Question: how do you start building a transport like a train

Andy Woods answered on 15 Nov 2017:

Let’s imagine we think we need to build a transport link. We need to know what it needs to do.

Where does it go from and to?
How quickly does it need to do this?
How many people does it need to carry?
How much are we prepared to spend on it?
How safe does it need to be?
When does it need to be done?

We need to answer these questions to set the “constraints” for the Engineers. Constraints are the limits in which we can work.

For example we can imagine we need to build a link to Birmingham from London. We could build two airports, we could build a hyperloop, we could build a High Speed Railway, we could build a normal railway or we could build a road.

We need to answer the above questions for all of these options to work out which is the best.

Once we have done that we can ask some more questions about how we will do it. We keep answering questions until we start building things.

Engineering is knowing how to answer questions and to make models and designs to answer these things.