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Victoria Falls: A Post-Collapse American Nation Quest [Down With Victoria!]

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picklepikkl said:
Everyone in this thread is sleeping on the fact that Alexander being 90 in the mid-2070s means that he's a millennial and, more to the point, a nineties kid.

From this I conclude that his environmentalism stems from his sexual awakening being due to Linka from Captain Planet. :V
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Shinr said:
From my experience of Eastern European low-to-lower-middle class childhood in the 90s: The 80s stuff will have a bigger impact on Alexander due to it being easier to procure via piracy, will have access to Cartoon Network (and thus Captain Planet) via satellite tv, Anime including OG Dragon Ball and unaltered Cardcaptor Sakura before the Americans got to butchering it, will have NES and Genesis knock-offs with the former being a "thousand-games" variant (the SNES never really took off) AND a PC (due to it being more cost-effective compared to game-only consoles in the eyes of economically minded population).
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stairmaster said:
Alexander would probably be more of a weeb probably into LoGH.
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Cyberphilosipher said:
Ah...A Man of Culture LoGH is the PINNICLE OF political Anime and is not only fun and engaging but makes you think about what comes before and after a great man.

I wouldn't be suprised if he cosplays as Reinhard every year when he was younger.
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Thanks, I want to kill him even more now.
 
Train acquisition and operating costs in the US:
Locomotive/Traincar Costs

Baldwin 24 ton 4-4-0 (1860): $9,725 [3]
Baldwin 27 ton 0-8-0 (1860): $11,331 [3]
Unknown 35 ton 4-4-0 (1870): $10,000 [3]
Baldwin 40 ton 4-4-0 (1885): $6,695 [3]
Cotton Belt 50 ton "C3" 0-6-0: $7,500 to $8,152 [1]
Cotton Belt "D2" 4-6-0 (1898): $10,860 [1]
Cotton Belt "E2" 4-6-0 (1900): $15,250 [1]
Cotton Belt "G0" 4-6-0 (1913): $21,900 [1]
Baldwin 51 ton 4-4-0 (1905): $9,410 [3]
Baldwin 91 ton 2-8-0 (1905): $14,500 [3]
NYC 2-8-2 "H-10" (1922): $72,173 (Based on $8.3~ million order for 115 x H-10s) [4]
GE/PRR GG-1 (1934-43): $250,000~ [2]
NYC 4-8-4 "S-1" Niagara (1945): $240,000 [4]
UP 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy" (1941-44) $265,000
EMD FT (1943-45): $125,487~ (based on Cotton Belt paying $2,509,747 for 5 x four unit sets [20 units in total] in 1943-45.) [1]
EMD FT (1942-1944): $500,000~ per four unit set delivered to the B&O [6]
Baldwin 608NA Switcher (1946-47): $92,000~ [1]
Alco PA-1 (1949): $211,600 [1]
EMD F7 (1950-52): $163,670~ (based on Cotton Belt paying $7,037,865 for 43 x F7A and F7B units from 1950-52) [1]
EMD GP30 (1960): $250,000~ (quote is from a Trains article quoted on trainorders.com – LINK)
EMD SDP40F (1973-74): $433,300~ (based off $65~ million cost for purchase of 150 x SDP40Fs by Amtrak) [5]
GE E60C (1973): $692,000 [5]
GE U30C (1975): $350,000~ (quote is from trainorders.com – LINK)
EMD F59PHI (1993): $2.3~ million (based off $20.8 million cost for purchase of the first nine by Caltrans in January 1993) [5]
Bombardier Superliner II (1993): $2.4~ million (based off $340 million cost for purchase of 140 by Amtrak) [5]
Siemens ACS-64 (2010): $6.65~ million (based off $466 million cost for purchase of 70 by Amtrak) (Wikipedia)
Bombardier Viewliner II (2010): $2.29~ million (based off $298.1 million cost for purchase of 130 by Amtrak) (Wikipedia)


Notes: Apparently back in the early 1970s it was said that new locomotives cost roughly a dollar a pound, and that this was roughly the price of the GP9s when they were brand new in the 1950s. (trainorders.com – LINK)


References:
Cotton Belt Locomotives by Joseph A. Strapac [1]
The Streamline Era by Robert C. Reed [2]
A History of the American Locomotive: It's Development, 1830-1880 by John H. White [3]
Super Steam Locomotives by Brian Solomon [4]
Amtrak by Brian Solomon [5]
Electro-Motive E Units and F-Units: The Illustrated History of... by Brian Solomon [6]

Energy Content of Fuel

Compressed Natural Gas (CNG): 30,100 BTU/Gallon
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG): 73,100 BTU/Gallon
No. 2 Diesel Fuel: 128,100 BTU/Gallon


References:
An Evaluation of Natural Gas Fueled Locomotives, November 2007 (1.5~ MB PDF)

Overall Thermal Efficiencies:

Average Steam Locomotive (19th​ C): 4% or less [3]
Average Steam Locomotive (1948): 5% [1]
Modern Steam Locomotive (1953): 7 to 7.5% [2]
Ultra-Modern Steam Locomotive (1980 ACE 3000): 15%~ [5]
Coal Burning Gas Turbine-Electric: 20~% [1]
Kerosene-Burning Gas Turbine-Electric: 25~% [1]
Diesel-Electric: 37~% [1]
Ideal LH2/LOX Fuel Cell: 83~% [4]


Notes: An efficiency of 6% means that for every 100 BTUs of fuel burned, about 6 BTUs of horsepower is produced, basically.


References:
Popular Science, November 1948 [1]
Popular Mechanics, September 1953 [2]
Out of Steam: Dieselization and American Railroad, 1920-1960 by Jeffrey W. Schramm [3]
Fuel Cell Technology Handbook, 7th​ Edition by EG&G Technical Services, November 2004 [4]
The Ultimate Steam Page: The ACE 3000 (LINK) [5]

Overall Availability Rates:

Steam: 33% [2] to 45% average [1]
Diesel-Electric: 90-95% average [1]


Notes: In 1941, the Santa Fe's crack Chicago-Los Angeles steam freight run required a complete engine replacement at each division/section, or roughly every 200 miles, in addition to the regular fuel and water stops. By contrast, the early FT units they had were able to make the entire run with only three stops for fuel. Overall this meant a complete run time of 112~ hours by steam and less than 90 hours by diesel. [2]


On that note, the entire term "jerkwater town" comes from from the jerking of a water tower's waterspout down to water a locomotive, because usually the entire reason for the town's existence was to act as a refueling/water-stop for locomotives. [3]


References:
The American Diesel Locomotive by Brian Solomon [1]
Popular Science, May 1941 [2]
Out of Steam: Dieselization and American Railroad, 1920-1960 by Jeffrey W. Schramm [3]
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Negentropy said:
Wow! This is an incredibly helpful resource! Granted having non-existence infrastructure and close, hostile neighbours will probably drive the prices up but still an amazing springboard for cost estimates! Just one clarification - do these prices include whatever taxes/rebates are applicable in the US?
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Not sure.
The Amtrack costs probably did; no idea about the older ones.


EDIT


High altitude solar powered drone test. 35m wingspan.
Might theoretically come in useful in our future attempts to secure trade on the Mississipi.
 
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uju32 said:
Not sure.
The Amtrack costs probably did; no idea about the older ones.
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Thanks! Anything you know helps!

Just wondering because the cost-effectiveness could be radically changed by additional taxes or tax rebates/credits (among other government incentives) which no longer existing could alter the landscape greatly. And that's not even getting into what tariffs there are or the dismal state of the former US in just about every way both driving costs up. Although the latter may be partially circumvented if we can find any useful ruins (although I doubt it considering the Vics decades of pillaging and burning).

Assuming we manufacture/refine/import all this in America - which is probably the sensible option to build up our own industry, growing our economy and ensuring our logistical network is self-sustainable in the event of trade being cut off and or otherwise disruptive - but in a pinch say Europe or China could help speed things up if we purchase particularly higher-end equipment/infrastructure from them.

Of course, they'll have their own regulations which will affect the price, not to mention with the Pacific about to be embroiled in conflict to the West and the East at least for now largely dominated by Victoria, I guess we'll have to wait and see what the situation will evolve into.

But regardless this info should still be excellent for a relatively accurate estimate - which at this level of simulation is (probably) all we really need.
 
I think at this point we can rely on foreign loans. It's more a question of how quickly we could get returns on the investment. The ideal solution would probably be an electrified railway since we lack easy access to oil. The question would be whether we had a labor force capable of building the track in a timely manner because until they're completed the whole thing is completely useless.

On the other hand the distances from chicago to detroit mean steam locomotive availability wouldn't be as big an issue (in the steam age railways were subdivided into one hundred miles of track because that provided a rough estimate of when a locomotive would need to go into maintenance). The other thing to consider was we would be able to produce locomotives with our domestic industry. They wouldn't be the best but the grades wouldn't be that harsh on a chicago detroit line anyways. I would not be surprised if there's a few primitive coal burning coffee pots chugging around past the great plains out there.
 
Negentropy said:
Just wondering because the cost-effectiveness could be radically changed by additional taxes or tax rebates/credits (among other government incentives) which no longer existing could alter the landscape greatly.
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If anything, train locomotives are probably cheaper now.
Cheapest form of bulk land transport once you have a rail network going, and most energy-efficient compared to trucks and aircraft. Russia and Japan are both big into rail, as is much of Europe. And if Africa has gotten it's act together, you're looking at significantly greater penetration there as well.

stairmaster said:
The ideal solution would probably be an electrified railway since we lack easy access to oil.
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Every locomotive we operate will have to be capable of transporting itself on rail without reliance on external infrastructure.
Any form of transportation that can be crippled by a Vic sabotage team blowing up an electric pylon or a Russian cyberwarfare attack on our power grid is not tenable. Else you'd have sabotage attempts crippling your entire internal mass transportation network.

And we don't even have an electric grid back up anyway.

For train locomotives, try looking at either diesel-electric or gas turbine-electric locomotives.
Maybe hydrogen or methane fuel cells are also an option, depending on if the costs have come down in the last forty years and can set up solar-powered hydrogen production facilities. But those will be beyond our ability to maintain locally, unlike diesel-electric or gas turbine.

Electric is only something to consider when we have a working electric grid back up and running, and have laid our hands on whatever sodium-ion or graphene batteries or capacitors are currently in use in the rest of the world.
stairmaster said:
On the other hand the distances from chicago to detroit mean steam locomotive availability wouldn't be as big an issue (in the steam age railways were subdivided into one hundred miles of track because that provided a rough estimate of when a locomotive would need to go into maintenance).
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Steam locomotives require generous amounts of water to operate. Old timey trains allegedly had to stop not just for coal but also for water; it's supposed to have been the raison d'etre for a lot of those old Wild West towns you see in fiction, and why so many of them had massive water tanks in the middle of town.

Diesel-electric OTOH runs from origin to destination while only stopping for passengers and cargo.
I cannot see why we'd throw money into maintenance-intensive infrastructure when we can get our hands on stuff that's cheaper and costs less.
stairmaster said:
I would not be surprised if there's a few primitive coal burning coffee pots chugging around past the great plains out there.
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Who has been maintaining that rail network for forty years? Who has been supplying the tons of coal? Especially with Victorian agents roaming around? It's not like it would require an army to destroy a train yard; a small band showing up with homemade napalm and some heavy weapons of the GPMG and RPG variety would trash the trainyard and kill the technicians.

The Vics could even contract it out to a local warlord/bandit gang.
 
uju32 said:
Who has been maintaining that rail network for forty years? Who has been supplying the tons of coal? Especially with Victorian agents roaming around? It's not like it would require an army to destroy a train yard; a small band showing up with homemade napalm and some heavy weapons of the GPMG and RPG variety would trash the trainyard and kill the technicians.

The Vics could even contract it out to a local warlord/bandit gang.
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I'd bet on there being some short stretches of rail line that are still in use, but the locomotives running on them are likely to be bodged together from old semi tractors or something.
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'd bet on there being some short stretches of rail line that are still in use, but the locomotives running on them are likely to be bodged together from old semi tractors or something.
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I can buy some short stretches of rail lines still in use.
You don't need a motor engine to pull a carriage; mules, donkeys, horses, even human labor can pull a small cargo cart along rails, and even an animal train would get vastly improved travel time.

The fuel is the issue. Even wood-burning engines will have supply issues.
And the economics is unclear; I can't think of many things bulky and valuable enough to be worth hauling short distances on rail in a post-Collapse society. Or to risk the same sort of "accidents" that have befallen many others.
 
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uju32 said:
And the economics is unclear; I can't think of many things bulky and valuable enough to be worth hauling short distances on rail in a post-Collapse society. Or to risk the same sort of "accidents" that have befallen many others.
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Cars? There's gotta be like a bajillion old cars lying around, and ripping them up for scrap metal is probably cheaper than mining more ore and smelting it, especially for stuff like aluminum and whatnot. Potentially concrete being repurposed from tall buildings that can't be maintained, too.
 
Wouldn't rail lines be something Victorian retroculture ideologically promotes?

Like the book specifically calls out local regions developing train infrastructure as a good thing.
 
me.me.here said:
Cars? There's gotta be like a bajillion old cars lying around, and ripping them up for scrap metal is probably cheaper than mining more ore and smelting it, especially for stuff like aluminum and whatnot. Potentially concrete being repurposed from tall buildings that can't be maintained, too.
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For what though? They can't export the scrap metal, and in the absence of industry, I can't think of anything that needs the volume.
Artisan-level crafting work on motor vehicles doesn't need that sort of haulage capacity.
I've seen it done.

Similarly, they aren't doing large-scale construction. They don't have the facilities to recycle concrete AFAIK.
And it's not like home construction in the US uses all that much concrete anyway.
 
AKuz said:
Wouldn't rail lines be something Victorian retroculture ideologically promotes?
Like the book specifically calls out local regions developing train infrastructure as a good thing.
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For Victoria, I believe.
Non-Victorian populations.....I believe we saw them address the inhabitants of lower Ontario as orks. In this AU, anyway.
Orks don't deserve good things.
 
uju32 said:
For Victoria, I believe.
Non-Victorian populations.....I believe we saw them address the inhabitants of lower Ontario as orks. In this AU, anyway.
Orks don't deserve good things.
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No he literally refers to the governor of... Wisconson I want to say? Deciding to go all in on TRAINS and that being good and retroculture.
 
AKuz said:
No he literally refers to the governor of... Wisconson I want to say? Deciding to go all in on TRAINS and that being good and retroculture.
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I didn't read that far in. So I'll take your word for it.
Given that Wisconsin was the center of the Midwestern Nazi infestation in this AU, their approving of Wisconsin going in on trains might be somewhat..... conditional.
 
uju32 said:
I didn't read that far in. So I'll take your word for it.
Given that Wisconsin was the center of the Midwestern Nazi infestation in this AU, their approving of Wisconsin going in on trains might be somewhat..... conditional.
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The Nazis were dead by that point.

What we're seeing here is actually a result of that purge Agent Dmitri conducted. Rumford approves of quietly conservative people who build trains, and lets them live even if they're really obviously playing him. He is, after all, quite gullible. And Kraft is an ideological hardliner who listens to his protege when he says that this polity or that is totally fine. He's not actually invested in the mission of, "Keep America fucked to hell and back," he's invested in, "Reclaim the glorious legacy of the West from vile modernity."

But Rumford and Kraft are dead now, and their most blinkered followers with them. They were replaced by two generations of Victorians raised in loyalty to Alexander's mission, and told that keeping America shattered is their only hope for survival -- after all, they have killed an awful lot of people.

So in principle, yes, to Victoria, trains are good.

In practice, long railroads mean political reorganization and an expanding industrial base and mean that it's time to send in the Army.
 
PoptartProdigy said:
The Nazis were dead by that point.

What we're seeing here is actually a result of that purge Agent Dmitri conducted. Rumford approves of quietly conservative people who build trains, and lets them live even if they're really obviously playing him. He is, after all, quite gullible. And Kraft is an ideological hardliner who listens to his protege when he says that this polity or that is totally fine. He's not actually invested in the mission of, "Keep America fucked to hell and back," he's invested in, "Reclaim the glorious legacy of the West from vile modernity."

But Rumford and Kraft are dead now, and their most blinkered followers with them. They were replaced by two generations of Victorians raised in loyalty to Alexander's mission, and told that keeping America shattered is their only hope for survival -- after all, they have killed an awful lot of people.

So in principle, yes, to Victoria, trains are good.

In practice, long railroads mean political reorganization and an expanding industrial base and mean that it's time to send in the Army.
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Not to mention, the spread of degenerate ideas, after all:

"Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?"

― Joseph Stalin

Although the Vics would loathe attributing the source as anything but good old (totally Tsarist) Russian wisdom, which would be technically true, in a twisted sense of irony.
 
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PoptartProdigy said:
So in principle, yes, to Victoria, trains are good.

In practice, long railroads mean political reorganization and an expanding industrial base and mean that it's time to send in the Army.
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I figure that since to some extent America is exploited economically in this timeline, there are a few exceptions to this, but only where the railroads are specifically providing economic benefit to Victorians and where Victorian client states subject to careful monitoring are doing most of the heavy lifting. Sort of like the situation you've described with the Soo Locks; they're too useful for the Victorians to allow them to close, so the Vicks prop up a client state for pretty much the sole purpose of running the thing.

uju32 said:
The fuel is the issue. Even wood-burning engines will have supply issues.
And the economics is unclear; I can't think of many things bulky and valuable enough to be worth hauling short distances on rail in a post-Collapse society. Or to risk the same sort of "accidents" that have befallen many others.
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Anywhere the Victorians import raw bulk goods (minerals, food), there is a good reason to have at least some basic rail trunk lines in place to move the goods. Think about that screwed-up Dakota Poland-Lithuania-alike; it exists to market food that Victorians purchase, but most of it is far inland. Surely there is either rail or truck transport, and of the two the Victorians would probably favor railroads because railroads are much easier to control. Plus, railroads don't translate as directly into military strength as a large fleet of trucks that are easily converted into technicals.

AKuz said:
No he literally refers to the governor of... Wisconson I want to say? Deciding to go all in on TRAINS and that being good and retroculture.
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My working hypothesis is that the governor of Wisconsin was actually playing a deliberate con on Rumford in an attempt to appeal to his fetishes and gullibility in hopes that he would lead the Victorians to just leave Wisconsin and the Chicago area ALONE for a while so they could get some rebuilding done.

And that it actually kind of worked a little, though the Russians noticed Rumford being gullible and that this was one of the things that specifically led them to kill him as having outlived his usefulness- because his fetishes were now causing him to ignore the exact kind of proto-revivalist states they'd been using him to destroy.

This ties into my backstory ideas for the Saras (somewhat developed with Poptart) in ways that I haven't explored in omakes yet.

Sara Goldblum:

"John Rumford was a lousy tipper. In fairness, he was also bad at detecting spit in his coffee, so I guess it cancels out?"
 
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Negentropy said:
Not to mention, the spread of degenerate ideas, after all:

"Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don't let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?"

― Joseph Stalin

Although the Vics would loathe attributing the source as anything but good old (totally Tsarist) Russian wisdom, which would be technically true, in a twisted sense of irony.
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From wikiquote:

"
  • Often attributed to Stalin, there is not a single source which show that Stalin said this at any given time. There is only one source outside the blogosphere which attributes the quote to Stalin, but does not provide any evidence for the attribution. That source is the book Quotations for Public Speakers : A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology (2001), p. 121 by the former US senator Robert Torricelli.
"

Not that I have any desire to protect the man's legacy, but I'm feeling pedantic
 
AKuz said:
From wikiquote:

"
  • Often attributed to Stalin, there is not a single source which show that Stalin said this at any given time. There is only one source outside the blogosphere which attributes the quote to Stalin, but does not provide any evidence for the attribution. That source is the book Quotations for Public Speakers : A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology (2001), p. 121 by the former US senator Robert Torricelli.
"

Not that I have any desire to protect the man's legacy, but I'm feeling pedantic
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Basically any time you see some quote from a famous dictator about how people aren't allowed to have guns, you basically have to default to assuming it's some shit made up by an American conservative in the 90s, 00s, or 10s.
 
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