Why is there no sea train?

What is dynamic long distance wave management technology?
Just how big would those pontoons be?
What if a ship wants to cross the railroad?

It would be easier to just build a high bridge.

Great idea. What will it cost? What will the pontoons anchor to? What routing – over Newfoundland, Greenland, and Iceland, or straight across?

Oh, what about refueling? Where will the diesel fuel come from? And suppose there’s a problem with the train – where will maintenance be dispatched from?

And then there’s the problem of North Atlantic hurricanes and had weather – what will we do about that?

One final question – there’s a lot of cargo shipping that goes up the Atlantic to NY and Europe. Are you suggesting bridges every 100 miles between pontoons?

Interesting concept, but lots of problems to address.

Wuld any of these interest you???

@lostinparadise
-the pontoons would be vast intercontinental bridges. Or, possibly even horizontal space elevator tech that floats.

Insomuch as it would be pontoons. There would be successive links. Each link ~50m long x ~20–30m wide x ~20m deep. The links would be jointed together like bicycle chains in a very metaphoric kind of way. Certain couplings would include some sort of chain spool that could be ‘let out’ to create a temporary break in the rail. The individual links could also have a similar quad anchor system that monitored wave patterns and creates manageable trackways for the segments with a train on them. Other advancements could be made if its feasible.

@elbanditoroso
Direct route across the pacific ocean. Maglev powered by nuclear power on land or onboard. The trains will be crewed with technicians, and certain links will act as breakdown lanes. Trains coming behind could nudge a breakdown into that pit.

The pontoons will be built to withstand extreme weather.

I’m not suggesting this is a valid idea. Just a thought.

Cost ~9t spread out between interested countries, over 30 years.

@ladymarissa this would be thousands of km’s. Such a tunneling under the ocean would seem fully impossible, not just impractical.

I am sure that will work great in a high seas storm,

Actually, they have been discussing these since I was a little girl, but always had some reason to wait longer. I think that the under the ocean was due to the fear that IF there was ever a breach in the system that there would be NO way to rescue those trapped. Then there was the excuse that it was faster to fly than to take the train that far. After a while, I just stopped listening to the excuses figuring it would happen eventually…when it was supposed to happen!!!

@LadyMarissa maybe on the seafloor?

@Ltryptophan I don’t think the planning ever got that far. Like a lot of other things in my life, it seemed too futuristic to become a reality…now, many things are coming into reality!!!

There is a huge and volcanically active continental fault line bifurcating the Atlantic ocean. I believe that would be a problem for any sub-seafloor tunnel. That and the pressure from an 8km tall water column above.

Building and operating a 500 to 1,000 foot long boat is much easier than building and operating one 3,000 miles long.

@Call_Me_Jay building a canoe is easier still.

It is an outlandish idea.

Might be a solution without a problem. Or, a problematic nonsolution to a nonproblem.

Or, it might be a crazy idea that needs a lot of tech that we don’t currently have, or might find an easier way to do even if we did have better tech.

Or, it’s worth it, to maximize shipping, and shave time and costs from intercontinental commerce.

@Ltryptophan I see exactly the same problem with the hyperloop. The idea is essentially building a pressure-proof airplane fuselage hundreds of miles long, instead of flying a 200-foot aircraft between airports.

If it’s not absolutely necessary, I think it’s unwise.

To be necessary I think you’d have to show a year over year +20% savings across the board.

Where would that come from?

Increase in number of shipments?

Energy savings?

Labor?

Would a sea train if it worked like a charm, and someone gave it to us gratis, fix anything?

Plenty of cruise ships go across the oceans. Covid has put a damper on the crossings, I don’t know if they are still being done. The ships go faster than a pontoon. I don’t understand why a pontoon, I am missing something. The Cunard ship the Queen Mary goes back and forth constantly between England and NY (again this might be suspended for covid, I don’t know).

There might still be a hydrofoil from South Florida to the Bahamas, there used to be one.

I don’t know what regular crossings there in the Pacific. There were ships that fairly regularly went up and down the west coast of America, and of course repositioning cruises to Hawaii and Asia and back during specific times of the year.

You talk about bridges. Bridges are closed during bad weather, especially high bridges. So the same weather events that cause rough seas also cause bridges to close. Ships can go around bad weather, a bridge there is no flexibility.

There used to be a train to Key West. The overseas railroad. Here’s the history.

@JLeslie the pontoons are a example bridge style. These would be massive pontoon sections, maybe tens of thousands of them.

For the weather, they would use advanced computerized systems to ‘follow’ the waves. At the same time these individual pontoon sections would be anchored to the seafloor somehow.

It would be a rail chain.

Follow, so they move? How can they be anchored and move?

Why is the railroad better than a plane or a boat?

What a titanic idea.

The pontoons would be attached to each other in some flexible way. There could then be quad anchors for each section. These would be attached to powerful motors that would manage pitch and yaw. Sensors interacting on each pontoon section would communicate the oceans topography and create manageable speeds and lines for the trains to successfully traverse. Sometimes the trains could be halted.

This would creat a wall-like barrier where no ships could cross.

How about a circular cable under water that runs continuously (like that of the cable car system in SF). Cargo ships could simply attach to the underwater cable and be towed across the sea. In high seas and storms the ships can disconnect from the cable for safety. Then later reconnect to the cable at any time.

Corrosion would be a major factor. Repairs would be difficult.

Sounds like a huge problem to create, maintain, have it survive ocean-scale waves, and also a barrier to surface vessel traffic in international waters. Also, trains don’t like any variation in height, even on solid earth. Even if your pontoons could handle an ocean wave, the trains wouldn’t like it.

The Chunnel also seemed/seems like a problematic idea to me, but at least is solves the problems of being on the surface by being underwater. Still, it’ll be a nightmare if/when something goes disastrously wrong with it.

This would also pose a problem for model railroad hobbyists as they’d have to build their layouts in swimming pools.