Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that a freight train that has all articulated cars can do the same speed as a passenger train is permited to around curves. I remember reading that somewhere. Whether it was a true statment I’m not sure. I also believe that Santa Fe had or attempted to run fast piggy backs at 79 miles per hour with a few locomotives which were re-geared to achieve the higher speed. Correct me if I’m wrong on this. I’m interested to know. I seem to remember reading something on this.
I better tell the hogger today about this 59 mph stuff…we usually go 70 across the Needles Sub to Barstow,California from Needles,Ca.,unless we have a manifest train with emptys,then it’s 55 mph.
BNSF Conductor–Needles,California—
In 20 years you will not see a boxcar on a major railroad,It’s all going intermodal with the big RR,s.
We bring you a container or two,you load it,thus no hump yards needed as they are a hugh waste of space,labor,track,specialized equipment & produce no income whatsoever.It will probably be sooner here on the BNSF transcon.
You obviously have never worked the Hump as I have…It does not matter how many wheels are being retarded ,as long as the braking force exist to slow the entire car.I have humped many 3 & 5 pak cars,you can stop them dead in their tracks if you need to. I have done that before to keep pigs from striking a slow rolling hazardous tanker. I wi***hat I had attended college and became a writer,then I would know what cannot be done with railcars in a hump yard.----------
You are not far off. A train on the BNSF that is totally articulated cars can run a max of 70 mph,loaded or empty…an empty NON-articulated car will restrict you to 55 in most areas. The locomotives are not geared to run 90 as Amtrack does here in the desert…70 mph ,after that the overspeed alerter goes off and will shut down the train if the engineer does not respond and reduce to 70 mph or below…Santa Fe did have 79 mph Super-c freight service in the late 60’s,but running one train so much faster that the others created problems,IE, the slower trains had to be sure to be clear well ahead of the super-c…that basically slowed down the entire railroad down to expedite one train…not a good trade off…BNSF Conductor…
Steel wheel interchange in Chicago is the holy grail of intermodal operations. There are many high volume lanes that allow thru blocks to be built in the west and these are steel-wheeled across Chicago - a growing trend, in fact. However, there are just too many point pairs with low volume to do a steel wheel interchange with all of them. Another trend has been construction of load centers, where box destinations are mixed and matched between rail cars to get enough volume for a steel wheel interchange. Rutherford on NS does this, taking well cars with mixed destinations from a half dozen eastern terminals and reloads them in solid destination blocks.
Another reason for all the rubber tire interchange in Chicago is IMCs (Intermodal marketing companies) will often handle a transcon load as two separate local trips. For example, to NS, it will look like a Chicago local trip, but the IMC will then dray it across town to BNSF to get it to it’s final destination. They do this because sometimes the sum rates for the two “local” trips is cheaper than the thru billed rate.
…Even if railroads wanted to run higher speed freights doesn’t it require different wheel trucks under the freight cars…? Thought ordinary freight car trucks were limited to lower speed of operation.
I am wondering if it would be easier if the railroads used containers with openings on the sides instead of the back. That way if say Wal-Mart requires a whole bunch of different stuff, you might have a 20 foot container from Hong Kong, a 20 foot container from Seatle and 2 20 foot containers form Los Angelas. Load onto an 89 foot flat car and take it to the Wal-Mart siding and they could unload it themselves. Of course on flats and spine cars would work. I don’t see Wal-Mart having much use for containers in well cars.
Different hump yards are capable of different things. I once worked at one hump that handled only single cars but could handle empty cars in pairs, some hump masters did “illegaly” let larger cuts of emptys go but could get in trouble for it. I later worked for a diferent railroad at a different hump that routinely humps large cuts of cars at a time.
So we can use our imagination and take it a step further and sugest perhaps a more higher tech hump yard with more acurate control of coupling speeds in all weather that would eventualy be able to carfully “hump” even double stacks. Perhaps this would neither be a gravity “hump” nor a very large hump. I see stand alone well cars being built in large numbers now. What’s up with that?
Mudchcken, Jeaton and Mr. Hemphill have pretty much laid it out.
High speed freight service in the U.S, with very few exceptions, would not be overwhelmingly beneficial as nowadays (unfortunately) a lot of lines that were once multi-tracked are now single tracked. A number of yards were either reduced in sized or closed. Freight trains, particularly in the west still “Wait their turn” to enter major yards.
Additionally Uncle Sam doesn’t give the Class 1s a lot of incentives to run fast freight anymore. I clearly remember in the 1970s that 70 mph freight runs were still common. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Hemphill, but I read that the Santa Fe Super C running with the cowl locomotives hit between 85 and 90 mph in some stretches in the early 70s.
Cheers!
Thank you bnsfmemptm for clarifying that for me.
Most freight locomotives are geared for 70-73 mph maximum speeds, and most operating practices limit freight trains to 70mph maximum or less. BNSF did run test UPS “Bullet Trains” with high speed geared units up to 79mph, but UPS didn’t want to pay the cost of delays such a fast train causes to other trains, and BNSF has a whole fleet of hot trains that equal or better the fastest schedules on other RRs, so that cost was not inconsequential. UP “bought” the business by offering the service without the premium price; they have less hot traffic to delay and were trying to win points with UPS. Result was UP has been paying UPS to highway haul their loads because they can’t handle it (gotta love new twists on old UP slogans LOL), and now UP has canceled the contract for this business they bought from BNSF (and the extreme high speed schedule business will stay on the highway for now since UPS doesn’t want to pay BNSF for the premium service).
Super C used to run 90mph in many places, since ATSF had plenty of ATS equipped sections of mainline - and curves superelevated for high speed passenger trains. Today, much of the ATS is gone, and the curves have less elevation as well as the focus is now solidly on freight as opposed to passenger. 79mph is doable if somebody wants to pay the bill. You’ve got to be impressed with BNSF’s ability to run the Bullet Trains fast enough to match the Super C’s old Chicago - LA times (UNDER 40 hours!) given the tremendous traffic levels they have today and despite losing some of their top speed capacity, but replacing some of the ability to run at 90mph with more 2 MT/CTC on the “Transcon.”
As for Federal Law, without ATS (Automatic Train Stop) or some modern train separation system, maximum authorized speed is 79mph. This by the way has NOTHING to do with “safety” in terms of 80mph or higher needing such safety appliances; it was the government’s way of trying to force the RRs into expanding their ATS systems post WWII. The RRs reaction, more often tha
Oh, and double stacks and piggybacks aren’t supposed to be humped - you’re likely to end up with some second layer containers shearing off (held on in most modern doubles stack equipment by nothing but the fasteners used to join them together when stacked on ships)…
I have heard of two frieght trains that were probably “fast.” The Pacific Fruit Express, which is supposed to be the most profitable unit train ever, and the “Salad Bowl Express.”
Does anyone know what the schedule of these trains was and how fast they had to go to make it?
TIA,
Dennis
I don’t know about that- intermodals really shoot it up off the island of montreal- The Cn detector reports via trains proceeding at 97, 102, 107, 45… And thats just yesturday!
CP intermodals have gone 75 MPH- that is the max- and I have seen them do it. Better check the max. Gear ratio speed for those locomotives-
On CP track with our EMD 59PHi We get up to 75, 80-
unless it’s around the 55 MPH curve.
You should take a train from Toronto to Montreal. On the Kingston Subdivision, the train with 2 P-42s and 8 LRCs went over 100mph.
And they called it progress!
Here’s another equation:
no diesels + no roller bearings + no welded rail + no CTC = no more railroads left today!
Take any one of the 4 away and railroading as we know it, would be uneconomical.
American Railroads can build cars with Aircraft alnummun and contruction. They can use Polumers and light weight trucks to save fuel and increase speed…But the FRA wont let them because of crash standerds that are outdated…
The people at the FRA are hardly stupid.
As long as you are mixing frt and passenger along the same ROW, it would be a real stretch to call the FRA crash standards “outdated”. You can build passenger cars from whatever material you like, they just have to meet the performance standards for buff strength and collision post strength. Those standards have saved a lot of lives over the years, don’t dismiss them so easily…
Besides, fuel cost ain’t what’s killing passenger service. And lack of high speed equipment isn’t the problem, either. That stuff is all small potatoes compared to creating high speed routes.