So here's a plan that wraps up super-fast, ultra-efficient, convenient transport with smart energy usage and a tangible boost for renewable power creation schemes. ... • In 1976 LUL brought into service a ‘tunnel cleaning train’ • Based on 1938 tube stock and used forced air to disturb dust and dirtBased on 1938 tube stock and used forced air to disturb dust and dirt followed by a vacuum to remove it. Would be nice to have more info on how they would generate the vacuum, and what quality would be required/maintained. Mag-lev train lines themselves are exorbitantly expensive: Japan's Linimo HSST, a low-speed suburban mag-lev line, cost around US$100 million per kilometer (0.62 miles) to build. High speeds would mean that serving meals and bathroom breaks on a train would be unnecessary, thus no isles would be necessary. Of course, if it was that simple, we'd already be blasting around the Earth at orbital speeds like they were predicting in the 1800s. And once you reach your top speed, you simply stop accelerating, apply no further energy, and coast. In pneumatic systems, the chute connects to an underground pipe that leads directly to a neighborhood waste collection center. See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning. Transport for London has dust on the tube is “highly unlikely” to be dangerous to health @JPAR - the total skin friction in a tube is far greater than that on a train, unless the trains are extremely close together. Underground Train File: Surface Stock 1933-1959, Brian Hardy, 2002; Journals of the 'London Underground Railway Society; Metropolitan Railway Rolling Stock, Snowdon, J.R., Wild Swan, 2001. The tunnel was built in a shallow trench of 4 feet (1.2 m) in depth; the contemporary illustration (right) showing the line disappearing beneath the landscape seems to be no more than artistic licence although, as built, earth may have been drawn up around the structure. Over 280,000 people receive our email newsletter. Yes we could do it, but why? [14] This legend has been developed into the novel Strange Air by fantasy writer Tom Brown.[15]. [1] The bristle collar served to keep the tunnel "partially airtight". Based on calculations by entrepreneur Elon Musk, who came up with the idea of a train that travels inside a vacuum tube, a journey between Manchester and … Having everyone lie down head to foot boarding the train would maximize speed and minimize supporting infrastructure. In 1978, a woman claimed to have found the tunnel and to have seen within it an old railway carriage filled with skeletons in Victorian outfits. [2] It operated for just over two months, and may have been a demonstration line for a more substantial atmospheric railway planned between Waterloo and Whitehall, construction of which was started under the Thames but never completed. good luck to that. Today there are multiple inlets, one for each waste stream. The train would speed inside a vacuum tunnel at a theoretical speed upto 8000 km/hr, that’s roughly six and a half times the speed of sound. Kinetic energy increases as the square of speed, so an earthquake or other surprise could turn the train into a big explosion. Tests conducted by London Underground — which spends £60m a year on cleaning — show that washing the tunnels has a big impact on the air quality at some platforms. it would be far cheaper and easier to build spaceplanes that fly above the atmosphere. Central , Bakerloo , Circle , District , Metropolitan , Jubilee , Northern , Waterloo & City , Hammersmith & City , Piccadilly , Victoria along the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) while interconnecting with the local train … Since 2010 he's branched out into photography, video and audio production. There are no shortage of people and groups pushing for widespread adoption of vacuum tube technology as a superfast travel option – after all, with the demise of the Concorde supersonic airliner, mass global transit speeds have remained stagnant since the 1960s. Similarly light weight bridges could be used instead of massive expensive structures. Not to mention....what happens if the train loses cabin pressure? Earlier this week, everyone was banging on about Virgin Hyperloop, the train in a tube that’ll supposedly be able to hit speeds of 1,000 kph (620 mph) when it’s finished. And it turns out we've got the technology to do that today – mag-lev rail lines remove all rolling friction from the energy equation for a train, and accelerating them through a vacuum tunnel can eliminate wind resistance to the point where it's theoretically possible to reach blistering speeds over 4,000 mph (6,437 km/h) using a fraction of the energy an airliner uses – and recapturing a lot of that energy upon deceleration. What happens when an earthquake strikes and cracks the pressure seal or destroys the tube completely? The London Underground has also owned several departmental self-powered vehicles designed for other duties. These include a tunnel cleaning train, consisting of two 1938 stock motor cars and three purpose-built cars, which act like a giant vacuum cleaner , and can hold 6 … Removed up to 1,000kg What's more, there's really very little precedent to show exactly what happens when a populated carriage goes from ultra high speed in a vacuum to being struck with regular air pressure. Sending an e-mail from London to Beijing might be instantaneous, but the rest of the world still feels like a long way away if you have to physically travel around it. You could also make more efficient use of power creation and usage cycles – energy that's created in California at off-peak times can be sent across the grid to be used in peak hour in New York. “More than £6.5 million was spent by Transport for London (TfL) on its doomed tunnel-cleaning train project, it has been revealed. Trains could enter & exit the main 'loop' via separate connectors so that the air speed wasn't an issue when stopping at the destination. [3] In the tunnel the bridge-profile rails were on longitudinal sleepers whereas in the platform sections conventional cross sleepers were used. Operating in a vacuum, these vehicles would make almost no sound, even as they smashed through the sound barrier, because there'd be no air for them to create sonic vibrations in. Ultra-fast, high efficiency ground transport is technologically within reach – so why isn't anybody building it? [7], It has been rumoured that the site of the railway is haunted, a popular urban legend of the 1930s partially connected with stories surrounding Crystal Palace railway station. Speed, for one. After all, we've all seen the wreckage that can be caused in a 60 mph (96 km/h) car crash. Vacuum tube-based transport has a lot of things going for it. 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