[JeremyBarbosa]

>The City was among America’s premier trains, a luxury streamliner that could hit 110 miles per hour while white-jacketed waiters balanced trays of cocktails

I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later (aside from the life-threatening storms, of course). The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!

More on topic, I was surprised to read:

> When the steam generators’ water tanks ran dry, heat disappeared, too.

Weren't there surrounded by frozen water? Is there any reason snow couldn't be used in an emergency to heat the train?

[basementcat]

> I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later (aside from the life-threatening storms, of course). The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!

I don't think people ride the California Zephyr to get from Chicago to the Bay Area as quickly as possible. Most of us spent as much time as possible in the observation car marveling at the Rockies and Sierras.

[pessimizer]

> I don't think people ride the California Zephyr to get from Chicago to the Bay Area as quickly as possible.

Of course they don't. It's too slow. Our rail shouldn't be as bad as it is.

I love that trip, and I've taken it more than twice, oohing and ahhing all the way, but I do not need it to last as long as it does.

[colonelspace]

A few reasons that occur to me:

1. The volume of snow to be collected would have been significantly greater than the resulting water.

2. Heating snow at elevation requires more energy.

3. Perhaps getting snow into the steam generator wasn't so easy.

[glaucon]

> The volume of snow to be collected would have been significantly greater than the resulting water.

Yes, dependent on the nature of the snow but a broad idea is that if you want a litre of water, you need five litres of snow.

[SketchySeaBeast]

The stat I've seen is even worse at 10:1.

[Arjeigh]

Depending on elevation, the type of parent storm, the ambient temperature, and other factors, the water content to snow can vary from 1:6 - very heavy chunky lake effect snow falling right at the freezing point, the kind you get wet just walking from the car to the door, to 1:12 , the kind typically seen in mountainous, more semi-arid locales. The fine white snowboarding/skiing snow. Generally the colder the air, the less moisture in the snow, same with height, unless it's precipitating out due to orographic uplift first.

[xarope]

anecdotally I think I've had to scoop about 30l of snow in a stuff sack, to get about 2-3l of melted water (of which I've probably added at least a cup or 2 of water to get started - to prevent the bottom of the pot being scorched by heat before the snow melts), so that sounds about right.

[dylan604]

> I wonder how passengers back then would have imagined rail travel today, 75 years later

Show them the airplane that gets them to the same destination in a couple of hours vs days

[Retric]

It was January 13, 1952 they had airlines.

[stevenwoo]

OTOH, flying was considered a luxury in the USA until the airlines were deregulated in 1978. https://www.npr.org/2024/07/05/1197960905/flying-airlines-de...

[Retric]

Deregulation had far less impact on prices than people generally quote. Getting out of the energy crisis did a lot to shift prices quickly which made it seem like deregulation was suddenly working. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970s_energy_crisis

Longer term Airlines got a lot better and a lot cheaper worldwide at roughly the same rates because things like fuel economy and engine maintenance timescales skyrocketed.

[opo]

The general consensus among economists is that deregulation had a big effect on airline prices. For example:

>...Every serious study of airline deregulation in the intervening years has found that travelers have indeed benefited enormously. As we documented in our 1995 Brookings book, The Evolution of the Airline Industry, airfares, adjusted for inflation, fell 33 percent between 1976—just before the CAB instigated regulatory reforms—and 1993. Deregulation was directly responsible for at least 60 percent of the decline—responsible, that is, for a 20 percent drop in fares. And travelers have benefited not only from low fares, but from better service, particularly increased flight frequency.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-fare-skies-air-transp...

[Retric]

Percentage drops don’t add they multiply.

A 20% drop on its own is 20%, but if prices fell 33% it requires a separate 16.25% drop not a 13% drop. Meaning deregulation was responsible for 55% of the total decline for the numbers to work out.

PS: If they’re confused or lying in just that blurb I’d question the rest of their analysis.

[stevenwoo]

I am not an expert, just recalling the latest thing I heard/read about the subject but I think we can both agree that in the 1950-1960s inclusive, flying was not egalitarian as it was after the changes in operating environment we discuss.

[vel0city]

Yeah I mean you hear about what a lot of airlines were like and many domestic first/business class seemingly don't even compare despite energy costs were significantly higher.

[refurb]

Airline regulation set floor prices to certain routes so I’m not sure how the energy crisis resolving would have fixed that.

[Retric]

Which is why I said less of an impact not zero impact.

Regulators didn’t set floor prices to wildly unreasonable levels. So yes, it did modestly lower prices and service quality because airlines now competed in different ways. But we’re talking the difference in the cost of an inflight meal etc not some wildly different number. For that you needed wildly more efficient aircraft from other companies.

Post regulations we also got lots of bankruptcies and bailouts which shifted costs from consumers to taxpayers.

[worik]

> Weren't there surrounded by frozen water? Is there any reason snow couldn't be used in an emergency to heat the train?

I have tried this.

Snow is not very dense. A lot of snow makes a very small amount of water. Quite an astonishingly small amount of water

I expect the steam generators were quite thirsty, I do not know.

[deepsun]

There were special water filling stations on many stops.

That's why currently running steam engines are better off with diesel pushing them: https://youtu.be/12Zpb0Yh-sM

[Animats]

UP's Big Boy got some upgrades after a year or two of touring the UP system. It no longer needs a Diesel helper. Previously, the helper engine carried the modern Positive Train Control gear, and the steam engine cab had a display connected by a cable to the Diesel helper. Now, UP 4014 has its own PTC gear and antenna in the tender, so it's self-sufficient. UP runs that engine on heavily used main line track, so it needs to be fully connected to safety and dispatching systems.

This was mostly a power problem. UP 4014 had a small steam turbogenerator atop the boiler to power lights and such. Now it has three such generators, and there's enough electric power to run auxiliary equipment.

UP did a serious rebuild on the Big Boy, to original main-line standards. Many parts were fabricated from scratch. It's ready for regular use for decades. Most heritage railroads lack the resources for such major overhauls.

Here's the first test run with no Diesel, in May 2024.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJZ6NO5rhQ

[DonHopkins]

Oh, "PTC gear" as in equipment, not just one magical gear that prevents accidents, as popped into my mind at first!

[redmajor12]

Is PTC the first step in getting rid of human engineers, billed as a safety system?

[sonofhans]

Snow is dirty, and getting dirty water into a high pressure steam engine is an awful idea, even in the short term.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Why, where and how is snow dirty?

The much bigger issue that steam is massively less dense that liquid water: roughly a 1:10 ratio. Loading up 10x more snow than you need water is no small task.

[sonofhans]

Snow is dirty all the time, everywhere, especially near commonly-used train lines. It’s not difficult science. Particulates, dead insects, leaves, mouse shit — all end up in snow. Scoop up a bucket of snow and melt it and I guarantee you’ll see a bunch of crap in the bottom of it.

[gaadd33]

Is that true at 7k ft on a train line that only has 1 train on it? I can understand next to a busy freight line or something like that but it seems like freshly blown snow (to the volume that it stops a train) wouldn't have much in it. I can't say I know the purity of snow at that altitude though.

[bobmcnamara]

A 12 foot snowslide might have trees in it.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

You must be thinking of a different kind of snow than I am. Have you ever been through Donner Pass?

[RandallBrown]

Yes. Every piece of snow crystallizes around a piece of dust or something else in the air. Even the prettiest snow in the world will have some "junk" in it after you melt it. Not to mention all the stuff that falls off nearby trees and passing trains.

[sonofhans]

I’ve played in snow on most continents, in the wild and the urban. Never have I seen snow clean enough to put into a steam engine. You may be underestimating (a) how important clean water is in this context, (b) how much particulate matter there is in the air and, thus, in snow.

[VBprogrammer]

I don't really have time for a deep dive but from a brief look these are diesel electric trains. The water and steam we are talking about here is likely a simple boiler where the steam is only used to deliver heat to the carriages.

This is similar to heating systems installed in skyscrapers of the period (I'd definitely recommend this video if you haven't seen it https://youtu.be/nkgM0qCy5o4?si=46vNv6aaoYHcDO2l).

After the steam condenses the water in a skyscraper is trivially returned to the boiler (by gravity). However, on a train I suspect they run it as a total loss system and the condensate is simply discharged when it reaches a trap.

This whole system is relatively low pressure and, more important, low velocity so it's unlikely it would have caused an immediate issue (the train would obviously have required work before going back into service in any case).

I think the problem is more likely to have been an inability to collect enough snow to make a meaningful amount of water, in addition, it would likely have needed to be liquid to introduce it to the boiler, you can't just shovel it in.

[unwind]

I think you had a typo, you meant "snow" where you wrote "steam".

For the water:steam ratio, obviously it's an expansion and I think it's around 1:1,600. Steam wants space.

[rsynnott]

> The Overland Route is now freight-only, and the closest equivalent, the California Zephyr, takes about 52 hours to make the journey this train did in just 40!

I mean, this is largely a product of the US's general disinterest in and underinvestment in passenger rail; with a modern high speed system it'd be about 10 hours.

10 hours is _probably_ too long to be particularly useful, mind you; people would just fly. The sweet spot for high-speed rail is more in the 5 hour and less range; at that point when you factor in the faffing around involved in getting to airports, going through security, the inevitable delays etc, the train is still faster.

The longest high-speed route in the world is about this length: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing–Kunming_high-speed_tra...

[chrisco255]

It's doubtful that you could build a high speed rail that could fly from Chicago through the Rockies to California in 10 hours. Even more doubtful that the cost benefit would be worth it considering you can fly from Chicago to the Bay Area in 3.5 hours. And you can't factor time spent getting to airport and not factor time to train station and time to stop at other major cities on the way (as trains are wont to do).

The Chinese route you mentioned does not need to go through one of the largest mountain ranges in the world. It's also at least 15-20% shorter than the distance from Chicago to SF, and experiences much less elevation change over the course of the journey. And the wiki article claims it "averages 10.5 to 13.5 hours", so there is a huge amount of variability in time to travel on that route.

[rsynnott]

> And the wiki article claims it "averages 10.5 to 13.5 hours", so there is a huge amount of variability in time to travel on that route.

Yeah, I think it depends on how many stops it calls it; there are a few different services on that line. While it's a high speed line they're mostly not classic express services and actually have quite a few stops. I'd expect a notional Chicago->California high speed line would have fewer. A journey with no stops at all at 300km/h (ie high standard high speed rail, but not absolute state of the art) would be 10 hours; any stops would add a bit.

> And you can't factor time spent getting to airport and not factor time to train station

As a general rule, airports are not hugely conveniently located. Normally intercity rail in big cities will depart from a central train station, which usually will really be quite central, and will be linked into all the other transport. You get there, and walk onto the train, and you're done.

The airport will _never_ be central, for obvious reasons, and if it has a rail line at all, it will likely be a single line, usually relatively infrequent, and, for some reason, with the airport end almost always extremely inconveniently located (this seems to be a law of nature). You'll want to get there at least an hour in advance, and the plan will likely be delayed at least somewhat on both ends. At least one queue will be involved. On the other end, you will then make your way slowly into the city.

[campl3r]

10 hours are perfect for a night train