Join the discussion on the following article:
BNSF Logistics acquires Transportation Technology Services
TTS has some great people, I’ve been able to work with them at a few of their Texas locations. I hope BNSF will keep the people that have been running TTS.
A bit off subject, but leaving the verb out of the first sentence is a real editorial blunder. Perhaps Jim Wrinn should not do as much railfanning.
Mr. Bates, it s a common problem that even occurs in the magazine itself. Apparently nobody does proof reading.
Corporate takeovers always have sacrificial lambs Kenneth, I agree with you though.
Randall, Edmond…and the human brain is wired to automatically read words that aren’t there, which is why there are so many of those tests out there with only half sentences that over 90% of the people can still read…it’s not a life or death situation. I automatically read the sentence as " will acquire", and I had to read it twice to notice it was missing…that’s how are brains work, now if only people would put that into practice in the real world, imagine what kinds of gain in productivity we could have…in all fields of work.
It would be great if they could haul more turbine blades. I see a lot of 3 vehicle processions (each need a leading and trailing alert vehicle) on I-29 just to haul 1 blade. BNSF should be able to do it for a lot less.
I should add, thats a lot of fuel and labor to haul one blade by truck.
James,
Are you sure you are not seeing the final leg of the blade’s trip? They try to ship by rail as much as possible, but in nearly every case the windmill site is not rail accessible and they have to move the last leg by road. Also because of the lengths of some of the bigger blades, there are some rail routes that due to curvature cannot handle a long blade.
I think the blades are coming from a plant in Aberdeen, SD (or maybe Canada) and all going south on I-29 to wind farms, maybe Kansas, Oklahoma or Texas? They are at least 70 to 80 feet long. Maybe 100 feet.
Since Kansas City is the second largest rail center in the country, we get to see wind trains every so often, especially westbound on UP and westbound on BNSF. Primary locations for wind farms are in eastern Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and other western states. Most of the manufacturers are in the northcentral Plains states and other locations that require a lot of rail transport over long distances with final disposition to the farms by truck. The blades are usually transloaded as close to the erection site as possible to minimize the situation that James Homan describes. Perhaps his blades are going short distances from the factory to the erection site without rail help.