When I was at Horseshoe Curve in Alroona, PA on 4-14-12, a Norfolk Southern waste train passed by.
I know that railroads are making money on the trains, but why garbage?
Why not?
Where the garbage IS (point A)
Where the garbage is going for disposal (point B)
Are not the same place, Railroads make money by moving various things from point A to Point B, in this case, it happens to be garbage that needs to be moved from point A to Point B. The railroads are not concerned so much about WHAT it is that needs to be moved, as they are if they can make money moving it, and doing it safely. Haz-mats aside, garbage is pretty easy to move safely, now just price the move to be Profitable.
Doug
Would you rather be behind 100 garbage trucks on the PA Turnpike or RT80? Railroads move bulk products like ores, coal, cars, and, yes, garbage: economics, rates, fuel, envronment, load on path (? but I think you know what I mean). So why not. Unless you could get everyone who is driving from New Jersey to Ohio to fill their trunk with garbage in exchange for a gallon of gas and free tolls.
Plus garbage trains are easy money - pickup and drop-off. No intermediate switching or humping needed.
Money is money, even if it stinks.
These articles - and perhaps some others, including at least 1 of John Kneiling’s “Professional Iconoclast” monthly columns back then - explain it pretty well:
“Garbage plus steel wheels equals money - A tale of three trains”
by Kneiling, John G., from Trains, February 1975, p. 44
(Magazine Index ‘keywords’: freight garbage )
“The garbage express - perhaps a profitable commodity to haul”
by Hamlin, G. Homer, from Trains, May 1985, p. 52
(Magazine Index ‘keywords’: commodity freight waste WP )
“The waste line express - Norfolk Southern carries trash out of Roanoke, Virginia”
by Biesenbach, Betsy, from Trains, June 1996, p. 62
(Magazine Index ‘keywords’: commodity NS operation trash )
- Paul North.
Even the New York City Subway runs garbage trains…
Thats actually kinda awesome…
I have often thought if I owned a couple hundred acres of pristine desert wasteland here, I’d open a landfill sell space to cities to dispose of it and recover the gas and sell it… but at just $2 / 1000cf there would be no money in it.
Trash Hauling.
Better than looking at the collection of Municipal Waste Haulers that litter I-80 west of NYC in Pa. Every time I drove east to NYC I would see a collection of the waste haulers that had run off the road in Pa on the way to Ohio.
The wrecks got so bad that Pa required a permit to haul thru the state to cover the costs of cleaning up the trucks when they had accidents.
It has gotten to be big bucks for the RR’s even for short hauls. NS I think still runs a train up outside of Roanoke, a haul of only 50 miles, every other day.
NY connecting and NY & Atlantic haul EMAX containers and car load shipments.
Rgds IGN
Interesting question: Maybe, it is not who wants to buy garbage but what to do with it. If one can’t find a place locally, ship it. The railroad may very well be the answer.
It is sort-of like saying: Why would anyone want to buy snow? Railroads have been known to load up with unwanted snow and travel south. Often, by the time they reach their destination, the snow has melted and they can just load up, say with coal, and travel back up north. (A “win” - “win” situation)
Lion: Thanks for the memories. Born and raised in NYC, I am familiar with the “garbage” cars. Often, while waiting for the subway after a late night college class, I was often delayed while the “garbage” train got the “right-of-way”.
PS…Sometimes, I had to wait while the “cash” train passed. (Oh, all those tokens!)
I see garbage trains in Tacoma pulled by union Pacific Diesels
By far the best environmentally correct way to handle the stuff.
I say it makes a lot more sense to move it by train than to get stuck behind an overturned garbage truck on the 401…
I don’t know. Spending all that fuel to move garbage to a landfill.
You’d think they’d build a waste-to-energy-plant closer to the source.
A waste-to-energy plant closer to the source? Coming from Northern New Jersey (left almost 25 years ago) I can tell you it’s been proposed up there many, many times, but it always gets bogged down in politics: NIMBY politics, BANANA politics, environmental politics, you name it. JMJ, how I hate politics!
Years ago a New York City garbage official put it succinctly: “Waste disposal is a problem, and it’s going to be solved one way or another. But it’s probably going to be solved in a panic years from now when it can’t be put off any longer and with a solution that no-one likes. A solution applied because there’s no other options.” Wish I could remember that wise mans name, he’s probably as accurate a prophet as any in the Old Testament.
Trust me my County I live in LOVES Garbage the County Board OWNS a 2 Square Mile piece of Land and the Option on 4 Square more all right by the Intersate. Their Largest Customer the City of Chicago. Chitown ships so much to us that lets just say my Taxes on my house are over 1500 LESS than they would be just 1 mile NORTH of here in the next county. Why all the Dumping fees the County Gets from Chicago. Estimated year we run out of Space is 2120. I will be dead long before then and we are getting ready to start Burning the Methane from the Capped cells and making Power with it so More Money for the County and Lower Taxes. Hell YES Ship it here.
Lehigh Valley 2089
If you saw the trash train at Horseshow curve, it’s a good bet it was either going to Ohio loaded or coming back empty. I see it here in Pittsburgh on Sundays usually between 10:00am & 1:00pm. I don’t know if it’s a daily or not, but I wouldn’t be surprized.
Tom
When you are talking about major metropolitan areas and their trash - there are very, very few locations that are appropriate for landfills of the size necessary to provide a ‘solution’ to that areas long term trash needs, and even then that site will get bound up on all the shades of politics that exist from NIMBY’s to BANNAS to outright graft and corruption. While I have no idea of the politics that got played to develop the rural sites that are now receiving metropolitan trash I am certain the politics entered into the site selections also.