I re-read the big merger article in the July 2005 issue of Trains Magazine. The author, Michael W. Blaszak mentions single line service as an advantage of many of the merger combinations he discussed. Why would that be such a big advantage? With trackage/haulage rights,power runthroughs,agreements, etc…it would seem the railroads work together to ship a lot of things through on 2 or more railroads. Computers must have made the paperwork and billing easier than in the past. What advantages would single line service provide that isn’t being provided now?
You get to keep all of the money instead of just part of the money.
Also, the time wasted in setting up the operation in the first place and the expense in solving all of the petty disagreements the arise.
Murphy,
Single line hauls can, most of the time, cut switching fees and dwell time.
Every time a car is yarded, then switched out of one train and into another, it cost the customer money.
Let’s say BNSF is the first line, they pick up the car, take it to a yard, and switch it out into the Tex Mex track.
They charge the customer to do that, and the car sits for however long it takes the TexMex to come and pull their track at that yard, more daily fees charged on the car.
TexMex takes the car, switches it once or twice to get it on the correct train so that at some point, it can interchange it with CSX…and the cycle starts over…
On the other hand, if BNSF was the only line that handled the car, they could block it out at the original yard, and deliver it faster, with less yard stops and switches, shorter dwell times and switching fees.
Keep in mind that each railroad charges a slightly different fee for switching and the other services, so you can imagine the billing gets a little frustrating.
Single line service can often do away with several of the handling fees and switching fees and shorten dwell and transit times, as the original line can often block the car into the long haul train in one switch, at the originating terminal, and once into the local at the receiving yard.
Ed
If the service starts varing from what you promised the customer it is quicker to fix.
Dare not mention it here,but Open Acces ( shhhhh ) Would shoot that all to heck !
Actually, you’ve got it backwards. One of the advantages of OA is that you would now have the option of single line service from Seattle to New York, Calgary to Omaha, et al, something we don’t have now, e.g. anywhere in North America to anywhere else in North America. Not only would you have the option of one service provider to deal with point to point, you also have an array of single option service providers to choose from in those bigger markets. What route to take would be up to the transporter depending on mileage, time demands, congestion demarcations, user fee differentials, et al.
The only way you could replicate that in the closed access system is to have everyone merge with each other, or internationalization of the entire NA rail system, and the likelyhood of that happening under a Democrat/Liberal or Republican/Conservative reign is zero. Maybe under a Fascist North American totalitarian dictatorship, but not in our respective representative governments.
Dang-you found it ! Dave:to be able to have the option of single line service from Seattle to New York, wouldn’t you have to have ROW company the whole distance? Otherwise, it seems you’d have a lot of delays.
Can you answer this on the OAT thread, just to keep it all in one place?
Thanks
Methinks that FM doth protest too much. Transcontinental single-line service does not have to be provided by one railroad. BNSF has extended its service beyond its own territory through haulage rights and other marketing agreements, which are not unlike code-share agreements among the various airlines.