Underground Freight Networks

morphovar writes "The German Ruhr University of Bochum is conducting experiments with a large-scale model for an automated subterranean transport system. It would use unmanned electric vehicles on rails that travel in a network through pipelines with a diameter of 1.6 meters, up to distances of 150 kilometers. Sending cargo goods through underground pipelines is anything but new — see this scan of a 1929 magazine article about Chicago's underground freight tunnel network (more details). Translating this concept to the 21st century would be something like introducing email for things: you could order something on the Internet and pick it up through a trapdoor in your cellar the next morning."

Re:I don't have a cellar

[Nos.]

Except that they give you extra living space. If nothing else its a good place for the furnace, water heater, water softner, etc.

Re:I don't have a cellar

[Everyone Is Seth]

Basements make very little sense in places that practically never get tornadoes...to people who think basements only serve as protection from tornadoes. The temperature and moisture levels in a basement are pretty constant, and we used ours to store certain foods. It is also one of the cheapest ways to expand living space in your home.

Re:Pneumatic Telegraph

[auric_dude]

The Post Office Underground Railway, London First pneumatic then electrically powered. In 1853, a small vacuum tube about 225 yards (200 metres) long was built to deliver letters inside a Post Office building. The system, now known as a Lamson Tube, became very popular, and in 1859 the Pneumatic Despatch Company was formed to build a larger subterranean line between the Post Office buildings. A test-line 450 yards (411 metres) long was built near Battersea, and the Post Office approved it. Read all about it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3826019 [bbc.co.uk]

Re:I don't have a cellar

[tmosley]

Basements don't work in places with high water tables (like the Gulf Coast), and don't really serve much purpose in places with shallow freeze lines (the South and Pacific coast). The foundation of the house has to extend beneath that line anyways, so if it is more than 4-5 feet deep, it doesn't cost much to go a few feet deeper and provide a basement. There is no great economic incentive to have a basement in warmer climates, so prevalence is hit or miss.

MailRail in London

[Animats]

MailRail [ntlworld.com], in London, came closest to the proposed system. Little automated electric trains carried mail since 1928. It was shut down in 2003. (It's still intact, though; it might be restarted some day.)

MailRail gives a sense of the constraints of a realistic system. The tunnels are 9 feet in diameter and double-tracked, so it's possible to get repair crews and equipment into the tunnels without much trouble. For small-tube systems, breakdowns are tough to deal with. MailRail was a railroad in miniature, with stations, sidings, switches, repair shops, and work trains. Even rails wear out and have to be reground or replaced, so MailRail had the gear to do "maintenance of way" work. All those things are needed, and many of them are labor intensive.

The operating cost on MailRail was quite high, even though all the capital costs had long since been paid for. Cost was 3x to 5x the cost of using trucks. But the real problem was that it didn't go to the right places; over the decades, post offices had been moved to locations off the MailRail line, and only three of the nine stations were still in use.

The Chicago tunnel system had a different problem. It was designed when long-haul freight was by rail and local delivery was horse-powered. Bear in mind that trains were routinely hauling heavy loads by 1850, but trucks didn't appear until the 1920s and didn't work well until the 1930s. (1920s trucks had power comparable to that of a small car today.) So for a seventy-year period, local delivery was badly matched to long-haul transport. Early attempts to deal with this problem involved breeding very large horses [shirehorse.org]. This was the period of pneumatic tubes, underground freight rail systems, and similar attempts to fix the local delivery problem. Once truck engines and drivetrains become powerful enough to do the job, those local delivery systems were no longer needed.

Re:I don't have a cellar

[innerweb]

I am not a builder/construction worker but a friend of mine is. I consult him on almost all of my house construction needs. He has in the past told me that adding a basement is much more cost effective long term than a second floor. Basements are much easier to control the environment on than a second floor, have much lower heating and cooling costs, and in fact when used right, can actually lower the HVAC cost for the entire house. He also explained that building a basement is less expensive (in this area) than adding a second floor on a new house. On an already existent house without a basement, it can be much more expensive to excavate the basement than to add the second floor unless you do it yourself. He said the most expensive part of adding a basement is the manpower to safely dig out the new basement under the existing foundation, or move the house off the existing foundation to dig a new foundation (basement level).

Most basements have window wells, windows that are just at or below ground level, and many have an exposed external, or mostly exposed external wall (depending on the grading of the property the house is built upon.)

Now, I am not in the construction business, but he and his family have been for over 80 years, so I trust his opinion.

InnerWeb