i am the new kid on the block and i live in Mississippi on the CN main (ex IC) and I frequently ride #58 and # 59 and it seems and i have seen them run freights around theCity of New Orleans in the Jackson Ms yard about a half mile from the station track causing delays up to an hour. . One of the engineers says that CN really wants Amtrak to abandon this route .Ican’t see why it’s just two trains per day. just curious.
Passengers and passenger trains have a love/hate relationship with freight railroads. Freight railroads have a notion that a passenger train will interfere with their running freight trains where they make their money…and they are right, sort of and some of the time. Freight railroads also like the improved track and signaling systems needed to run passenger trains, improvements often paid for by Amtrak or other agencies, which also allows for faster and improved freight train performance. Railroads, i.e. management and labor, love to show themselves off with sparkling passenger trains, lots of people paying positive attention to them, and assuming a sense of pride. However, passenger trains re expensive to operate because of them being labor intensive, needing special expensive equipment, and having to put up with the public overall. When railroads first came on the scene in the 1830’s and 40’s, it was a 50/50 game of carrying freight and people but by 1900 it was quite apparent that passenger trains cost a lot more money to operate and provide less of a return if any at all. And today with new technologies and dynamics of trains and track, the compatabiltiy of the two traffics can be in conflict. Culturally, the US specifically, North America generally, have concetrated rail services in the for profit freight traffic and not in the high overhead passenger traffic. As our overall transportation infrastructure, as our need for addressing environmental and land use issues, all comes to a head, we must address our philosophies and needs for both freight and people in all modes of transportation. It is easy to say…and I say it often I know…they used to run freight and passenger trains together without the fear of losing lots of money on delayed freight because of a passenger train, that they had the skills, the manpower, the pride, the ability, and the need to do it. But I also realize that times have changed drastically.
Try this,
You have a 75 car Freight rolling at 45 mph. You have a Passenger Train owned by another rail line ahead of you that will be making a “Station Stop” down the line. If you owned the tracks, would you brake down and stop your Freight to wait for the rent paying Passenger train to clear or sidetrack the Passenger so the Freight can keep rolling? If it were my railroad, “my customer is more important than your customer”.
Starting in the 1820s land was taken by the government to have railroads built. The railroads HAD to have, by law, both Passenger and Freight service. The first intercity paved roads came in the 1920s with the “US Highways” (US 1, US 6, etc). The interstate Highway System and Jet Airplane of the 1950s ended the for profit passenger service. May 1971 gave us Amtrak.
You have only one train a day, it will get their, sooner or later, hopefully on time. Here in the northeast you mix 150 mph bullet trains every hour with 110 mph Amtrak Regionals and 90 mph Commuter Rail. Being on time is like an Airline, miss your time slot and you wait. Freight service is only in the middle of the night or other rail lines.
What you are saying is true but in the case at Jackson Ms the station track is off the main and does not obstruct run through freights. In fact a quarter mile south of the station platform KCS Meridian Speedway crosses The CN main and from what I have seen It causes more of a problem to run a BNSF coal train and a CN manifest around Amtrak through the yard and holding up KCS and NS intermodal. when Amtrak could at least be in the station and taking care of business out of the way. But as I have see an heard passenger rail except for certain corridors are not too welcome. I believe that the day will come when the people realize that we need to examine passenger train as viable transport and Even though freight companies loathe them, They are the only transportation system that has to support itself totally
Facts don’t matter. physical characteristics don’t matter, track and station configurations don’t matter. You are dealing with mindsets and contemporary tradition: this is the way (freight) railroaders think and operate… But even if you have a side track set up, you have to slow down or stop other traffic to get on and off the side track
Two trains a day can be quite disruptive. Several years ago, BNSF ran a so-called “Bullet Train” as a test run for a possible UPS contract for high-speed freight. The schedule was tight and disrupted almost everything else on the route as dispatchers had to put just about every other train into a siding to give a clear track to this run.
Yeah…anything new or different gets in the way of the way things are always done. Thus, you can’t do that. Or anything else.
Henry,
CN/IC Can not afford to maintain four North/South main lines through Mississippi anymore either. The bastards!
Mac
Mac, I wouldn’t put it that way at all. Business is what it is, Thus what is there is because of business decsions which had to be made and have been made based on the philosophy, plans, and needs of the railroad. Four track mains are uncalled for in so many places because ot the changes of technology and the like as well as by traffic patterns. I am a supporter of passenger rail by all means, but it has to make sense as well as dollars and cents if it is to be superimposed on an existing freight railroad.
If passenger service could be provided on the same basis as freight, that is if railorads recognized the fact they can provide such a service, develop and market such a service and get a return on their investment, then it should be done. But that is wishful thinking in part because no matter how good a business plan they can come up with for passenger service, the idea that they could be making or are making more money with freight will always alter their mindset. And if passengers would be willing to pay for the service on the same program as airlines and highway users do, then it might work better. Until then…
CN is abandoning the straight shot main that IC used to use . They are using the line that takes an hour to run Amtrak 33 miles along the Yazoo River. You ought to see the mess ever time either the Mississippi or Yazoo river rises. Thing back up all the way to Memphis. On the same token KCS and NS are double tracking the Speedway and Improving the yard in Pearl Ms. CN really , in my opinion don’t run this portion of the ir system like IC did