Passenger Train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas

One of the most greatly overlooked public transportation connections in the United States is the train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. This is probably a conspiracy, but out of respect for our overlords I will claim it is due to laziness by the american people.

Some of the reasons why this would be an important connection include:

Las Vegas is an important city.

Las Vegas is an entertainment destination.

Las Vegas is feeling left out.

There would be a savings for the future in terms of energy.

This would promote productivity in so far as giving motivation to workers.

My train includes storage room for 'bins' and large objects. Elevated trains are easier to maintain in my opinion because they have fewer meeting points with the terrain which allow for the terrain to shift underneath. Mag-lev trains are nice, but I always thought a mag-lev train enclosed in a vacuum tube would be even more efficient.

I would also include entertainment cars and even casino cars once the border has been crossed however the journey might not be long enough to bother.

-Nicholas Juntilla

email: nick(at)worldnick(dot)net

The Gravity Train

My latest invention is called the Gravity Train. The gravity train is a series of Lighter Than Air platforms that lift one end of a Gigantic zipline thousands of feet above the ground. Baskets are lifted up to the platform via boyency from either hot air or the compression and decompression of lighter than air gas. The Baskets / Pods / Shuttles / Capsules rise to the Air Platform Station where they are attached to a new materials zipline and dropped down the zipline to a resting station many miles away. The principle is that more energy is conserved from lifting the vehicle than from pushing it along the ground. If you push a vehicle along the ground you have to constantly fight friction, but in a gravity train friction can be harnessed to re-power a battery in the capsule.
In the above picture the left side would be a city like Covin,a California and the right side would be another city like San Bernardino, California. The Gravity Train should re-gain most of the energy lost in powering it in the form of travel and battery energy. As you can see from the picture there is a slight incline at the end of the line if there is any need to help slow the cart however the resistance from the generator should be sufficient. The cart is recycled. These stations could leap frog all around the globe.
There is also a version of the Gravity Train that uses geo-thermal energy to power the up transportation however I do not believe that drilling giant holes in the Earth would be wise. The heat from the Earth's core could be the reason life is possible creating the contrast with the sun and sapping that energy could lead to a closer demise of the Earth life system. This is evidenced by the diminishing size of life on earth as the core cools. It would be wise to power the upwards locomotion with either the above mentioned compressed gas or heat depending on which proves to be more efficient. I have not done the math.
Nicholas Juntilla