Port of Walla Walla officials plan to make $2.7 million in rail improvements at its Dodd Road Business Park for increased Railex train traffic. BOB BRAWDY — Tri-City Herald
Photo linked from http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/11/02/2655211/walla-walla-port-to-make-27m-rail.html
The article above makes reference to Railex working on a Jacksonville FL terminal. Here is an article published this September about that expansion :
Looking at the photo, do the locomotives move through the distribution center when switching? There are what appear to be exhaust stacks along the length of the building above the rr track. Or do they only handle the exhaust from the reefers?
Also, what routing do you think will the new trains take to Jacksonville? Will the four trains split at some point rather than having two distinct routings?
When UP train ZSKWA arrives at Railex in Wallula, WA, it normally travels around the loop track in a counter-clockwise direction, and the UP road power pulls right through the warehouse. The power is then uncoupled and exits the building at the south end (far end of the building in the posted aerial view); it runs light to Hinkle, OR, for servicing. A local switching outfit moves the reefers through the warehouse during loading/unloading. You can see their power in the lower left area of the photo.
If they’re talking four trains a week, I suspect that it will be two solid trains each to Rotterdam and Jacksonville. I’m sure that the new trains would go from Wallula to North Platte, Gibbon Junction, Kansas City, and probably St. Louis. CSX is the traditional partner, but I don’t know what the most expeditious route from St. Louis to Jacksonville would be–possibly via Vincennes, Evansville, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta.
It sounds from the original post that this business will deal with a lot of wine. I don’t know if similar trains will be coming from California to go to Jacksonville, but if they do, they’d probably be combined at Granger/Green River until business dictates separate trains running the distance.
Thanks!
Do/will the trains backhaul anything? Wine from New York? Florida produce? Georgia peanuts? Puerto Rican rum? Other food products?
The California and Washington trains for Selkirk have been running combined east of Green River for quite a while now. Once combined they run under the ZDLSKP and ZSKDLP symbols. Once in a while I have seen the ZWASKP run separately, but that’s not normal. Off hand, I would say they started combining the trains when the economy first soured a few years ago.
Westbound out of Selkirk they are mostly empty. Maybe 2 to 5 loads in a train, the rest of the cars empty. One time when I had the train and looked at the consist, the loads on that train were a couple cars of fish.
Jeff
Hey, fish is good.
Anyway, I see these reefer boxcar unit trains as having three main drawbacks:
The difficulty of finding westbound loads for the equipment. Railex has been around a while and it’s apparently not having much success with backhauls.
The need for extensive investment in terminal facilities. This greatly limits their service area and the longer haul trucking to and from the few terminals drives up costs.
The less than daily service provided by the unit trains. This freight is perishable and it needs to move quickly.
I’ve always seen intermodal as a better alternative. It’s much more flexible than a unit train, which facilitates westbound loading. It can use many existing terminals, which lowers capital costs. Many IM trains run on near daily schedules, which expedites the perishable movements.