Temperature Controlled Freight

I would only agree with the point made by BaltACD since he is retired, most likely, familiar with current 1" to1" railroading issues Overmod has taught me much. My position is just observational; I reside on a main feeder line of BNSF’s Southern T-Con [Main#03 El Dorado sub] Having been essentially house bound for the last couple of months, I’ve been able to observe the passing parade. WE have our large number of container stack trains, both west bound and eastbound.

I have also noticed that we have a couple of solid TOFC trains each week, WB they seem to be reefers(not runnin/dry freight?), and EB they seem to be reefer units operational. Mostly they are reeferTOFC, but lately, there are a fair number of OTR Carrier’s Reefer Containers (Operating). Have even seen JBH reefer containers, as well. Those trains always seem to have their compliment of dry freight, pup trailers, as well as longer units. The OTR reefer containers have been a growing number over about the last year.

While in Albuquerque, at the railyard on the South end of town, they had a mobile fuel truck, that seemed to be fueling some of the trailers on a stopped TOFC train (?). Was not able to get close enough to actually watch for somew time. There seem to be a growing number of satellite sending units on the TOFC units, and even some of the reefer containers (small unit mounted near the top, on the trailer’s nose area).

3 simple problems with going to Battery systems. First off the weight. The engine in the modern reefer unit on the nose of a trailer weighs in at less than 400 pounds wet weight that is ready to run. The rest of the weight is the refrigaration unit itself that keeps the trailer cold. 2nd is the Service net. Thermo King and Carrier both have massive service networks that can get someone to a broke down unit in less than 2 hours nationwide with the parts needed to get a unit back up and running and with satalite montioring with the newest units they can diagnose the problem on the fly. Lastly is the fuel use of the current units. 1 gallon of fuel per hour at highspeed cooling or heating and less than a half a gallon on low speed constant running are the quotes and real world results. Your talking an entire new infastructure for these new units again.

The Insulation used in the walls and the roofs of reefer trailers anymore is structurial also they are built as part of a Stressed skin counstruction by several builders. That means the interal and external walls have minimal bracing between the roof and bottom of the trailers the insulation is literally the glue that keeps the trailers from buckling under the load of the products being carried. Wabash was the first to come up with this design and it cut about 1000 pounds from the weight of the trailer. They figured out a way to make their duraplate trailers into reefers and pretty much took over th

We could always go the Australian rail system route and mount fixed 20’/24’ generator containers every so many cars and hook up the refrigerated units to those so that they don’t have to use the onboard refrigeration unit while in transit. I’m guessing that’s how they’re able to run entire trains of referigated international containers from inland to port, since that’s what I’ve seen in dozens of videos.

CN has been doing that for some years already. Often cables run across multiple cars, with warning stickers and locking blocks in place to prevent them from being uncoupled.

And then there are the knuckle and drawbar failures that don’t read and abide by the warning stickers.

That happened to a loaded welded rail train in Saskatchewan some years ago. A shame I can’t find the pictures anymore.

Would have been a big, tangled, dangerous mess to clean up.

What you were looking for?

You’re right. Those are simple “probems”, if they’re problems at all.

This is in no way going to require “an entire new infrastructure”. Similar reefer containers are moving around the North American rail network now. They’re just hooked up to a diesel generator in some fashion. What I asked about was the feasibility of replacing the diesel generator with some newer tech batteries. The batteries wouldn’t go on the container/chassis combination. They’d be on the well cars during rail transit. On the short haul drayage I wondered if the container reefer units could draw juice from an electric tractor’s existing batteries.

You just said it would save 400 pounds dead weight per load, and that will translate to 400 more pounds of payload. Did you include the fuel weight that won’t have to be drug around, further limiting payload, if short haul (300 mile range) Tesla tractors were to be used?

There’s absolutely no reason TK/Carrier repair people can’t handle this with the same set up