US Railways. US railroads: subsidies and government control Development of railroads in America

The use of electricity as an energy source for traction of trains was first demonstrated at an industrial exhibition in Berlin in 1879, where a model of an electric railway was presented. A train consisting of a 2.2 kW locomotive and three carriages, each of which could accommodate up to 6 passengers, moved along a section less than 300 m long at a speed of 7 km/h. The creators of the new type of traction were the famous German scientist, inventor and industrialist Ernst Werner von Siemens (Werner von Siemens, 1816-1892) and engineer Halske.

The electric line and train demonstrated at the exhibition instantly became a sensation. Over the course of 4 months, the train transported about 90,000 exhibition visitors. DC electricity with a voltage of 150 V was supplied to the electric locomotive via a contact rail located between the rails; the return wire was the rails along which the train moved. The draft was controlled using a water rheostat.

A copy of the first electric locomotive from Siemens and Halske (1879) in the German Railways Museum. in Nuremberg.
Photo: Oleg Nazarov, 2010.

Swiss engineer Rene Thury (1860-1938) built an experimental mountain rack and pinion road in the suburbs of Montreux in 1884. Movement along the site to the mountain hotel with a slope of 30‰ and a length of 300 m was carried out by a two-axle locomotive, which could also carry 4 passengers.

The first trams

The expansion of the use of electric traction at the first stage encountered serious resistance from officials due to misunderstanding or often unwillingness to change anything.

Because of this mistrust, Ernst Werner von Siemens had to build a demonstration model of an electric tram at his own expense. The world's first permanently operating electric tram line opened in Berlin in the spring of 1881.

In the USA, the appearance of electric traction is associated with the name of the inventor Franklin J. Sparga (1857-1934), who is called in America the “father of electric traction.” In 1880, F. Sparg received a patent for a system for collecting current from a contact wire with a contact wheel on a pantograph, using which in 1887 the first electric tram system in the United States, the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, was built in Richmond (Virginia). Here, on February 2, 1888, the ability to operate without problems was demonstrated for the first time. tram lines with slopes up to 10‰, which was previously impossible with horse traction.

Electric tram in Richmond (USA) using the Franklin Sparga system. Postcard from 1923.
Source: Wikipedia.

The Russian engineer-inventor Fyodor Apollonovich Pirotsky (1845-1898) began to conduct experiments using electricity in 1874. In 1875, in St. Petersburg, on a section of the Sestroretsk railway, he conducted experiments with electric cars, for which about one mile of the track was electrified. In his design, the rails were connected to a Graham generator. Both rails were isolated from the ground, one of them was a direct conductor, and the other was a return conductor.

Based on the experiments carried out in 1880, at his own expense he upgraded one city horse-drawn double-decker tram in St. Petersburg to electric traction, and on September 3 an unusual public transport begins to transport residents of St. Petersburg, despite open protests from the owners of horse-drawn trams. A carriage weighing 7 tons could carry up to 40 passengers at a speed of 12-14 km/h. Pirotsky's experiments continued for several days until the end of September 1880, after which he proposed replacing all horse-drawn trams in St. Petersburg with electric trams. Unfortunately, like everything new, the idea of ​​the Russian engineer was treated with distrust; the papers wandered around the offices of officials for a long time , there were no funds available for its implementation for a long time. And only in 1892, when electric trams had already successfully conquered European cities, they appeared on the streets of St. Petersburg.

Engineer F.B. Bespalov, in the brochure “Electric Economic Railway” published in 1894, substantiated the principle of controlling several cars in a coupling from one post - perhaps for the first time in the world. This is a key principle for managing multi-section rolling stock.

The first electric locomotives

For the first time in industrial use, a section of electric railway approximately 2 km long was launched in 1879 at a textile factory in French city Breile.

In the UK, the first line to be electrified at 500 V DC using a contact rail was the 5.6 km underground City & South London Railway, opened in 1890. The company Messrs Mather & Platt and Siemens Bros supplied 16 electric locomotives for it, each equipped with 2 gearless traction motors with a power of 36.7 kW. In fact, it was the world's first subway.

The first section of the main electric railway, 11.2 km long, was opened in 1895 in the USA between Baltimore and Ohio (Baltimore Belt Line) with a catenary voltage of 675 V DC. The line consisted of an open section 6.4 km long and an underground section within the city. Electric locomotives for it were supplied by General Electric.

Europe's first experimental electric locomotive for main lines was created by the Hungarian engineer Kalman Kando in 1894. The electric locomotive was powered by a three-phase high voltage network of 3300 V with a frequency of 15 Hz and was equipped with an asynchronous traction motor. A new electrical machine invented by Kando, a phase shifter, was used as a converter. K. Kando has the same meaning for European engineers as F. Sparg for Americans, therefore in European countries K. Kando (1869-1931) is considered the “father of electric traction”.

Electric locomotives designed by K. Cando were used in Italy to organize traffic on a full-fledged railway route (before that they were used only on certain sections of roads). Energy was supplied to the electric locomotive through two contact wires; rails were used as the third phase.

Electric locomotive Kalman Kando (Hungary) for Italy.

He also wrote that in Florida they are designing a high-speed line specifically for this locomotive. It will be called "Brightline" and will be the first high-speed private railway in modern history USA. The construction of the line is progressing as usual. The tracks are being reconstructed and stations are being built.
And at the Siemens plant in Sacramento, the first train of two diesel locomotives and four cars was assembled. The cars are assembled in the same place as the diesel locomotives, in Sacramento. Now the first train of five is being transported from California to Florida, to its future place of work.

The design of the cars and colors match the name - bright and memorable. As someone said in the comments to this photo on Rail Pictures, well, design has finally gone “from form to function”, and not the other way around.

Although four cars for two fairly powerful diesel locomotives seems to me to be a kind of waste. Some purely American redundancy in the spirit of the Silver Age trains, when three or four motor sections could be attached to a train.

The Brightline will connect the cities of Miami and Orlando, passing through international Airport Orlando. The length of the line will be 390 kilometers. New trains are planned to run at hourly intervals. The planned average speed will be about 130 kilometers per hour. That is, approximately the same as on the only high-speed railway in the United States, the Northeast Corridor. People have already nicknamed these trains in the Japanese style "bullet train".

But I don’t understand why the expressway wasn’t electrified. After all, they could order electric locomotives for it, which are made there at the Siemens plant in Sacramento.
By the way, the Siemens company has been seducing its American partners for some time now by exhibiting in the Sacramento Railway Museum the head car of a train of the same type as the Sapsan. And before, he stood in the square in front of the local California Capitol. The Germans seem to say:
- This is the railway future of California and the entire United States. Just find the money to build the road, and we will make the carriages for you.

United States North America have one of the largest railway networks of any country in the world. This network was created in conditions of fierce competition, unplanned and with a certain spontaneity. The lack of planning, which was most clearly manifested in the placement of the railway network, left its mark on the development of individual branches of the railway industry. In the track sector, in which the process of updating fixed assets proceeds more slowly than, for example, in the field of rolling stock management, this lack of planning is most obvious. First of all, it is expressed in the enormous diversity of the superstructure, in the diversity of even the fundamental dimensions of the transverse profile of the subgrade, in the great diversity of artificial structures, etc.
It is obvious that the diversity in rail profiles, especially those of the same weight, which gives rise to a variety of switches and fastenings and introduces very serious complications in the management of track facilities and in the operation of metallurgical plants, was not caused either by the diversity of operating conditions or by any other practically expedient need.

In terms of its technical equipment and methods of maintenance, the US railways are extremely heterogeneous. Along with the use of technically backward and outdated track structures and clearly imperfect methods of their maintenance, on some of the most active and profitable roads the track facilities are at a high technical level. They use not only noteworthy track designs, but also carefully developed, especially from an economic point of view, methods for its repair and maintenance.
This experience is of undoubted interest, especially since in terms of load intensity, axial loads and type of traction, as well as the similarity climatic conditions The railroads of the United States are much closer to the railroads of Russia than the roads of any other country.

As is known, in American practice, the maintenance of tracks and structures includes not only the railway track and artificial structures, but also all other structures and permanent devices located in the right of way - service and technical buildings, water supply devices, equipment, signaling systems, etc.

Electric and diesel locomotives

The development of track facilities is always and in many respects connected with the impact on the track of rolling stock and the practice of its use, as well as with the size of traffic. Therefore, before moving on to a consideration of the technical condition of the American route, it is necessary to briefly highlight those operational factors, without taking into account which it is impossible to approach its correct assessment.
As is known, the most important operational factors affecting the operation of the track include the type of traction, axial loads of locomotives and cars, travel speeds and load density.
The majority of diesel locomotives in operation have axle loads of 28 tons.
Every year the number of diesel locomotives with loads from 29 to 30 tons increases and the fleet of diesel locomotives with axle loads of less than 25 tons decreases. Car loads are no less important in terms of their impact on the track (Table 1).
Table 1

Car types	Gruzopod capacity	Tare weight 3	Axial load value in t		Specific percentage in common park
			normal Naya	at maximum overload
Boxcar
Gondola and hopper. . .
Self-unloading
Hopper for cement. . .
Six-axle hopper. . .
Isothermal car
Tank with maximum
load capacity
Flat car
Cattle wagon
Conveyor, etc.

From the table 1 shows that when the carrying capacity of the cars is fully used, their axle loads do not exceed 22 tons. The only exception is isothermal cars, for which they are equal to 23 tons, but such cars in the total fleet are only 6.2%.
In table 1, along with normal axial loads, shows the loads resulting from the maximum permissible overload of cars, which in the practice of US railways is standardized by the strength of the axles (neck size) and is designated on the cars as their maximum load. Maximum loads of cars are allowed only in exceptional cases.
The weighted average axle load for the entire fleet of freight cars is 19.8 tons. The value of the most common car loads is 19-40% less than the same locomotive loads. This circumstance is very important for the operation of the track, since at least 85% of the ton-kilometer work is created by cars. The axle loads of passenger cars are much lower than those of freight cars, and are in the range of 12-18 tons.
American railroads offer the highest speeds for both freight and passenger trains.
Axial loads and train speeds determine only the degree of impact of the rolling stock on the track. The number of these impacts per unit of time depends on the load intensity.
Due to the unstable volume of freight turnover on US railroads, the freight load on individual roads is also subject to some fluctuations. The freight intensity of US railways is more than three times lower than the freight intensity of Russian railways, but it is much higher than the freight intensity of railways major countries European Union. Freight load as one of the most important operational factors is taken into account when determining the required bearing capacity of the track superstructure.
According to the Interstate Communications Commission, capital investments in tracks and artificial structures are distributed as follows (Table 2).
table 2

Title of articles	Cost in million dollars	% of total railway capital investments
Subgrade and right-of-way
Artificial constructions
Other travel materials
Works on laying the superstructure
Crossings, fences and waymarks
Track machines and tools

198.3 thousand permanent workers are employed in the maintenance of tracks and structures (17.6% of the total number of railway personnel). These numbers seem quite low. However, it should be taken into account that roads in the spring and summer involve a significant amount of time for repair work. work force. In addition, they often use the services of specialized companies, especially for flaw detection and destruction of vegetation on the canvas.

In connection with the crisis of the American economy and the intensification of competition between railway and other modes of transport, the fall in the volume of transportation work of the railways, and, consequently, a decrease in their profitability, the latter are expending a lot of effort on finding such methods for constructing and maintaining the track, as well as mechanizing track work, which would ensure its maintenance at the appropriate technical level with minimum costs. The technical measures carried out in this regard are not without a certain practical interest.
American railroads have made significant progress in extending the service life of wooden sleepers, improving the design and quality of rails, fastenings and switches, using machines for cleaning and compacting ballast, for changing sleepers and laying rails.

Subgrade.

The design of the roadbed of American railways has certain differences from that adopted on our network. Some of them are worthy of attention. Thus, the minimum width of the main platform of the roadbed of single-track mainline railways is accepted as 6.10 m, and 22% of them (large main lines) have a width of more than 6.70 m. During construction, the dimensions of the ballast prism and the corresponding width of the main platform are assigned taking into account the freight turnover, expected for the 15th or 25th year of operation. This is done because a subsequent increase in the size of the main site is extremely difficult and expensive and is associated with serious interference in operational work.
During construction, a margin is assigned to the width of the main site for erosion, shedding and subsidence of the soil, so that it is 1.5 m larger than the width of the ballast prism at the bottom. When filling from unstable or waterlogged soils, the embankments are given a certain margin in width at the top compared to the norm.
Much attention is paid to soil compaction during construction and the use of numerous designs of light and heavy rollers for this purpose. Filling of soil into an embankment for the purpose of better compaction is allowed only in horizontal layers no more than 30 cm thick. Laying waterlogged soils into an embankment is prohibited. In arid areas, on the contrary, mechanized watering of the soil by tanker trucks is recommended to obtain optimal moisture content, which ensures the greatest compaction.
The role of poor quality is especially emphasized in the occurrence of subgrade diseases. earthworks and poor water drainage during construction and, especially, during operation of the line. Under-compaction of soil in embankments during construction is regarded as one of the main causes (if not the most important) of subsequent deformations.
The methods of healing and strengthening diseased areas of the subgrade differ in significant features.
However, not all of them can find application on our railways. Thus, terracing of slopes of embankments and excavations for the purpose of their stabilization, which is quite widely used on US roads, is ineffective and in many cases unacceptable. Terraces require careful maintenance and can themselves cause deformations if water drainage from them is poor or difficult. Drains with stone filling are also not used on our roads due to their rapid clogging. The scarcity of cement and the results of cementation of large embankments, which have not been sufficiently verified even by the authors themselves, do not allow this measure to be widely recommended in our conditions. The high cost of soil silicification with limited effect when used to stabilize slopes of embankments and excavations makes this measure, well known in Russia, unacceptable. Finally, the driving of piles or old sleepers in the form of a pile barrier, which is widely used in the USA to stabilize the top of high subsiding embankments, cannot be recommended in conditions of high traffic density on our roads.
When reading this section, it is especially necessary to critically evaluate the various measures recommended in the encyclopedia, which in each case should be applied taking into account specific local conditions and characteristics.

Rails.

US railroads use the heaviest rails in the world and consider increasing their weight as the main means of strengthening the track. The laying of heavy rails is carried out not only and not so much to improve train safety, but to reduce operating costs, especially labor costs for track maintenance.
According to observations carried out by AREA, the latter are highly dependent on the weight of the rails lying on the track. For example, according to the results of 10-year observations on the Illinois Central Railway, the average annual costs on the track with rails of 56 kg/m turned out, under other identical conditions, to be higher than on the track with rails of 65 kg/m in terms of labor consumption by 9.5% , in terms of sleeper consumption by 22.4% and in ballast consumption by 23.5%.

Along with heavy rails, there are also a large number of light rails on the road. If in terms of length the first place in given time takes the weight category from 60 to 50 kg/m, then the second place is occupied by rails weighing from 50 to 40 kg/m, and only the third place belongs to the weight category from 70 to 60 kg/m. A significant place (12.6%) is still occupied by rails weighing less than 40 kg/m. As for very heavy rails, weighing more than 70 kg/m, the laying of which began at the end of the First World War, now there are about 6,000 km of them on the road, i.e. less than 2%.
Of particular interest are the AREA recommendations given in the encyclopedia regarding the laying of rails of various weight categories depending on the load intensity and speed of trains, as well as their service life standards.
The standard length of US railroad rails is 11.89 m and only last year, after lengthy research, AREA presented recommendations for converting to rails of double length - 23.78 m. Approximate savings per 1 km of laid rails as a result of reducing the number of joints by half according to data AREA will be $760.4 for rails weighing 57 kg/m with hardened ends and $640.5 for unhardened ends, and $781.3 and $665.9 for rails weighing 65 kg/m, respectively.
Long welded lines (jointless track) began to be tested on American railroads more than a quarter of a century ago. However, with the exception of one Atchison - Topeka and Santa Fe road, which completely replaces new rails with welded rail strands, on all other roads this event has not yet left the stage of experimental study. In the encyclopedia this extremely important and an interesting event not given the necessary attention and the information provided is very meager.
In the “Rails” section, significant space is devoted to the description of various types of rail defects. However, the presentation of this issue is very poor in that it does not contain recommendations for preventing the defects described, except for the controlled cooling of the rails after rolling, as a measure against the occurrence of flakes.
It cannot but surprise the reader that in a number of the cited standards and technical specifications, individual digital values ​​of some normative data were simply omitted when the book was printed, which often depreciates them.
Noteworthy is the practice of American railroads in sorting rolled rails by carbon content and cutting numbers of ingot rails (head, second, etc.), as well as laying them on the track, taking into account the conditions of the upcoming work. For example, rails with a high carbon content are laid in curved sections, the first ingot rails are laid in sections with reduced speeds, etc. Data on the principles of rail profile design, which are used in last years American specialists were guided by the modernization of existing and creation of new rail profiles.

Rail fastenings.

American railroads have long believed that the existing type of crutch attachment of rails to sleepers, characterized by extreme ease of manufacture and use, fully satisfies operational requirements. In recent years, without stopping work on its improvement, they began to search for new, more advanced attachment systems. Wider and wider American roads screws, spring crutches and a separate type of attachment with spring terminals are beginning to be used, used on bridges, at the junction of block sections with turnouts, etc. In addition, rubber gaskets placed between the rail sole and the lining are beginning to be used more and more widely or between the lining and the sleeper.
Unfortunately, the encyclopedia does not provide any data characterizing the performance qualities of all these new designs.
More interesting is the chapter devoted to butt fastenings, containing a number of practical useful information not only in their design, but also in their care during operation.

Path connections.

The switch industry of US railroads is characterized by a wide variety of grades of crosses (13 grades - from 1/5 to 1/20 inclusive) and the use of blind crossings at various angles. This is explained by the lack of unity between the numerous industrial enterprises producing track connection structures, and between individual customer roads belonging to different companies.
A common feature of the switches is the use of points made from track rails of a regular profile, which have relatively weak lateral rigidity. To strengthen them, it is necessary to rivet longitudinal steel strips to the neck on one or both sides, and to reduce the amount of work on sharpening the sole of the blade running onto the base of the frame rail, the blades are placed slightly higher than the frame rails (by 6 mm). This ensures that it is impossible for the frame rail to expand when the band moves along the edge, but it creates an artificial distortion of the track within the arrow, which worsens the traffic conditions. In addition, to ensure reliable translation of both wits, it is necessary to install up to seven connecting rods with long wits. Thus, this decision cannot be considered completely successful. The root attachment of blades with a liner, bent plate and spacer used in the USA is the best possible for hinged blades. Arrows in the USA are made without carriages and without tilt. The attachment to the bars is a crutch.

To increase the permissible speed of movement along a transfer curve, US railways use the installation of symmetrical transfers of various brands. The flattest of the standard turnouts - grade 1/20 - allows movement along the transfer curve at speeds of up to 85 km/h. Recently, the Erie Railroad began laying symmetrical 1/24 grade switches from rails weighing about 70 kg/line. m, allowing speeds up to 127 km/h.
In order to improve the points in the USA, they began to use curved points, trimming the frame rails to cover the points of the points, several connected strips at the point of the points (to stabilize the track width in this place), rollers to facilitate the translation of points, making frame rails and points from high-carbon steel and with heat treatment, the use of special stops with wedges for clamping frame rails, etc.
It should be noted that the switch stops used on Russian railways with horizontal bolts passed through the neck of the frame rail better secure the switch against theft.
The predominant design of crosspieces in the USA is prefabricated with a manganese insert; solid-cast and prefabricated rail crosspieces are also used. On station tracks there are so-called self-protecting crosspieces with flanges without counter rails. Such crosspieces are not applicable in our conditions due to the different widths of tires on locomotive and carriage wheels.
Crosspieces with a movable guardrail (for turnouts with rare passage of trains on the side track), as well as blunt crosspieces with movable cores (in cross-switches and blind intersections), are widely used in the United States. The latter design is very positive, since it ensures the passage of rolling stock along a blunt cross without any harmful space, i.e., it eliminates the danger of derailments.

Sleepers.

Due to the high costs of sleeper maintenance, American railroads place great emphasis on increasing the service life of sleepers. In the last eight years, the annual change of sleepers did not exceed 3% of the number of sleepers lying on the road. This means that the average service life of sleepers already exceeds 30 years. In the previous decade, sleeper replacement averaged 4.4%, i.e. the average service life was 23 years. Such significant achievements in improving the service life of sleepers in one decade deserve serious attention.
More than 20 tree species are used for sleepers in the United States. The vast majority of sleepers are made from hardwood. In the post-war period, 40-47% of the total volume of sleepers laid was made from oak, from pine - 20-26%, from fir -8-10%, from larch - 3-4%, from eucalyptus - 6-8%, from various deciduous species (maple, birch, beech, etc.) - 6-7%.
Of the total volume of sleepers supplied, 78% are laid in timber type and 22% are hewn on two edges.
Sleepers are removed from the track for a variety of reasons. Their specific value in the total yield varies within very wide limits. For example, according to AREA, the yield for rotting was 55.5%, for cracking - 16.8%, for mechanical wear in the area of ​​the linings, including splitting from crutches - 20.8%, damage due to derailments rolling stock rails - 4.2%, due to natural defects - 0.2%, due to breaks - 0.1% and for other reasons - 2.4%.

However, these data are subject to very large fluctuations depending on climatic and operating conditions. For example, according to the Santa Fe Railroad, which examined 80,362 sleepers removed from the tracks; by type of defects they were distributed as follows: rotting - 3.8%, mechanical wear in the area of ​​the linings - 20.2%, longitudinal cracks (split sleepers) - 31.5%, cracks at the end - 29.2%, fracture - 1 .9%, damage from rolling stock derailment - 9.5%, scratches on annual rings - 3.9%.
American railroads avoid laying untreated sleepers. The percentage of installation of the latter has not exceeded 1-2 for a long time. Due to the high average service life of wooden sleepers and the fairly even distribution of forest resources across the country, US railroads consider it economically infeasible to use any substitutes for wooden sleepers, including the installation of reinforced concrete sleepers. Therefore, they are not covered in the encyclopedia.
In the field of sleepers, the most interesting issues are the issues of increasing the service life of sleepers on American railways. In addition to the manufacture of sleepers from hard wood, the most important measures aimed at solving this problem are:
high requirements of technical conditions for the supply of sleepers developed by AREA, and careful monitoring of their compliance by road acceptance inspectors;
precise compliance by sleeper impregnation plants with all established rules for storage and impregnation of sleepers;
impregnation of sleepers, as a rule, with highly toxic oily antiseptics;
performing all the required mechanical processing of sleepers before impregnation (drilling holes for crutches and screws, trimming in the area of ​​linings, etc.);
preliminary pricking of hard-to-impregnate wood species;
implementation of preventive measures to combat cracking of sleepers, which consists of driving in end brackets when stacking sleepers for air drying or using waterproofing coatings of sleepers with heated bitumen or special mastics;
mandatory implementation of preventive measures to combat mechanical wear of sleepers.
These measures, in addition to increasing the weight of the rails and improving the maintenance of the track, especially the ballast layer and drainage systems, come down to increasing the area of ​​the pads, always drilling the crutch holes before impregnation, using sheathing crutches, laying spacers under the rail pads and, finally, gluing the rail pads to the sleepers , eliminating their vibration when trains pass.
Extremely great attention is paid to careful handling of sleepers after their impregnation, especially when loading into rolling stock and unloading onto the track.
In the encyclopedia, all these recommendations, which are of great practical importance, are presented very schematically and incompletely. However, this gap is partially filled by the fact that for a number of them current standards and technical conditions are given, familiarity with which, despite the fact that they are designed for specific conditions, is certainly useful.

Ballast materials.

At this time, the route to the USA by type of ballast is distributed as follows: crushed hard rock - 15%, crushed limestone - 9%, sorted crushed gravel - 18%, quarry gravel - 11%, blast furnace slag - 14%, even rocks (ore waste) - 7%, fuel slag - 18%, sand and other materials - 8%.
Requirements for ballast materials are usually differentiated depending on the freight turnover of the lines and train speeds. When manufacturing ballasts, it is possible to artificially achieve a more complete compliance of their properties with technical requirements. Therefore, as a rule, ballast materials in their natural form are not recommended for lines with large cargo turnover.
Simultaneously with the use of ballast materials High Quality American railroads pay great attention to establishing such dimensions of the ballast prism that ensure high and long-term track stability.
It is believed that the additional consumption of ballast materials is compensated by savings in track maintenance costs. For mainline railroads, AREA recommends that the maximum thickness of the ballast prism under the sleeper be equal to 75 cm, taking into account the cushion. On the main lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The thickness of the crushed stone ballast is taken to be 46 cm, and the cushion - 30 cm. The width of the shoulders of the ballast prism, on which the lateral stability of the track largely depends, is recommended to be set from 15 to 30 cm, the steepness of the slopes is taken to be 1: 2 and 1: 25.
The American experience in constructing a ballast prism is of certain interest for domestic railways. Not without interest is the use of bitumen coating on some American railways as a means of protecting the ballast layer from pollution, which, as reported in the encyclopedia, also helps to reduce cracking of sleepers and their longer operation without tamping.

Travel works.

US railroads use a variety of track repair and maintenance methods and have extensive experience in both organizing and mechanizing track work on crushed stone.
In the field of work organization, of great interest is the currently observed process of consolidation of work departments and the use of traveling department teams of about 5 people for the current maintenance of the track, which carry out the necessary minor work throughout the entire work department. The development of this system is facilitated by a reduction in the annual volume of work on current track maintenance. The latter is due, on the one hand, to a drop in freight turnover and an increase in the load-bearing capacity of the superstructure of the track and, on the other hand, to the transition on many roads to the periodic implementation of continuous lifting and tamping of the track.
In recent years, fully mechanized teams of about 40-50 people have begun to be used for continuous lifting and tamping of tracks, especially those accompanied by changing rails, cleaning and adding ballast. Such teams perform about 2 km of continuous lifting with tamping of sleepers per shift. These mechanized brigades have road subordination. If the roads are long, on average one such brigade is created per 2 thousand km of track. In this case, repair teams of remote and local subordination are eliminated.

Of particular interest are systems for lifting tracks on crushed stone ballast, methods for cleaning crushed stone, the latest railcars, including those with devices for moving on a highway, as well as the use of houses attached to vehicles, intended for housing workers and for office premises.

The specificity of track maintenance and repair conditions on US railroads should be taken into account. For example, the low traffic load allows the use of track repair technology designed for long haul hauls. Certain methods and techniques require a very critical approach when assessing their usefulness, for example, the method of cleaning a crushed stone prism, in which an increase in the drainage properties of ballast is achieved mainly by moving pollutants to the lower layers of the ballast prism.
American railroads pay great attention to the destruction of vegetation within the ballast prism, on the sides of the roadbed and in the right-of-way. This experience is of undoubted practical interest.
In the fight against snow drifts at large stations, trackless snow blowers and electric heaters on switches are widely used.
In terms of the saturation of track facilities with machines and mechanisms, in terms of the degree of mechanization of various track works, US railways occupy one of the first places in the world.
The most widely used on US railways are vehicles, mainly motorized railcars of all types, intended for transporting workers, track workers to the place of work
materials and equipment, as well as for control purposes.
Huge purchases of vehicles are determined by the adopted system for organizing track repair and maintenance work, based on the use of specialized teams.

A large number of machines and mechanisms are purchased for compaction, cleaning and leveling of the ballast layer.
A wide range of machines is used to maintain and improve the roadbed. These include bulldozers, high-power scrapers, levelers, draglines, tractor-mounted shovels, spreaders, ditchers, road rollers, self-unloading platforms and others.
The introduction of mechanization has significantly reduced the cost of track repair and maintenance, increased labor productivity and significantly improved the quality of track work. A commission to study the economic efficiency of track mechanization on the Pennsylvania and some other roads found that the introduction of mechanization led to a reduction in the cost of work in relation to the manual method of performing it in the following amounts (in%):
Changing rails to 31-35
Tamping sleepers for 26-29
Loading and unloading operations at 77-117
Replacing ballast with 40-48
Drilling rails at 26-50
Unscrewing and screwing nuts 7-19
Digging ditches and ditches at 221-225
Destruction of vegetation on. . . 200-400

Methods for quickly freeing repaired tracks from various machines and mechanisms used in these works, through the use of special designs of removable devices, special cranes for removing machines from the path, adding earth to embankments in order to create platforms for placing machines, etc., deserve serious attention. The experience of mechanization of track work in the USA is so significant that even a general acquaintance with it is not without significant interest.

Artificial constructions.

There is no construction of new artificial structures in the United States due to the cessation of railroad construction. However, quite a large amount of work is being carried out there to rebuild, strengthen and repair bridges and tunnels.
The experience gained is reflected in the AREA recommendations, which are of significant interest. These recommendations are provided in translation without significant abbreviations. Unfortunately, the encyclopedia does not contain standards for the design of artificial structures.
Bridge piers on U.S. railroads are typically constructed of stone, concrete, or reinforced concrete and are either solid or hollow-core. Prefabricated supports are used in some cases only for overpasses. Recently, more rational designs of intermediate bridge supports made of metal and reinforced concrete cylindrical shells, bulls in the form of high grillages on reinforced concrete and metal piles have been used.
In terms of number and length, overpasses make up about 60% of all structures; Most of them are built of wood, with reinforced concrete trestles in second place and metal trestles in third place.
Much attention is paid to the issues of wood preservatives and waterproofing of massive structures.
For the construction of overpasses and piling works, timber impregnated with antiseptics is supplied, which, as a rule, does not require further processing at the construction site. There are detailed instructions on the procedure for antiseptic bolt holes and other places where during construction the impregnated layer would have to be disturbed for some reason.

The use of reinforced concrete beam spans, including prefabricated ones, is limited to spans of 18 m. There are structures with direct attachment of the track rail to a beam or slab, which is a promising solution for the conditions of Russian railways.
Pre-stressed spans are almost never used.
It should be noted the use of high-strength bolts for metal spans as connections, as well as the beginning introduction of aluminum alloys.
The ballast trough on metal and reinforced concrete spans is often made of wood, which from our point of view is irrational.
Unfortunately, the issues of organizing the current maintenance of artificial structures are not reflected, nor is the impact on bridges of heavy loads and high speeds of their circulation. Meanwhile, it is known that on a number of American bridges that suffered from certain design flaws, these circumstances led to the appearance of significant defects.
Pipes under railroad embankments are common on U.S. roads. Currently, they are often used when backfilling existing overpasses. Along with other types, pipes made of corrugated iron with a diameter of up to 4.5 m, as well as antiseptic wood, are widely used. To construct pipes under existing embankments, slots, tunnel methods, and also the method of pushing pipes with jacks are used. Headings are not suitable in all cases.

In a number of cases, according to American experience, it turns out to be advisable to replace an existing tunnel with a deep excavation, using modern powerful earth-moving equipment.

Building.

This means locomotive and carriage depots, freight stations and their equipment, power plants and boiler houses, passenger stations, carriage scales, prefabricated railway buildings and equipment for supplying trains with ice. In addition, heating and ventilation systems, equipment for electric lighting, floor structures, platforms, gates, windows, skylights and others.

It is known that in the practice of construction of industrial, railway and residential buildings in the USA, there are quite interesting solutions regarding design standards, reducing the weight of structures, increasing their durability, rational use of materials used for the construction of buildings, and much more.

Considerable attention should be paid to equipment arrangements, location of liquid fuel supply points, transfer stations and fuel storage.
In American construction practice, precast reinforced concrete is used in relatively small quantities. The necessary base for its production has not yet been created there.
For the purpose of possible redevelopment of locomotive depot premises during operation, some internal walls and partitions are made movable or collapsible, allowing for relatively easy rearrangement or removal.
Heating of workshops is carried out by the installation of radiant systems consisting of heating devices (pipes, radiators) built into walls or floors, heated by steam, hot water or air. Radiant systems built into floors provide a continuous supply of warm air rising from the floor, resulting in a more stable normal temperature in the work area.
For insulation of industrial buildings, reinforced shaped glass is often used, manufactured in the form of hollow blocks and laid, like brickwork, in openings instead of frames.
Radiant heating and shaped glass are not new to Soviet builders, but American practice indicates the advisability of their wider distribution.
Transportation of goods in semi-trailer containers, also used now in some European countries, this method of transporting goods consists of using covered carts on tires, called semi-trailer containers. They are unloaded by tractors specially designed for this purpose.
The AREA recommendations for this section provide the types of warehouses, design requirements for them and the materials from which they should be built, fire safety measures, etc.
Conveyors operating under the influence of the weight of the goods they move are widely used.
There are special requirements for the design and construction of floors, passages, driveways, etc., so that the surfaces of the coatings on which vehicles move are smooth and durable.
The equipment for the mechanization of loading and unloading operations is basically the same as that used on Russian railways - forklifts, truck cranes, tractor-trailers, electric cars, etc. Along with this, suspended cable cars and cable cars running under the floor of the warehouses. Vertical movement of goods is carried out in the same way as ours, using elevators.
The encyclopedia emphasizes that recently American thermal power plants have achieved great perfection.
When designing stations, it is recommended to pay special attention to operating efficiency and structural strength. The following characteristic remarks are given: “Many consider architecture to be the main indicator of culture, yet buildings are usually built not in order to create architecture, but for some practical purpose” or “all railway buildings are built not for decoration, but in order to use them and exploit them."
The need to create comfort for passengers is pointed out, by which we do not mean architectural decoration, but the satisfaction of their practical needs.
Air conditioning equipment, automatic lockers and other luggage storage facilities are provided at the stations. Tickets are sold automatically using electrical equipment, which significantly speeds up passenger service. Vending machines dispensing drinks and water are widely used.
The AREA guidelines for station renovations provide general requirements that must be taken into account during design. Here, special attention is paid to the need to create amenities for passengers and ensure cleanliness and order.
The encyclopedia pays great attention to the economic side of construction and operation of buildings. However, it does not provide any specific comparisons, calculated data, etc.
Regarding prefabricated buildings, it is indicated that they can be made from a wide variety of materials. However, it only talks about metal and wooden prefabricated structures. The delivery of structures is carried out by special companies and concerns with a high degree of technical readiness, which does not require finishing them at the assembly site, and installation, in the presence of an experienced supervisor, can be carried out by low-skilled workers.
The types of roofing materials and the requirements for them generally do not differ from those used in Russia. Recently, in the USA they began to produce roll roofing from inorganic artificial fiber - glass threads coated with bitumen. The mesh fabric is laid in one layer and heated bitumen is rolled onto it using a roller. The encyclopedia states that this type of roofing can be glued to both wet and dry surfaces. This roof is of some interest, but the information about it in the encyclopedia does not cover the entire practical side of the matter.
Much attention in the encyclopedia is paid to issues of equipment for electric lighting. Factors influencing the design of electric lighting should be considered in sufficient detail. railway stations, workshops, goods yards, etc. Familiarize yourself with recommendations for the maintenance and repair of lighting equipment. Some new methods of lighting, in particular through improvements in the design of incandescent lamps by installing reflectors in the bulb itself, etc. Also interesting are the lighting standards in various rooms, which are of practical interest.

Devices for equipping and cleaning rolling stock.

We are talking about the equipment, construction, construction and operation of equipment facilities for diesel locomotives, tanks for storing diesel fuel, oils and water, organization of cleaning and washing of locomotives and passenger cars, construction of pipelines. Considerable space is devoted to the issue of treating water consumed by diesel locomotives and steam locomotives. In addition, some data regarding separation and other methods of purifying petroleum products, sewage water and collecting oils during these operations.

Along with issues of significant interest, such as the original designs of devices for supplying diesel locomotives with diesel fuel, oil, water and sand, as well as the organization of in-line cleaning of rolling stock, chemical cleaning and water treatment, pump designs, devices for cleaning the internal surfaces of pipes etc., you can consider descriptions of well-known methods of equipment and devices. The latter include such issues as methods of manufacturing and constructing metal tanks, pipelines, water treatment inside the boiler, the use of mobile gas tankers to supply diesel locomotives with fuel, etc.

Signaling and radio communications.

We are talking about rules and recommendations that are essentially close to the technical specifications for the construction, testing and maintenance of signaling devices established by the signaling section of the Association of American Railroads; they are mandatory on all US railroads.
A characteristic feature of rules and recommendations is their unique declarative nature, which is expressed in the fact that the rules stipulate certain requirements, but for the most part without specific instructions on measures to ensure them. These same roads are given ample opportunity to determine on their own how to solve certain operational and technical problems.
The standards for inspection and testing of systems are more strictly regulated. This usually provides precise instructions on the purpose, procedure and timing of inspections and checks.
Signaling on US railroads is high-speed. The presence of a large number of private companies has led to a significant number of forms and types of signals. So, for example, there are semaphores with wings moving upward - semaphores of the upper quadrant and with wings moving down - semaphores of the lower quadrant. It should be noted, however, that when installing new and reconstructing old signaling systems, semaphores are usually replaced by traffic lights.
The desire to convey the most accurate speed instructions to the driver, in turn, predetermined the need to create a relatively large number of signal indications. American signaling is also complicated by the fact that here in the traffic light signaling they tried to largely repeat the night readings of the semaphore signaling. However, in devices of recent years, such signaling is no longer used.
Currently, US railroads continue to work to adapt signaling to the requirements of high-speed traffic and, in particular, to traffic on switches and switch ramps designed for high speeds.
High driving speeds and the resulting long braking distances lead to the need to equip automatic blocking systems with multi-unit delimitation and multi-signal signaling. Some roads equip conventional three-digit signaling on stretches and multi-digit signaling on approaches to stations.
The Illinois Central Railroad, when installing a four-digit automatic interlock with locomotive signaling in one of its sections, in an original way solved the issue of the fourth indication of floor signals by using a flashing yellow light for this indication. This made it possible to get by with one searchlight head for four-digit signaling.
The descriptions of modernized dispatch centralization systems used on railway lines with medium and small traffic volumes, including on lines where only 3-4 pairs of trains operate per day, require consideration. When constructing dispatch centralizations on such lines, they proceed from the need to reduce the cost of dispatch centralization as much as possible by eliminating those elements that can be dispensed with during small traffic. Here they refuse to install pass-through signals, install a push-out switch at one end of each siding, and only include the second end of each siding in the centralization.
Particularly effective, apparently, will be the equipment of dispatch centralizations of a modified type on newly built railways, since here, with a reduced operating staff from the very beginning of the opening of traffic, the need for housing construction is correspondingly reduced.
Brief mention is also made of multi-channel dispatch centralization systems, which allow a large number of control and notification codes to be passed simultaneously through the same circuit.
A characteristic feature of locomotive signaling used on US railways is the repeating nature of its signaling in relation to the readings of floor signals. Locomotive signaling is also used as an independent signaling system without floor signals, and in conjunction with floor signals. Locomotive signaling is usually equipped in combination with hitchhiking and speed control. In recent years, a number of roads have been equipped with separate sections of locomotive signaling without hitchhiking. New developments in the use of locomotive signaling at hump humps are of particular interest.
The complex of signaling devices used on US railways also includes devices such as indicators of dragging devices of rolling stock, landslide fences installed in mountainous areas, signaling of the movement of mudflows, high water levels, signaling for monitoring the position of bridge supports and shifting of supporting parts bridge supports. Recently, an alarm system for monitoring overheated axle boxes, operating using infrared rays transmitted by floor-mounted units, has begun to become widespread. The latter type of alarm did not have time to be reflected in the encyclopedia. All these alarms are usually linked to the readings of the signals, and in some cases the corresponding instructions are also transmitted to nearby stations.
A new element in crossing alarms is the selective-speed control of fencing devices at crossings. Here, with the help of track circuits equipped with time-delay devices, the speed of approaching trains is controlled so that the start of operation of the guarding devices is approximately the same for both low- and high-speed trains. There are also crossing signaling systems that begin their operation when the train approaches the crossing and stop after a certain time if the train stops at the crossing without crossing the latter. When the train moves further, the fencing devices resume their operation.
In recent years, automation of the control of hump retarders has begun to be used relatively widely on US railways. Here, electronic computing devices of the imitation type are usually used. With these devices, based on information about the resistance of the cut to movement, its length and weight; Based on the degree of filling of the sub-hill track with cars and, according to the distance and characteristics of the route, the output speed of the cut and the degree of its braking by the retarder are established.
Recommendations for increasing the maximum shunt sensitivity of track circuits are of interest.

Hello! Do you know when the first rail line was laid in America? And who became its discoverer? Today I will talk about American Railways. Don't think that you know everything, I will definitely surprise you.

For example, the American railway sector has always been built and developed much faster than transport in Continental Europe, which I wrote about in. Rail lines began their development in the 19th century.

Already at the very beginning of the 19th century, the American John Stevens created a railway company, which over time passed into the hands of the Pennsylvania Railroad and became part of it. At that time, no one in America knew about the existence of both a practical and a land vehicle, so the decision was made to rapidly develop the rail sector.

Ten years later, in the 19th century, the first steam-powered rail cars were born. Their creation was easy for builders and engineers. It was much more difficult to design a locomotive. But was this enough, is this what the Americans wanted? Where is the comfort and safe movement they promised?

After constantly building locomotives without success, John Stevens decided to take matters into his own hands and create the first steam locomotive and his attempts to create a steam locomotive were successful. These events contributed to the rapid progress of the development of American railroads.

In 1830 the first railway was opened for common use. Transport was a reliable means of transportation and also became a serious competitor to shipping. And it still continues. But still the public thought completely differently. The people believed that steam engines were the sons of the devil, and travelers would receive nothing other than a “concussion.” However, the advantages of steam engines over steamships were undeniable. To prove this to themselves again and again, people staged competitions between a train and a steamship. The rules of the game were to go through a certain segment as quickly as possible. The steamer completed the task and arrived in 3 days, while the locomotive covered 545.5 kilometers in just 16 hours.

Until the mid-19th century, American trains did not travel long distances. For example, a trip from Philadelphia to Charleston had eight tracks, meaning passengers had to change trains more than five times during a single trip. They did the same with the cargo. Who could even stand this?

Over the course of 10 years, the length of railways increased from 64 kilometers (40 miles) to 4.5 thousand kilometers (2755 miles). And before we start Civil War, in the 60s of the 19th century, the length increased to almost 50 thousand kilometers. While railways played a special role. After all, they served as a means of transporting weapons and various military equipment (ammunition, food), as well as transporting military personnel.

However, it was not only because of hostilities that the road developed. But thanks to the rapid growth in agriculture, there was a rapid construction of railways. All due to the fact that farmers needed constant export of products.

At the end of the 19th century, subways in New York gained particular popularity and development. After some time, trams also became popular. And soon they became the only way to travel.

In the mid-60s of the 19th century, the “Golden Age” began in the field of American railroads. Over the past 50 years, the railway world has expanded to a global scale: the length of railways has increased from 50 thousand kilometers to 400 thousand.

The current state of American railways

These days, the length of American roads reaches 220 thousand kilometers. It has a width of 1435 mm - this is the European norm. About 180 thousand people work on American railroads. employees.

Today, American railways are not among the most popular and popular types. ground transport. It is not profitable for the state to improve the railway sector, which is why transportation in America has been at a standstill for a long time. Are in great demand domestic flights, they are often much cheaper, and they are also considered safer and more comfortable than traveling by train. Thus, trains remain for the use of aerophobes and desperate romantics. But there is still a huge advantage for tourists: a person visiting the country for the first time can take the train in order to study the area and flavor of the country in more detail.

But really, you might not think it right away, but passenger rail traffic in the United States is very underdeveloped. Okay, it’s Europe, what are the distances there, but in the USA it would still be a decent amount of places to go.

What happened to passenger rail traffic in the United States? The state that calls itself a global superpower and was once a veritable kingdom of busy steel highways, after the Second World War, actually deliberately destroyed the mass transport of people by rail. Grand stations built during the “golden era” of rail were mercilessly demolished, reconstructed and simply abandoned. The legendary and often fantastic-looking transcontinental trains, which for decades had been part of the Americana, the material culture of the country, were simply thrown into the dustbin of history.

Why did this happen?

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the United States should largely thank rail transport for its current role as a superpower. Passenger traffic on the country's oldest railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, opened in May 1830, and it was an event that once and for all changed the way Americans thought about their country and themselves.

The development of steel highways proceeded like an avalanche. Thanks to them, the products of factories, factories and farms began to be quickly delivered to ocean ports for export, bringing money to the United States and prosperity for industry and agriculture. People quickly forgot about the spartan conditions of stagecoaches and began to travel in comfort. Railroads dramatically shortened distances across the vast country, providing unprecedented mobility for its population, and with it the path to that very American dream. The rails and the seekers of fortune who arrived along them truly conquered the Wild West; it was they who made the United States truly United.

Golden age

By 1916, the last peaceful year for America, the total length of the country's railways reached a fantastic 409 thousand kilometers. For comparison: in the same year the length of all similar highways Russian Empire slightly exceeded 70 thousand kilometers. In the USSR - a real railway empire - at the peak of its development, the length of tracks, including access enterprises, was 220 thousand kilometers, and in China, which launched a grandiose railway construction, now the network of roads of this kind has only exceeded 120 thousand kilometers and should increase by 2050 " only doubled.

A hundred years ago, the United States, especially its eastern half, found itself enmeshed in a dense railroad web. Of course, she was far from optimal. There were many competing private operators in the country, whose railways often duplicated each other. Moreover, the rail boom gave rise to phenomenal speculation on this basis. Cornelius Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan and Jay Gould made their millions, their current billions, on the railroads, and, of course, this method of enrichment could not help but attract swindlers and adventurers of various calibers.

Periodically, the boom turned into a bubble that burst. Uncontrolled construction for the sake of construction, the bankruptcy of the banks that provided loans for it, and speculation in railroad stocks were the direct causes of the stock market crashes of 1873 and 1893, but despite this, the American rail network continued to expand, reaching its peak before the First World War.

Railroads actually ensured the transformation of the United States into a powerful industrial power, thanks to which hundreds of millions of acres of valuable land in the center of the country were brought into agricultural use, which, in turn, ensured lower prices for food and other goods and contributed to the influx of dispossessed immigrants from the Old World into the United States. Sveta. Railways were at the forefront of progress, they were not just a symbol of the country, but also an important stimulus for the development of science and technology; modern methods of doing business were born in their office buildings. Railroads made America America.

IN major cities Across the country at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, rail operators built grandiose stations - veritable palaces, the equivalent of European castles, transport temples. For an ordinary citizen, visiting them became a real event. Once inside these gigantic buildings, the worker and the farmer, the newspaper delivery man and the laundress, the official and the clerk, the writer and the gangster felt their involvement in the real sacrament - the beginning (or end) of the Journey. The future of American railroads seemed bright, but it was just a mirage. Clouds were already swirling on the horizon, and each of them had the shape of a Ford Model T that rolled off Henry Ford's production lines.

For about 70 years, until about 1920, railroads remained virtually the only means of intercity transportation in the United States. With the start of mass production of cars, the advent of buses and the construction of the first highways, the popularity of traveling by train began to gradually decline. The process was slow and not very noticeable at first, especially since in the 1930s American railroad companies began to introduce completely new types of rolling stock and travel formats. Streamline came into fashion - an artistic style, an offshoot of Art Deco, which was characterized by streamlined silhouettes, a swift aerodynamic image, associated with something ultra-modern, even fantastic.

Steam locomotives of archaic forms were replaced by futuristic locomotives, trimmed with shiny polished metal and more reminiscent of the first rockets. The famous trains California Zephyr, Texas Zephyr, Super Chief, Flying Yankee, Rock Island Rocket rushed along the roads of the country faster and faster, the very names of which encrypted in every way their main advantage - speed. Speed ​​and comfort. In luxury trains, in addition to sleeping cars, which provided unprecedented comfort, there were restaurants, lounges and even special cars with panoramic glazing, which allowed passengers to enjoy the surrounding nature without interrupting small talk over a cocktail. It was probably a triumph of industrial design highest point development of the country's railways and their swan song.

End of an era

During the Second World War, steel lines received their final impetus for development. Gasoline became a strategic commodity, its supply was limited, and people again switched to trains. However, with the end of the war and the beginning of rapid economic growth in the United States, railroads increasingly faded into the background. Streamline trains, by inertia, enjoyed a certain popularity for about ten years, especially over long distances, but mass transportation was steadily falling. Already by 1946, 45% fewer trains were operating in the States than in 1929, and then the process of outflow of passengers only worsened. Along with the number of passengers, the income of private railway operators fell, their debts grew, the first bankruptcies began, and the state withdrew from subsidizing rail transportation. He has new favorites.

Traditionally, in the United States, railroads have been private businesses. Its successful development was more than once interrupted by crises, but the rail magnates, losing first one or another of their colleagues, always pulled out and continued to earn money on their own. The railroad network was well, perhaps overdeveloped, and the federal government concentrated its efforts on other infrastructure projects. In 1956, the United States began large-scale construction of a system of interstate highways, the so-called “Interstates,” a project that would take 35 years and cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. President Eisenhower, who commanded the Allied armies in Europe during World War II, was very impressed by the Nazi autobahns in Germany, and he became interested in creating a similar network of expressways in his country. In addition to their defensive value, they were supposed to provide ordinary and increasingly motorized Americans with the opportunity to quickly, safely and independent travel across the USA.

This was a heavy, but far from the only blow that marked the beginning of the complete destruction of passenger rail traffic in America. At the same time, it entered its new, reactive era civil Aviation. The federal government subsidized its development and the fundamental reduction in the cost of domestic flights, including through the construction of airports, not only in large, but also in medium-sized and even small cities and populated areas. The last point was very important. After some time, it turned out that it was possible to fly to literally any town in the entire vast country (or its immediate environs).

Born of the “free market” and having earned billions of dollars from it, private railway companies were suddenly faced with its own grin. Deprived of government support and concerned about competition with each other, they were unable to keep tariffs at a level competitive with road and air transport. For a conditional farmer in Nebraska, who had earned money and wanted to vacation somewhere in Florida, it turned out to be simply more convenient and cheaper to get to the vacation spot in his own car along the highway or to get to the nearest airport and in a few hours, even with transfers, find himself by the warm blue sea.

Railroad companies found themselves in a hopeless situation - with extensive infrastructure, highways that often duplicated each other, rapidly falling passenger traffic and revenues, and equally rapidly growing debts. Faced with complete indifference on the part of the state, they were forced to begin cutting costs: huge palace stations in city centers, in the absence of customers, became an unbearable burden, which they began to get rid of. In New York in the 1960s, the monumental Pennsylvania Station, which occupied several blocks, was mercilessly demolished, which shocked contemporaries. The famous Grand Central in New York was saved only by a miracle.

Their counterparts in other large cities faced different fates: some (like Union Station in Washington or Los Angeles) still retained more or less active long-distance and commuter trains, continued to work as intended, others (as in Cincinnati or St. Louis) were eventually repurposed for other functions - museums or shopping and entertainment. The giant complexes in Detroit and Buffalo were much less fortunate - they were simply abandoned.

Here we discussed in the world

Trains were canceled en masse; due to the infrastructure crisis, many remaining trains ran with increasing delays from inconvenient stations on the city outskirts, routes were closed, and along with them thousands of stations. Passengers simply stopped relying on the railway as a reliable means of getting to their desired destination. Rail transport was no longer associated with progress, something modern, in keeping with the spirit of the space age.

took his place jet aircraft And own car, which gave Americans, traditionally individualistic in spirit, a desired sense of independence, and the infrastructure created according to Eisenhower’s plan with interstates literally dotted with motels and eateries provided the necessary space in order to realize this independence.

The final blow to private passenger railroad companies came in September 1967, when the U.S. Postal Service canceled their service. Payments for the transportation of mail allowed carriers to keep many remaining flights on the edge of profitability, and the departure of such an important client provoked another wave of mass liquidation of familiar routes.

In 1968, in a desperate attempt to save themselves, the country's two largest surviving railroad companies, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central, merged, but it turned out that what they had in common was their own problems. Bankruptcy followed in 1970, but by this time the American federal government had come to its senses. The aviation and automobile lobby, of course, retained its influence, but even with its interests fully taken into account by the Nixon administration, it became clear that the future, and the near future, threatened the complete collapse of the country's railway system, which is fraught with unpredictable consequences. In May 1971, with the formation of Amtrak, the remains of passenger rail service were effectively nationalized.

This was the end of the American railroad dream. In a decade and a half, what had been created over the previous 120 years was virtually destroyed. Of the 409 thousand kilometers of tracks that existed in 1916, only 220 thousand remain now. The US railroad network is still the largest in the world, but 80% of them have no passenger traffic. Amtrak now carries more than 30 million passengers a year, twice as many as in 1972 (its first full year activities). It would seem that progress is being made, but a third of this traffic comes from the small but very busy Northeast Corridor - a high-speed line between Boston and Washington through New York and Philadelphia. Another 5.6 million people move short distances within California.

Miraculously preserved trains long distance accounts for less than half of all passenger transportation Amtrak: They are very expensive and not very convenient. Over the past 60 years, American railroads have undergone a remarkable evolution from a means of transportation to a luxury enjoyed only by tourists.

The United States has lost the habit of using hardware, and it will be very difficult to accustom the country to it again. The average American will never understand a multi-day trip across the country in a compartment, much less in a reserved seat, with the obligatory chicken wrapped in foil, boiled eggs and a bottle of whiskey. The future of local rail transport lies only in the renewal commuter traffic and possible high-speed highways. High-speed rail in California, which should connect San Francisco and Silicon Valley with Los Angeles and Anaheim, is already under construction, but so far its experience shows only one thing: new China with its thousands of miles of highways, every year in the US is impossible. It will take a long time for the railway romance to be revived and it will be very, very expensive.

And what was this and