How long will the Class Is keep accepting single carload traffic from shortlines. Certainly the customer will be better off if the final delivery is by another shortline. The big problem with the Class Is is operational discipline. If you want to see true precision railroading look at the Swiss Federal Railways domestic carload network, next day delivery of your load from anywhere in Switzerland to anywhere else in Switzerland overnight. And if you are along one of the mainlines it will be by noon the following day. So say you are the Brewery at Rheinfelden, east of Basel, and you need a carload of Beer shipped to Geneva. Your carload will be picked up by 5 pm, humped at Basel, put on a mainline train to Lausanne, humped again, and delivered to your warehouse near Geneva by noon the next day. On a US railroad you might be lucky if they completed the hump switching at Basel by noon the next day. A big part of the problem is the very big size of carload trains in the US. It cuts down on the linehaul cost of carload movement, but tends to create real problems in execution of switching. BTW SBB delivers 98% of the carload traffic on time which is defined as within 30 minutes of schedule. US railroads can’t achieve that percentage within 24 hours of schedule.
Of course the corollary for the Swiss is that your carload better be ready on time, or it won’t move at all.
Undoubtedly one of the factors that help the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) achieve the laudatory results that you reference is the fact that approximately 29 per cent of its revenues comes from the public sector. Read taxpayer subsidies! And a total of 21 per cent of these revenues are plowed into infrastructure that is used by passenger and freight trains.
Look at the geography of Switzerland! It is mountainous and compact country…rail lines were built before motor vehicles became so prevelant…so they had and have little space to build super six lane highways like we know them. Their best transportation asset is the railroads: improve upon them makes sense because there is no room to build highways and its so mounainous it is cheaper to use the railroads.
We keep comparing foreign rail and transportation systems to what evolved here and it is actually like comparing apples to oranges to grapes. Systems evolved in other countries because of the geography and economies and social structures; many of those countries are only as big as most of our states. We keep comparing the differences but not understanding the whys of the differences. Nor do we understand why US railroading would not fit the foreign roles and vice versa.
Shortlines and Class 1’s are two totally different animals. A class 1 may in fact be making money by running a branch line, but not as much as other, high priority lines. So, in turn, it is cheaper for them to abandon that line, or sell it off to a shortline.
In a shortline’s case, they may only have one locomotive to maintain, and don’t have to maintian the railroad itself to as high of standards as would a Class1. So the short line can do a better job at servng the industry(ies) that is serves, and can make enough money to survive.
Railway Man wrote much the same here, more than once. As soon as a major bridge deteriorates to the point that it can no longer safely carry trains at any low speed, or a tunnel collapses, or there’s a major washout, etc., then it’s “Game Over !” for that line. That’s been seen to happen recently, too, from time to time in various places.
But it’s not accurate to stereotype or paint all short lines with the same brush, just as it isn’t with people. Some are indeed able to reinvest into their track and equipment as capital assets on a ‘going concern’ basis just as fast or faster than they are deteriorating or being used up, so that over the long-term they should be able to remain viable. How they’re able to do that is very individualized and site-specific - more traffic, better/ higher rates or ‘divisions’ of rates with the Class I, a surcharge from an understanding shipper, etc.
Essentialy, many short lines are to the Class I’s what convenience stores are to full-service grocery stores or Wal-Marts - you can get in and out of the former faster than you can walk from your car to the front door of the latter, albeit at a somewhat higher unit price, etc.
This issue of TRAINS dealing with shortline/regionals is one of the best of the year. I always look forward to this special issue.
The article on Sandersville Railroad was outstanding, but very brief. For years I have noticed their cars plus the white tankers carrying Kaolin and wondered about the railroad. That is quite an operation…big time railroading. Take a look at their physical plant - welded rail and big ballast. Also impressive is their 4 scheduled deliveries to NS daily. This is a special railroad, not a typical shortline.
What is impressive is their expansion away from the one commodity. The infrastructure is in place for other services.
While in some respects you are correct, I’m not sure that geography is the whole story. Just as important is the willingness to “invest” a billion dollars in that 6 lane freeway, complete with major expropriation of property, rather than spend 50 million “subsidizing” rail operation. The dollars come from the same source, but somehow calling it an investment instead of a subsidy causes the vaults to open wide.
An urban environment may not usually have mountains like Switzerland to create location challenges, but punching that freeway through a city creates massive disruption of lives and new barriers between the neighborhoods. We have accepted that as the “price of progress” without bothering to find out the true cost.
But not the way you insinuate. I compare showing the ways they are different and not that they are different. Your interpretation is that I say, for instance, that passenger service is better in Europe. But what I say is that passenger service in Europe is different because of the lighter loading guage standards, less space, government support, etc.; reasons they are different. The discussion on Switzerland is an example…the terrain, the ecnomomy, the country size, etc. are all so much different than the US that to compare all of mountainous and tiny Switzerland is not equal to the various geophysical characteristics and huge size. So, my above conclusive statement is that we keep comparing the services and quality without understanding the economics, the geography, nor the government inclusion in rail services. To compare one Amtrak train or route to any in Europe, for instance, is unbalanced.
I wasn’t the one making the comparison. It was a pretty highly placed SBB manager himself. There is more than geography and economics driving the “what” and “how” of Swiss rail. There is a really large political and cultural thing going on.
average length of haul - a lot shorter, about an order of magnitude.
revenue tons per carload - much less, about 1/2.
cars and tons per train - about half the cars per train.
rate per ton-mile - much higher
You left some out:
ton miles per crew hour - about the same as here, surprisingly.
Revenue loads per car day - much higher than here.
Infrastructure cost per ton mile - higher
The SBB manager was of the opinion that if they could get out of the subsidized siding business and nudge those customers to transload, then the SBB could come close to breaking even on the car load business.
It’s interesting that transload facilities get mentioned. Unless I’m missing something, this seems to be one of the better ideas to come from shortlines/regionals, taking the concept of the team track and improving on it.
A classic example that comes to mind is the A&M RR. BN dropped that part of the Frisco line and A&M seems to be doing very well as a freight and excursion RR. I took a trip on the line two years ago on a rare mileage trip that went from Springdale to Ft. Smith and return and also Springdale to near Monett, MO the following day.
They now have a dome car that was recently refurbished. We rode in the caboose as a charter and it was a very enjoyable time. I’m glad someone kept that line going because it was part of Frisco.
I don’t want to re-slice and re-dice the “open access” debate again either. I would simply point out, in connection with the analogy made by one of the posters, that electric utility “open access” is a very poor model for railroading. Utility “transportation” is nearly instantaneous and doesn’t require that a particular generating company’s power be delivered to a particular end user over particular routes. The user draws power from the grid regardless of where it is generated, and the provider feeds an equivalent amount of power to the grid. Train operations on heavy traffic main lines have to be very carefully coordinated, or else the lines will degenerate into gridlock. This coordination involves more than just finding slots for the trains moving on a particular line. It involves coordination of the traffic moving on the entire rail network that includes the lines, and devising transportation plans for particular traffic moves that make the best use of a railroad’s facilities. The railroads learned this the hard way over the last two decades. Uncoordinated movements of traffic from multiple service providers would make any kind of network approach to operations impossible, and seriously degrade existing rail services.