Hello all ;
Just found this one on the web, looks like an interesting idea in terms of freight cars
Mario,
Logically this is not much different than “Iron Highway” which is a multi- platform RORO system. The only place that it is used is in Eastern Canada.
Mac
Neat idea, the only objections I can see are truck drives are going to hammer the prongs, and you can’t double stack it, plus it takes a good sized piece of real estate to load/unload….but out in the wilderness or in an area where that is not a concern, pretty neat idea.
Still think drivers will bend the prongs up though.
Intriguing! Off the top of my head, I’d say some advantages are: -Looks like a low cast setup for terminals. No cranes, lifts, etc. -As Ed pointed out, not double stackable but could work on limited clearance routes. -Might be just the thing for low volume or short term traffic. -Could work for some kind of OTR overnight segments (drivers sleep without having to pull off somewhere). OTOH, the first time one of those accidentally separates at speed…
The idea of hauling the tractor(and driver) along with the trailer pops up here frequently.
I very much doubt that this would happen in the United States without major State and/or Federal mandates and incentives.
For a 100 trailer train the railroad would be hauling 2,000,000 lbs. of tractors and given the low margin truckers work off of I can’t see how they’d afford it without some kind of major subsidy.
the whole idea of intermodal efficiency is based on low tare weight and the “truck ferry” concept does not offer that…
As built, major disaster in a short time. ANYTHING that misaligns those long prongs… whether a wayward trucker or yard equipment, while exposed, or a lateral shock while running, will make them ‘spring’ relative to the truck assembly. You’ll then need one, perhaps two people with specialized equipment to shove the prongs so they align with the slots. Then let’s hope they don’t seize at the next disconnection stop, and trap the truck while someone goes for the equivalent of a Lidgerwood to pull the assemblies apart, or bangs the connectiion (not a generally-recognized-as-safe practice!) Now let’s add some wear, racking, corrosion to the mix.
And what happens when one of the prong latches fails to engage while the car is loaded? Something similar (the hitch-pin lock) on the original Iron Highway caused all sorts of consternation. While I’m not implying a comparable design defect… it wouldn’t take much to distort that long, unconstrained assembly end…
All this before the fun involved in running trucks on and off, in all weather, with that kind of clearance! We have at least one professional driver on this list… what does HE think of making someone do this regularly as part of an ordinary job? Adds dreadful new meaning to ‘career’… ;-}
I’d still put my money on CargoSpeed and some strategic trailer reinforcement if I wanted a system to handle large numbers of trailers quickly in parallel…
I am not sure I follow everything that is going on there, but if the prongs and their box are to run rigid with the main cargo platform, the trucks must pivot relative to the prongs and their box. So that is why they need four-wheel dolly as an adaptor coupled to the prong box. The dolly is aligned with the track and so it keeps the prong box aligned with the track while plugging in the prongs. If you did not have that dolly unit in there, the truck would run aligned with the track, but the prong box would pivot freely and could not be aligned with anything. I don’t see a problem with the design.
I found Cargo Speed’s website, and here’s the video page - of course, the first thing to enter my mind was Flexi-Van service - but worse; look at that terminal infrastructure - depressed tracks or raised parking areas - basically elevated loading docks - and hydraulic pistons at given intervals to raise and rotate the trailer-holding turntables on the wagons (cars). Ugh, at least Flexivans flatcars didn’t require special terminal infrastructure (but they did require special trailers, which of course is a different drawback).
Handle large numbers of trailers quickly in parallel? How about doing what they did in the incredibly advanced future years of the late 1990s; get a number of piggy-packers or equivalent, and then load them splines up (takes about a minute and a half each).
Did the Iron Highway use a lowboy trailer concept for loading/unloading? If not, maybe one solidly built neck on the dolly would work better than the two prongs on the well-car portion in terms of limiting vehicle collision potential?
This looks almost exactly what a freight car engineer at Conrail designed in the 1980s. He even built a working O scale model.
Thanks for providing that link. In my opinion, a number of detail-design changes need to be made in order for the CargoSpeed system to work reasonably, such as being able to move the piston carriages individually for balance; the principal benefit of the approach is that large numbers of trailers can be loaded and unloaded in a comparatively small footprint, without having to ‘match’ underframes or bogies to trailer bodies.
In some applications, prospective speed justifies the use of the under-rail infrastructure. I developed a system in the '70s (with ISO series 1 containers) that could load and unload a 60-unit train in three minutes or less (using what amounted to modified Stedman loaders) to minimize dwell time in high-speed train service. The CargoSpeed approach is really intended to do something similar. If you don’t have the track-occupancy or train-utilization problems, the peculiar requirements of a system that can quickly lift trailers is not as compelling (as you note).
The ‘downfall’ of FlexiVans was balancing the special trailer bogies with the actual van traffic; there was as far as I know no cost-effective way to shuttle the bogies between terminals, and the special ‘poling’ tractors couldn’t do anything if a bogie wasn’t presen
Why do people keep trying to make a simple, inexpensive thing, such as transferring a container between rail and road, complex and expensive?.
Overmod…First, the reason I used “Spline” is, as you guessed due to a specific neurological disorder known as a “dang typo”. Oops.
That said, turns out Greenbrier is still cataloging those combo well-car COFC/TOFC designs you mentioned, as their 53ft All-Purpose Double Stack (PDF brochure). Took me a few seconds to realize how they could handle 57ft trailers in that car (the well is 53ft, the car itself is 76ft, so as the diagram in that PDF shows the trailer kingpin area overlaps the car’s deck). The diagram also shows a little clearance between the top of the well-side and the bottom of the trailer, but I still think the well-side top gets dinged a lot from those piggy-packer loader arms during loading/unloading operation.
We all know you really love containers Greyhounds, but I (and seems like 10s of thousands of Mechanical Engineers and Logistics Experts across the globe) feel that a system of transporting trailers that
a) Does not require any special terminal infrastructure beyond a rail siding embedded in pavement
b) Handles bog-standard road trailers up to 57ft; No Flexivan bogies, no Road-Railers - standard trailers
c) As close to roll-on/roll-off preferred - and at a individual trailer level: the railroads used to be quite good at “Circus Style” TOFC, but generally phased that out as Direct Access via (piggy-packers) plucking individual trailers off the flatcars became feasible. “Speed is of the essence”.*
d) Simple & robust rolling stock, with a minimum of fiddly movable parts to wear out or get damaged.
e) Minimal requirement for unicorns, flying pigs, and rainbow ponies
Could be useful and revive TOFC (no, I am not exp
Some of the older cars have similar limitations on 53’ Western trailers. There are multiple labels vigorously instructing which of the fifth wheels to use for a long trailer, and in which units they can be accommodated! WOE to the person who does not carefully read these! -}
Yes, and there is what I think is the principal reason for the proposed ‘prong’ system of what amounts to taking the end(s) off a low-floor well car to allow the trailer to be backed or driven into it. There may not be adequate room between the top of the side rail and the hardpoints on suitable trailers to get proper ‘fork’-like arms in there; you may also recognize that some fairly sophisticated method of assessing the longitudinal center of mass of the loaded trailer needs to be used, or the loader may need to take several time-destroying ‘cuts’ at lifting before it will go up safely balanced out of the well. If the lift did not have to be made so perfectly vertical, without any swing or sway until well clear of the structure of the well car, much of the expedient problem of loading trailers in well cars would not be so troublesome…
The big problem, as I think I mentioned, is that most van trailers aren’t built to be lifted. They are designed to be loaded only by the attach points on the bogie and the kingpin and plate, and there is really very little in the underframe that will take the concentrated loading of a fork, nor is there
[quote user=“chutton01”]
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We all know you really love containers Greyhounds, but I (and seems like 10s of thousands of Mechanical Engineers and Logistics Experts across the globe) feel that a system of transporting trailers that
a) Does not require any special terminal infrastructure beyond a rail siding embedded in pavement
b) Handles bog-standard road trailers up to 57ft; No Flexivan bogies, no Road-Railers - standard trailers
c) As close to roll-on/roll-off preferred - and at a individual trailer level: the railroads used to be quite good at “Circus Style” TOFC, but generally phased that out as Direct Access via (piggy-packers) plucking individual trailers off the flatcars became feasible. “Speed is of the essence”.*
d) Simple & robust rolling stock, with a minimum of fiddly movable parts to wear out or get damaged.
e) Minimal requirement for unicorns, flying pigs, and rainbow ponies
Could be useful and revive TOFC (no, I am not expecting US or Canada to force TOFC usages like is done in Switzerland).
BTW, here’s a chart I’m sure Greyhounds has seen: American Intermodal Traffic: 1988-2011
In 1988 TOFC is no longer King, but still is a larger percentage of US intermodal traffic 55 to 45%
Around 1990, the ratios are equal, and by 2007 TOFC is getting clobbered by COFC, about 85% to 15%
Note the absolute numbers of TOFC decreasing after 1997, because - among other things - as noted on the Chart several trucking fleets converted portions of their intermodal fleet from trailers to containers on chassis.
But there are still plenty of standard trailers out there which could go intermodal i