lines in tension using counterweights, and just minimal maintennance, but I guess the rails would be working thenselves loose rather fast.

After all, there is a high traffic frequency with very heavy waggons, and the rails would easily get into the 60°C range already just by the sun. Add work-induced heat from the trains, then cool it off in the nights... This must be hell on rails.

Out of interest - we know that this rail system would be very expensive to operate - how about the alternative I proposed in jest - digging a channel?

After all, you can do this right next to the Egyptian border, so you don't have to deal with having to cross it. The terrain isn't a huge granite slab, and mostly unused, except for the Gaza side, but even there, there isn't so much big stuff that you couldn't just move it. After all, you'd have to do the same as well if you were to build a harbour and train station.

After all, Rhine-Main-Danube channel was built for about 2.3 billion €, over a part of the Alps and had 16 gates, levees, pumps, bridges and whatnot, and all the excavated material had to be dealt with instead of just being dumped in the general vicinity like you could do in the relatively flat Negev.

They're putting almost 6 million tons of freight through it per year.

Build such a channel, and use small container vessels to ship the cargo through. If the ground makes it easy to excavate deep , make it deep and wide enough that container vessels of mediterranian size could be put into the transfer routes, as well.

As I said, it would also make any attempt of invasion (and smuggling) from Egypt much harder, so you could even finance it in part as a military project - "THE BIG MOAT"

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 05:37pm 

I made a quick check on google maps... I don't have the topographical data, but from the satellites view, it seems it's mostly desert with nothing on the way, except...

... Except for the Fucking. Gaza. Strip. How's that for an obstacle, uh ?


Avoiding the Gaza Strip altogether to have The Moat reach the Mediterranean south of Ashkelon would force you to dig 30-40 more kilometres for the canal, and expropriate lot and lot of people in a densely populated area.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 06:01pm 

And with the Gaza strip, the hypothetical container harbor and railway station would also be built near Ashkelon, with 30-40 km more tracks needed. No difference.

The RMD-channel is 55m wide and 4m deep, the Suez is 24 m (79 ft) deep and 205 metres (673 ft) wide as of 2010. And I wouldn't count on Israel to not relocate the people on the needed strip.

Come to think of it, Israel could probably build a second Suez for their annual military budget.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 06:07pm 

One of the more heavily worked railroads by tonnage on earth is the Sishen–Saldanha narrow gauge iron ore railway in South Africa, with 50kv overhead electrification. The normal size of a train is 210 cars of 100 tons each, about 4km long, and they are individually the heaviest trains run on earth on a scheduled basis at over 21,000 tons. Absurdly impressive for 3ft 6in gauge. I don't think the track coming apart is going to be a problem if the South Africans can run trains like that through the edge of a big desert. The US also has couple of freight lines that run through the Arizona and Nevada deserts that take ~150 car trains of double stacked containers, and Australia runs non trivial trains through massive desert distances. If you use modern track construction methods the rails will hold together just fine. All rail joints are welded, and you hold the rails to the ties with clips rather then spikes. From time to time a rail joint will break from thermal expansion, but that's life on any railroad and can be countered by employing machines that electronically sound the rails for cracks as they move along. IIRC this can be done now at speeds over 40mph.



That would only work if it was also in Egypt, defeating a lot of the point, and it'd still be massively expensive, certainly far more then the few billion being talked about for a railroad. I suspect the best single option would be to make the existing canal a lot wider so ships could go faster without eroding the channel banks so badly. A double channel could only be justified by a massive increase in world shipping. You could snake a railway line around many of them and climb over the worst, a canal would have to blast through everything.



We can move whole mountains if we want, that doesn't mean its cheap idea. A canal through Israel is a non starter given how many high ridges are in the way. This map suggests you have elevations up to 1,000m tall in the way of a canal across Israel by the shortest possible route into Gaza, and not less then 500-750m tall stuff if you took a longer route with turns. Lack of water means locks are not an option, you'd have to have a sea level canal with a 500m deep cutting 40km long!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... graphy.png

In comparison the Gaillard Cutting at Panama involved a average depth of about 40m, and the highest summit of the ridge before the cut was made was only 59m above sea level. The distance was also much shorter then what would be involved for this, closer to 12km for the cutting.



That's an irrigation ditch in comparison to this idea, and hell, I suspect Japan now has storm sewers with greater possible water flow. Those canal barges could go as deck cargo on the kind of freighters the world uses for ocean going trade now. In fact the only way you are going to get a trans Israeli canal at a remotely sane cost or price tag would be to blast a canal to the dead sea, flood the dead sea basin until it reaches sea level, and then blast a canal to connect it to the med in the far north. This would also flood non trivial areas of Jordan and wipe out all the prime farmland, but that is the PRICE OF PROGRESS!



Small ships wouldn't change the need for a sea level canal (unless we build a railroad to move the ships, which was proposed as a dead serious alternative to Panama, Russia has a 3,000ton capacity ship lift semi railroad now), and frankly if you are going to make one at all it might as well be giant to have a greater chance of recouping the cost this century. The ground is solid rock past the first few feet of earth and sand on the surface, and maybe not even that in some areas. This would be the kind of project that explodes about 5,000 tons of explosives per day (they more or less do this in mountain top removal), for a few decades. But then on the plus side, Israel could dump all the spoil in the sea off Gaza and massively expand the land area of that place so people complain less.



It would work well for that, but then a concrete faced 300ft thick, 100 foot high anti tank wall with ramps for vehicles on the Israeli side and 'barbed wire' fields made out of battleship anchor chains and I beams to ensnare tanks would likely cost less.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 06:32pm 

Ok, thanks. I was honestly curious about that.


Ok, that's a deal-breaker. I wasn't aware that there was stuff higher than a hundred meters between.

Well, as I stated, it was a "mad scientist" solution I came up with for comedy value.

On the other hand, if dug that channel, they'd make (150000*25) 3.75 million US$ per day in revenue if the current Suez traffic splits equally between channels. That's almost 1.5 billion per year. And I'd assume that shipping would increase if capacity increases. After all, the Suez is a chokepoint.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 07:45pm 

You aren’t using enough ENGINEERING to be mad. See the mad solution is to make this plan way more complex. We shall build a canal with locks, and how do we power pumping water to the top? Why it’s simple, we take up another plan that really exists, to drill a tunnel down to the Dead Sea and build a hydropower plant at the end of it. The Sea Dead would be allowed to expand, to increase evaporation area, but not to the extent that the entire basin is flooded. This will power pumping water to the top of the mega canal locks, and then as water runs between the locks, we could actually recapture much of the energy with turbines placed into the culverts that connect each flight of locks. Meanwhile since this will still be slow, high speed priority traffic will be loaded onto large nuclear powered hovercraft while the container ships are still underway in the Gulf of Eilat and whisked across Israel on a hovercraft road that need only be clear of major rocks and the steepest grades. Nuclear hoverfreighters in the 2,000 ton payload class have been designed, so it should be no big deal to ensure that Ipads reach France in record time. Some of these can also be produced to serve as mobile assassination bases and nuclear weapons platforms of the IDF while creating more nuclear weapons material as they cruise along. Or hell, maybe just base the whole plan on nuclear hovercraft that go all the way from Eilat to Europe. Quickly commence estimating required nuclear hover freighter numbers!

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 09:27pm 

Comrades! This man has gone mad, mad! There is no time to waste! Get him desk and notepaper and authorize 5,000,000 ruble budget for technology demonstrators!

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-10 10:46pm 

Why not just have a nuclear powered train?

I like the idea fo breaking the ship cargo up at the point cos of all the cute liddel ports in the med, so a nuclear powered ship hauler is probably over the top.

(incidentally, it seems nuclear powered cargo haulers have been trialed and failed. sad)

so, using semi-realistic mad engineering - big train, solar powered. Running across israel. Worth building a branch line, carrying goods out into the middle east?

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-11 11:29am 

I like your plan. I'll design the deathrays for the hovercrafts.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-11 11:38am 

A nuclear powered train would be big enough that it would probably need two sets of parallel tracks to run on- there are designs for small nuclear reactors, but "small" on the scale of warships, not locomotives.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-11 03:34pm 

I dunno, supposedly the NR-1 reactor was about 12' in diameter and 10' long. Not sure about output, though.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-11 03:51pm 

NR-1 couldn't make five knots surfaced, so probably not a good example of how to do it.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-11 04:04pm 

True, but there's always this (1954 design study on atomic choo-choo, powered by a molten salt reactor, or the Soviet road-mobile reactors. Come on, Simon. We can link the hovercraft's blowers to the primary coolant loop, cools the reactor and inflates the skirt at the same time. There is nothing at all that can go wrong with this!

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-11 04:07pm 

This discussion is getting silly. Get back on topic please and ponder your mad scientist schemes elsewhere.

 Post subject: Re: Fourth Dolphin for Israel with Germanoid Money?

Posted: 2012-02-12 07:34am 

I am wondering something about Israeli navy. Lack of an effective navy is Israel's military weakness. Israel depends on overseas trade to sustain it's commerce. It had only 3 submarines and little dedicated ASW capability. It is true the IDF is unbeatable in the ground and air. But what if the regional enemies tried a submarine blockade ? Israel would be helpless.

Maybe this was considered when the Dolphins were purchased ?