I found this article on Google Finance…
http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/72430/canadian-national-csx-link-up
I’m a little surprised that this is even news. I thought all the class 1s interchanged with one another to provide seamless service to customers. CN and Norfolk Southern also work together on the providing Roadrailer service to Canada. Does CN already have other partnerships with NS, and if so what advantages would this new linkup with CSX provide?
It means that instead of transloading containers and toting cross town, the lines will interchange cars of containers. I think the reality is that they will be able to contract a single move of unit trains or blocks of cars. It guarentees that each carrier will love, honor, obey till more money doth part.
That makes sense…only I thought that was already happening.
It looks like the article is describing a steel wheel interchange between CN at Prince Rupert and a CSX terminal in Ohio. The steel wheel interchange is the new element, and perhaps with joint through rates which the author was too ignorant to ask about.
Most rail to rail intermodal interchange in Chicago is by truck. Simply put, the streets of Chicago are the railroad’s switching facility for this traffic. This allows railroads on both sides to load as a single Chicago block containers that are Chicago local, plus NS, CSX, UP and BNSF to any destination. It is that old aggregation problem that steel wheel interchange does not handle well due to the low volumes to any specific destination on any given day.
Even if BNSF made up a daily train at Chicago for NS, for example, NS would have to strip it and sort all the boxes. The “street switching” means all the rails can strip an incoming train and reload the train for a return in fairly short order. If they did steel I/C, BNSF for example, would have to strip the train as now, put NS boxes somewhere in the terminal, come up with a set of cars and a track to load them on, round up the NS boxes, load them, and run a transfer job. NS would have to strip probably all the boxes, stash them and load them. The double handling in the terminals would slow them down and cause congestion, perhaps enough to bring the whole system to a halt. It seems pretty obvious that those who do this for a living choose to do it the way they are.
Mac
Rubber Tire interchange has been the King of intermodal interchange among the carriers in and around Chicago.
Part of the problems in having steel wheel interchange has been the lack of assembled destination volume. With CSX’s North Baltimore facility being a ‘aggregating’ intermodal facility it has the ability to take shipments destined to Western Canada from multiple US origins and put them all on the same block of intermodal cars. While there may be a 100 box a day volume moving between CSX origins and Vancouver - at present this total volume may be on 6 to 10 different trains from different origins - were steel wheel interchange to be attempted for this traffic (which in reality may be paired on it’s rail-car with traffic for destinations that are NOT Western Canada [and not Canada for that matter] you may only end up with a pitiful handful of cars that would have to operate through Chicago, most likely with loose car interchange cuts between carriers.
With this agreement, CSX can put together a solid CN Western Canada train and operate it directly to the CN who will take it to some point on their system where they can separate the boxes to their final destinations; by the same token, CN can build a train for CSX Eastern US destinations and operate it, all rail, to CSX in North Baltimore where the boxes will be sorted and dispatched for their final destinations - along with other all CSX traffic that is on hand for those destinations.
Does CN already have a similar arrangement with NS? I ask because CN and NS seem to have a longstanding partnership and a history of working together with Roadrailer…thus a more extensive partnership involving other intermodal would make sense.
Does anyone know the symbols of the new trains (for both CN and CSX), or are the boxes handled on regular intermodal trains?
I do know that CSX is currently handling a pair of BNSF interchange trains into North Baltimore (Q171/Q172), but not sure about trains from UP or CN.
Ed
I do not think the service has started yet, and I am not sure how it will operate. As for trains to the UP, Q157 is a straight Global 1 train and Q147 is a straight Global 4 train.