In a nutshell, summarizing some of the above comments, Murphy’s lumberyard suffers from 3 concurrent disadvantages to the railroad:
- Location is poor - not near a major traffic hub, yard, or other concentration of carload industries that would otherwise justify or need local switching service;
- Low volume of traffic; and,
- Low-rated and low-value commodity per carload - lumber vs. chemicals, etc.
Fix any one of those 3, and the dynamics and attractiveness of the traffic to the railroad may change dramatically.
See also the concurrent “Large Frieght Yards” (sic) thread here, at: http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/212469.aspx
Why are those large yards needed, if not for “loose car railroading” ? (Aside from the likes of UP’s Bailey Yard at North Platte, Nebraska, which does an extensive business in servicing unit trains that really just “run-through” except for swapping out the occasional block of cars for repairs or heavy maintenance, etc.)
More later, mainly on the theme of “loose cars” fitting the niche in transportation modal technology for the volume magnitude of ~10 to ~100 carloads per day, while containers (or trucks) are better for the ~1 to ~10 carloads per day range, and unit trains are best for the ~100 cars per day and up range.
- Paul North.