Typically, are there more freight trains running during the business day or throughout the evening and night time? During the week or on weekends? I am considering buying commercial property for development next to a UP line and want some idea of how often and how long my site will be blocked from highway view by the 50 - 100 trains which pass by daily. Thank you.
24/7/365 - each day will be it’s own existance and no two days will be alike.
nevermind.
Sunday and Monday are typically lighter than Friday-Saturday. But that’s relative. The difference between 60 trains on Friday and 50 trains on Monday might not be that much. If there are 50-100 trains they will be all hours of the day and night. If there are that many trains that implies multiple main track which would mean longer trains, one to two miles long.
You will have to set up near the tracks a type of digital camera that is activated when an infrared beam bouncing off a reflector on the other side of the tracks in interrupted by the passing of a train.
The monitoring of the activity would have to be done continuously for at least a week to see if there is some pattern.
There are multiple operating conditions that will change the volume and timing of operations over a particular route on a week to week and day to day basis.
Its not that hard.
50-100 trains a day means a train every 15-30 minutes. With that frequency of trains you know they aren’t going to all be bunched up on one shift or just at night. Its going to be a continuous, frequent flow of trains.
Its pretty simple, if you don’t want the view of your business blocked by a train, don’t put your business next to railroad tracks that run 100 freight trains a day.
Actually on any given line there will usually be a pattern to the operations. Some member might be able to give a better answer if you would post the location.
A simple game camera would probably suffice - available at any sporting goods store. I’m pretty sure most, if not all, are time-stamped.
Unless your roofline is substantially lower than the ROW, and/or there are limitations on signage in that locality, you can probably ensure that folks know where you are fairly easily.
I believe many trains have fairly consistent call times. The problem is that there may be work to do between the on-duty time and when the train actually departs its terminal.
Priority trains are about the only trains that consistantly run close to a identifable schedule. Merchandise trains, while the railroad has a identifable schedule for them, can run off the advertised for a multitude of reasons (crew & power availability being the biggest). Other bulk commodity trains (coal, oil, ore, grain etc. etc. etc.) have no identifiable schedule, they run when made available by the shipper and are the 3rd party in line for crews and power behind Priority & Merchandise. Local Freights, while normally having assigned calling times, will move with respect to the industries and other work they have to perform and how much Main Track traffic the affect - they do not have special priority.