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3 phase OHLE for Ultra High speed Rail

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popeter45

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would any advantage come from using 3 phase on sections of a hypothetical Ultra High speed (e.g. 500kmph+) Rail line?
using single phase with a single pickup at junctions but for long stretches of high speed 2 additional pantographs could be extended to collect from 2 additional wires?
 
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swt_passenger

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Have you not noticed how wide a single pantograph is? And the single wire is staggered from side to side to even up wear? And then all three wires, and three pantographs would all have to be an electrically safe insulation distance apart from each other? And do all that within structure gauge, at bridges and through tunnels?

A complete non-starter I reckon...
 

edwin_m

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A single wire at 25kV seems quite capable of feeding all the power needed to get to any speed the train is likely to be able to attain.
 

Bletchleyite

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There is only one three phase OHLE railway I know of - 2 phases overhead and one in the track (bonded to earth) I think - the Jungfraubahn in Switzerland.
 

furnessvale

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There is only one three phase OHLE railway I know of - 2 phases overhead and one in the track (bonded to earth) I think - the Jungfraubahn in Switzerland.
I believe the Gornergratbahn (Zermatt) is also 3 phase, or was last time I visited.

Italy had some 3 phase on the main lines but got rid of it years ago.
 

Nym

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Put simply, no.

In addition to having the physical space to install this equipment, the aerodynamic effects on contact wires gets pretty extreme even at 125mph, let alone taking that into normal high speed rail or even beyond. Being able to provide the structure to support this, then sufficient pantographs within the train, without detrimental aerodynamic effects upon each other would be very challenging, for what would only be a gain for infrastructure that can be gained in other manners.

Then of course there's the potentially greater issue of how to transmit all of these between the cars at the high voltage, is hard enough getting one multi kV jumper in play, let alone two or three.

Then if we assume that all power is to be immediately rectified anyway as it's likely to make use of a DC Link converter, one would not be able to benefit from a 3 phase common core transformer as for one, it would be too much larger to realistically fit with the revised core shape. But for another under the common fault conditions of loss of a single phase, this would cause significant damage to this type of transformer. So you'd essentially have, three, single phase supplies, all rectified. Rather than a three phase supply.

So in summary, it's not really helpful and it's exceedingly difficult to manage, even with relatively low speeds.

And any kind of motor drive technology that would benefit from having all three phases presented has fallen out of favour nowadays because people either don't understand it, or it doesn't provide any benefit in a rail traction environment (usually both for high speed systems).
 

hexagon789

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There is only one three phase OHLE railway I know of - 2 phases overhead and one in the track (bonded to earth) I think - the Jungfraubahn in Switzerland.

There are four 3-phase ac lines in use in the world (the Jungfrau and Gornergrat in Switzerland, the Rhune in France and the Corcovado in Brazil), and Italy had until the early 1970s an extensive network of such.

3-phase had the issue of producing fixed running speeds which weren't always very flexible. The four surviving railways are all stiff climbing and slow speed so a steady speed is fine, the Italian system had locos with either two or four running speeds (freight/passenger).
 

HSTEd

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A single wire at 25kV seems quite capable of feeding all the power needed to get to any speed the train is likely to be able to attain.
And even if it wasn't, we have an existing standard for 50kV......
 
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