Question:
Nothing wrong with nuclear power, but, just like passenger rail
technology, if you want the safe and efficient technology, better get it
from the French. The US does not have a very good record in building
standardized proven designs.
Answer:
Do you have government subsidies for coal mines over there?
(In Germany, "cheap" coal power is actually one of the
biggest drains for tax money: a lot of money is spent to
keep a relatively small number of jobs alive ....)
Forget the 2060 mm MÁV pantograph. Meanwhile 1950 mm works in
all of Hungary (the new class 1047 has only two 1950 mm
pantographs and works fine in Austria regularly ....)
Also note that ZSR class 350 is going with the same 1950 mm
pantograph in three of your mentioned systems: CD (DC), CD/ZSR
(AC) and MÁV (AC), when pulling the EC Hungaria. The Thalys
PBKA is also using the same pantograph for SNCB/NS (DC) and
DBAG (AC).
You left out the ex-Yugoslavian countries there, and I am not
entirely sure about them myself .... anyone?
Even though it's more expensive to build dual-system
locomotives, countries with both DC and AC wires (France, Czech
republic and Slovakia) are running a lot of dual-system
locomotives instead of converting their DC wires to AC.
Croatia is going to go all-AC soon though, from what I heard.
Followup to misc.transport.rail.europe as this is really an
European topic.
Not that I know of. The government subsidizes health care for victims
of black lung disease, which would normally be a liability for the
health insurance plans paid for by eastern coal mining companies.
This is more of a historic artifact because as I understand it, black
lung disease is much rarer now due to better dust control in modern
mines. It also provides some money for R&D for cleaner or more
efficient methods of burning coal. The U.S. has large deposits of
easy to get to coal, which makes it cheap.
Is coal mostly mined underground in Germany? Underground coal
mining is almost extinct in the United States: a small number of
underground coal mines still exist in West Virginia and Pennsylvania
but now most of our coal comes from the Western beds of Wyoming,
from vast strip-mines where the entire topsoil above the coal seam
is torn orr and stored, the coal recovered, and the topsoil returned.
In most cases, restoring the ecosystem above the topsoil is a
horrendous cost, but in Wyoming the surface ecosystem is mostly
tallgraaa prairie which is easy to restore.
Even whee underground mines exist, they are highly automated with
very few people in the mine. Coal is ground off the seam by borers
similar to tunnel-boring machines, scooped up by rotary claws on
tracks, and sent back to the surface by extensible conveyor belts.
Mnual labor is mostly used to shore up and bolt the tunnel roof.
I have often wondered why small-gauge TBMs aren't used in underground
coal mining. The Russians experimented with the idea in the 1960s
but I haven't heard of it since.
