But there's an article in this week's New Yorker called "The Train to Tibet." The subtitle is "What will the greatest rail journey on earth do to it's destination?" The article includes a map and a photo of "A train crosses the triple-arched bridge over the Kyichu River, just outside Lhasa, as an armed policeman stands guard."
Posted by stlboomer (Member # 2028) on :
"its" with an apostrophe? Please, say it isn't so.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
Maybe the guys at the New Yorker need to get out more. The railway line to Tibet is not exactly new news. See the thread of last July on this web site for some other disucssion on this line.
Posted by Kiernan (Member # 3828) on :
No, thats my mistake. Its the first mistake that Ive ever made in my entire life.
Thank's for pointing it out.
Posted by 1702 (Member # 4508) on :
quote:Originally posted by George Harris: Maybe the guys at the New Yorker need to get out more. The railway line to Tibet is not exactly new news. See the thread of last July on this web site for some other disucssion on this line.
The article is much more about the social and political aspects of the China/Tibet situation, including the possible negative impact of the railway on Tibet's future, than about the railway itself. The train was the author's mode of transport.
Posted by Railroad Bob (Member # 3508) on :
Whatever the politics are, who wouldn't want to take THAT ride? Just to get to the start of the Tibet Line, you have to go to a pretty exotic Chinese locale; I think it is in Qinghai Province, city of Golmud. Not exactly on the "tourist" itineraries of the PRC. Aren't the passenger coaches somehow pressurized for the high altitudes? The locos are western-made, I believe-- custom-built for the line and were tested up near the Moffat Tunnel, CO. I give the Chinese credit for building it, from an engineering standpoint anyway. Pretty challenging to build a RR over permafrost.
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
George, 1702 is right -- the railroad is just the conveyor for a much larger view of the Han Chinese takeover of Tibet's economy and culture. The piece was not aimed at us foamers.
The article is excellent. It reminded me of how railroads helped kill the culture of the American Indians of the West.
The few details about the train itself were interesting -- there is nothing luxurious about the ride. Oxygen at every seat because the train often climbs over 16,500 feet in the mountains.
Posted by Henry Kisor (Member # 4776) on :
Forgot to add that the author of the piece said the railroad engineers are having difficulty dealing with permafrost because of global warming. In some places they're pumping artificial frost under the roadbed to keep it stable.
Posted by Kiernan (Member # 3828) on :
When I was taking an arctic engineering class so I could get my engineering license in Alaska, the professor explained building on permafrost like this: Imagine using steel as a structural material when the steel is within, say, twenty degrees of its melting point.
Any construction on permafrost is difficult and expensive. If you allow almost any heat into the permafrost, it melts and whatever you built on the permafrost sinks. It would be a problem for a roadbed.
Posted by George Harris (Member # 2077) on :
As an exercise in railroad engineering and construction, this line is impressive. 1140 km (710 miles) of new line Golmud to Lhasa, with 960 km (600 miles) at an elevation of above 4,000 m (13,000 feet), with the highest point at Tanggula Pass at 5,072 m (16,737 feet) elevation.
My comment was more on the order of why did it take the New Yorker so long to get around to this subject, whether it is the railroad itself or the political ramifications of it. If you go to the thread from last July on it, headed with the complete misnomer, "China's Amtrak" you will see that was my take on this thing from the beginning.
This is the essence of what I said before:
1. The line was built for political reasons primarily. The political reason being to further tighten the grip of the majority Han Chinese people in general and the Beijing government in particular over the people and culture of Tibet. Even if we consider Tibet as a backward theocracy, it was at least their own backward theocracy, not an even more repressive dictatorship by outsiders. While what the boys in Beijing are saying, that it was done for the improvement of a backward, undeveloped and primitive region is true in some ways, it is far from the whole truth. I doubt anyone would consider the replacement of Tibet’s theocracy with Beijing’s much more repressive and anything but benevolent dictatorship an improvement.
2. While the line is a spectacular achievement, I hesitate to call it a spectacular engineering achievement because there is a lot of it quite literally on very shaky ground. Good engineering means well built for the situation, both site adn purpose. As I had said earlier, it is not just that it is on permafrost, but that it is on very delicate permafrost. There are people in Canada that have figured out how to maintain a functional railroad on permafrost, but in their case, the permafrost is more stable than that in Tibet, where the temperature of the permafrost is only a couple of degrees below freezing instead of on the order of 20 plus degrees below freezing. However, as Kiernan says, any construction on permafrost is difficult and expensive. What must be done is to make sure that all compressible material in the freeze thaw zone must be removed and replaced with non-compressible material. Read this as remove all frozen mud to a depth below which any part of it is likely to ever get un-frozen and replace it with open graded gravel that will not change in volume in freeze-thaw cycles, and when you do this, make sure that you have picked the point below which things will stay permanently frozen AFTER the construction is completed.
By the way, the analogy between steel and permafrost breaks down in many aspects. Steel loses strength as its temperature increases, losing almost all of its strength by a point quite a few degrees below its melting point. Check most texts that have information on the subject of steel at high temperatures. This heating to the point of loss of strength is the point at which the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings began. On the other hand, frozen water maintains its strength up to the point at which melting begins.
The whole question behind this railroad was not whether it was technically feasible or economically beneficial to the area, but that it was politically demanded by central government and would be built virtually regardless of cost or practicality. Reasons not to do it simply were not to be discussed.
3. The coaches have oxygen available, but are not pressurized. Pressurization is impractical, as if you did it you would either have to have airlocks at the ends of all cars or depressurize at each stop. It has been stated that he ventilation system enriches the oxygen in the atmosphere by removing some of the nitrogen, but how that is done was not explained. A trip on this line should still be approached very cautiously by anyone with breathing difficulties or diminished lung capacity. You will be spending a lot of time at very high altitudes, and not all of it in the train where the oxygen is accessible.
George
Posted by ehbowen (Member # 4317) on :
With that enriched oxygen level, how strict do you think they will have to be about enforcing NO SMOKING rules....
Posted by 4020North (Member # 4081) on :
quote:Originally posted by George Harris: Good engineering means well built for the situation, both site adn purpose. George
Assuming they did select a desirable route from a geological standpoint, and did deal with conditions correctly (replace frozen material to the right depth, etc.) then I would conclude the engineering was done well. If they dealt with challenging conditions (i.e. permafrost), then for that it was a greater accomplishment. How well the track construction holds up and how much maintenance it needs during the coming years will tell.