Amtrak got the passenger train franchize from the frt RRs. That included express and and other “head end” business. Whether that included all that Roadrailer and reefer business was debatable and the UP “debated” it quite loudly. The courts sided with Amtrak, but the UP is still fuming - well at least *** Davidson seems to have a very low opinion of Amtrak.
Gunn had Amtrak cut way back on this business for several reasons - among them, it was only marginal interms of revenue and it was shifting focus away from passengers.
That brings up another topic of discussion, what if the railroads could promise delivery of a trailer from dock to dock FASTER than an over-the-road trucker? One way to do this is to arrange it so that some form of TOFC or RoadRailer/RailRunner service can run at the max speed on some of Amtrak’s routes such as the Northeast Corridor at 125 mph. If that speed is sustainable over a certain distance, maybe it can make up for terminal time lag. The point is, if the RR’s can pull such a thing off, they could actually charge more per trailer than the over the road truckers and still win the time sensitive business.
How hard would it be to upgrade bi-modal equipment to run at those speeds? I know that the RailRunner stuff is rated up to 106 mph. What about incorporating the tilting Talgo technology into the intermediate bogies of RoadRailers and RailRunners to allow them faster than usual operation over standard highball freight lines?
Whether it is Amtrak to perform this work may be a moot point, since most Amtrak trains are burdened with numerous station stops which cut down on the sustainable speed aspects.
Again, trucks are limited to max speeds of 70 mph or so by law (give or take 10 mph either way depending on locale), while rail speeds are only limited by the desire of railroads on how much to spend on track upgrades to meet FRA standards for select speeds. It is theoretically possible for some sections of trackage in North America to be upgraded to 100+ mph speeds
I can’t feel too sorry for the truckers about that, considering how much government subsidy they get in the form of highway tax dollars. On the other hand, being on a train when Roadrailers or express cars were being picked up or dropped off was often a little disconcerting. It always seemed to cause a considerable delay, and there were often eriee moments when headend power was lost during the switching moves. All the while the carhosts were very hush-hush about what was happening.
The reason RoadRailers didn’t work out on Amtrak is simply that Amtrak couldn’t beat standard intermodal freight running times between major terminals. Amtrak is hamstrung by having to stop at every passenger station stop, most of which are blown past by intermodals.
Are you sure about that assessment regarding the terminal to terminal times. I think that might be true on BNSF and UP. Where I have heard from railfan friends of mine tell me that they couldn’t even chase “junk trains” on the UP and BNSF mains going at 80 MPH on the the parallel US highways and Interstates in rental cars.
But here in the east both NS and CSX seem to loathe to power up their hot intermodals more than 2 HPT and with the typical Amtraker going at 79 MPH and with a HPT ratio of 5 to 10 to get up to track speed quickly. It seems thqt the death of Amtrak Roadrailers is more than terminal to terminal timings. The Three Rivers is still way faster than anything that NS and CSX puts on the east coast to Chicago market.
Isn’t it true that the hotshot intermodal cross country times are faster than Amtrak’s, and one can assume this is due to the frequent station stops required by Amtrak. Hotshot freights are only constrained by crew changes, refueling, and general line congestion. Amtrak has to contend with all that and the station stops. So I guess the reasoning is that why run intermodal boxes with Amtrak when you can get faster schedules with the hotshots?
There was only one time I was not able to catch up to a train an the freeway in the “flat” Central Valley. It was an Express Lane train going close to 70 MPH. Unfortunately, the freeway was only two lanes in each direction and clogged with 55 MPH trucks in both lanes. Anytime I have been able to go at the speed limit on the freeway (65 to 70 MPH) I have been able to catch any type of freight train. Although sometimes it might take several miles.
I’ll admit, I am suprised, and on a number of fronts. On other posts here we’ve discussed the willingness of shippers to pay a premium to long haul truckers due to the assumption that they are the fastest dock to dock e.g. “when it absolutely positively has to be there yada yada yada…”. When one thinks of a “premium” I guess we assume that means a couple of hundred bucks per box. But only $50? And that’s the dock to dock comparitive price, right? Not just the rail terminal to terminal difference? I guess I’m taking the comparitive pricing of Fed Ex and UPS package price quotes (not counting overnight and two day which would use air freight, but three day, four day, etc. “ground” schedules) and using those prices as a predictor of trailer/container prices. I would have thought the price spread percentage would have been similar for packages and entire trailers.
Secondly, I would’ve thought with the added burdens of station stops that Amtrak would be slower than the hotshots, all other things being equal e.g. crew change points, refueling stops, etc. Aren’t hotshots allowed to run at passenger speeds? Didn’t the Santa Fe used
As mentioned above some of Amtrak’s long distance trains were being delayed for hours due to the procedures of coupling or uncoupling the roadrailers. By the time connections, inspections, and brake tests were conducted the trains were running behind scheduled. Compound that with the trains running over railroads where freight trains were regularly "prioritized"over Amtrak, and you had a pretty bad report card.
Too bad as the concept could have worked if all the parties involved would have fully cooperated.
RR suvival is a 3 legged stool. If you drop bulk, intermodal or car load, you don’t have enough revenue to support the network. So the trick is to accomodate these three groups with very different service demands on the same mainline network.
Things change - what works today will put you out of business tomorrow. If RRs were only in the market niches they were in 1980, they’d all be broke by now. They’ve had to embrace new markets, such as steamship stack train and new service, such as dedicated finished auto trains and terminals in order to keep from shrinking away. Similarly, if they don’t keep looking for more new, good ideas, the traffic base of today will simply be gone in 20 or 30 years. High speed service may be one of those, new, good ideas.
Don’t foget about frt at pass speeds - RRs think about it all the time. Conail looked pretty hard at an 18-20 hr schedule from NJ to Chicago and 79 mph running was on the table. RRs have been losing out to team drivers on speed - have done well against single drivers. Faster speeds are a way to keep a hand in this market niche. However, maximum track speed often is a very small driver of overall trip speed. It’s all the other “stuff” that happens out on the RR that slows the trips. Equipment failure, track&signal failures/slow orders, weather, meets/passes, being held out at terminals, etc, all conspire against fast service. In fact, on Conrail, you needed to keep about 3-1/2 hours slop in the NJ to Chicago train schedules (compared to unopposed run times from simulations) in order to have the train arrive 90-95% on time. Another thing that slows service down is terminal trackage and slow speed connections. It takes many many miles of running at 79 (or even 90) to overcome only a few miles at slow speeds.
High speed rail might mean more that just passengers - if we don’t blow it. Recent NEC history is a bad precedent! There is some conventional “wisdom”
Thanks, Mark and Don, for the insightful observations.
Some clarification:
When I refer to “bulk” I tend to include trailers and containers that have amassed at a terminal and all bound for the same general direction. 100 trailers or 250 containers qualify as a “bulk” load in this context.
As for increasing car weights, I will give you a link regarding studies on track maintenance expenditures relative to 264k, 286k, and the proposed 315k standards and how those max weights influence the laws of diminishing returns as applied to increasing track maintenance costs:
It’s an interesting approach to quantifying track maintenance costs.
I agree with Don that a high speed rail network (125 mph) could result in new markets for time sensitive ground freight/overnight freight. One wonders what the playing field would be like if over the road trucks were still limited to 70mph max while hotshot freight were blowing by at 125 mph!
Railroads could do other improvements on the right of way besides increasing weight per axle or improving speed characteristics. Raise the max height allowed for freight cars from 20’2" to 30’ and we could start double stacking trailers using wells and racks! David P. Morgan was an advocate of a wider gauge, and if he envisioned something around 10’ or so it would be possible to stack two containers or trailers side by side. Of the two, I would think increasing height would be less costly. Food for thought!
Mark, I really hate it when you make me dig back into my files!
I gave you the wrong link, although that study does make mention of the point at hand. The information regarding Heavy Axle Loads (HAL) is from an email correspondence I had with Jim Blaze of ZetaTech and one L. Kauffman in a running argument on shortlines. The study regarding HAL is entitled “Economics of Heavy Axle Loads: Costs and Benefits” authored by Allan M. Zarembski and Jim Blaze. In it, the authors conclude that the law of diminishing returns comes into play when axle loadings are increased from 36 tons (72,000 lbs = 286k car ) to 39 tons (78,000 lbs = 315k car), e.g. the track maintenance costs increase more than the benefits of the increased load factor of the cars, although they do conclude that the benefits of 315k still is better than the older 263k standard. I can email it to you if you’d like.
The HAL subject is something I combine with another assumption, that there is a relative incompatibility of fast freights with drag freights in the final track profile design. Having to construct trackage to handle both time sensitive and cost sensitive commodities ends up eliminating adjustments that would suit one over the other,
This thread got interesting in the past few hours.
We ran the numbers intensively back in the mid-'70s for an integral container train between Ivy City and Boston, which essentially would provide ‘overnight delivery’ for ISO series 1 containers to a bunch of intermediate transfer stops (from which trucks would then make final dock delivery, on a separate schedule). There is no particular reason other than economics why a container train, properly designed and built, can’t run at least as fast as a passenger train.
Tilting per se is utterly useless on a freight train. Its purpose is to relieve the inner ears of passengers, not to make the train more stable on curves at high speed – in fact, a tilt system usually makes the train MORE prone to high-siding. In order to get the benefits of tilt, it’s also necessary to perform lateral shift (e.g. at the bolster) to move the roll center physically inboard. And, of course, systems failure at speed will be anything but fail-safe…
One of my business mentors is the former CFO for Consolidated Freightways, who pointed out that precise delivery scheduling is MUCH more important than absolute end-to-end speed for almost all classes of practical freight. The volume of ‘overnight’ traffic in most markets is already saturated at levels that leave FedEx’s express division considerably lower in overall CTP than, say, its ground-based services. Think of it this way: an industry normally schedules deliveries of factors via JIT (also known as kanban) scheduling… and has a string of deliveries at intervals. A few extra containers going a bit more slowly isn’t going to have substantial impact on profitability – what’s the debt service on a couple of extra days? – BUT either early or late arrival at the process location has very real, and often very substantial costs associated with it.
This is the place that rail has to address, and quite frankly the existing companies haven’t seemed to have done very much that is ef
You do confirm my own assumptions, e.g. a high speed freight service would have to limit axle loadings to around 55,000 lbs per axle if not even less. That does not necessarily mean each car is limited to 220,000 GW if three axle trucks are utilized. A six axle freight car at 55,000 lbs per axle comes out to 330,000 lbs per car, so the whole increasing-load-weight-to-make-railroads-more-efficient rationale would not be revoked. In that mode, you might be able to have high speed freights and heavy haul freights co-existing on the same line without subjecting one to the other in terms of track profile.
One thing I’ve noticed when observing passing trains, I always pick up at least three or more instances of the BAM BAM BAM of flat spots on wheels as the train passes, no matter what type of train is passing. I would think that flat spots on wheels of the heavier cars would cause much more track damage than those of the lighter cars, and I doubt the HAL studies that have been done ever take this constant into consideration when determining the cost/benefits of heavier axle loadings.
Isn’t NS running some freight on the Corridor now? If it is, what a good story for Trains a report on a cab ride would be! But the article should obviously include the economics of the situation, the technical details on the requirements Amtrak places on NS equipment in the service, who the customers are, what the freight is, etc.
I know Guilford has some peddler service north of New York (on the Corridor-Amtrak and on Metro North), and it would be interesting to contrast this freight service with the higher speed freight service south of New York.
Dave, the flat-wheel problem is one of the greater problems with track integrity, and I agree that you won’t find this in the conventional analyses of track wear with increasing axle loads. Part of the reason may be that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the physical effects of “flat wheels” – which may differ dramatically based on the length of the flat, nature of the ‘corners’ where the peak transition forces occur, etc.
Where there is no question, however, is that the effects of flat wheels become profoundly magnified with speed increases. At a time when railhead metallurgy is already demonstrably overstressed (pun intended) at current axle loads with current rail steels, it seems strange to me that people are considering higher axle loadings on “existing” track and alignments. I need to read as much as possible of your sources before I can assess their authors’ methodology and conclusions, but I suspect they are assuming linear extension of characteristics in areas which will prove to have profoundly nonlinear characteristics. (I’m tempted to say “Hatfield, anybody?”)
I am currently investigating cost-effective methods of reducing the problem of wheel-skidding on “conventional” air-braked cars, and of repairing or replacing poorly-worn wheelsets in service (perhaps by using a field-applied temporary material to re-establish profile). I confess to being a bit surprised to find that nobody is using on-wheel lathes to perform regular light re-truing of locomotive wheels (the ACE people specifically mentioned doing this with a Hegenscheidt wheel lathe, 1970s technology)
I wonder whether this thread and the 4-axle thread are beginning to converge. When you go to six-axle cars to ‘spread the weight’, you’re essentially building ‘one-and-a-half’ four-axle cars, with some theoretical saving of tare weight, but by definition increasing the anticipated vehicle capacity up to (design axle load x 6). Running any part of this capacity ‘light’, except when expres
I THINK AMTRAK SHOULD KEEP THE ROADRAILERS AND ANY OTHER MEANS OFHAULING LCL ITEMS IF THE FREIGHT RAILROADS DONT LIKE IT LET EM LUMP IT. THE CRYBABY PRESIDENTS OF THE FRT ROADS MIGHT GET A FEW BUCKS LESS IN THEIR PAY BUT ALL OF THEM ARE OVER PAID AND DONT GIVE A HOOT ABOUT THE PUBLIC OR THEIR EMPLOYEES