Sardinian Insanity

[princessofthecape]

I was randomly looking around on Google Earth at railways in obscure parts of the world (I do this pretty frequently because I'm a nerd like that [FYI, the tracks running along the east coast of Taiwan are just an unbelievable engineering feat, take a look sometime!]), and I spotted this track arrangement in Carbonia, Sardinia. Now... what the heck is this thing? And before someone goes 'it's a crazy wye because they ran out of space,' the station in Carbonia is on the outskirts of town. They most certainly had space for a conventional wye. So... why do this?

[jamesbrodie67281]

Miss sorry Princess,
You must admit that the Y it's quite different and impressive, don't know the official reason for a Y like shewn unless the curves are easy for large locos to negotiate and maybe a conventional Y would be too tight......Only surmising.
I only wish I had the space for a Y on my layout, I don't even have an area large enough for a turntable.
You gave me an idea to look on Google earth for the Y at Vancouver as the last time I rode on the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver the whole train went on the Y...(Modom and I were doing a world tour (sort of) to celebrate our 40th anniversary some 17 years back.) hence the ride on the Canadian and even the Gann but our next trip Lord willing we will try and travel on the Amtrak CZ....NY to CA.
James.

[mlehman]

Maybe it's a satanic wye?

If there are any questions on those Taiwanese lines, let me know. My wife hangs out with some of the engineers who work on high speed rail line engineering in Taiwan who are here at the U of Illinois as students or adjunct faculty in the railroad engineering program. They do know good engineering when they see it. She says they were impressed by pics of my layout on her cellphone.

[jamesbrodie67281]

Nice Peepelz, Reading the Google Earth map I feel that there isn't enough space for a conventional Y and some draughtsman has been very clever at working out the curve radii required. Really it's a brilliant piece of design and engineering. Thank you Princess for 'drawing' our attention to it.
James Brodie.............Happy Trails.

[catt]

Friend of mine says these are quite common in Italy.

[jamesbrodie67281]

spaghetti junctions ?
JB.

[WP 257]

No, it simply appears they did not have the space to build a more conventional wye.

Just because an image from Google Earth shows there is physical space on the ground to design and construct something does not mean it can actually be done due to environmental, political or other issues.

In this case it appears a conventional wye might have been "too close" to the road in the lower corner, or else that "available space" was "high value" property belonging to somebody, such that they did not feel they could acquire it for railroad purposes--or else who knows what was dumped there in the past?

Here in the U.S. we sometimes avoid what would be the obvious solution when we suspect the ground to be contaminated with unknown waste materials. Already state DOT's and others are avoiding the obvious, simple solutions because they do not want to touch their own ground that they already own when they believe past dumping of materials now defined as "hazardous" has occurred.

In the U.S., the cost of dealing with hazardous substances is now escalating design and construction costs for both roads and railroads. The current thinking is that it's now both cheaper and much faster to avoid the crap entirely than to deal with the permitting issues and/or possible cleanup required by multiple federal agencies.

The problem with the "you must avoid it" options is that they usually are more expensive. I have a project where the client does not want to move their existing maintenance facility out of the way because they don't know what is buried in the ground. They don't want any excavation even near it! This vastly complicates the design process, and will most likely more than double the cost of the new freeway interchange (because the entire configuration will be different--toll plaza is also going away).

[riogrande]

Mar 5, 2014 10:39:50 GMT -8 WP 257 said:

In the U.S., the cost of dealing with hazardous substances is now escalating design and construction costs for both roads and railroads. The current thinking is that it's now both cheaper and much faster to avoid the crap entirely than to deal with the permitting issues and/or possible cleanup required by multiple federal agencies.

In general that is true, however, it seems since the late 1990's the regulatory environment seems to have backed off somewhat partly because of the big push in clean up and remediation work going on between the late 1980's and the late 1990's, and government agencies like New York's DEC seemed to have eased up a bit too. I was educated as a geologist and worked in the environmental industry during that time frame and the work and money being spend really died off around 1997/98 and never really recovered - hence my switch to IT work cause at least I could find some steady decent paying work. New York state and Massachusetts seemed to be among the toughest in the US, and I don't doubt California is up there too!

[WP 257]

Well, sorry to hear of the forced career change; however, the bugs and bunnys people and the wetlands people have not backed off at all in other states (you did not mention). Today on a road widening project we are having to design and build retaining walls (at nearly $100 per exposed square foot of wall visible above existing ground) to protect wetlands that were created when a roadway was built in the first place, 50+ years ago. They are non-native wetlands...the regulatory agencies really don't care about the facts. It is ongoing as I write this...millions of dollars for walls that should not be built, and are not being built for noise reasons, but to save a man-created-in-the-first-place low quality wetland that we could actually do a better job of replacing at some other location. That's one project I'm working on. Elsewhere on the very same project we are being directed "must avoid" suspected contaminated ground...

Ironically, this roadway I'm talking about is the very same one that killed some railroads, and I can't name which state, railroads or this roadway...or risk losing my job.

[riogrande]

To be honest, I was getting tired of living out of hotels and being out of doors all the time. IT work is much better in that respect! I don't doubt the birds and bunny people are still at it on some fronts, but the ground water and soil contamination work really slowed down at the consulting firm I originally moved the NY State to work at and majorly downsized the environmental geology division I worked in to less than half and later were absorbed into another division.

The last geology work I had was mainly investigating and closing oil wells in NY, PA and WV for a Fortune 500 company and after a several years that work wound down too. It was interesting work I have to say! Besides having to do due diligence by verifying liability by doing chain of lease searches in courthouses, I had to go and physically find the old abandon oil wells which were on the states list wells in the field. Then organize contractors using old fashioned cable tool drilling rigs to clean out the wells and plug them according to state regulations. It was a bit like oil archeology - mind you these were wells drilled mainly between 1910 and 1950's and many had the casing pulled out so they were literally just a hole in the ground! They were pumped radially from a central "power house" rather than the "grasshopper" electric pumps people many have seen in the past 25-40 years.

There was an 84 year old man who still went out and operated one of these old ancient power houses and pumped a few active wells off of it - probably made a little money as the price of oil was up at the time. It was very interesting to see this in action! It was a large single piston engine which burned the light crude oil straight from the ground as fuel - with a huge exposed flywheel and governor spinning around - it powered a horizontal concentric wheel, which as it rotated, it moved rods attached to it in and out, like spokes from a wheel. Each "spoke" went out to an oil well and transferred the in-out motion to up-down the well, which pumped the oil up via a check-valve to the surface where it flowed into a storage tank waiting for a track to transport it to a vendor. That was probably one of the last operating old style oil well systems in north western Pennsylvania - not far from Franklin PA - southeast of Erie and on the border with NY.

[trebor]

What about the B&O dockside transfer terminal in Baltimore I think. A circular maze.