Disaster Response Trains

[LoudMusic]

I've been pondering for a while on a concept of using trains as response vehicles for disaster situations. Trains are capable of delivering huge amounts of relief supplies in a relatively quick manner. They could bring in water, fuel, generators, communications equipment, housing, medical supplies, and specialized tools based on the type of disaster encountered. The problem is assembling the consists and having them ready to roll prior to the event.

For situations like hurricane response the effected area would need housing, medical supplies, and water. A train could be prepped with tank cars full of water, box cars with medical stations in them, 20' containers outfitted with living accommodations, and a crane truck to set them out on the ground.

The train could be parked waiting in Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee ... and when called it could reach an east coast disaster region in less than 24 hours. Our weather systems are able to detect general intensity and path of large storms further out than that, which would even give the train(s) time to mobilize before the disaster even occurs and position themselves even closer for when the storm subsides to move in for greatest response effect.

A group in Japan has even made really high tech temporary living facilities in "shipping container" form factor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJw8nY7ucyc

I don't think they need to be that fancy, but it is evidence of how much living space can be included in a 20' container. And on a 100 car train there could be 400 such units, which is a lot of houses for people who just lost their homes.

Other conditions for such a response train could be massive forest fires, earth slides, earthquakes, tornadoes ... to name a few (that have had extreme effect in the past couple years).

In addition to the types of supplies I listed above there could be cars with tanks full of fire suppression chemicals, bridge building supplies, trench cutting supplies, spools of high gauge cable, data cable, small helicopters and UAVs, ... on and on.

Parked in the center of the United States with government ordered rail priority it could likely reach anywhere in North America in less than 48 hours with potentially enough supplies and equipment to rebuild a small town.

What do you think? Could trains be effectively used for such a strategy?

[Littlefoot14]

I like the idea, but I do see one problem, the train tracks aren't immune to natural disasters and they would most likely be just as destroyed as anything else that went though the storm.

Your best bet would be to just try and get the train close, and use wheeled vehicles to get supplies the rest of the way.

Neat concept though, now model it

[LoudMusic]

I was actually thinking of modeling it - could be a fun project.

[dave1905]

Why would you want to buildit and then park it for months letting the perishables go stale?

Just buy the stuff right before the hurricane and ship it after the incident.

You have to have the ability to unload and distribute the train too, so that means piggyback and container unloading, plus forklifts to unload boxcars.

Basically they do that already, but it can take months to get a train in there after the hurricane, the lines east of New Orleans took months to recover.

[Gary B]

Sounds good on paper but I do believe that the railroads themselves use mostly road vehicles for their own emergencies now a days . My Grandfather was a cook on an NYC wreck train in the 1930-40s. I don't think they send out crews like that anymore. (Then again I maybe totally wrong.)
A number of years ago someone suggested using airships for the same purpose, that never got off the ground.

[Railrunner130]

I like where you'd like to take this concept. The idea of prepackaged living quarters (I've stayed in them overseas. Look up Stratex) supplies and equipment for disaster relief can't be beat. However, I'd have to agree- tracks are usually the first thing to go in a disaster.

[dave1905]

In some of the recent hurricane disasters, the railroads were ready to go but the road transportation was so damaged they couldn't get to the railroads effectively and the stuff you are proposing wasn't able to be used.

[NYW&B]

As others have indicated this idea in the form of a model of sorts might be fun, but in the real world it is essentially not viable because of the potential existing damage to the infrastructure over a large area in the wake of a major disaster; the necessity for a pre-existing large distribution transportation interchange point (train to over-the-road vehicles) in the immediate vicinity of the disaster; means to mass the equipment, trucks and personnel necessary to facilitate such an interchange on very short notice in perhaps an obscure location (with the help unlikely to come from the immediate disaster area itself) and get it to where needed doesn't work quickly. These are hardly all the problems either.

Only the military "might" have any chance at pulling off such an operation. But as with any typical military operation, the time required to finalize the arrangements, load, move and unload whatever materials are required - especially fresh foodstuffs - would likely delay such a response far beyond any viable time span. Look how many days it took even the military to just arrive on-scene in New Orleans (with political as well as geographic considerations). Now imagine the obstacles presented to rail transport by a major earth quake in LA or Frisco, where rail transportation simply would no longer exist! In the 21st century disaster relief must be approached largely by air, not across the ground, at least during the first weeks post-disaster.

NYW&B