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They do this shit at least 3 times a week here in south Mississippi, and its a fucking freight train with over a hundred train cars usually.
with over a hundred vehicles steady burning gas all around
How are hundreds of car drivers as stupid as the dust on the road and don't turn off their engines?
Good question.
Apparently, if you multiply two sides of two major intersections that are two lanes wide, backed up for over a half hour or so, then how many cars are being blocked from travel?
Sorry I didn't get out and do an exact count, I can't exactly be in two places at once, but this shit blocked all the intersections to our part of town.
AC/heat doesnt work when the vehicle is turned off. Some vehicles require getting out and smacking the starter with a hammer to get it to turn over. Just to give a couple of reasons why you wouldnt want to turn off your vehicle when stuck by a train.
Yes, I'm familiar with reasons that passenger vehicles break down. Shit happens, I get that.
But the fucking miles long freight train itself shouldn't break down 3 to 5 days a week, that's what's going on here.
stop idling your engine
Yeah rev it up really loud, drill some holes in the exhaust too.
That'll be sure to scare off the trains.
I'm not sure why people are down voting you so much.
This shit doesn't happen anywhere else. If a train parked and blocked a crossing 3 times a day for half an hour at a time there would be an uproar.
Well I'm assuming there'd be an uproar, impossible to tell because all our tracks are double tracks to allow passing and trains don't stop for no reason blocking crossings.
We also use bridges a lot.
How do trains save fuel
By reducing the number of freight trucks on the road
Man, you have some really fucked-up traffic regulators. That kind of thing isn't common even in poor countries.
Like yeah it's bad. The people who run the train company don't give a fuck about you or the workers who are being held responsible for way more train than is safe for longer than is safe for them to be working. Oh and they always have to be on call 24/7.
It's not the train's fault, it's capitalism. Take the trains back, let the workers run them safely and efficiently, and this won't happen.
In my state, train companies are fined if they block a crossing more than 10 minutes during the day or 15 minutes at night. But every so often we have to remind local politicians that those regs need to be upheld.
To answer your question directly, Diesel locomotives are actually Diesel generators that drive electric motors. When they're stopped they cycle down the generators to a minimal count to maintain power. They're more efficient in general because the engines are generally running at their peak efficiency RPMs (to drive gennies instead of the wheels). Unlike trucks that are rarely running at peak efficiency RPMs and will burn extra dirty at idle.
The question about train fuel consumption was not the question.
The question regards how much passenger vehicle fuel gets wasted when a train parks and blocks their path. Cause and effect yo, a train parks, blocking multiple intersections, and half them vehicles ain't even gonna shut their engine off.
So, a train parks, over 100 vehicles park at direct and nearby intersections, many many gallons of fuel are being unnecessarily burned.
Yes, we shut our engine off while we waited, but half the chucklefucks out there won't even do that..
I don't see the train as the problem in this scenario. Its not wasting gas the cars are. That being said there should be no train crossings they should all have bridges or such.
Cause and effect, train parks, blocks vehicles, and half the drivers refuse to shut off their engine.
Trains literally have their own parking areas, one such parking area literally about ~300 feet to the right of this photo. There was absolutely no reason they had to park where they did, dodging their literal 3 line maintenance track, by ~300 feet. Fuck they coulda put the train in reverse to use their maintenance tracks rather than blocking not one but two major intersections..
oh. ours don't park like that. I mean it takes a while for them to pass through but they don't just stop. I mean I imagine in the past some breakdown issue might have caused it. I think I did not get your actual thing because its foreign to my experience.
I imagine a big part of it is lack of infrastructure spendinf.
Or are we just letting freight lines continue to milk century old infrastructure without regard to anyone else?
ALL YOU GOT TO DO WAS FOLLOW THE DAMN TRAIN CJ
Has anyone ever taught you to turn the engine off while waiting at a railway crossing?
Have you read any of my comments? Of course we did!
Half the chucklefucks around us didn't though...
You're clearly looking for validation, not explanation. Off you go.
No, I'm looking for an answer, or a means to pursue an answer, or even better, hopefully a solution.
Another commenter suggested I call the train authority/maintenance people. Sounds good on paper, but their number is disconnected.
But you very clearly only asked how trains save fuel. By not editing the post to actually request an answer it still looks a lot like seeking validation
I didn't ask how trains save train fuel, I asked how they save fuel in general, across the board of all transportation, particularly those blocked by a train in my post.
You assume too much, learn to read around the question. If a train parks and blocks a hundred pedestrian cars, and half those cars don't turn their engines off, then the train is still wasting the fuel of 50 cars..
The problem is that you assume this is a normal train behavior. It is not.
If your question is truly about the general efficency. here is the very first article that i found https://www.thegreenshot.io/uncategorized/train-vs-car/
But all your answers make it clear that you don't care about your question, instead you want to complain. And rightly so! This is shitty
Just stop fraiming it as if you are asking a question. It is not happening with well designed infratructure and is not a general problem with trains.
Maybe in your specific place it might even has a net negative impact. But almost everywhere else trains are saving tons of fuel.
So what do?
I didn't assume much, but I am telling you that you think you said this and you haven't
Good luck with this fight. Texas sued for the right of the state to enforce time limits on trains blocking intersections; and the supreme court told them to fuck off.
Why not build bridges?
The premise of the question is wrong. Trains need fuel like every other means of transportation. They can help consumers and logistics operations save on their individual fuel cost if they make use of rail rather than roads. A great passenger network saves fuel over all because people share a large passenger carrier rather than individually driving mostly empty cars, especially SUV tanks with only a driver behind the wheel.
Trains also don't "park" on open lines. There is a reason why it stopped and it's most likely safety. So it doesn't hit another train or runs into rail damage, construction crews, people, a shrub fire, etc. Since you say this happens regularly, It's likely the train infrastructure is old. Maybe it's a combination of those problems with too tight running schedules creating a bottleneck. Bring this to your local political leaders, complain to the train companies.
I don't know how hot it is there. What are the rules on not idling your engine while waiting in traffic jams and at railroad crossings? And if drivers are supposed to turn their engines off, this may be a clusterfuck caused by a train but blame must be disturbed. Even if it was hot (and unless I had infants or infirm folks in the car), I would switch off my engine these days because of your president's adventures in Iran.
Trains stopping on roads is a locally significant problem in the USA. They do just park for hours while cars are shunted around.
One major part of the problem is that the state and city governments have no power, and the federal government gave them permission, and (obviously) doesn’t care about the freight rail network at all, never mind passenger rail.
Its not even hot here yo, especially not today, it feels really good to be honest. Yes, we just rolled our windows down and shut the engine off while we waited, but for whatever 'murica first™ reason or whatever, half the vehicles around us apparently have nothing better to do than piss away fuel money and continue contaminating the planet..