The people that want to put tons of electronics, sensors, and all that tech in railcars: it’s obvious they never see how railcars get handled both on the road, in the yard, and by private industry.
There’s a reason they are as crude as they are.
About the only application I can see having any success in the short term - industries won’t have to buy a trackmobile to spot cars over a pit or rack?
He says that, but is it the truth?
His statement reminds me of an official looking at a 100 mile single track segment of railroad with 5 sidings and 7 trains in each direction and saying that line segment has ‘excess capcity’ - because every foot of the line is not occupied by a train - it is grid locked with too many trains for the sidings.
We have a customer that is like that. Their corporation sees they have (for example) 2000’ of track space, so they think they can handle 2000’ of cars at any one time. Never mind that the cars need to be emptied or loaded (they only have one pit to unload/load one car at a time) and you need space to move them around to do that.
Yes it is true that railcars, especially open top cars like gons and hoppers, get the crap beat out of them. But they don’t have to accomplish much, whereas these powered railcars are more like locomotives which have a much more challenging job to do. Intramotev will just have to make them durable enough if they want to be in this business. I don’t think this point is lost on the company.
It’s the same with track capacity. Maybe there is enough or maybe not. But the CEO says that penetrating the Class 1 railroad market will be the last frontier, so it might be quite a while before that happens. Meanwhile a lot of pieces have to fall into place, and there will be time for that. Some railroad management may not want to go after this business model. They might just say it is not what they do, especially if they believe it will interfere with what they do with the multi-mile-long trains. But generally, I sense that the Class 1s are unusually interested in autonomous operation with standard equipment. So they might be especially attracted to this Intramotev concept just to get the autonomous ball rolling.
This isn’t the first company to propose this, and it won’t be the last. Like I said before - these concepts never seem to get anywhere. I doubt this will be any different.
We’ve been having these discussions a couple times every year for the past decade+ here.
For systems with excess capacity the big railroads sure have an awful lot of congestion…
Call me when the autonomous railcars learn how to sweep snow out of switch points, and line the manual switches and derails that are found at nearly every carload customer spur.
Some of our customers have big electric winches for that. Others use a loader, a forklift or even a pickup truck as their ‘yard engine’. One or two sites even used those old car moving pry bars until quite recently, and they still might when no one is looking.
That makes absolutely no sense. If you don’t involve the Class 1 railroads, where are these autonomous railcars going to travel? Are they going to go from one side of the steel mill to the other? Five miles down the shortline from the gravel pit to the transload facility?
Actually, that sounds rather like a good proof of concept.
As has been pointed out, the logical place for this is “last mile” applications. Industrial parks being a case in point. However, that will require that the shipper/receiver pairs have sufficient dedicated cars to cover those loading, unloading, and in transit.
The Class 1’s role would be getting the car from the originating staging point to the delivery staging point, where the autonomous part can be used. And return.
A significant majority of railcars in use have no reason to be capable of autonomous operation. They operate in bulk business from end to end. And cars not in dedicated service will be floating around the system with the autonomous equipment just going along for the ride.
The idea that an autonomous car is going to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles all by itself is a bit far-fetched…
[quote user=“tree68”]
That makes absolutely no sense. If you don’t involve the Class 1 railroads, where are these autonomous railcars going to travel? Are they going to go from one side of the steel mill to the other? Five miles down the shortline from the gravel pit to the transload facility?
Actually, that sounds rather like a good proof of concept.
As has been pointed out, the logical place for this is “last mile” applications. Industrial parks being a case in point. However, that will require that the shipper/receiver pairs have sufficient dedicated cars to cover those loading, unloading, and in transit.
The Class 1’s role would be getting the car from the originating staging point to the delivery staging point, where the autonomous part can be used. And return.
A significant majority of railcars in use have no reason to be capable of autonomous operation. They operate in bulk business from end to end. And cars not in dedicated service will be floating around the system with the autonomous equipment just going along for the ride.
The idea that an autonomous car is going to travel from Chicago to Los Angeles all by itself is a bit far-fetched…
Conditions there now?
Not forgotten - although the factor I thought of was operation of the switches themselves. Either someone has to shadow the autonomous cars to throw the appropriate switches to route the cars where they need to be, or all of the switches have to be remotely controlled by someone/something.
Backshop wrote the following post 11 hours ago:
Euclid
But the CEO says that penetrating the Class 1 railroad market will be the last frontier, so it might be quite a while before that happens.
That makes absolutely no sense. If you don’t involve the Class 1 railroads, where are these autonomous railcars going to travel? Are they going to go from one side of the steel mill to the other? Five miles down the shortline from the gravel pit to the transload facility?
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(Quote function does not work with above post in blue)
The grocery organization went bankrupt and no longer exists, most of the other industires came to use other means to receive/ship their products and in a number of cases went out of business. When I was last working in 2016, a yard job from another yard in Baltimore would come to the area once or twice a week with a car or two for the remaining customer(s). The industrial park still exists. The grocery warehouse has become a FedEx Terminal. The brewery that was at the termination end of the main customer lead was torn down and the land occupied by a construction materials company.
The land the industrial park occupied was the location of the B&O’s 1927 Fair of the Iron Horse. Guaranteed the location will not be used to celebrate the 200 year anniversary of the founding of the N&O.
Going across Omaha a few trips back, I was looking at all the remnants of business that’s no longer there. Some are cases where the track has either been disconnected or entirely pulled up. But there is a lot of cases where the original business is gone. Some facilities have been repurposed, but they won’t be able to originate or terminate a full rail car’s worth of freight. Some won’t even use a full trailer or container’s worth.
And that’s just what can be seen from the mainline. The old Zone/Track/Spot books show a spider web of industrial leads that are about in the same predicament.
Jeff
How will the autonomous cars know when it is time to move and where to go to within an industrial park?
How will multiple cars coordinate their movements?
Who will handle the switches, derails, warehouse doors, gates, etc.?
These wouldn’t be used for just any old destination, would they? Probably certain, very active customers with well suited up to date track situations I would think.
Derails, chocks, doors, blue flags, equipment, etc are all present even with active customers. The whole restricted speed thing.
Autonomous running is going to require autonomous switches. I don’t see this system being ideal for going into industries to provide a daily switch. The main benefit of autonomous operation is to reduce locomotive operator labor. So getting that benefit in just industry switching is not going to accrue labor savings compared to running some miles over the road.
Plant switching would involve the least miles and operational time, while requiring the most equipment investment in not only the automatic railcars, but also the entire fixed infrastructure such as autonomous features on trackage infrastructure such as switches and automatic warnings and communication to people on the ground in the industrial plants.
Private railroads with heavy weights, over distances of at least a few miles are going to be the best application starting out. Rio Tinto would be the best example, taken to the maximum in the current state of the art.
However, this Intramotev concept surpasses Rio Tinto because it automates coupling and uncoupling.