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On my way to work this morning, I heard on the news that a high priority of a Presidential candidate (who will remain nameless to avoid political controversy) is infrastructure, and particularly high speed rail.

Since I discovered slow prototypical modern O Gauge trains like TMCC and LC+, I have been hooked on it.

However, if and when we have real high speed rail in the USA, then fast model trains may arguably become prototypical.

This thread is a place to post videos and photos of your high speed O Gauge trains. 

I would love to see some modern fast model trains such as Acelas (sp?) and the like, which I don't have, and to learn more about them.

For instance, I assume that modern high speed rail would include sleek, streamline passenger trains, but what about freight trains? I can't imagine long freight trains over 1 mile long racing along the right of way. 

Below is a video of a K Line Baltimore and Ohio diesel freight train, with 2 powered units, racing along my layout:

I have wanted the above locomotives to run slower, but they are very peppy. Maybe that peppiness will be more desirable once we have real high speed rail. Arnold

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I don't know, the old Post War and engines like Williams seemed to have pioneered high speed O gauge trains a long time ago....open up the handle on the transformer and they would literally fly *lol*. 

When they refer to high speed rail I believe they mean passenger service, not freight. Given the length of freight trains, doubtful you could get the kind of high speed service we are talking with passenger service, just not practical (not to mention I doubt freight railroads would spend the kind of money it would take, assuming you could move a mile long freight at 100+ mph, to upgrade the track to handle that, not to mention the logistics of trains running that fast with slower traffic on the same rails. 

In my opinion, the CA high speed rail will eventually be completed between San Francisco and LA.  It will just take much longer to build and much more money than anyone thought possible.

No Where to No Where is actually going to be between very populated areas.  The population of the CA central valley is booming.  The main roads are already clogged in the middle of farm fields.  Cities such as Bakersfield, Stockton and Fresno are rapidly expanding.  The Sacramento (in the north) to Bakersfield (in the south) central corridor will be as populated as the Washington to Boston corridor by the end of this century if current trends hold.   

The biggest and most expensive project is building the tunnels through the Coast and Tehachapi mountains.   Both of these mountain ranges are subject to earthquakes.  The last time that I looked, there are several proposed routes.  

Overhead catenary is under construction between San Jose and San Francisco.  The catenary is designed to handle the high speed trains.  The initial use will be for the San Jose to San Francisco commuter service.  A new $2 billion train station was just opened in San Francisco.  It is designed to be the high speed train terminal.  (This is the train station that was opened a year ago and then closed for a year when the support beams started to crack.  It just reopened following repairs.)

I think that CA high speed rail will probably be done by 2050.  This will be beyond my lifetime but it will come.  

NH Joe

This is high speed rail on the G&O.

DSCN1863

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Last edited by OGR CEO-PUBLISHER

O scale high-speed passenger trains do exist...for 2-rail.

They were made by a Japanese firm, Kumata  & Co. They were highly detailed models, with a price tag to match. A 16-car Shinkansen would cost you somewhere in the neighborhood of Sixteen Thousand Dollars. And that might even be an understatement.

The biggest thing holding back anyone scratchbuilding a bona-fide modern Asian/European high speed trainset in O scale is the availability of suitable power trucks. If you had those, it would only be a matter of buying an HO scale model, and using a scale ruler to fabricate O scale bodies with styrene and/or sheet brass. That's how I scratchbuilt an Amtrak material-handling boxcar long before MTH existed. The difference being that All-Nation's 2-rail passenger trucks were available to be bought. Power trucks like the ones Third Rail put in their Electroliner and/or RDC, are not. If they did, I probably would have tried my hand at building some of Japan's boxy commuter EMU's

---PCJ

Last edited by RailRide

Not exactly high speed, but Virgin Trains USA is under construction between WPB and Orlando and the 40 mile section between Orlando and Cocoa Beach will see 125 mph regularly. No crossings and precise new track enable the higher speeds and it should be fun to watch 125 mph trains zip past 70 mpg cars only 50 feet away. 

 

BTW I'd love to get an O gauge model of the Virgin Trains or Brightline. 

Last edited by Gary Graves

Arnold,

With the advent of modern O gauge speed control (MTH PS2, PS3, Lionel Odyssey), DCS, Legacy and scale-sized O gauge locomotives and cars, it seems to me that the emphasis has become running at realistic slow and medium speeds rather than high speeds – perhaps because most home layouts are not large enough for realistic-looking high-speed running. Other than my Amtrak AEM-7s, or maybe GG-1s, I don’t have any model locomotives whose prototypes ran at more than 100 MPH. Nonetheless, when running passenger trains on my O-72 layout, I always give them a short run at “high speed,” say 80 MPH, as in this video of my MTH PRR G5s #5740 with PS1. It may not be realistic on the curves, but I like to hear the (steam) sounds, blow the whistle, and see how a train looks passing through the countryside at 80 MPH - a speed the G5s locomotives did attain on the LIRR.

As far as the real thing, I would like to see the investment and construction of modern high-speed rail in the United States. I enjoy travelling on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor at 125 MPH. And there are city-pairs in the US where high-speed rail would be feasible.

My first step will be to have an O gauge layout large enough to run an Acela at 150 MPH...

MELGAR

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Last edited by MELGAR

One of my favorite stories (from a Trains article in 1973) was of a run from Crestview OH to Ft Wayne IN where an out-of-service PRR T1 was pulled in to head up a mail train with quite a few coaches when one of the two K4s broke down. The engineer said to the fireman (who wrote the article) "Lets see what she'll do as its unlikely we'll ever get to drive on of these again".  After several stops, they were facing a long straight section of track leading into Ft Wayne where they opened her up and twisted the speedometer off at 125 and she kept on increasing in speed beyond that point.  He said "the telephone poles looked like a picket fence!" The superintendent called them to the carpet in his office and scolded them for their misdeed. 

Last edited by c.sam
Gary Graves posted:

Not exactly high speed, but Virgin Trains USA is under construction between WPB and Orlando and the 40 mile section between Orlando and Cocoa Beach will see 125 mph regularly. No crossings and precise new track enable the higher speeds and it should be fun to watch 125 mph trains zip past 70 mpg cars only 50 feet away. 

 

BTW I'd love to get an O gauge model of the Virgin Trains or Brightline. 

Trains don't really have to run 200 + mph to be high speed.  The key would be get to 100 to 150 mph and staying there.  The distance between downtown SF and LA is just over 300 miles.  A train that left either city and ran non-stop at 150 mph would get to its destination in just over 2 hours (city center to city center).

This would be beat flying by at least 2 hours given travel time to and from the airport, security checks, etc.  The flight time between Oakland and the LA Airport is 1 hour 10 minutes. The travel time between the LA Airport and downtown is 1/2 hour with light traffic and over an hour with normal heavy traffic.  The security check at LA Airport from 15 minutes to over 2 hours depending on the day.  I always plan to arrive at the LA airport at least 2 hours before flight boarding time.  This means leaving for the airport 3 hours before my flight boarding time.  NH Joe

My fastest train is the Postwar Lionel Brunswick green Pennsy GG1 passenger train shown in the video below:

In real life it travelled 100 MPH in passenger service and 90 MPH in freight service. Its streamlined style makes it appear to be made for speed and power.

Clearly, there are high speed modern passenger trains in existence today that greatly exceed 100 MPH, but it's hard for me to imagine a mile long freight train going any faster than 90 MPH. 

Any chance that the GG1 can be resurrected for high speed freight service? Arnold

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david1 posted:

No gg1 can be resurrected because of components that are hazardous and I doubt they would build one from the ground up to look like a gg1. 

I saw them everyday along the mainline in The suburbs of Philly, oh what a sight to see. 

Dave

All the hazardous components have been removed from the remaining GG1's.   It's my understanding that many of the survivors also have frame issues and it wouldn't be economically feasible to try to resurrect one with contemporary electronics if they could be shoe-horned in somehow.

Rusty

Well, there already is interest in model high-speed trains, enough so for several models to be produced in HO at various times in the past:

There just isn't much interest in intermixing Asian/European prototypes with US layouts. Y'know 'cause of that pesky "prototypicality police" and such. Believe me, I've looked for examples to the contrary on YouTube. So far I can count them on one hand.

---PCJ

Very nice, Railride, thanks for sharing that video of high speed model passenger trains.

IMO, if we had more real trains like those in Railride's video, then model O Gauge passenger trains could be popular down the road. Little kids love fast trains.

What about high speed or fast, mile long freight trains. Do they exist in real life or in the world of models? 

If they exist, or will exist in the future, in the USA, that could be good for our hobby.

If not, that could also be good for our hobby. Maybe in the future we will have layouts with high speed passenger trains, and long, slow freight trains. Arnold

MELGAR posted:

Arnold,

I just reread an article from a 2016 issue of MR in which they tested an N scale model of the Amtrak ACS-64 electric locomotive now in use on the Northeast Corridor. The model tested at a maximum scale speed of 248 miles-per-hour. Maybe N scale will be the way of the future - but not for me...

MELGAR

At this point in my life, O-scale/gauge is as small as I would like to go.

MELGAR posted:

Arnold,

I just reread an article from a 2016 issue of MR in which they tested an N scale model of the Amtrak ACS-64 electric locomotive now in use on the Northeast Corridor. The model tested at a maximum scale speed of 248 miles-per-hour. Maybe N scale will be the way of the future - but not for me...

MELGAR

As my eyes and I get older, I might need a magnifying glass to see N scale trains. IMO, O Gauge is a great size, and S scale is as small as I would ever want to go. Arnold

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