[?][?][?] In the US News article the BNSF talked about adding additional trackage (50 miles) per year. What are the advantages or disadvantages of lets say adding 10 relatively short sidings (2 miles long) sidings vs adding 5 (ten mile) sidings over a mostly single track district.
The same advantage as multiple tracking. Except, you don’t have advantage of keeping going when you get to the end of the siding and the train you are to meet hasn’t passed yet.
With your “short” siding, you get to pull in and stop. And wait. With your “long” siding, you can keep going for 5 miles, and you can get more than one train into a “long” siding.
you can park more trains in longer sidings and only have to maintain 2 switches insted of many switches with shorter sidings… but the delay of having to wait in the hole for a train to pass is alot longer if the train your meeting has to go 20+ milesor so on the singal main befor it can pass you will kill you in the long run…shorter sidings spaced out better means better train opporations your not waiting as long …keeps the trains moving better…and if your about to go on the law…you can be put into a siding and left for dead untill the relife crew shows up…off the main…out of the dispacthers hair…insted of going belly up on the main and plugging up the whole railroad…keep in mind…if they are adding “sidings” that are 10 miles long…odds are its not a siding…its another main track…
csx engineer
Sounds very comon sense practical to me what you posted. [:p][:)][:o)][:I]
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Originally posted by csxengineer98
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QUOTE: Originally posted by spbed
Sounds very comon sense practical to me what you posted. [:p][:)][:o)][:I]
have to look at things from an opporational standpoint… when you can think of the overall big picture it sometimes becomes a bit more clear
csx engineer
Oh my, you mean, you’re telling me you’ve seen the big picture, csx? Oh, did your hair turn gray?
I agree, give me some nicely spaced two mile sidings, seems to me like long running tracks would tend to bunch trains up.
Rob:
I’m baffled. Assuming $2 million per mile cost … 10 x 2 = 20 vs. 5 x 10 = 50? Did you mean 25 x 2 = 50 vs. 5 x 10 = 50?
Well Valley X must have had a to do with you somtime earlier. For me this is one great school to learn from [:D]
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QUOTE: Originally posted by csxengineer98
To do? No, spbed. It’s rather a joke on the railroad and I imagine all the railroads to be told by a dispatcher or a trainmaster or some other quasi-authority figure, if you question something, to be told that, “You don’t see the big picture”. We keep looking for someone who’s actually seen the big picture so they can fill us in.
I was joking with csx, that’s all.
lol…actuly i never did see csx’s big picture… but i always hear the higher ups making some refrence to it… i personly think its just a pipe dream and their is no big picture…just a bunch of post cards…lol
csx engineer
It would seem that it is alot more simplistic to build short sidings because infrastructure such as grade crossings and bridges can be worked around. I don’t claim to be an expert, thats just my guess.
How many trains are expected to run? How long will they be? How fast are they expected to run? Are they locals or long distance? What kinds of freight, what priorities?
That’s a few questions that pop imediately into my mind.
I bet a train longer than 2 miles long is a rarity,so I don’t see the point of a five mile siding.
Does this make sense? Actually a long siding would be needed. If a heavy freight is moving at a good speed and has to ‘side’ for an oncoming train because he nearer to it. Then he would have to get onto the siding and stop in a required time/distance. Of course everyone here knows how long it takes a train to stop.
I am not as knowledgeable about trains as you guys so maybe this scenario would be unlikely exept in an emergency. Maybe dispatch keeps up with where the trains are on a main line more acurrately than I think.
If you build a 5-mile siding every 5 miles, then eventually you can connect them, and 3 sections later, lo and behold, you’ve got 15 miles of new main line (just remove the switches) and double track.
Or just a giant 15-mile siding.
I did not realize the multiple use of a siding. I learn something everyday on this message board. QUESTION: Is there any way to find [approximately] the amount of trackage that has been removed over the last 25 years from the American Railroads? It is astounding to me when I see mid to late 20th Century maps w/ the enormous amount of rail lines detailed in each state, and then realize how much of that rail has been abandoned and now removed in the early years of the 21st Century. I just wonder how much has been lost… especially when you consider that many rail lines had double trackage in several places for many miles [10, 20, 25 or more] at a time.
i for one would like to see a 7500 ft siding every 10 miles where i run. it is very frustating to be on a 6800 ft train and the next 3 sidings are only 5900 ft long. this means i have a lot of waiting to do. and i hate to say but for all of us guys and gals running out there, there is no big picture for us, is there? bnsf engineer
Don’t just remove all of the switches after installing double track, upgrade to single or universal crossovers every ten to thirty miles or so (depending on what the railroad is willing to spend to move future traffic levels efficiently). Voila, sorting capability.
Obviously, sorting is accomplished much quicker in CTC territory but still it can be done in ABS-DT territory.
The last is essentially what the BNSF is doing on the Transcon. In any case, a good dispatcher with excellent engineers can run a single track railroad with long sidings without stopping trains at sidings, “running meets”, whereas short sidings add the additional operating expense and time of stopping and starting trains.
that would be nice but you have to remember how railroads realy work…they will spend millions to put the sidings in…use them for a little while…never maintain anything in them other then the switches (and only after they bust) and 10 or 15 years down the road…when the traffic demographic shifts to where they dont need them anymore…they will just rip them rigth back up agin…also the railroad isnt going to invest the money needed to build a 5 mile long siding… if they are going to put out the capital to build something that long… odds are they will make it an additional main track…not a sideing… …you wouldnt want to remove all your switches…crossovers are very nice things to have around in chunks of double track… when you get a dispatcher that can run trains…they will krisscross trains around one another if thier are any problems like a crew goes on the law… or the train just plain brakes down… stacking up trains behind a dead one with on way to get them around it will start a domino affect… and then the dispatchers problems just multiplyed…
also… when railroads spend the money to build a siding… since its not main track…it donst have to be up to the same specs as main track…thier for it will cost them less to maintain then a new main line track segment would…
just a few more thoughts on the subject
csx engineer