There has been a lot of talk lately about UP dropping its bid for the UPS bullet train. One of the main reasons for this was track disruption.
My question is, is the disruption solely what it does to the schedule of other trains or does it actually really hurt the physical plant itself? Or both, and if both, what percentage?
Gabe
Common Mark, take one for the team!
Think of it as on a divided one lane road with jersy barriers on either side. You got a 3 18 wheelers doing 40mph in front of a porchse doing 90. Even though the porchse left point A 3 hours later, it has already made up the time. Now it is stuck behind those trucks till a small patch of right lane comes up for the trucks to pull over.
Now imagine you have cars and trucks comeing at you and going in the same direction in a single lane…with lots of trucks and few passing areas…at rush hour. [:0][:0]
The only way that it hurts the track is that the surfacing and other maintenance gangs can’t get out of the hole to work on the track. The DS sees the train leave the east coast and orders everybody off the track from Iowa -west who might be in the way… Pig trains are lightweights and do not cause the wear and tear of coal trains, grain trains and some stack trains.