Heated Airport Runways

leonz

Hello and good morning Dan, Mark, Jamie, Nicholas and all,

The GN ripped out its original electrified section from Wenatchee to Seattle in 1956 which was originally part of the first installation for the first Cascade Tunnel installed in 1909 on Windy and Cowboy mountain.

This work brought GN generated electricity to the railroad towns of Skykomish, Embro, Nippon, Wellington and Cascade Tunnel Station and Wenatchee.

The railroad towns of Wellington, Embro, Nippon, Wellington and Cascade tunnel station no longer exist as they were no longer needed by the GN when the second Cascade Tunnel was completed in 1929.

The second Cascade tunnel would have bankrupted the the GN if the wholly owned Chicago Burlington and Quincy railroad was not operating and hauling iron ore from the Mesabee Iron Range to the GN docks at Allouez.

They could have kept the old tunnel and route as they had been improving the line for years(replacing wood snow sheds with concrete ones, regrading the line and installing sheet piling to fix the grades with substantial concrete grades, and improving the drainage,

If they had listened to John Frank Stevens they would have and should have and would have moved the line to the southern side of the valley to eliminate most of the avalanche risk and still have the small railroad towns for the water stops and coal and sanding yards.

Its a real shame as they could have just mined 2 feet of rock out the floor of the old tunnel at wellington and had been able to run the unit trains with no problems.

As it is now they can only run 33 trains per day through the existing tunnel as they have to flush the tunnel free of diesel fumes with fresh air in order to allow each freight and passenger train to pass through the tunnel safely.

If they had at least kept the tunnel electrified they would have
been able to use modern Bombardier Traxx locomotives and pulled the trains through the tunnel quickly and doubled the number of trains passing through the new tunnel.

It would be easy enough to mine the floor out of the tunnel to install the pantograph electrical lines and insulators in the tunnel ceiling as was done in 1928-29. It would just take part of a summer to do it. But repairing the old tunnel and the old rail line would be a faster by moving the grade to the southern side of the valley and repair where the old line and both tunnels could be used for directional running.

The new tunnel was never planned or designed to have the amount of traffic it has now in any case and they have found out that the physics of tunneling and mine ventilation can not be bent to thier (BNSF) will.

When they began transporting trailer on flat cars and shipping containers on flat cars with the diesel engines they had to cut the corners back on the cascade tunnel entrances to clear the quarried stone cornices that were mortared into place in 1929 when the when the tunnels were finished.

As a retired hard rock miner I knew exactly what they missed and could have done for an immediate benefit for the railroad and made even more money with the improvements made on the line.

OH, one big factor in this was that the GN board of Directors was loaded with railroad people and today that would never have happened.

To qoute Louis J. Hill when Ralph Budd put the issue to a vote was this; "Your ruining my fathers railroad". If J. J. Hill was alive
in 1925 he would have overruled Ralph Budd Sr., and the other board of directors and removed them all from the board.



More trivia

Jamie Hall

The only thing I might add to the above is this... at the time, thanks to the ICC and the Feds in general, GN -- and all the other Class Is -- were as near to being bankrupt as was financially possible -- and could raise no more capital. It wasn't until the Staggers Act (1980) which allowed the railroads to raise their rates to the point where they could actually make a return on investment, not to mention divesting thousands of miles of branch lines which railfans (including me!) regret, but which were money sinks, that the modern Class 1s were able to recover.

Three other things which one must keep in mind on North American practice vs. European:

First, and perhaps most important, is that the North American Class Is are private enterprise. Very little government money has gone to them, and then only with considerable kicking and screaming. This is completely unlike the European, where the railroads are regarded as a public utility and have large government subsidies even where they aren't actually government owned.

Second, North American operations are completely freight oriented, whereas European operations are strongly passenger oriented; freight is a secondary operation where it exists at all. Should we have more passenger rail? I'd say most certainly -- but not unless the people through their governments are willing to pay for it, which they aren't.

And third, there is a different culture (which you see in many areas, not just railroads): the European systems prefer fiddly, fancy, highly stressed and highly efficient machinery which requires very highly trained people to maintain it and operate it, whereas North America tends to prefer simpler, perhaps slightly less efficient, machinery which just plain runs, and if it breaks can be fixed enough to limp home without major effort (a friend of mine, to give an example from a different field, had a logging skidder from Sweden - a million dollar piece of equipment -- break down the other day about a mile back in the woods. He couldn't even tow it out and had to fly a team in from Sweden with the necessary parts and tools and mechanics to fix it)(consider back in the steam age -- French compound steam engines were masterpieces of efficiency and machinery -- and took years to learn to even start, never mind run. North American steam wasn't that much less efficient -- but it sure was a lot simpler). Is the one culture better than the other? Dunno, though I have my own preferences -- but they surely are different.

leonz

Hello Jamie,

I totally understand what you are referring to as I dealt with the same thing with Wagner mining scoops. simple to work on but if you broke an axle at the hub you had to drag it back to the shop and ship it to Lakeshore Mining Equipment at Louisville to have it welded back together and also have gussets welded on the hubs to strengthen them before that were shipped back to us.

The newer mining scoops were larger and more complicated as they used electric over wet spring compression braking systems and did not use compressed air braking which made all that much harder to work on.

They were also overloaded as they were only ment to carry an 8 cubic yard load of blasted rock and the mine manager ordered the new 8 yard machines with 10 yard buckets which stressed the axles even more and constantly broke the axle bolts that held the bogie to the rigid rear axle.
All in the name of production to meet the minimum quota tonnage per day of 10,000 tons of finished rock salt hoisted out of the mine 5+ days per week.

Gordy

I don’t ever see “conductive concrete” as a vehicle to snow melt on a large scale. Roads, bridges,runways etc. For obvious reasons, maintaining conductivity in a concrete mass would be a nightmare over time.

Great idea, just near impossible to implement with concrete.

Mark Eatherton

Gordy said:

I don’t ever see “conductive concrete” as a vehicle to snow melt on a large scale. Roads, bridges,runways etc. For obvious reasons, maintaining conductivity in a concrete mass would be a nightmare over time.

Great idea, just near impossible to implement with concrete.

Yeah, I wonder what the added effect of having an electrically charged concrete would be with mag chlorides... Having enough trouble with our bridges and other super structures with just mag chloride... I'd bet you could hear the rust eating the steel...

I keep thinking in my mind how a person could pour in lifts, with some super density XPS insulation incorporating PEX in the upper portion of the slab cap, but having landed HARD at MDW numerous times, I'm thinking its not a good idea.

ME

Jamie Hall

Mark Eatherton said:

Gordy said:

I don’t ever see “conductive concrete” as a vehicle to snow melt on a large scale. Roads, bridges,runways etc. For obvious reasons, maintaining conductivity in a concrete mass would be a nightmare over time.

Great idea, just near impossible to implement with concrete.

Yeah, I wonder what the added effect of having an electrically charged concrete would be with mag chlorides... Having enough trouble with our bridges and other super structures with just mag chloride... I'd bet you could hear the rust eating the steel...

I keep thinking in my mind how a person could pour in lifts, with some super density XPS insulation incorporating PEX in the upper portion of the slab cap, but having landed HARD at MDW numerous times, I'm thinking its not a good idea.

ME

Probably not... considering that the main gear of a big aircraft is rated to absorb over 100,000 foot pounds of energy on touchdown... which all goes into the concrete!

j a_2

Jamie Hall said:

Northeast. That was one of their beautiful Yellowbirds. I loved the 727 -- sweet flying airplane (even if it did have a couple of gotchas).

That whole flight I mentioned was dodgy -- it was Washington National (as it was in those days!) to Boston. Deice, took off in freezing rain. Absolute maximum performance climb out of that bird to get out of the ice (the stewardesses told me the folks in back were a bit perturbed at the deck angle... can't blame them). Fortunately very little wind, and right straight down the runway at Boston. Taxiing in was differential thrust on 1 and 3, 2 shut down. Braking action was nil.

I remember that DC-10. Those guys never really had a decent chance.

Northeast, that was the old yellow bird as I remember...lots of the mechanics ended up at eastern airlines...very talented bunch of guys...Piloting back then, required so much skill, as you know , deicing procedures changed over the years...I don’t think heated runways or taxiways will ever happen...Man did I love watching the phantoms taking the tail hook when I was on end of runway duty,at Kunsan Korea....

Gordy

The conductivity Problem is contraction , and expansion joints. While each of these joints have dowel bar baskets which would complete the conductivity circuit loop from section to section. It’s the intermediate cracks that will develop over time, which would open the loop.

Ever wonder why pavement blows up on the super hot days? It’s because of micro cracking between saw cuts. Overtime through hot, and cold cycles these micro cracks collect debris on the cold cycles (winter). As these cracks fill with debris the pavement gains length along its longitudinal axis. When enough debris collects in the cracks it loses area to expand then the pavement buckles. That’s why when newer pavement which has seen the same extreme hot temps doesn’t buckle but then years down the road does even though that same temp was reached when newer, and never had a problem.

It’s these micro cracks that are unnoticed that would break the conductivity of the concrete.

Until someone develops concrete that doesn’t crack (unless you leave it in the concrete truck) this what the demise of conductive concrete snowmelt faces.

As far as hydronic methods the hurdle is paving operations. When slipping lanes the slump is about an 1”, or less. When filling in lanes 2” or less slump. The vibrating heads are in the top 3 inches. Then there is the augers, and mud box that goes back, and forth transversely distributing the concrete once placed in front of the paver. You just wouldn’t have a way to have the pex at a depth shallow enough to keep the btus to the top, and low enough to not get chewed up, And stretched out.

There is no reinforcing to tie pex to other than baskets every 15-20feet apart.

A bridge deck by itself separate of the road way would be doable conductive wise since there is reinforcing steel in the concrete. However there would be a problem in that the conducting material would cause corrosion. I say that because chlorides on the roadway would be tracked onto the bridge deck to work their magic on the concrete.

Don’t get me wrong I love the concept. Think of the tons of chlorides that go into the ground, and into our storm sewers which end up into our fivers, streams, and aquifers every year in the snow belt. The environmental impact that conductive concrete, or asphalt would save would be incredible.

hot_rod

We certainly don't need airfare rates to go up! I suspect passengers would foot the bill for run way snowmelt installation and operating costs.

j a_2

hot rod said:

We certainly don't need airfare rates to go up! I suspect passengers would foot the bill for run way snowmelt installation and operating costs.

Being there government controlled I would say everyone would pay for it,even people like me that do not ever fly...and I for one am not interested in that, you fly you pay,you don’t fly you don’t pay...If the weather is bad enough to close runways the civilian planes should not fly, Once a plane is deiced it has x amount of time to take off,and if not it has to be redone..Deicing the large aircraft can be a huge challenge, the glycol blows back at you on 20 and 30 mile per hour winds..I am sure I drank a lot of it in my days....Mechanics used to have the chor to Deice, but it became to EXPENSIVE so they now for the most part use ramp personnel...go figure

leonz

good morning J A,


Did they employ Water Twisters at the end of the runways at Kunsan like they do on the aircraft carriers for controlling the arresting forces to slow the jets down and to make additional hot water?

The beauty of the water twisters is that they are so simple and they create a huge amount of hot water from the combination of simple friction and the water weight used to slow the jets down on recovery.

On the related topic of deicing I cannot remember for the life of me which airport has the infra red heated taxiing hangers to deice passenger and freight jets. It certainly would stop the glycol pollution in surface and ground water near airports.
This could be done on bridge decks but they would have to slow the traffic down to a crawl and or also have a large drain network but the devils in the details

hot_rod

I think it is a multi step deice now. if the plane has ice on it they de-ice with one glycol. They can also use a anti ice mixture to keep the aircraft from icing during takeoff.

I've heard the friction of the air across the wings keeps it ice free when up are to speed? You can see the glycol blast off the surfaces when you take off. A powerful blow dryer.

The glycol sometime would flows in to bio ponds, break down with O2 contact and then be flushed into sewers. They have used EG and PG over the years. All the storage tanks I see are now a form of PG.
I spend too much time in airports and in the air. "moving 8 miles a minute for months at a time", as Bob Seger sings.

Jamie Hall

It would be nice if the air friction kept the ice off while one is flying along... it doesn't. On most modern commercial size turbofan aircraft, the leading edges of everything are deiced with hot bleed air from the engines, and that works very well except in heavy freezing rain or supercooled icing (which can ruin your whole day). Most turboprops have deicing boots on the wings and tail (some use bleed air), and some form of deice (often electric) on the props. A few high end general aviation aircraft have leading edges which leak a small amount of deicing fluid onto the wings - but that's more to give you time to get out of the clag rather than fly around in it. Whatever you have, even if you are in a heavy you don't want to spend any more time in ice than you can help.

Whatever, you do not even try to take off with ice adhering to the wings -- that is if you seriously want to survive...

Sal Santamaura

hot rod said:

We certainly don't need airfare rates to go up!...

Oh yes we do. All the way up to the inflation-adjusted level they were before airline deregulation. Then commercial flying would return to being a reasonable, pleasant experience, as opposed to the dehumanizing cattle-car bus-with-wings thing it is now.

This from a retired Boeing engineer who drives rather than flies if there's no water (or, if there is, no bridge/ferry) between where he is and where he wants/needs to go. No matter how great the distance.

DanHolohan

@Sal Santamaura I haven't been on a plane in years. Don't miss it one bit. And I sure don't miss the TSA.

Jamie Hall

I fly either Amtrak or Chevrolet... no way am I going through that TSA hassle, unless I have to go to Europe. And even then, a nice freighter?

Gordy

I just got back from Vegas. A 737 is a very unpleasant 4 hours in the window seat for me......especially when the guy reclines in front of me. Isle seat not so bad.

Can’t imagine an emergency evacuation. TSA wasn’t bad.

However I did have a bit of a fit when my carry on was checked on the way there, AND on the way back, especially when your bag conforms to the required size. Apparently a disadvantage when you are group 8 boarding. Not enough overhead storage.

j a_2

hot rod said:

I think it is a multi step deice now. if the plane has ice on it they de-ice with one glycol. They can also use a anti ice mixture to keep the aircraft from icing during takeoff.

I've heard the friction of the air across the wings keeps it ice free when up are to speed? You can see the glycol blast off the surfaces when you take off. A powerful blow dryer.

The glycol sometime would flows in to bio ponds, break down with O2 contact and then be flushed into sewers. They have used EG and PG over the years. All the storage tanks I see are now a form of PG.
I spend too much time in airports and in the air. "moving 8 miles a minute for months at a time", as Bob Seger sings.

hot rod said:

I think it is a multi step deice now. if the plane has ice on it they de-ice with one glycol. They can also use a anti ice mixture to keep the aircraft from icing during takeoff.

Are you sure EG was ever used? When I worked for the airlines, that was never used dating back to the 70S...isopropyl alcohol was used at some point...What you see off the wings on take off is not deicing fluid...What some major airports have now is a what you call a car wash,it’s a taxi thru hanger like structure that is fairly close to the runways so the deice time limits are not exceeded by sitting waiting to take off...They do from my understanding recycle the PG...where years back especially at Logan ran thru the run offs to the harbor,hence the little clam and muscle diggers gathered at the outflow areas...The manufacture of PG told us the stuff was safe to drink, and I can tell you it had a very sweet like taste....Crazy times

j a_2

leonz said:

good morning J A,


Did they employ Water Twisters at the end of the runways at Kunsan like they do on the aircraft carriers for controlling the arresting forces to slow the jets down and to make additional hot water?

The beauty of the water twisters is that they are so simple and they create a huge amount of hot water from the combination of simple friction and the water weight used to slow the jets down
Not quite sure about that....I imagine the friction put out some kind of high heat

hot_rod

j a said:

hot rod said:

I think it is a multi step deice now. if the plane has ice on it they de-ice with one glycol. They can also use a anti ice mixture to keep the aircraft from icing during takeoff.

I've heard the friction of the air across the wings keeps it ice free when up are to speed? You can see the glycol blast off the surfaces when you take off. A powerful blow dryer.

The glycol sometime would flows in to bio ponds, break down with O2 contact and then be flushed into sewers. They have used EG and PG over the years. All the storage tanks I see are now a form of PG.
I spend too much time in airports and in the air. "moving 8 miles a minute for months at a time", as Bob Seger sings.

hot rod said:

I think it is a multi step deice now. if the plane has ice on it they de-ice with one glycol. They can also use a anti ice mixture to keep the aircraft from icing during takeoff.

Are you sure EG was ever used? When I worked for the airlines, that was never used dating back to the 70S...isopropyl alcohol was used at some point...What you see off the wings on take off is not deicing fluid...What some major airports have now is a what you call a car wash,it’s a taxi thru hanger like structure that is fairly close to the runways so the deice time limits are not exceeded by sitting waiting to take off...They do from my understanding recycle the PG...where years back especially at Logan ran thru the run offs to the harbor,hence the little clam and muscle diggers gathered at the outflow areas...The manufacture of PG told us the stuff was safe to drink, and I can tell you it had a very sweet like taste....Crazy times

I did an interview with one of the glycol engineers at Dow Chemical a few years back, he also did a webinar for us. He told me EG is still used at some deicing facilities, it was, maybe stills less expensive and with one less carbon it breaks down faster that PG. Dow still offers PG and EG at their deicing website. 2008 figures show only 11% of deicers were EG, about 25 million gallons used!

Airlines get top priority for glycol when supplies are low. We have had years where hydronic glycol were hard to come by and very $$.
A MSDS search turns up all the specifics on EG and PG deicing fluids. Potassium Acetate is another deicer.

I suspect most is captured and recycled now and alternates to EG are used after O hare settled a lawsuit years back on their use of EG deicers. The city also spent 80 million upgrading storm sewers in the area to collect the run way runoff. Baltimore-Washington was also threatened with a suit regarding EG deicers running into storm drains.

Sal Santamaura

Gordy said:

...A 737 is a very unpleasant 4 hours in the window seat for me......especially when the guy reclines in front of me...

Just one more example of deregulation fallout -- seat pitch has become absurdly small.

Gordy said:

...Can’t imagine an emergency evacuation...

If you think that would be fun on a 737, consider how it'd go on an A380-800 holding its maximum certified load of 868 passengers in a single-class configuration. At night. In 90 seconds.

Jamie Hall

At the risk of sounding selfish... that's partly why there's an emergency escape means directly from the cockpit...

Leonard

I like to be over the wings ,better ride, less bounce from springiness of the plane airframe . Also slightly back on them is the emergency exit door. Sweet. But door is cold, so I sit in front of it. Figure I can climb over the seat if I have to.

Gordy

I was over the trailing edge of wing. Ride was fine, it’s the confined space that gets me. One should need a confined space permit, and training to ride on one.

j a_2

Jamie Hall said:

At the risk of sounding selfish... that's partly why there's an emergency escape means directly from the cockpit...

Ah yes the escape ropes, but honestly I can’t ever imagine a pilot bailing on his pasangers or crew, especially a former military pilot...The fighter pilots on the phantoms i crewed had balls of steel...Bunch of crazy fools who partied harder than us mechanics...But when duty called and the buzzer went off it was all business...no more buddy buddy stuff...I just can’t say enough about the group of pilots I was assigned with...‘‘tis one big reason Sir John Mckain will always be on my hero list...but I think I best end there on that one...

scrook_2

“...there was a world airways DC10 in the early 80s that slid off the runway due too ice on the runway couple people died...”

Haven't thought about that in a long time: World Airways, flight 30, from Newark, January 1982.

Truly lousy night, temps in the 30's, foggy & rainy but the couple days preceding had been *bitterly* cold. The runways were contaminated w/ a thin layer of packed snow/ice, with water on top for extra lube, in spite of plowing ops. Long story short, pilot touched down a couple thousand feet long; went off the end, into the harbor, walking/wading distance to shore. Nose broke off at front bulkhead, wing engines flooded and stopped, but tail engine continued to run in full reverse thrust for a while. No fire. Minimal injuries only, (or so it appeared).

My father came into Logan little earlier that evening on another "Heavy" (greater than 300,000 lb takeoff wt. capacity), from a European business trip as I recall. Said they used pretty much the whole runway to stop before turning onto a taxiway. He later realized something had happened (after he'd cleared customs?), all flight ops had stopped & there was general sense of unease, though it wasn’t till he got home that he found out what had happened.

At the time they thought they had everyone accounted for -- the NTSB report discusses the SOB (Souls On Board) and subsequent deboarded/rescued count errors -- it was a couple days later that they realize Walter (70) and his son Leo (40) had joined the flight late, (their original flight had been cancelled?) and were in the row where the nose had broken off from the rest of the craft.

I had worked w/ Walter, he was retired, but worked a few hours a week where I was. Was one hell of a shock for us all.

I like to imagine they tricked everyone and, instead, were living life large in sunny South America, but, alas, that's not how these things go.

RIP Walter.