Barriger shows success in 1948 at the Monon

In the August, 1948 TRAINS Magazine, Barriger was showing profits with the Monon Railroad. When Barriger took over the Monon in 1946, he became aggressive! He announced fast freights that run on schedule no matter how much business was at hand. The “old” Monon had held freight until a maximum trainload was accumulated. The “new” Monon ran short, profitless freights for many months until shippers realized that good service was available.

Many railroad executives thought Barriger’s policies would bring disaster, but they did not realize the cautious operating ability that went along with his willingness to spend money to make money, and in his belief in the future of the Monon.

Find other stories on the Monon Railroad
https://penneyandkc.wordpress.com/the-monon-railroad/

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Louisville Not Alone Anymore; “Skinny Budget” To Bring MORE!

In the middle of the picture is the Louisville railroad station. No AMTRAK here!!! Better for Louisville to donate station for the Louisville to Chicago HYPERLOOP. (Some money to fix would be appreciated too).

Now we are going to get more “Louisville’s” thanks to President Trump’s Skinny Budget”.

Headline (really bottom line) Cutting Off ‘Fly-Over’ States, Trump to Axe Amtrak for 220 Cities.

President’s so-called “skinny budget” will eliminate all federal funding for Amtrak’s national train network.

Some of what we know:

In addition to slashing funding for the arts, education programs, climate change research, and worker protections (among many other things), another lesser known casualty of President Donald Trump’s “morally obscene” budget proposal: Amtrak.

The president’s so-called “skinny budget” will eliminate all federal funding for Amtrak’s national train network, meaning 220 cities will lose all passenger service, the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) warned this week.

“It’s ironic that President Trump’s first budget proposal undermines the very communities whose economic hardship and sense of isolation from the rest of the country helped propel him into office,” said NARP president Jim Mathews.

“These working class communities—many of them located in the Midwest and the South—were tired of being treated like ‘flyover country,'” Mathews continued. “But by proposing the elimination of Amtrak’s long distance trains, the Trump administration does them one worse, cutting a vital service that connects these small town economies to the rest of the U.S..”

“These hard working, small town Americans,” he added, “don’t have airports or Uber to turn to; they depend on these trains.”

Specifically, Trump’s proposal slashes $2.4 billion (or 13 percent) from transportation spending, threatening long distance routes including the east coast’s Silver Star and Silver Meteor lines, the New York-Chicago Cardinal train service, the Empire Builder, which connects Chicago to the Pacific Northwest, as well as the effort to restore the Gulf Coast line.

Indianapolis and Cincinnati will now join the “club” of NO AMTRAK.

Last week HYPERLOOP ONE (the leader in the HYPERLOOP world) held a conference in Washington. They “show-cased” projects they are supporting. Pittsburgh-Columbus-Chicago is included. Cincinnati-Chicago is affiliated with another Hyperloop manufacturer. Louisville-Chicago will be built with private funding using HYPERLOOP ONE technology. They attended the conference and were very, very impressed.

Louisville-Chicago “The Muhammad Ali Hyperlink” will offer other HYPERLOOPs use of it’s entrance to Chicago’s Millennium Station. And YES! They are into freight (like steam-ship containers).

Stay tuned to this blog! We will be the first to know.

Hyperloop One has a short list of cities for its 760-mile-per-hour trains

Above: Hyperloop One’s test site in Las Vegas.

Image Credit: Hyperloop One

Hyperloop One is working on a transportation technology that can make trains go as fast as 760 miles per hour. The company has raised $160 million in several rounds to build the transportation systems that seem like something out of science fiction.

Despite a lawsuit from former high-ranking employees, the company has moved swiftly to add new executives and expand its search for sites where it can build its lightning-fast transportation networks in cities around the world. (The company denied the allegations and countersued the former employees.)

Hyperloop One continues to build out its 100,000-square-foot Metalworks fabrication facility and 137-acre Apex test and safety site in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Construction of the company’s full-system development loop is underway as Hyperloop One prepares for its “Kitty Hawk moment” in the first quarter of 2017.

Last week, during CES 2017, the big tech trade show in Las Vegas, I met with Rob Lloyd, CEO of Hyperloop One. We talked about the company’s global challenge contest to find the world’s best Hyperloop routes. The list is now down to 35 possible projects around the world, and some cities such as Dubai are actively pursuing approvals.

More than 2,600 proposals were registered in five months, and the semifinalists come from 17 countries. A handful of finalists will be named by May. Lloyd and I talked about that process, as well as what Hyperloop transportation will mean for society in the future.

See an interview with Rob Lloyd by DEAN TAKAHASHI@DEANTAK

We are particularly interested in one of HYPEROOP ONE’s 35 FINALISTS: “The Muhammad Ali Hyperlink”

Designed to provide high speed trannsportation between Louisville and Chicago. It fills a void that AMTRAK has not been able to.

Anybody building into Chicago will have a big problem in finding space. As a sensible alternative, We suggested that the new railroad start instead at the Gary/Chicago International Airport. It is already served by the “South Shore” railroad which has a great terminal in downtown Chicago. Gary Airport is receiving Federal funding from Dept. of Transportation and South Shore railroad is receiving State/local funding for expansion.

Very recently Hyperloop One, announced that « cargo will be implemented before passengers ».

We anticipated this with the selection of Gary, Indiana (at the international airport) as our Northern Terminal. Of course passengers will still transfer to the South Shore commuter line operated by the Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District. But operating on the same right-of-way is the Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad. It provides freight service between Chicago and South Bend. It has important connections to the Indiana Harbor Railroad, Norfolk Southern, CSX Corporation. It is also connected to the in-formation Great Lakes Basin Transportation. It proposes to construct a new railroad line around the metropolitan Chicago area. The purpose of the new railroad is to expedite freight movements across the nation and to provide additional capacity for growing railroad traffic.

President Trump is “barking up the wrong tree” about High Speed Rail

Just read a great story by MARK WHITTINGTON about Donald Trump’s interest in high speed rail may be made obsolete by the Hyperloop. Passengers and cargo could be moved at supersonic speeds at a fraction of the cost.

President Donald Trump is interested in building high-speed rail lines across the United States. The idea is that 200 miles per hour trains would whisk passengers and cargo between destinations, substantially cutting down travel times. However, an emerging technology called the #hyperloop may already be about to make the high-speed train obsolete.

The Hyperloop would propel people and cargo in pods down a sealed tube using magnetic accelerators at speeds more than 700 miles an hour. The technology was invented by SpaceX’s Elon Musk and is now being refined by a number of private companies. Musk claims that a Hyperloop line between Los Angeles and San Francisco would cost about $6 billion to build as opposed to the nearly $70 billion (and growing) that the proposed high-speed rail line is estimated to cost. The line would be solar powered and, since it is built on elevated pylons, would have less of a “footprint” than a rail line. Hyperloop lines could be built along Interstate highways.

The Trump administration should approach the siren call of building railroads with caution. To be sure existing rail lines and tunnels, some of them approaching a century old, need upgrading. But if a way can be found to move people and cargo between cities at greater speeds, as less cost, powered by renewable energy, using less land, then that way should be seriously considered. Great care, at any rate, should be taken when spending hundreds of billions of dollars. Perhaps a prototype project, connecting two cities somewhere in the United States, should be undertaken to test the usefulness of the Hyperloop before committing to high-speed rail.

Perhaps President Trump should start with a “smallish” project: connect Louisville and Chicago. AMTRAK has fallen on it’s face over the years on this one. Well, they have an airport and an Interstate Highway.

Our company has already proposed this project to HYPERLOOP ONE, the leading company in the Hyperloop field. We have already published details of this project.

We have tried to make it as simple as possible and bring costs down. We follow Interstate Highway 65 from Louisville to Gary, Indiana. Then, knowing the extreme difficulty of entering Chicago from the East, we took a novel change. Passengers and freight stop at the Gary International Airport and change to the South Shore Railroad (already rebuilt with government funds). Passengers get off at Millennium Station in downtown Chicago.

Train traffic, speed to increase on LIRC line in Kentucky, Indiana

Train traffic will increase on the Louisville and Indiana Railroad (LIRC) between Louisville, Ky., and Seymour, Ind., on or after Sept. 1, according to the short line’s parent company Anacostia Rail Holdings.

Over several weeks, CSX and LIRC train speeds will increase incrementally from the current speed limit of 25 mph to a maximum of 49 mph at many locations, Anacostia officials said in a press release.

Track and signal improvements have been made to allow for a safe increase in speed. The number and average length of CSX trains also will increase from four trains to 10 trains daily on the LIRC line.

The number and length of CSX trains will vary and continue to adjust depending on freight volume.

The Muhammad Ali Hyperlink COULD Go From Jeffersonville to Louisville UNDERWATER (No. 15)

Hyperloop One Plans to Take the Ultrafast Transport System Underwater

By Kelly Tatera on June 24, 2016

It just keeps getting better.

As if the Hyperloop concept itself isn’t impressive enough, Brogan BamBrogan, the co-founder and CTO of Hyperloop One, announced the company’s plans to take the ultrafast transportation system underwater.

For a little background, tech guru Elon Musk pitched the idea of the Hyperloop transportation system back in 2013, and it’s quickly becoming a reality. Basically, the Hyperloop is a supersonic transportation system that will theoretically transport people or cargo in levitating pod-capsules at rates near the speed of sound.

Just last month, Hyperloop One, one of the companies developing the Hyperloop technology, demonstrated its first successful public display of a Hyperloop pod in the Nevada desert. Impressively, the propulsion speeds went from zero to 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers) in just 4 seconds. You can watch a video of the demonstration here.
DON’T MISS: MIT Unveils Their Winning Hyperloop Pod Prototype

Now, as if on-land Hyperloop systems weren’t futuristic enough, Hyperloop One also plans to test out an underwater system.

BamBrogan sat down with Science Friday to discuss the technology, and he claims that the company already has the capability of building an underwater Hyperloop system, but is trying to find a more cost-effective approach.

“The DNA of my time at SpaceX has got its fingerprints all over Hyperloop,” BamBrogan says. “There’s nothing new that has to be invented, but (what) we are doing is innovating and doing things to bring the cost down.”

At this point, BamBrogan says the production costs are still too high, but hopefully these costs will go down as the technology develops. Plus, he says that many people probably don’t even know how much they want the Hyperloop system since it’s new and yet to become available.

“We think we can deliver things people don’t even know they want yet, and that’s going to manifest itself in a lot of ways,” he says. “So I think we will see some above-grade systems, we’re definitely going to see tunneled systems, and we also want to see some underwater systems.”

The Hyperloop One underwater concept can be seen in the image above — exciting things to come.

JUST THINK: Not Another Ohio River RIDGE!!!

Kentucky cabinet seeks comments on draft freight transportation plan

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) earlier this month released a proposed 2016 statewide freight transportation plan for public review and put out a call for recommendations to establish a freight advisory committee that would help enhance communications between the cabinet and the freight industry.

KYTC’s Division of Planning-Multimodal Programs Branch partnered with consultant CDM Smith Inc. and the Kentucky Transportation Center to develop the draft freight plan, which analyzes the state’s system of roads, railroads, waterways, airports and pipelines. The plan proposes initiatives and investments for the state’s freight transportation system.

KYTC will accept written comments on the draft plan until July 8. The cabinet is seeking input from constituents, local governments, industry partners, and interested agencies and organizations.

“We are eager to receive input on the statewide freight plan from interested parties whose goal is to promote the safe and efficient transportation of freight,” said KYTC Secretary Greg Thomas in a press release.

The cabinet also announced plans to form a freight advisory committee to improve communication and coordination efforts between the state and freight industry. Public and private stakeholders, and anyone with an interest in freight industry needs, innovations and goals are encouraged to apply, KYTC officials said.

We will be furnishing Kentucky Government with documents about our plans to build a HYPERLOOP connection between Louisville and Chicago AND about the use of this connection for freight.