When I ended up out here I could not help but notice these huge way out of place monster cranes that looked like Giant Praying Mantis out of a grade b horror movie. During the time I was there i also noticed that there is only a handfull of JB Hunt trucks picking up containers out of this yard a day so most of the traffic is from train to train. I was thinking rather then use huge crains would it not have it been better to create a hump at Stanley yard up in Toledo and hump the cars that way? and instead of way out here have a intermodal sorting hub in a inner city where folks actualy need jobs and can take public transporation to. I am not sure what the brains at CSX were thinking when they built this. No other railroad has or wants to copy this.
How do you hump a 5 packer at Stanley that has 6 boxes for LA and 4 boxes for Portland?
CSX Intermodal originates and terminates shipments from ports all along the East Coast - Jacksonville, Savannah, Portsmouth, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. N.Baltimore is bult on the idea consolidating and separating boxes as necessary and to eliminate highway interchange of boxes to get through Chicago. It permits BNSF & UP to load all their East Coast boxes on a car(s) or train load and ship it East to N.Baltimore, where the boxes can be transloaded to car(s) and trains destined to the port areas.
Back in the day when all intermodal trains terminated in Chicago - ALL interchange between carriers was done over the highway, with resultant additional highway congestion in the Chicago area. Real Estate in N.Baltimore is much lower in cost that it would be anywhere in the Chicago area.
Each carrier has their own physcial characteristics to deal with and those characteristics are rarely the same. Each set of characteristics demand unique solutions to maximize the bottom line.
I would think for frieght headed West or East that Ohio geographically makes sense as a location to shift the containers around if needed by end distribution point as if you head much farther East I think your choice of destinations or ports by rail route efficiency dwindles. Seems to me that you would want to block containers on flatcars much as boxcars used to be blocked in a frieght by final destination or for those containers just traveling across the continent by the name of the ship they are going to ship out on.
Simply put - it’s essentially the “Chicago Yard” for CSX’s intermodal traffic - they do the same thing with containers and trailers that Willard does with carload freight.
Why not in northern Ohio? CSX built an intermodal yard in Chambersburg, PA some 70 or so miles from Baltimore as the crow flies. It is off of the old Western Maryland line on the south side of town. You access it off of Kriner road just a couple of hundred feet east of of Interstate 81 at the Wayne Avenue exit. CSX build this intermodal yard to get some of the Harrisburg and .Mechanicsburg intermodal traffic which has been dominated by Norfolk southern. CSX has a good reason to build a yard in Northern Ohio, just as they did in Chambersburg.
The hub and spoke happens because there are increasing numbers of intermodal terminals. As more terminals are built network theory enters. For each terminal started every other one adds one more possible destination.
So from whole trains to one destination from another you can get one unit a week from one to another. That over simplifies but points out the need for spokes to consolidate for a destination.
Brownfield redevelopment is the “in thing” where I am at in in Western New York. The former Bethelham Steel Site in Laccawanna has a wind farm and CN Lumber Distrubition Faclity. The new CSX Intermodal Yard http://www.mckeesrocks.com/ in Mckeesrocks outside of Pittsburgh is in the former P&LE yards and shops and is on a BRT Line. Toledo has no shortage of former auto and glass factory sites and has unused space along its port.
Willard has the space as well and the terminal facilities. Chambersburg PA happened because the Hagerstown MD politico establishment had there hands out for “contributions” and graft and PA taxes are much lower.
I’m not sure about other cities, but when Chicago Municipal Airport was opened, the only thing that was near it was Clearing Yard. When O’Hare Field was opened, it was also at the edge of the built-up areas and not particularly close to anything.
Name an airport that was originally built ‘downtown’. None were, they were all built in relatively uninhabited areas because of the need for cheap land to build them upon, as well as the potential to acquire more land economically as the runway requirements for planes increased over time.
If the runway requirements for future planes greatly exceed those of today, there will be a new round of airport construction further out in the boonies as most airports today have the same constriction of development building up around them as the railroads have in metropolitan areas. Transportation hubs breed development, development constricts the original hubs causing the creation of new hubs.
