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Moving water West by train sounds like it could be a viable solution. A DOT liquid car can hold 30,000gal, and 30,000gal/sec is the proposed solution from the article, provides at least a sense of scale required. Trains are probably more efficient for moving water uphill than pipes and pumps due to friction losses in the pipe. Bonus points because the infrastructure already exists! All the train would have to do is get water across the continental divide, and release it into a reservoir of choice just across the line. Bonus points for electrifying the railway. During wet seasons, this seems wasteful. During water rationing emergencies, there seems to be no more flexible way to engineer a reflexive water provisioning network.


Unless we convert those tracks into 24/7 dedicated track, there’s no way we could deliver the same volume of water by track vs pipe.




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