RUNNING BEYOND THE WIRES.

California's bullet train service might go into operation sooner, and more cheaply.

Some of the cost and time savings will come from a “blended” approach to rail construction, merging the new bullet trains with existing commuter lines. It would involve upgrading commuter rail in L.A. and in the San Francisco Bay Area while building the initial HSR line in the Central Valley as planned using federal funds.  Los Angeles gets linked to the Central Valley first, then San Francisco in a following phase.

The blended approach, however, involves changes of trains, an inconvenience to passengers, until the entire high-speed line is in place. That will discourage passengers. On a through train, you may be late, but you will get to your destination. On a train that makes connections, you may be late, and fail to make your connection. Sometimes that's adventurous, when a failed six minute connection in Cologne requires an improvised search for quarters in Brussels. But as a regular business proposition, it is something to be avoided.  The editorial writers of the Sacramento Bee are satisfied with the changes of trains, at least for now.

From Merced to Burbank, no longer would passenger trains, like Amtrak's San Joaquin, have to share travel with BNSF or Union Pacific freight lines – which have a maximum speed of 79 miles per hour.

This dedicated tracking not only would improve passenger service, it would free up freight capacity south of Merced. And no longer would passengers have to take a bus from Bakersfield to Burbank – because the only rail line is a busy, slow Union Pacific freight line over the Tehachapi Mountains. High-speed rail would have its own tracks.

In that first phase, the system also would connect, through a "blended system" to existing  – making the cost to build the larger network a lot cheaper. Riders would jump off high-speed rail at Burbank and on to Metrolink to get to Los Angeles. As High-Speed Rail Authority chairman Dan Richard said, "That beats the hell out of the car trip" – and with future improvements would beat airplane travel.

In our region, passengers would see improvements in Amtrak's San Joaquin rail service between Sacramento and Merced – improving speeds from 79 mph to 125 mph. Passengers from the Sacramento region would be able to get to greater Los Angeles with a single transfer, cutting travel time from what is now almost eight hours to just over five hours – competitive with car travel.

The suggested 125 mph speed on the new line suggests either best-practice diesel trains, or electrification. The commuter lines are not electrified, although the Peninsula commute service may be electrified as part of the Passenger Rail upgrades.  Transfers between faster intercity trains and suburban trains presumably take place at the end of electrified zones.

That involves unnecessary inconvenience for passengers.  Railroads have, for a long time, looked for ways to run an electric locomotive beyond the wires, either with an onboard power plant or with a battery.

Lackawanna tri-power locomotive 3501, somewhere in New Jersey.

Railroad Magazine photograph. 

Scanned from p. 302 of Middleton, When the Steam Railroads Electrified.

In 1930, the state of the art was a locomotive with electric motors energized by the overhead wire, or by a battery recharged by an onboard diesel-powered generator.  Hermann Lemp had recently worked out the control system that prevented the electric motors, which draw maximum current at startup, from stalling out the diesel engine.  A hybrid that could go from battery to diesel-energized motors was not in the card.

Locomotive builders have learned a few things in the past eighty years.  New Jersey Transit operate a fleet of dual-mode locomotives, originally purchased with the intent of operating through trains from the never-electrified Erie lines into Penn Station, a project that has been set back by the cancellation of the new North River tunnels into the sub-sub-basement of Penn Station.  The carrier still sees possibilities for dual mode operation of commuter trains.

"This kind of equipment never existed; this is the first of its kind," [Martin E.] Robins, director emeritus of the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University [and retired from New Jersey Transit], said as he eyed a dual-powered locomotive on Track A at Newark Penn Station. "There were years when it was said this kind of a locomotive could never be built."

Transit officials say the locomotives will allow for more one-seat rides for the thousands of passengers who now must transfer between trains.

At the Wayne Transit Center, for example, passengers travelling to New York City now ride a diesel-powered train for 10 minutes to Montclair State University. Then, after a 16-minute wait, they board an electric-powered train and ride 59 minutes to New York Penn Station because a diesel train can’t be operated in the tunnels to New York.

By "this type of locomotive, he's presumably referring to a locomotive capable of sustained running either in electric or diesel-electric mode. New Haven (now Metro-North in Connecticut) and Long Island have such locomotives, capable of drawing power from the third rail for short distances, then having extended range in diesel mode, and British Rail's Southern Region had locomotives with a short range in diesel mode, as was the case for Lackawanna's two tri-power units.

The applicability of such power to California is evident.  Electrify the Peninsula commute zone and the high-speed lines with the same voltage and frequency, then equip the diesel with sufficient fuel capacity to cover the non-electrified parts, and offer a single seat service, with a mode change during a station stop.