Does this work?
We’re not in Waukesha any more.
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It seems to be working fine. What’s your take on RoadRailers?
Yes, that looks like a regular container, not a RoadRailer.
Not a RoadRailer, yet speaks to its replacement. Didn’t take long, getting use to seeing the Triple Crown Containers running around the Detroit Area…
And in Kansas City as well 
Ya know?, ain’t much better than trucks with trucks 
GOTTA LOVE-EM!!!
According to recent reports, Norfolk Southern, the last major operator of RoadRailers, officially stopped using them on August 25, 2024. Their final RoadRailer train, number 255, departed on that date. Operator: Norfolk Southern’s subsidiary, Triple Crown Services, operated the RoadRailers. Reason for discontinuation: The company decided to transition to standard double-stack container trains due to operational efficiency concerns. Replacement service: After phasing out RoadRailers, Norfolk Southern is now using Trailer on Flat Car (TOFC) services temporarily before fully switching to double-stack container trains. Generative AI is experimental.
TF
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The ‘container’ version of RoadRailers (container skeleton underframes with the Mark IV truck mounts, etc.) was called RailRunner. It was markedly less than successful; the tare weight advantage of even reinforced dry-van RoadRailer construction was all eaten up in the underframe+steel container envelope. The only ‘niche’ I remember was a ferry operation to somewhere offshore, where having a wheeled chassis for marine containers was a logistical advantage.
The story of the ‘original’ RoadRailers, the ones that used the inside duals of the trailer bogies for load-bearing contact and the associated fun with self-guiding frogs and high pavement, would make an interesting technical article. Plenty of experience with Michelines turned out to apply usefully to vehicle behavior!
Well Now!
Aparently the link function wasn’t clear to me yet, as demonstrated on my prior post…Oops, wonder how that works?
PS Got it somewhat fixed after a handfull of edits.
Carry-On
TF
I could swear Greyhounds (who is an expert on a wide range of RoadRailer topics) had a long post on this thread. I’m sure Craig had a reasonably good chuckle over the ‘competition’ saying TOFC became a ‘thing’ after 1986…
Greyhounds had some remarkably good posts on the ‘old’ forum about what was necessary to ‘make money’ with RoadRailers. It may be useful to consider the relative strengths and weaknesses of different intermodal approaches… the premise of the ‘original’ style of RoadRailer, for example, was highly attractive back in the days that TOFC intermodal was beginning to be touted as the successor to loose-car railroading everywhere, with the construction of all those little two-track loading ramps in out-of-the-way places. Would have tied in neatly with the old REA model of logistics on the railroads, too: 100-mph capable and (relatively) easily added block-wise to passenger consists to be detached as needed, hitched up a la Rotterdam and towed straight to last-mile destinations. Post Office shot that model by the late Sixties, and in the meantime no one seemed to be talking about how you had to reinforce dry vans and the like if you wanted to lift them anywhere but at the kingpin and bogie if you expected reasonable service life out of them.
Something I didn’t see coming is, perhaps, one of the things that drove the nail into Triple Crown RoadRailers (where you had a service that benefited from the distinctive competence of the mode, with lanes that balanced equipment utilization at necessary scale). That is the commodification of intermodal stack container service – I understand that a significant amount of this traffic now moves at nearly bulk-cargo rate, rather than as priority Z trains. There was a significant intermodal presence at the yard near Buntyn in Memphis, with multiple Mi-Jack cranes continually working – we now have many solid blocks of Hunt, etc., sometimes up to 240 unite long… but the Mi-Jacks and any traffic in intermodal is gone, perhaps to Marion/Harvard or the BNSFTennessee Yard expansion. In a world where container underframes are in plentiful supply, container boxes easily secured, and bulk facilities in operation to actually yard the containers and get them forwarded to road in a JIT-enabled fashion… at rock-bottom price… where’s the market for a bunch of fragile, expensive purpose-bulit dry vans that save a little theoretical money and require careful and unusual handling?
Should anyone wish to write an article, the Pullman Library has two horizontal drawer (!3’ ea) + of RoadRailer drawings, manuals, memos, etc. And…associated, a lot of TrailMobile photos/negatives, and TTX manuals, photos, drawings, etc.