As I was driving past a Philly-area railyard yesterday looking at the rolling stock, the thought came that the last big change in railcars was the articulated double stack well car. Or maybe was it the Auto-Max articulated tri-level? What are the odds of us seeing any new types of railcars in the next 5-10 years given the following assumptions?
Boxcars have become a niche category, center-beam flats handle most of the packaged lumber business, steam coal loads have been declining, lessening needs for new hoppers, covered hoppers handle plastic pellets, grains, cement, etc, tank cars are, well, rolling tanks, and gons and flats do their things well enough, what’s left at the current 286k weight limits?
Load-assisting container cars (i.e. the NYC Flexi-Van system)???
As is often said - Form follows Function - and my corrolary is that Function follows Need.
Freight cars are a result of the need to effectively handle freight. When new ideas cause freight to be handled differently, new freight car designs will be constructed to permit the different kind of handling.
Moving freight is a ‘bring it to the bottom line’ activity for all parties involved - shipper - consignee - carrier. They all want to bring it to the bottom line. Shipper/Consignee want to minimize what the pay for shipping the product. The carrier wants to minimize his costs in moving the product between shipper and consignee. If a new car design will minimize those costs, the new car design will be built and used.
I’m hoping that the next thing will be lightweight intermodal cars for DPU trains. If you can keep the in train forces down, you don’t need the buff and draft strength in current designs. If you spread the power throughout the train, you can do this.
Lighter weight, cheaper, shorter life equipment should help. Makes it easier to implement ECP, “Internet of Things” stuff on trains.
That would seem especially true as IM loads are entire trains, at least what I see on UP-West for the most part. The buff and draft strength could be greatly reduced. I have also noticed that ship containers are mostly not double stacked and those trains (also carrying piggyback. mostly UPS and some refrigerated trailers) seem to run faster (and quieter) than double stacks.
With the current round of railroad top management, I don’t see that happening. Fewer, bigger trains is their motto and their belief. They will move on in time, however all those that replace them will have been ‘schooled’ with those principles in their ascents to power. Who will be able to make the case to go against the ‘norm’.
You are probably right, but maybe changes will happen if and when some techie wiz believes radically new appraoches to railroading could be a gold mine, does a buyout and hires creative folks from within and outside.
Regulators could somehow mandate shorter trains, or
Efforts could be brought for for more grade separations and other measures to separate trains from public contact. The driving public wouldn’t care if trains were five miles long if it didn’t delay them from getting their latte…
I think it was in the 1890’s that the head of the US Patent Office thought it should be abolished, as everything important had been invented. Every year some musician or music critic bemoans the fact that there is no way to come up with anything new musically. When there is a demand for innovation and something new, something will come along to fill that void.
Yes, if grade crossing were eliminated nobody would care how long the trains are. Although somebody would have to pay for that change. Another possibility is that automated running will eliminate the advantage of running massive individual trains. With automation, they could run shorter, less disruptive trains. And they could run them on a close enough headway to get the same tonnage moved as with the massive individual trains.
So, while DPU has opened the door to practically unlimited train length, it may just be a technical stepping stone to greater improvement in the future. After all, the track sits there 24 hours a day, so why run the day’s total tonnage in just a couple train movements when you have automation that does not need to worry about calling crews, hours of service, etc.?
No matter the method of operation - there is still only 24 hours a day of track time. No matter the method of operation - Maintenance in the way (sorry mudchicken) requires their time to maintain the track. No matter the method of operation a required safe braking distance is needed between trains, big or small.
Freight car development will always be hitting a wall if there is no demand for new development in either improving existing car design or developing new cars for new types of business and new types of freight. Is there any existing freight commodity that railroads would like to haul, but do not have the right kind of rolling stock? I would assume that there is not because if there were, suppliers would jump at the chance for the business and provide exactly the cars that are needed.
In a lot of business, there is a continuous need for new product development in both the produces that the business sells, and the capital equipment that the business uses to produce their products.
In the railroad business, there is always the need for improvements in capital equipment, but there also tends to be a counterforce in the fact that railroad equipment has a lot of highly standardized features because the equipment is used in a full interchange pool. Any improvement must therefore fit that standardization by being instantly compatible.
On the other hand, the standardization defines the majority of rolling stock design parameters, so that aspect expedites the development of new equipment.
We have freight cars about as big as the clearance plates allow now, with loads coming up against dimensional or weight limits. If they were to raise the weight limits again, a whole lot of track wuld need upgrading again (upgrading the track to 286K GRL hasn’t even been accomplished). The next logical move in that direction would be for 125-ton cars (315K GRL). It’s been tried before, and is not worth it. Think about it–you increase the size of coal cars, you have to modify all of the rotary dumpers. Increase the size of box cars (maybe 86-footers again to haul what 60-footers do now), and you’re talking structural problems.
As much as it’s been a problem to implement so far, I’d like to see electronic air braking applied to everything in the fleet. But then, we’ve seen the PTC debacle, and I’m not so sure.
Here’s an idea: use somethng similar to coil cars to handle newsprint rolls. They might be easier to load and unload, a longer car could be used, etc., etc. But then you’d have the problem of dock redesign, where everything is supposed to go through a door.
The Vert-a-Pack discussion in another thread is actually a decent case study for this.
Someone saw a need (or a desire), acted on it, and made it happen. At least, for a while anyhow.
Who knows, if the concept had been successful we might still be seeing such cars.
Methinks that perhaps we have reached a plateau in types of cars. Unless a new commodity shows up, what we have will work just fine. As Carl mentions, the technology of the cars may be the next new frontier. This might be new metalurgy (transparent aluminum?), or wheelshape, or ECP, or suspension changes. Or who knows?
We are dealing with the same thing over here in my industry. Customers want more capacity but the balk when we say it will cost you more as the materials to build such trailers and trucks needed to pull them will cost us more to aquire and therefore we have to pass the costs onto you. We already use Aluminum as much as possible in trailers and in our trucks plus fiberglass and other composites and plastic parts where possible. The only way we can get more cargo capacity is to get an increase in our GVW however that is a nonstarter in the regulators and most trucking companies heads. We could gain almost a ton back if we could get rid of the DEF and SCR requirements on our engines. Yes that is how much those 2 systems add in weight to a truck. We had an Owner Operator order a glider kit from Fritzgerald that is the same make and model we run normally. Instead of the Cummins engine with the SCR and DEF required by the new engine he put a 60 series engine in the truck and then weighed it. He is 2000 lbs lighter than a truck built the exact same way but with the EPA required engine in it for that year. The emissions difference over a year is less than 10 lbs of CO2 and 20 lbs of NOX due to his higher fuel economy. We sat down and figured it out based it off the emissions standards of his engine and one of our current ones. Shocking isn’t it.
That would be one of John Kneiling’s integral trains. The question is always, “Who’s going to start doing it first?”
Becasue it could be stand-alone and interchangeable (though perhaps by agreements, I’d see that happening before electrification. That would be my second bet for ‘the next big thing’ - but it’s not a freight car (subject of this thread).