I thought I would try to start a no-trolling thread for railfans to think like a businessman and for the real railroaders to help out and talk amongst themselves and us novices in determining for fun what the railroads should be doing, improving whatever in the future.
I am hoping this will attract the members who haven’t been here for awhile because some of the discussions have been silly and not interesting.
Hope this appeals to everybody so let it begin.[:)]
you hit the nail on the head about the direction the forum is taking right now… no good suject matter for weeks now…
csx engineer
Well, too start while we’re dreaming big, maybe they should open up their wallets, work together and invest in the Chicago terminal.
I think Chicago has pretty much hit its limit…I dont see them building any new trackage, but I do see the terminal managers and the Class 1 corridor managers having to figure out a way to move all that traffic through there in a more timely fashion.
My personal thoughts,
the Class 1s will shed as amny of the local jobs, the plant switching, and yard to yard work as fast as they can.
I see them helping a lot of short line and regional railroads start up, to handle the loose car and small train work, and bring it to a major yard for interchange.
That way, they can concentrate on what seems to be their main pursuit, the unit and shuttle trains, (coal, coke, grain, and plastics) and the big manifest freights…leaving all the “dirty work” to smaller regional roads.
Ed
Which yards in Chicago are at capacity or struggling to keep the trains going?
I dont think its the yards so much, as the through traffic, or the interchange that has to happen, but more the fact that it formes a bottle neck of sorts…if you could go around Chicago, then all the better…
Ed
Ed: I’ve always wondered why the Class 1’s don’t “sub out” a lot of the detail work. Why wouldn’t they figure out how to work with a smaller railroad to do the switching and etc. it takes to assemble and dis-assemble trains? For example, they could gather all those bothersome grain cars up in Montana, so that several thousand farmers and a couple posters could sleep better at night.[:P] ( note tounge in cheeck). I would have to believe that BNSF will rationalize more of their branch lines and spin them off.
Why do they have so many darn diamonds as opposed to bridges? I look at some of the hot spots like Dolton, Blue Island and Griffith and wonder what they were thinking as even in the “old days”, they ran alot more trains then now as they were smaller but the sheer volume of different railroads plus they did run their own passenger services, is crazy.
Have the railroads thought about maybe building highway style on/ off ramps with bridges or tunnels? This way trains don’t have to go through the interlocking process but still can get access to the other lines. Some areas won’t work as there wouldn’t be enough room for that but some junctions don’t really need it if there are a few of thease highway style systems, I believe that is a great way to solve that problem without moving them out of Chicago.
I don’t know why the railroads in the older days didn’t do that when it wasn’t necessarily a corporate taboo to spend large amounts of money on super-build style projects.
Look around in you city, especially the older parts, and you will find city streets going under the tracks…because it was though that keeping auto and train separate was safer…more expensive, but safer.
But note in the new part sof town, lots of “at grade” crossings…
Same with track, it’s just flat cheaper to create junctions and diamonds than flyovers at most locations.
But, in Kansas City, they did do what you suggest, twice, and it works well for them.
But the cost of an “overpass” for a train, and the amount of real estate needs is just too expensive for every junction…
Ed
Serve drinks…those boxcars get mighty warm in the summer time and a cold beer in the afternoon would really be nice…
Well, if we are dreaming big, then I would have to say the real Penn Station should be rebuilt. Unfortunately, there would be no real gain from the HUGE expenditure, except to replace a current functional station (but then again, I would get to see a piece of history that was destroyed before I could see it, and darn it, the railroad should revolve around what I want [;)]).
Realistically, what should be done is some serious double-tracking along the Joint Line in Colorado that need it. And this is probably something that the railroad not only thinks it should do, but actually wants to do. The problem here, from my understanding, are the towns that the line goes through are being too uncooperative (to put it nicely).
But then again, that is just my [2c]!!
There are a few area where it is needed
Dolton, Chicago Heights, Porter Junction, State Line Junction, Brighton Park Crossing, Hayford Junction (requires CN over the busy Belt Line/CSX line including a ramp like connecting track to the Clearing Yard), 75th Street-Forest Hill Crossing, and Deval.
I noticed a couple of places in Chicago area it isn’t too bad including Pine Junction where that already is how the track go.
In Philadelphia, I noticed that Q191 comes from the Trenton Line, uses the Wood Connecting track and heads onto the NS Morrisville Line; it reminds me of a road traffic heading from a road to the highway. I don’t know what kind of grade that is though.
As far as cost go, that is something that the railroads might do anyways in a slow cost effective pace. Unless the governments help out, that will be the way it will go in speed of construction that is if they decided to do it.
So now you’re turning into a bridgefan too? Don’t you have any loyalty?[:O].
Santa fe as a subsidary under BNSF Bring back Santa fe!!!
LOL.
Well I hate to say it but as a railfan, I like the diamonds but as far as if I owned the railroads, the junctions in Chicago are a pain for existing traffic never mind additional traffic. I really don’t know what UP and CSX will be doing with the new produce train they plan on running.
Is there a logical reason why they can’t figure a way to route traffic around Chicago for through and interchange traffic?
I’m thinking about track pans. How someone thought of a way for steam locos to take on water on the fly to be more efficient.
If containers could be on and offloaded quickly as a train moved past a point, that could reduce a lot of terminal time and congestion, couldn’t it?
MS,
In a thread several months ago, MH talked about the myriad of variables involved in Chicago’s railroad traffic. Very complex.
tomtrain: I understand that. But I also read where railroads are moving their interchange points to be on either side of Chicago, but then running the trains through Chicago still. Just wondered if there was a better way?
Nothing comes to mind but it seems like the railroads seem to favour Chicago for interchanges over multiple places. I just don’t know how much longer they can keep up the bottlenecking without greatly increasing the traffic rerouting unless they do something drastic like that.
The demand for rail isn’t going away nor is it slowing down.