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Notes on the October 5th’s RailPAC/NARP Meeting San Francisco
By Noel T. Braymer I wasn’t in the mood this time to ride buses for 2 night in a row for this year’s meeting in San Francisco. So I got a flight out of San Diego at 7:56 AM for an arrival at 9:35 AM at San Francisco. Since the first Coaster Train to San…
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The Future of Wireless Electric Trains
By Noel T. Braymer Recently there was excitement among techno-geeks about a patent application by the Tesla electric car company for a hybrid metal-air/lithium ion battery car. The speculation was this could be Tesla’s 400 mile range electric car it has been working on. So what is a hybrid metal-air/lithium ion car? The idea is to…
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How to Save the Chief
By Noel T. Braymer The prospects for the future of the Southwest Chief don’t look good. The BNSF has made it clear that they will not spend more money on the route between Albuquerque, New Mexico and Newton, Kansas to maintain the tracks to passengers standards with so little freight traffic on them. BNSF wants…
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Stuck in Pico Rivera on Metrolink
By Noel T. Braymer Everything was normal until we left the City of Commerce station on Metrolink #604 after leaving LAUS on time at 4:30 PM on Friday September 20, 2013. We barely cleared the station around 4:45 PM when we came to a halt. That’s not usual if the problem was signals or a…
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Life after “Death” for Rail in LA.
By Noel T. Braymer In 1998 the future of rail transit, particularly subway construction looked bleak in Los Angeles. Construction of the Red Line subway from downtown Los Angeles to North Hollywood was a mess. The Red Line construction had created a huge sink hole in east Hollywood. Many buildings were damaged because of ground…
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What’s the Plan for LOSSAN?
By Noel T. Braymer LOSSAN’s goal should be to increase ridership by providing better rail passenger service with faster trains serving more destinations.This is done with coordination of the different services to feed both local and express trains. By doing so all the trains on LOSSAN will improve their efficiency and be more economical for…
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LOSSAN to Arizona?
By Noel T. Braymer LOSSAN originally stood for LOS Angeles-SAN Diego for the route of the San Diegan Trains back in the 1980’s. Since then rail service on this corridor has expanded to Santa Barbara and later to San Luis Obispo. With the introduction of Metrolink and Coaster service sharing parts of the LOSSAN corridor…
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Why I am Thankful for California High Speed Rail
By Noel T. Braymer I was never a big fan of the planning for the California High Speed Rail Project. I have long wanted State Wide High Speed Rail service in California. But what was originally planned by the California High Speed Rail Authority was often long on glitz but short on substance. Much of…
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Orange County Transportation Authority gets the LOSSAN Administration Contract
By Noel T. Braymer I was able to attend the LOSSAN Board meeting on August 23rd in San Diego at the Board Room of SANDAG. The final selection of an agency to take care of the administration of the reorganized LOSSAN Joint Powers Authority was the main order of business and took up most of…
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The Fallacy behind Hyperloop
By Noel T. Braymer The problem with Hyperloop, like most attempts to “reinvent the wheel” is that the promoters of such ideas ignore the fundamentals of how transportation works. The fundamentals are feeders and distribution networks and the travel time from origin to destination. When looking at any airport you will find lots of flat…