I think Amtrak had a overnite post train from Springfield to Washington, maybe up till 10 years ago. wether it could be classed as high speed , I don’t know.
As far as dwell times go , I would imagine heavy service only offered to terminals, and intermediate stations that already have a dwell time over 15 minutes. I would also say that palletization of baggage, as well as parcels , and some way of quickly lifting them into the baggage car would speed up all stops. a cage such as this one,
Except that Amtrak is by its charter a passenger railroad and not legally authorized to be a freight railroad.
Do you really thinking in today’s world that Amtrak could be a viable option to ups or fed ex which both offer door to door or store to door service. Can’t imagine having to drive down town to drop a package off at my friendly Amtrak station which happens to be only open in the wee hours of the morning. The infrastructure no longer exist to support that kind of service. The days of the old red and green rea trucks are gone. The private railroads had their chance to compete and declined. Let it go.
Amtrak could do a Much better job of marketing its existing package service and palletized services. These trains have the existing equipment and stop at stations that are equipped to handle this kind of shipments.
This might be railfan conventional wisdom but I think it is not necessarily true…
If the package express is a new market segment they do not currently serve and they cannot serve well by themselves. I honestly do not think they would care.
Right now the railroads cannot serve the premium express market and only serve the slower ground options for FED EX and UPS. An intelligent operator could take advantage of that and the proximity of the Post Offices to rail passenger stations…many with elevators or elevator shafts still extending to the track level…could use Amtrak in some cases to implement overnight or second day service between a lot of cities in the United States.
If they wanted to sweeten the pot, they could offer a cut of the profit to the common carrier for getting the passenger train to the terminals on time. Even better offer up management of the company as a joint effort between USPS, Fed Ex and UPS. With all three involved in management and feeding high priority packages along with potentially a joint share in the profits. Really do not see the railroad industry complaining.
The railroad industry does need this type of think outside the box approach if it is going to continue to expand market share and thrive, IMO. Fast Frieght handling and Fast Freight movement the rail industry in the United States has attempted to handle with UPS and the failed exper
Also, want to point out another difference here. There is a difference in structure and operation between Fed Ex Ground and regular Fed Ex. So lets say that Schlimm wants to buy a Fed Ex Ground Franchise, pretty easy for him to plunk down the $800k to do that and become a railroad intermodal shipper. Fed Ex Ground is franchised out to private owners. Fed Ex regular with the red “Ex” is not and is a single company. Which trailers do you see predominantly on the railroad intermodal trains. Is it the green “Ex” or the red “Ex”?
Proves my point that the railroads have not necessarily captured back the express package business. They only have a slower market segment of it.
NRPC is still chartered to provide Mail and Express… CFR 49 USC
§24305. General authority
(a) Acquisition and Operation of Equipment and Facilities.—(1) Amtrak may acquire, operate, maintain, and make contracts for the operation and maintenance of equipment and facilities necessary for intercity and commuter rail passenger transportation, the transportation of mail and express, and auto-ferry transportation.
(c) Miscellaneous Authority.—Amtrak may—
(1) make and carry out appropriate agreements;
(2) transport mail and express and shall use all feasible methods to obtain the bulk mail business of the United States Postal Service;
§24306. Mail, express, and auto-ferry transportation
(a) Actions To Increase Revenues.—Amtrak shall take necessary action to increase its revenues from the transportation of mail and express. To increase its revenues, Amtrak may provide auto-ferry transportation as part of the basic passenger transportation authorized by this part.
Amtrak has a package service although limited in scope it is tailored to the trains and stations that are equipped to handle the service. I
Amtrak has tried handling mail in the past. It made a substantial investment in mail cars and terminal imorovements. The service was flawed from the beginning with the equipment having bad trucks. Even after those issues were resolved, The service was eventually discontinued and investment wasted. I highly doubt if either the post office or Amtrak will try mail any time soon.
As far as premium package service, Amtrak lacks the infrastructure, equipment, human resources and train frequency to compete with ups,fed ex,or even the post office. It would require a substantial amount of capital which would be better served being directed to other capital straved projects and defer maintainence.
I believe the railroads prefer to be the middle man in the package business, hauling premium priced containers and trailers for package company.
Amtrak was primarily established to relieve the burdens of passenger service from the railroad. Mail, express and auto services are a secondary objective. Amtrak’s first attempt at mail was a disaster. It burdened its passengers and wasted precious capital and effort.
Let Amtrak focus on running passenger trains. Like it was said before,long distance trains will never turn a profit. Move on.
Except that the proposal on the table was not Amtrak going it alone but attempting a cooperative service with one of the package carriers.
Problem is Amtrak only has so much control as a transporter. As the USPS stated in the Trains article it would use MORE RAIL if RAIL was able to help the USPS in it’s mission of delivering the mail more beyond mere transport. I think the Trains article made this very clear.
So a smart freight railroad could buy up some museum RPO cars, modernize them for compatibility with intermodal trainis, and offer to sort small UPS packages on one long route, such as Chicago - LA, SF, or Seattle, see how profitable the service is, and then possibly purchase new equipment to provide a UPS-sorting car to each important West Coast destination. The clerks would be railroad employees under UPS supervision at terminals, and would work a standard seven hour day, with clerks changing off at division points and allowed to work up to ten hours ini case of train delays. Seems like a good idea, does not relate to passenger service, just making intermodal service more profitable.
But, if the AAF experiment works, and railroads then become interested in taking over Amtrak, this service would then probably be shifted to the passenger trains. More big ifs.
I may be wrong but I have the article in front of me ( p 6 march 2015 trains magazine ). No where in the article does it mention moving mail on Amtrak. No where does it mention rpo’s. It does reference an office of inspector general for the postal service September 2014 report stating it could save 10.8 million annually by moving more mail by rail much like its private sector competition fed ex and ups has embraced the intermodal options. Although my reading comprehension may be poor, I understand this to be trailers on flat cars on freight trains. Trains even provided two nice pictures of intermodal trains in the article.
Nor do I see any mention of a private enterprise concern trying to partner with Amtrak to provide premium package delivery services.
Oddly enough the post office is skeptical if intermodal service could meet thier service standards.
Your getting all mixed up and there is no reason to get upset here. The proposals were made in this forum to which the railfan community largely poo-poohed the ideas and stated the status quo was just fine. Very clearly in the trains article the USPS said they would be willing to look at shifting more mail to rail if they saw a new proposal beyond the status quo service. Some people picked up on that line (me for one) and saw opportunity. Others just would rather stay in their comfort zone of the status quo.
All I am saying is give innovation and invention a chance here at potentially boosting traffic…as it has in the past.
Ha! Doesn’t necessarily mean bringing back the RPO. This is NOT NEW and the USPS has made a proposal like this before and a vendor has stepped up to the plate. Look at EDS and the Postal Buddy Corp of a decade or more ago created to sell stamps and other merchandise via kiosks (Google Postal Buddy and read up on it). EDS provides the software, postal buddy provided the hardware. It rolled out to the public and then flopped for various reasons. It does illustrate this kind of proposal has been made before by the USPS and responded to by outside vendors and partnerships. They reached into the USPS and took over internal USPS procedures and attempted to automate them…then market them back to the public. Very innovative, IMO.
Railroads would be smart to look at areas they could take over from the USPS at their terminals and speed shipments of mail faster to make the USPS more competitive on speed. I think that is where the sweet spot is here.
Also, look at the difference between Fed Ex and the USPS. Fed Ex has “Delivery Manager” on which I can login and reroute a package once it is shipped to another destination. USPS has nothing like that and even a hold mail request done via their USPS website takes a full day prior to properly execute. So I am pretty sure there are huge opportunities on the USPS side for improvement.
Instead of dropping RPO, the PO could have installed well-designed automation equipment in the RPO cars to increase the productivity of each mail clerk by a factor of 10 or 20.
When I was an undergraduate at MIT, LPs had just come on the market, and I was quite a hifi nut, which is what got me into acoustics. My phono player had the best cartridge available at the time, a Pickering, whose factory was in Long Island City. The early Pickerings had a soft suspension that could dry out and the sound would suffer. I would pack the cartridge in the original small box, with original cotton, address it and stamp it for 1st class mail, bike or use what is now the Red Line to South Station, and hand it to the mail clerk of an RPO on The Federal at around 10pm, with complete assurance it would be at the Pickering factory the next morning. Three days later I was able to listen to my record collection again, and eventually Pickering did solve the problem with a different material.
Considering the USPS (at least around here) has been moving all sorting duties to larger regional centers (and away from local post offices), it seems to be taking a major step backwards to try to sort in a RPO.
Well I like the Fed Ex model myself and I ship a lot by Fed Ex. Sat in one of their distribution centers for about two hours waiting on a package that was on a delivery truck. They are extremely efficient. Do you know they have one person running the customer service counter after business hours from 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. it is pretty impressive to sit and watch him/her work. Give it a try some night when you have a lot of spare time on your hands. Trully amazing how much productivity they squeeze out of that one person with a bar code scanner, hand trucks, etc. I was amazed in the two hours of me siitting there that clerk handled almost a full semi-trailer of packages flowing into the place after hours from small and medium businesses. Do you think the USPS could do that with one person? Yeah right