Rule Allows Natural Gas Transport by Rail in Dense Areas

Re:Rule Allows Natural Gas Transport by Rail in Dense Areas by gruez on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @11:09AM (#25571155)

>When you build a pipeline, it's good for exactly one thing. An LNG pipeline won't do for anything else, not even other types of oil products. But building a railroad on the other hand, that's good for just about anything from transporting bulk grain to truck frames to solid rocket motors.

But doesn't that only make sense if there's going to be demand in the near future? Unused rail lines get abandoned all the time because they have maintenance costs, so it's not like we can build it, stop using it, and then resume using it a few decades later when demand picks up.

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Re:Rule Allows Natural Gas Transport by Rail in Dense Areas by Arnt on Tuesday December 29, 2020 @12:18PM (#25572091)

Those aren't the kind that are abandoned.

The kind to carry natural gas goes from A to B. The ones that are typically abandoned go from B to hamlet-near-B, or to factory-near-B, or were obsoleted due to a change in the network.

I see all three where I live. A new express route was built and bypasses some stations, so fewer trains stop at those stations, which makes local connections to those stations less valuable, and some X-to-hamlet tracks will probably be closed in the end. A new tunnel is being built and when it's done freight traffic will be routed differently than it is now, and it seems likely that one old route will be closed.

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