Isn’t there a big difference between Depart/Arrive times and Cutoff/Available times? One is when the train is in motion and the other is when the freight must be received, which seems like it would add at least an hour or two on each end.
Likely, but then again those old schedules were public freight schedules that were probably padded somewhat.
- Ed Kyle
No published schedules are ‘run time’ schedules. Schedules have to take into consideration other trains and known conditions.
Consider what a big deal was made out of the “South Wind’s” nonstop run from Nashville to Birmingham (205 miles) in 1940. L&N 295 had its third cylinder removed and a huge tender added to make this run.
Didn’t both PRR and NY Centr schedule a 1960s TOFC/COFC train in 25-26 hours?
One of the major premises of Flexi-Van was quicker speed, both in intermodal transfer and in lessened wind resistance, lower cg. etc. One of the greatest advantages was that, if the correct number of bogies and yard tractors were present, a given train could be gang-loaded or unloaded in what might be little more than the time to unload; I don’t know haw carefully NYC actually got prestaging precision of how the equipment would be ‘blocked’ (in the theatrical sense) to facilitate it, but a railroad capable of building a turbojet RDC on a science-project budget could surely have figured this out.
Something I remember at the time was specifically running an improved Santa Fe train with handover to NYC at Chicago, for some impossibly quick timing from the Super C points in the West to the regions served by an increasingly passenger-free NYC – both railroads then still equipped with a rickety but largely functional ATC system allowing 90mph speeds.
I don’t think PRR would have something that fast with Truc-Trains except perhaps under wire. They certainly used passenger-geared Es on some trains in the early Fifties, but equally certainly didn’t have the wherewithal to put automatic back transition on them. Meanwhile, it would take kangaroo pockets or similar to get even contemporary trailers through the North River Tunnels (although of course Flexi-Van would go through as easily as breathing). I am unaware of any PRR idea of using three-piece-truck equipment at very high speed in context, or of building dedicated high-speed flats to do what ATSF and NYC could do – and by the time any of that would matter, the merger had been consummated, gone south, and the railroad bankrupt in both the operational and financial sense…
Obviously PRR could have used rebuilt GG1s for the necessary speed, and would have had no trouble finding, or even adapting from no-longer-needed passenger equipment, the necessary trucks, secondary suspension, brake and ride-height ad
One thing I like about Flexi-Van appears to be, was its ability to pretty much load or unload a van anywhere. No need for a terminal or its expensive lift equipment. Just a tractor and the tandems to bring, or take the van away.
OM: Don’t forget the use of Flexivans tacked on one of the IC’s passenger trains on the Iowa line. Greyhounds could opine on that.
IC’s Flexivans turned up in more places than just the Iowa line. I saw them regularly on the “Campus” (Chicago-Carbondale), probably in mail service.
I have not at all forgotten, and it would have been interesting to instrument a couple of them to gauge exactly how fast IC ran them… I suspect at faster peak speed than NYC did… [:-^]
But those were the equivalent of M&E tacked onto an existing passenger train, not ‘fast freight’ in the sense of the (excellent) example of the IC’s Memphis-Chicago service. I don’t remember IC operating trains or solid blocks of Flexis in that service, or even operating pure-intermodal consists of TOFC-FlexiVan equipment on a fully-expedited basis or schedule… although they certainly had the plant, the equipment, and the men to make a go of that service at that time.
Market research and development for a business are like reconnaissance for the army. Without either, you won’t know what to do. You’ll end up doing really stupid stuff and waste your scarce resources.
The most blatant example I can think of was Santa Fe’s “Super C.” The customers didn’t want it, it failed, and wasted a lot of money in doing so.
Yes, the IC operated flexi vans. They carried mail on passenger trains for a short while. One favorite photo of mine is the IC’s “Land O’ Corn” behind passenger Geeps ready to leave Waterloo, IA with two flexi vans headed to Chicago.
In a futile exercise of “Hey, let’s try this” the IC offered flexi van service for freight on the Panama Limited. (Overnight between Chicago and New Orleans.) They never sold one load.
Conventional intermodal service was overnight Chicago-Memphis and 2nd AM to New Orleans. That met the market demand just fine. Anything faster could go air freight.
Nobody has mentioned Southern RR’s putting piggyback cars on their Piedmont passenger train after they chose to NOT join AMTRAK. I remember catching the train in Washington DC and I think we had four passenger cars and four F7’s on the point. We stopped in the yard at Alexandria VA, and a switcher pushed about twentyfive piggyback flats up to our train, and off we went. Fast downhill and slow uphill. Moved the pigs but I think it was just a way to reduce some costs for the train on the bookkeeping side.
I have seen autoracks on Southern passengers trains they used to stop to pick up passengers in Gastonia and Kings Mountain NC that is where I saw them late 60’s early 70’s.
Turns out PRR’s 1967 schedule for TT-1 was 25 hr 15 min, Meadows to Chicago 55th St. No doubt NY Central’s fastest schedule was similar.
In the Kalmbach book Rio Grande Through the Rockies the have a photo of the passenger train the Prospector hauling a TOFC car. In 1964 they started attaching a car or two to the back of the train, but the train was discontinued in 1967.
A car or two doesn’t make a successful business case for anything.
Oh yes it does.
If I could put $1,000 of daily incremental revenue on a train for $200 in daily incremental cost, it made a difference.
Railroad operating people count cars. Railroad marketing people count dollars.
Or it could have been $10 betting on future expansion that never happened.
How long do you fish for specific prospective business until you realize ‘they’ aren’t taking the bait - especially after you have changed bait multiple times?
Well, you do the research and analysis as best you can. You interview the potential customers, etc. If it looks positive you give it a try in a “Test Market.”
What you try isn’t always going to work. But if you never fail you’re not trying hard enough.
Yeah, but you’re putting it on a train that is losing, let’s say, $2000 or more per trip…
And another real disaster comes when the fancy new revenue-producing intermodal has to be paid for up front at full price – same effect as commuter service when new equipment becomes needed – but the incremental revenue is a tiny fraction of that cost.