The Auto Train is a great idea, but why can’t all passenger trains have a single level auto carrier (box car) to carry a personal auto as excess baggage to passengers holding tickets for travel? I would take the train if I could have my car to get around once I got to my destination, either for work or vacation. (I’m a freelance cameraman, video).
Unless you are going for an extended length of time, it is cheaper to rent a car at your destination than it would be to ship your own. The dwell time at each station to load and unload vehicles would be a major drain on the schedule.
Now if there is something special about your vehicle that makes you need that vehicle at the destination, that would be different.
The B&O in the late 60’s tried transporting autos in regular passenger service - with a remarkable lack of success.
You’d need a car carrier for every pairing of stops and have to break the train at each stop the number of times you have pairings. How loud can you scream “nightmare”? It might work with enough cars between maybe three or four city pairs over a 1000 mile distance, but it really would be a logistical and operating headache. Every stop would be at least a half hour for switiching out or unloading/loading. Marketablity shot before you start.
Passengers on the Overland between Melbourne, Victoria, and Adelaide, South Australia, can take their personal vehicle on the train. The train runs three times a week in both directions. The cost ranges from $142 to $191 AUD. Vehicles can only be carried from end point to end point. The car carrier is located at the back of the train.
Passengers on the Ghan, which runs once or twice a week, depending on the season, between Adelaide and Darwin, can take their car from Adelaide to Alice Springs or on to Darwin and vice versa. Prices range from $204 to $1,067 AUD. The train stops in Alice Springs for more than four hours, so there is ample time to off load vehicles bound for the Springs and load cars for Darwin or Adelaide.
Passengers on the Indian Pacific, which runs from Sydney to Perth, can take a personal vehicle from Sydney to Perth or Adelaide; Adelaide passengers can take a personal vehicle from there to Sydney or Perth and vice versa. The Indian Pacific runs once or twice a week depending on the time of the year. The cost ranges from $235 to $1,135 AUD depending on the distance and size of the vehicle. This train lays over in Adelaide for more than three hours, so there is plenty of time to off load and load vehicles.
The Great Southern Railway, which is investor own, receives some subsidies from the Australian federal government. It has been offering the option to transport personal vehicles on its premier trains since at least 1999. Apparently it generates enough revenue to make the effort worthwhile.
The Great Southern Railway is not a government operation. This is one of the reasons for the innovation. And one of the reasons for only running the trains when there is a demand for them rather than for political reasons.
When Auto Train was a private company they tried a second Auto Train between Chicago and Florida. It didn’t pay. Amtrak never tried it. While carrying private vehicles would probably not work between every station there could be cities where it would not be impossible.
Take a look at US Patent 3285194 “Combination Railway and Passenger Automobile Transportation Systems” invented by Deodat Clejan of General American Transportation Corporation http://www.google.com/patents/US3285194 (you have undoubtedly seen GATX on the side of tank cars and other railway cars).
Clejan, a Roumanian emigre (Web references mistakenly give his origin as France), was the inventor of one of the systems of truck trailer piggyback on railroad flatcars. RRollway, an HSR auto ferry was supposed to be the next big thing after that. He died in a small plane crash – I remember when Dad came into the kitchen with that sad news – and I guess the dream died with him.
The key feature of RRollway is a purpose-built wide-gauge wide-body railroad line and train cars that allow random access at stops by driving cars on and off sideways. If you are building an HSR from scratch, why stop at standard gauge and why be constrained to the usual loading gauge? Also, an electric HSR will have so much power that Interstate-type grades are not a problem. The idea is to follow the terrain instead of worrying about “water-level railway lines”, and I think the French do some of that with their TGV.
Among the documents I have from Dad’s garage are dimensions of 1960’s era automobiles. I immediately knew what that was about – the RRollway project and how wide to build the train.
The other “vintage” aspect of RRollway was saving space by allowing entry/exit from only one side of your automobile. Back then, bench seats were common place. Nowadays you can pretty much slide in and out of one side for the back seat, but the fashion is for bucket seats and between-seat consoles. I think it is really hard for the driver to enter a car from the passenger side.
After Clejan’s passing, Dad (V. Milenkovic) patented concepts for a car fe
That is pretty neat that you have that connection. I remember seeing some of your dad’s designs in a Google search, neat ideas. I agree that you need to let the passengers load their own cars to make shorter distances possible. I also like this design, check out the tail fins! http://www.google.com/patents/US3149583?pg=PA10&dq=Rail+automobile+car+carrier&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VajCUL6zLojYywHG54CIAg&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAg
I have some corresponce from IRM where people were writing in to Pullman back in the 1950’s asking for the service.
Auto Train’s second train was from Louisville to Florida, not Chicago.
Right. But on the current Auto Train does not draw its riders from the greater Lorton metropolitan area; many come from the greater New York metropolitan area. Louisville is a 5 hour drive from Chicago and Chicago is a large city. I understand that Chicago was considered and important source of riders.
The existing Auto-Train does not draw it’s business from a single area but the entirety of the cities in the Northeast - New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington and all their surrounding suburbs.
Likewise the Louisville terminal was positioned to draw from Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati as well as Louisville and probably St. Louis. Have no idea of the cause for the end of this service, however, I suspect that the precarious financial position of the original Auto-Train company didn’t permit adequate promotion of the service. There is also the fact that even when there was through Chicago-Florida passenger service there wasn’t enough business to support the three premiere trains ‘The City of Miami, The South Wind and The Dixie Flagler’ on more than a alternating day basis so that the three ended up providing daily end point to end point service. On the East Coast, there was sufficient business for the legacy carriers to have multiple daily schedules to both coasts of Florida from New York.
The most important successful part of Auto Train was the marketing decision that people would drive so far and take the overnight portion aboard the train. Amtrak has been smart enough to keep that intact as Lorton VA is 5-10 hour drive from Maine to NY to Buffalo. A mid west train would have to be at a central location with a 10 hour population pattern similar to Lorton.
Missing from this equation are the Alleghenies and the Smokies and whatever mountain ranges need to be crossed, going from the general direction of the Upper Midwest to Florida.
The thing about an automobile ferry is that you are moving a lot of tonnage – not only the passengers but their automobiles plus the tare weight of the auto carrier plus the weight of railroad coaches, sleeping cars, and related amenities for overnight train travel. The Midwest is at a disadvantage of (more) of a mountain range to carry that weight.
Jim Hediger, Senior Editor of Model Railroader, wrote (maybe more years ago than he or I want to remember) one of the definitive articles on the original private-company Auto Train, “This Highway is not on any Oil Company Map”, dating the article as to what oil company or gas station gives out maps anymore? In it, he reported on Auto Train’s claim that their operation achieves substantial fuel savings over driving. Whether a rail auto ferry service can ever get enough market share to make a dent in the national fuel consumption picture is disputable, but were the Auto Train to be comparable to auto fuel usage at especially today’s oil prices, that would be a major contributor to cost. On the other hand, cars have gotten more fuel efficient since the inception of Auto Train and the Amtrak Auto Train service.
By the way, the RRollway proposal as well as the stillborn auto train service proposed as part of the Metroliner and TurboTrain projects that preceded
[quote user=“Paul Milenkovic”]
Missing from this equation are the Alleghenies and the Smokies and whatever mountain ranges need to be crossed, going from the general direction of the Upper Midwest to Florida.
The thing about an automobile ferry is that you are moving a lot of tonnage – not only the passengers but their automobiles plus the tare weight of the auto carrier plus the weight of railroad coaches, sleeping cars, and related amenities for overnight train travel. The Midwest is at a disadvantage of (more) of a mountain range to carry that weight.
Jim Hediger, Senior Editor of Model Railroader, wrote (maybe more years ago than he or I want to remember) one of the definitive articles on the original private-company Auto Train, “This Highway is not on any Oil Company Map”, dating the article as to what oil company or gas station gives out maps anymore? In it, he reported on Auto Train’s claim that their operation achieves substantial fuel savings over driving. Whether a rail auto ferry service can ever get enough market share to make a dent in the national fuel consumption picture is disputable, but were the Auto Train to be comparable to auto fuel usage at especially today’s oil prices, that would be a major contributor to cost. On the other hand, cars have gotten more fuel efficient since the inception of Auto Train and the Amtrak Auto Train service.
By the way, the RRollway proposal as well as the stillborn auto train service proposed as part of the M
I wonder if that is part of the thing with a Kentucky Auto Train. There are “snow birds” in the Upper Midwest, but there seems to be more volume of this kind of thing between the Northeast and Florida owing to population density and history of where people from one region looked to vacation in another region.
FRA glazed, ventilated, fire suppression, you got it pegged in terms of the problem of any kind of ride-in-your-car-or-SUV-or-RV Auto Train – the sort of thing that take a 50 thousand dollar freight car and turn it into a 5 million dollar passenger train car. The other thing is that the auto carrier is a kind of garage – suppose some wise guy turns on their motor – is there enough ventilation that people don’t choke?
With respect to ride-the-train let-your-car-ride-too, truckers do quite the business transporting cars to and from Florida, for the snow birds, for folks wanting to buy a Florida car that hasn’t seen a Northern winter, and so on. Maybe not same-day-service, but I heard there are “Auto Train” like deals of get your car shipped and take a bus?
Forget about the mixed passenger and auto
Another factor to consider in regard to a Midwest to Florida auto-train is that many snowbirds in the Midwest go to Arizona. Also the routes from Louisville south would not permit a schedule as quick as the east coast route. From Chicago to L’ville, the route is very slow.
I was trying to figure out why it would take so long to disconnect one set of autoracks and reconnect another set. With two yard locomotives could this be done in 5 minutes? With one yard locomotive in 8 minutes? With only the train locomotive and a reverse to setout, and a forward & reverse to connect to the second set of autoracks - in 5 minutes? This probably depends on rules (of which I am unfamiliar), air brake system, and number of autoracks. At www.railway-technical.com/brake2.shtml , Al Krug does a good job of explaining air brake systems and their pitfalls. Getting brake pipe pressure up to 80 - 100 psi and checking for leaks and release wouldn’t take too long for just 2 autoracks, but 20 would be another story. Would you be allowed to retain the brake pipe pressure from the yard locomotive and use the End Of Train device for pressure verification? This would speed things up. //Keeping track of autorack destination for 3 cities is not a problem, but after that you are going to need special autoracks and side loading looks interesting. Added complexity, however, increases your modes of failure. Finally there is the money angle, new more expensive autoracks, new terminal facilities, more personnel, more marketing, and empty backhaul logistics. I say lets do it.
The first hole in your argument is that all the cars on the autorack would have to be going from the same city to the same city. The second is that it would add AT LEAST ten minutes to each stop. Multiply that by the number of stops. Then there is the purchase cost and crew cost for the yard engine at each stop. Last but not least, not every stop has a place to store the two autoracks, the one being dropped and the one being picked up.
Transporting autos must be limited to end points or at least crew change / refueling stops. Any other plan would be too complicated to be practical.
5 minutes!!! Two switchers!!! Maybe on the Lionel Lines but on two rails 4 ft 8 1/2 inches apart, no.
The trick isn’t to switch the cars, it’s figuring out how to do “live” roll - on, roll - off.
The time wouldn’t be terrible. They used to do 5 minute engine changes in NH. A head-end pick up or set off is no different by rule (as long as the pick up block had an air test ahead of time)
But, then, a certain freight RR I know has trouble doing step-on, step-off intermediate crew changes in 15 minutes.