I looked at several Intermodal Terminal schedules from the major railroads’ websites (except UP for some reason won’t show it) and there is a day and time listed for trains. There is a “cutoff” time and a “available” time. Does this mean that the day & time for Available means when you can start dropping off containers & Trailers for that trains departure and the cutoff time means the latest you can drop your shipment off?
“Cutoff” means the last time at which an intermodal unit can arrive at the departure terminal and still be guaranteed to be included in the train’s departure for which the cutoff is published.
“Availability” means the first time at which an intermodal unit is guaranteed to be available at the arrival terminal for pickup.
RWM
Well that confuses me a little. According to NS departures and arrivals out of Pittsburgh it takes about a day to get to Chicago, two days to get to Kansas City and almost three days to get to New Jersey. Last I checked Jersey is the closes to Pittsburgh. Type O or how bad is traffic on NS’s Harrisburg Division?
Please note the scheduled train routings listed for each destination.
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Origin: Pittsburgh, PA |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Destination |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
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Chicago 63rd, IL |
Cutoff |
M 1630 |
Tu 1630 |
W 1630 |
Th 1630 |
F 1630 |
Sa 1630 |
Su 1630 |
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Available |
Tu 1000 |
W 0930 |
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For whatever reasons, they’re not real interested in the Pittsburgh-Jersey business. It’s only about 430 miles. At that distance the railroad would be up against some really competitive over the road truck rates.
Their marketing folks have doubtlessly taken a look (and I believe NS to be the best intermodal marketing operation in railroading) and decided they’ve got bigger fish to fry than Pittsburgh-Jersey. The railroad could obviously offer overnight service between the two locations if it saw a way to make a buck doing it. (Overnight = ship it Monday afternoon, get it at destination Tuesday morning). Their market analysis probably says the buck isn’t available.
They quote a rate and offer a service, and if a shipper simply must use them, they’ll haul the freight and take the money. But they don’t seem to see it as something that’s worth a lot of effort.
[quote user=“MJChittick”]
Please note the scheduled train routings listed for each destination.
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Origin: Pittsburgh, PA |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Destination |
Monday |
Tuesday |
Wednesday |
Thursday |
Friday |
Saturday |
Sunday |
|
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Chicago 63rd, IL |
Cutoff |
M 1630 |
Tu 1630 |
W 1630 |
Th 1630 |
F 1630 |
Sa 1630 |
|
I wonder if that service isn’t attractive for steamship companies to reposition their empty boxes? The service takes so long for two reasons. The first is that Harrisburg has two terminals and this business flow thru both (HH15 is a transfer job between the two locations. I’ve always wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to expand Harrisburg more and not build Rutherford.) The second is that Pittsburgh doesn’t have enough volume in this lane for it’s own block. The Erails get mixed on cars with other minor destinations and they get sorted out at Rutherford. That takes the better part of a day.
MJChittick
So your saying this is not an express train strait to NJ. I don’t think NS realizes how much potential business they are turning away because of this. There is a lot of truck traffic that could be diverted off the PA Turnpike if they would offer overnight service, instead of stopping in Harrisburg and Philly. At least load the Harrisburg shipments on the end cars and just disconnect them at Harrisburg and couple up to pre-loaded cars at Harrisburg going to NJ. I think many people would agree with me that improvements could be made.
I’m sure that if enough profitable business was there, NS would be operating a dedicated Pittsburgh-NJ schedule. I would think that a fair chunk of the truck traffic on the Pottsylvania Turnpike is not through between those endpoints.
The heck with the truck traffic that’s on the Turnpike - because it’s a toll road, no one is there that doesn’t absolutely have to be.
Look at I-78 instead. When I have to make that dreaded boring WB drive from Allentown to or towards Harrisburg, I pass the time by counting the EB truck rigs that go by me during 10-minute intervals - that’s at a combined closing speed of around 120 MPH, so I’m seeing 20 miles’ worth of trucks. The number is consistently in the range of 120 to 130 trucks every 10 minutes, so that’s like 6 per minute on average = 1 every 10 seconds = 360 per hour or 8,600 per 24 hours. Almost any percentage of that is a decent train load.
Also, this is typically during the 7:00 AM to 9:00 AM time frame, after the big rush to New York. I know it’s much higher during the overnight hours, esp. Sunday afternoons and nights. I’ve never done it on I-80 - the EB lanes aren’t as visible - but I expect the results would be similar, as well for as for I-90.
What are EB lanes?
EB lanes = East Bound lanes, as both I-78 and I-80 are East-West routes; and WB is West Bound, not some entertainment industry acronym.
Sorry about that - I usually try to provide the ‘decoding key’ for abbreviations and acronyms like that.
…pssst… “Crescent Corridor” (and as far as doing better blocking and getting a better ride from Pittsburgh to NJ - the trains service and blocking are already optimized for the markets the trains serve. It just ain’t that easy…even though it seems so.)
A minor quibble: I don’t think those trains stop in Philly. The primary - if not the only - NS route east from Harrisburg to North Jersey is the former Reading Railroad to Reading and then to Allentown, and then the former Lehigh Valley to North Jersey. If NS would go to Philly, it would then have to go to North Jersey via either Amtrak’s ex-PRR line, or CSX’s ex-Reading RR line - NS has no line of its own there, as far as I know.
Also - Why did you select Pittsburgh as your starting point ? Since the demise of the steel industry there, that region is not a major generator of domestic traffic any more. I suspect that most of the trucks in Pittsburgh originated further west and south, so what you’re proposing might do better if the orginating terminal were moved farther in that direction. But let’s see what others with more knowledge and experience in the logistics and traffic flows have to say about that.
I got confused, I though the new Philly Terminal was open, isn’t it brand new? I picked Pittsburgh because I thought a lot of shipping companies would like to avoid the traffic going into the metropolitan areas of the Northeast, diverting more traffic of the PA Turnpike, and many of that traffic is through traffic the only other option is Route 30, but at the passe of 3 days then how can it compete. I think more traffic originating from the Pittsburgh, Ohio, & West Virgina areas would us the service offered if it were faster.<
OK - maybe I’m the one who is confused. I thought you were looking at the NS schedule of ‘cutoff’ and ‘available’ times to North Jersey/ Elizabethport, not Philly and South Jersey. Yes, I believe the Philly terminal is brand new, but that’s essentially a dead end = terminal for NS, not a way to get to North Jersey.
I now see your logic of using Pittsburgh as a ‘gathering point’ to divert from the Penna. Turnpike and avoiding US Route 30 - and/ or the newer and mostly limited-access Route 22 as far east as theAltoona area… But I agree with Don Oltmann above that the Crescent Corridor will gather more truckloads farther out for a longer rail haul. We’re thinking the same way, just at different places.
From what several of the posts above said - particularly wabash1 in detail - the congestion/ elapsed time/ delay issue is in the terminals, not on the mainline rails.
- Paul North.
Here’s the link to the NS schedule that appears to be the one under discussion here:
http://www.nscorp.com/nscintermodal/Intermodal/System_Info/Terminals/pittsburgh.html
- PDN.
Well now I am still confused. It was mentioned earlier that this train stops, loads, and unloads on it’s trip from Pittsburgh to NJ. The train goes through a name change two times so I just assumed that it stopped in Harrisburg and then Philly would be the only other logical stop. Why you would load a trailer to go such a short distance I don’t know.
I do believe congestion on the mainlines is going the be a larger factor in the speed of the train after the economy rebounds, but also the terminals are a real slow down which needs to be resolved. I did mention in an earlier post they could just couple cars loaded with cargo to Harrisburg on the back of the train and then uncouple them when they arrive & then just couple the Harrisburg loads coupled to the back bound for NJ. I think this would be a lot faster process and be fairly quick.
If Harrisburg is this train’s last stop why does it have three different names?
NS’s Philly Terminal is currently being used for empty grain hopper storage. The terminal never went on line following a labor dispute with the Teamsters. NS hasn’t operated any intermodal traffic out of Philly in many years.
The only intermodal facility in Philadelphia, is CSXI’s Greenwich Terminal, which handles lifts for both CSXT and CP/D&H.
Nick
Well that explains why no info shows up on the NS website. It is still shown on the map as a terminal, but there is no other information.