With the inevitable lock, one of the interesting evolving points in the Conrail/socialism subsidy thread (peripheral to the original topic, but still valuable in its own right) got short-routed just as it became particularly interesting to me.
I’m not sure how this differs from the sort of ‘Mi-Jack’ device that’s a glorified straddle loader with a container spreader and twistlocks for overhead lift. (My father has a version of this that works on a different principle but does the same thing while being portable on a loaded well car).
Dave, do you have full technical detail or a link to this ‘Portager’ system? The only Portager I remember was the ultimately-abortive four-wheel spine car thing, rather than a well-defined “interface” to load and unload it.
Note that a well-car ‘alternative’ to this, using single Wickens-style axle control in ‘bogies’ similar to those between units of those articulated hoppers, might be possible today. Problem (as usual with these things) is that the more advantage you take of the special axles, the longer your irreplaceable capacity on malfunction becomes … and the more jacking and general excitement occurs when you try to fix something on the road that suddenly is keeping the car from moving.
Please – even if we can’t keep politics out of this thread, let’s keep the Ross Rowland-style NNNs* (and their reflexive cross-comments) strictly on PM rather than in i
Adding tare weight and mechanical complexity drives cost. So does low volume load out.
Japanese 12’ domestic containers are reminiscent of LCL containers. It would be interesting to see the economics. I’d guess they exist due to clearance issues on the road grid, and capital subsidy from passenger rail. Compatibility with existing intermodal infrastructure is certainly a plus.
Yes, the early 1920s containers were quite primitive. But they certainly were a move in the right direction. They were the beginnings of an integrated transportation system that used both trains and trucks to their best advantage. I’m much more familiar with the New York Central’s use of containers than I am with their use by the Pennsy. The NYC claimed a savings of 75% (that’s not a mistake – 75%) in the cost of moving freight with their containers when compared to conventional boxcar movement. That’s nothing to dismiss. And that savings was calculated with the cost of a simple overhead crane at the terminals to lift the containers. Most of the savings were passed on to customers, but the railroads were able to hang on to about 1/3 of the savings. So these primitive containers succeeded in reducing the price to the customers while increasing the railroads’ profit. Not bad.
Who knows how this system would have developed if it hadn’t been literaly ordered out of existence by the stupid government regulators. The customers welcomed the system but the regulators blocked the change to containers. (The ICC case was "In the matter of container service.
One thing not mentioned so far is clearances. In Australia, east of Adelaide, South Australia, clearances are similar to those in continental Europe. As a result, TOFC and double stacking of standard shipping containers is not possible.
There has been a lot of interest in Flexi-Vans and later RoadRailer specifically for reasons of clearance. Both of these were widely used in the 1960s and late 1990s respectively but both faded away as the original road vehicles reached the end of their lives. The RoadRailers were unpopular since they had to be heavier than normal trailers and reduced capacity with our strict road axle loads.
The New York Central clearly had similar clearance problems, hence their adoption of the Flexi Van. (Just look at a Niagara, where almost no boiler mountings were allowed on an otherwise normally sized 4-8-4).
One system that hasn’t received much discussion was the use of double stacking well cars for TOFC operation. Some well cars have a “fifth wheel” trailer hitch above the trucks at one end and presumably flooring to support the trailer axles at the other end. I’ve seen some fairly recent photos of this in the East of the USA.
This would allow extension of TOFC to much of the East in Australia, although we have no trailer loading cranes or fo
ote that the full story of the Portager was in the April and May 1972 issues, a two-part article, and was in the pdf package more recently available to subscribers on this Forum. I think this would be an ideal solution, the very best engineering available,to simplify and make more flexible the system we have in Israel, or anywhere where restricted clearances prohibit double stacking AND the flexibility of one rail vehicle for each international standard trailer makes sence. This would include Europe and Great Britain I would think. Does GM, GM-Canada, or Cateriller’s EMD currently own the patents on this technology? I would like to bring it to the attenntion of local freight people but wish to know where to direct them. Thanks!
jerry@pennsyrr.com can provide the PRR container system booklet that was also a pdf freebee on this foroum some time ago.
I see this occasionally here on the West Coast, and have pictures from summer 2014 of a string of them. I think it is discouraged because it takes up the space of two (light) containers where capacity allows, and may be more difficult to get the trailer on and off the car. There are also generally enough spine cars that this isn’t needed. I saw an all-spine car Z-train on Cajon Pass this November, which was a treat.
“GMDL is also reported going into the freight car construction business. The Canadian Pacific Railway has announced that it has ordered ten T-40 piggyback cars from the locomotive builders, for delivery early in 1961. Construction of the T-40, or Portager, is an effort by the diesel locomotive manufactory to get back into regular production after the heavy layoffs which followed the completion of dieselization of Canadian railroads.” (CRHA News Report, January 1961) http://www.trainweb.org/oldtimetrains/CPR/intermodal/pioneer.htm
“Looking for Work – What do you do after dieselization?” http://www.bytownrailwaysociety.ca/phocadownload/branchline/1998/1998-12.pdf
Was just tinkering around in back issues of Trains from 1985 and came across reference to AAR’s HPIT development, which had a number of highly interesting sounding alternatives. I think we had a discussion about the 6-unit articulated Trinity grain hopper some time ago.
Looking at that page, it seemed all the lifters are attached tot the trailers, and go along for the ride. That would almost seem to me like hauling around non-revenue heavy equipment (much like road-railers and their attached rail wheels) - if going from truck trailer to ground (or ground to trailer), don’t they just use a heavy forklift at the unloading (or loading) facility?
Don’t forget that many van trailers have about the structural integrity of cardboard and tinfoil when stressed in ways they aren’t designed to be – particularly if lifted by sharp-edged metallic forks halfway down the spine or chassis, with the mass of the bogie hanging down at one end unsupported. When my father started tinkering with the European CargoSpeed approach, he had to design some highly compliant ways of applying lift to the right areas of a normal van trailer (or even one beefed up to the range where the tare weight begins to be uneconomical, as in the early generations of RoadRailer).
It does not take more than one trailer broken one time to eat up weeks or months of ‘big savings’ through direct lifting of intermodal trailers (vs. container handling in wells to skeleton chassis) – and that’s just the remediation cost, not the bad example and the poor word-of-mouth about disasters that gets back to shippers.
There are also problems with people who don’t appreciate the dynamics of a long, relatively fragile trailer when it is balanced on forks and you try to drive around with it up there. Bad enough, it would seem, with empty containers (which are much stronger, generally, and have more predictable dynamic response).
There is also the same question about the provision of enough ‘heavy-duty forklifts’ everywhere you want to drop a trailer. Look at any Home Depot sending a straight truck or semi to a job site with one of those little piggyback forks or a pony crane to help unload it. Compare that with the economics of having to arrange for unloading with a dedicated machine going to (or present on, having been leased, etc.) on the contractor’s site, or having somebody drive a Home Depot road-mobile device over there to meet the
