Train submarine

You are not even in the right ball park for costs .... subs under 1/4th yours are billions, not including weapons systems.

A one off concept? with over 4 TIMES the length is more than 16 TIMES THE COST.

This project would cost more than 100 million just during design phase, IMHO.

There is NOTHING SIMPLE about a sub.

And if trains are comparable, you won't have a one hour turn around, safely.

 

$10m? That is a PLEASURE CRUISER ....

These are around 200' and over $10 million, why would any boat yard take on your project with huge risk, and no profit?

http://www.superyachts.com/search-r..._price=50000000&min_length=46&max_length=100&

 

$40 million US: http://www.superyachts.com/luxury-yacht-for-sale/ab-166-1130/

50m long .... a dinghy compared to your sub. And it is 40 million. Even if you think 30 million is just greedy opulence, this is not even a 1/20th 'model' size of your 'train.' About 400 times more to get to your full sized train ....

 

Well it seemed pretty simple to me just a big pipe launched as it was extended and then a motor and control pod whacked on with a rail line and train inside.

Maybe you know a lot more about submarine construction than me.

 

I don't know that much about submarine construction, but the guys who build them are not cheap .... they charge more than other boat builders.

And plain boat builders make good money off of their boats.

Even a do it yourself catamaran of 30 meters should run you millions. Much lower complexity in comparison to what you are envisioning.

That is why fewer ships are between 300 and 500 meters, the bigger you get, the more cost is involved.

If your business model works, don't scrap it because of costs, but be realistic. Talk to some local boat builders about just the cost of a scale model.

A russian guy built his submarine in an attic during the Soviet era. Now he pedals around St Petersburg. But, it is maybe 4 meters long.

http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/powerboats/home-buuilt-pedal-powered-submarine-45157.html

wayne

 

As I said before I am 68 and it takes 10 years to do anything so if a man only gets three score and ten I just put a few of my ideas in what I consider to be places where they can be evaluated and if it gets up that would be great even if I never get to see it.

 

Well, its been evaluated - and it wont work for the variety of obvious reasons explained.

It has contributed some interesting discussion amongst the few people prepared to put any time into it though, so its been fun.

 

Can I buy shares in this project ? Where do I sign ?

 

Mr Efficiency
I am afraid it would only make sufficient to run it but I see 100 of them being built by the Australian federal government at a total cost of $1b in place of the $10b they want to spend on high tech subs to protect our sea lanes but would scare the pants off our neighbors.

Australians do not like spending more than they have to and they also like to keep friendly with everybody and you cannot do that with threatening submarines.

Admittedly the train subs could ram ships and land military equipment but they would not appear as threatening as a fleet of missile carrying submarines.

 

Mistereddb,

It has been mentioned, but I don't think explained.

The complexities of this project far outweigh what you are seeing. Building a vessel this length of Ny configuration is incredibly challenging for a whole host of reasons. Beyond the fact that there are only a few yards in the world even capable of building a ship this long, and that there are a lot of different train gauges so the train as loaded may not fit the rail where you are going... Just consider this.

Any ship needs to be reasonably rigid. So when your engine pushes on the back the bow moves forward instead of the sides buckling. Assuming you want to stay close to the width of a train, you would be designing a tube say 5meters in diameter. The largest container ship ever built is the Emma Maersk at just under 400 meters and 56 meters wide.

Since stiffness increases with the square of the thickness, and assuming we set the Young's modulus at one for comparison sake, or assumed these would be made from the same metal... The sub would have a stiffness of 25 units, while the Emma Maersk has a stiffness of 3,136units or roughly 150 times as stiff just from the base design. Now it gets more complicated and god knows I am not an engineer so I may have made a fundamental flaw here, but it is pretty easy to see that a long tube just isn't a very good design for a cargo ship.


Secondly, there are no ports anywhere in the world that are designed to handle a ship like this one. Even assuming you could get a rail terminal built to meet your needed specs, there are very few ports that a ship this long can get into. At about three times the length of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier where would you take it? It could only really go from dedicated port to dedicated port.

Finally why? A 1000m tube can only fit about 60 box cars. Versus the Emma which loads up to 11,000 containers. This tube would cost a fortune to build, have major engineering issues, and couldn't go anywhere. All while carrying almost nothing.

 

Hear, hear ! Carries bugger-all and costs a bomb, I am withdrawing my investment ! The Worm Submarine is a wacky idea, probably as wacky as I've seen here, the concrete sub was a doddle compared to this one.

 

Stumble
Thanks mate this is what I want to discuss, the engineering side of it.
It would only need a short section of suitable beach in a suitable spot to launch it metre by metre as it is built.

The beachhead rail gauge would not be a problem as it would only be the same as the sub and 1km long.

6m diameter is what I suggest with 25mm plate which is the same as a conventional sub that goes very much deeper and it may even be possible to have the props along the side nearer the front if experts thought there would be a bending problem.

One of the things I think you have overlooked is that it would travel at the base of the waves and therefore encounter very little stress and during loading/unloading it would sit on a prepared gravel bed.

You are right in that apart from the isolated beachheads it would have to have access to at least one container port from which it could deliver the container train full of bananas, car wheels, refrigerators or fish etc. so they can go to their final destination on a container ship and the train sub can then reload another container train full of consumables for the next isolated place such as Eden, King island, Norfolk island or any of the Indonesian islands that I believe costs more to get a fridge delivered than what it costs.

Perhaps in America you people do not have the same difficulty getting freight but take King island it does not have sufficient cattle for a slaughter yard and it costs too much to cart the live beasts to the mainland.

Finally these container terminals cost an arm and a leg, far more than any community of say 100,000 residents could afford compared to just a railhead on the beach with a self loading container truck. One hour and it would be away again.

 

Unbelievable !!!

Do you think boats, lets alone semi-subs, are extruded like spaghetti.

When you said you didn't have any idea about the technical side, you weren't exaggerating.

Like "25mm plate, the same as conventional subs". For goodness sake - haven't you seen at least a sub movie with all the bulkheads and longitudinal stringers to cope with a 50ft hull.

How on earth can you think a 100 ft version, with no internal structure could even rest on the bottom without bending, let alone travel hundreds of miles fully loaded.

 

I await the inflatable sub, it seems eminently practicable to me.

 

mistereddb

I tried, I really tried.

First, all modern submarines have TWO hulls, not one. One of the reasons they cost more. Second, it just ain't cheap building subs.

Google the civilian sub makers, they charge a whole lot more for play subs than do regular boat builders - a lot more.

And most of those subs are 'wet.' You MUST have a dry sub, there is no way around that with salt water and cargo ....

And YES, your propulsion MUST be on the front end, just like a real train, it must be front and back - so, you must have (four maybe) engine submarines ....

Crew areas would have to be dry, and at the depths you are talking about, I think the whole thing must be dry and at least double hulled, if not tripled ....