Ed Ellis was a pretty bright kid with a lot of great Ideas to bring back freight railroading to the mainstream. One of these was that Amtrak should be in the freight buisness because Amtraks priority ans higher speeds would bring traffic to the rails that would otherwise go by road.
Amtrak should also be the freight buisness for envirometal reasons as well because the Freight Railroads want nothing to do with LTL or Pallet shipments.
Was not LTL and mail supposed to save amtrak? Mail needs more time because it takes at least 7 years or more for ANY buiseness to break even.
MR GUNN is Playing Chicken with the feds again in that he thinks that all Passenger Rail should be subsidised like a National Subway system.
Since he has no experance with Freight which have ALWAYS subsidized passenger service since day one running Passenger and freight together is a foreing concept to a TRANSIT MAN… We NEED National high speed LTL service as a matter of national policy to unclog our roads and have cleaner air.[:)]
TF-
Have you been listening? Try reading over Mark Hemphill’s comments on Mail & Express in the recent threads. The answer to your question is a resounding YES!! Ed Ellis was WRONG. The M&E model doesn’t work for a dozen reasons, maybe more. For starters we already have a BIG LTL carrier that uses trails extensively its called UPS (or “Brown” if you prefer). If you think that the governement is gonna try to compete with UPS, check out how well the Postal Service does in that competition. Oh, and Ed Ellis doesn’t work for Amtrak any more, he got fired after the dimensions of the M&E debacle became known…
LC
There is no sense in Amtrak getting into the freight business at the moment when they can’t run the passenger service right. Amtrak’s major problem is poor marketing strategy as I outlined in the sale of NEC…thread. They also don’t have a lot of government support in order to get the service back to temperary relief but an aggressive marketing strategy could help that as well.
I believe that Amtrak’s future possibilities could include a partnership with UPS which would decrease the railroad’s obligations for on-time service and could divert the engines crews elsewhere (Union Pacific). Amtrak does have locomotives that can go up to 100mph and are not electric (P-42s). Amtrak could operate a service that I invented called the “truck mover”. It is similar to Amtrak’s auto train except that it is for trucks. The autoracks are linked by passenger train like diaphrams and both the trailer and truck drive on to the autorack. Train departs and the the engines go to the back of the train and pu***he autoracks to the off loading ramp and the trucks drive off-sort of like a ferry service. The principle would work particularly for door-to-door service for routes hard to get through due to bottle-necking of roads or highways.
Again though, MARKETING. I find Amtrak’s lack of advertising a major fault in their over-all performance never mind profitability. Amtrak would certainly go bankrupt if they were to branch off into other ventures without exploiting their potential better (due to good marketing results).
Andrew
David Gunn was one on John Reed’s and Larry Cena’s whizz kids at ATSF during the late 60’s and early 70’s at the time when they ran the “Super C”. So is he very familar with freight railroading. I think he it not so adverse to the concept of M&E but with a very hostile Republican Administration and Congress he has to make sure Amtrak is a functional and in good repair 79 MPH passenger train network outside the NEC and in good repair NEC. Before venturing into creating other revenue streams.
I also think that Ed Ellis’ idea was a good one but it did not pan out in the execution. Switching those MHC’s and Roadrailers in and out in a train full of passengers in the dark w/o the HEP running is not the same as loading pallets of US Mail into the cargo hold of 767 or 757 passenger jetliner along with the paying passengers’ luggage.
The former is greatly inconvenienced the latter doesn’t even know what is going on and they don’t mind that a little time is given as long as they know that their own luggage is being loaded into the very same plane that they are on
Colin-
Passenger inconvenience was only one issue. Remember, Ed’s ideas required a LOT of extra cost. The capital costs of construction and maintenance of the MHCs, roadrailers and additional locomotives for both long haul and switching service at local terminals, the operating costs for extra switching crews or contracts with other railroads to perform switching, extra maintenance and operating costs for terminal facilities and personnel; costs of running extra trains to reposition equipment including equipment, locomotives and crews; and I could go on…
All of these costs simply can’t be borne by a few extra carloads tacked on to a passenger train on a once daily route. The costs immediately make competitive pricing impossible and the inevitable losses begin…
Lets also not forget that based upon objections and litigation by Class 1s including UP, Amtrak was limited to how many cars of M&E were allowed per train, so margins had to be much higher than normal freight operations to compensate.
M&E is a BAD business model that won’t work. Not now, not later.
LC
Its tough to have dreams; Ed has had dreams for the future for a least 35 years.
Bob Wilcox
Was Ed Ellis wrong? YES!
The C&O tried roadrailers on the George Washington in the 1940’s, and that didn’t work. Then in the mid to late 1960’s the railroads tried mixing freight with passenger trains, not just mail and express trains but trains such as the Union Pacific’s City of Los Angeles. It didn’t work then, and it apparently didn’t work now. One of the problems with handling mail and express cars on passenger trains the schedules didn’t allow enough time to either load, unload, or switch mail and express cars in and out of trains so the trains were delayed. In some casesthe schedules might have been lengthened to allow for switching delays, but that made trains that handled mail and express all the more inconvenient.
LC,
You are right about the additional cost of the operation. It proves my point regarding the Postal Service having sort facilities in and around major airports for first class mail. The USPS does most if not all the sorting, pulls up a truck next to a loading jetliner or even regional puddle hopper and tosses the pallet or even mail bag into where the airline has designated the few cubic feet for USPS. Unlike the MHC’s and Roadrailers little or no handilng costs for the carrier and high profit margins.
THE MAIN PROBLEM WITH AMTRAK IS LACK OF DECENT FUNDING
Stop complaining and work on the real problem.
Whatever could be said about the potential market, Amtrak fell down on the execution. That’s not a criticism of their people, just after-the-fact ‘20-20 hindsight’. There seems to have been an assumption that marginal costs were all that were involved when in fact substantial capital and operating investment (much of which was not made) would have been needed even for rudimentary network coverage.
Hey guys, there were reasons REA went belly-up, and some of those reasons are still around… 
The problem with HEP is directly related to the need to switch cars with the road power. A rather obvious fix for this in at least some cases would have been a hi-rail tractor carried as a pup (look at the Home Depot 10-wheel straight trucks for an analogy). But that’s new capital equipment that somebody in Amtrak has to stick in their budget, and it’s all too obviously useful only for freight (the F-word to Amtrak critics).
Perhaps we can have a discussion thread on the forums about where Amtrak can find extensive marketing dollars, and retain talented marketing personnel or services, when they manifestly don’t have enough money to guarantee the services that are supposed to be marketed. Granted, much better marketing would have helped Amtrak’s M&E, perhaps dramatically – perhaps to the point that some of the operations might have reached the necessary critical mass to carry the back-end infrastructure to run it. But Amtrak had, and still has, much better places to put the money for that.
I’m still a bit astounded that a joint venture hasn’t been established, with some appropriately for-profit entity actually running, labeling, marketing (etc.) the M&E service, and Amtrak moving the cars. Perhaps that’s what we’ll see emerge after the pending fire sale of M&E equipment. Hmmm…
Junctionfan, you didn’t invent truck ferries – they’ve been in use in Europe for decades. Autoracks are the wrong equipment anyway – ever notice the clearance on the inte
This is the problem with railroads-to much “can’t be done” and “why should I spend money on that”. Railroads lack innovation big time. My ideas are innovative enough in principle. I get tired of listening to thease nay-sayers, doom-sayers and protectors of the status quo. It is no wonder why some of thease businesses go belly-up.
The “autorack” like idea to me is great because the enclosed unit protects against vandalism.
My idea was to not have to wait for trucks or cranes to pick them up, just go as soon as the doors open (like a ferry). Obviously if they would use an autorack, you would have to remove the deck and anyways thease are modified autoracks (unilevels?). If the trailers take up 53 feet plus another maybe 15 feet for the truck?, only make them that big.
Now why the heck couldn’t this work? Forget the business text book quotes; I want to know if people would use this service. If the answer is yes and yes comes from a lot of trucking companies and enough to make the investment worth while, than why can’t it be done?
Junction Fan
I am sure any railroad you choose would quote you a trainload rate between two points of your choice on a reasonable schedule of your choice. You might have to buy or lease the cars. You could then go sell it to the users. If you are right you will make a bunch of money. What is stopping you???
Mac
Junctionfan:
Look at the outside clearances on van trailers. Then look at the outside absolute loading gauge for autoracks of your chosen length. Then tell me how thick the wall framing is, and what your wall-to-roof bracing system is.
The difference between framing and van body is the clearance drivers will need to negotiate when driving on and off. Even small interference can cause substantial damage to the vans. Keep in mind that very slight lateral load shifting or misloading can cause the van to heel on its suspension, causing incidence at upper corners. One van ‘hanging up’ blocks everybody else from unloading.
What arrangements have you made for diesel exhaust from the truck tractors? Emergency exits for drivers in their cabs… or are you going to require them to ride a la AutoTrain? Bridging between cars is possible with intercar aprons (pioneered lo these many years ago on TrailerTrain et al) but how do you handle interference between the carbodies and the vans on curves?
Your thinking is all very well for perfectly level, tangent track with no curves, and perfectly trained drivers, but begins to fall apart badly when any of these factors are absent. You might have noticed that the automobiles transported in autoracks are just a bit smaller than Western trailers…
Perhaps a better place to have looked would be the truck-ferry trains used in the Channel Tunnel service… or would mentioning those have compromised “your” supposedly innovative design?
I’m not trying to suppress your innovation in the transportation industry – just gently pointing out that sometimes there are practical reasons why designs need to be rethought… or why things are done the way they are even though they seem suboptimal. You need to be very, very careful when you claim that one of your designs is ideal but the entire world seems to be (1) ignoring the obvious answer, and (2) rejecting your ideal solution. You run the risk of being con
Unfortunately I don’t have money to build a prototype so I will have to explain what it exactly will look like. All of your concerns you guys talked about, are good ones so I fixed up the model better.
How about trucks go on with those kind of wheel guides that you see at car washes? 2 metal bars, guiding the wheels but 2 on the inside and none on the outside (like railroad frogs). The structure is a top with vents supported on 8 “pole-like” bulkheads. The sides open at close so the driver even has room to get out of the truck. You have to go very slow obviously, to get on. The trailers are secured through wheel clamps which are semi-automatically clamped on at the bottom near the wheel guides. The side width is slightly larger than normal tofc but does not interfear with parallel train clearances.
I am debating if there should be conveyer belt system for wheel guides as it than would be automatic guiding.
Any other engineering suggestions for this system?
Junctionfan-
Just because something COULD work doesn’t mean it SHOULD happen. A couple of points to consider:
Capital investment - the RRs can just barely generate enough cash flow to support the capital spending that keeps things status quo. Actually, as a whole, they’re not event doing that - they are slowly eating their foot to keep from starving. Ever wonder why the frt car fleet is slowly shifting from RR owned to leased? Ever wonder why CSX leases so many locomotives? After you do the track work and buy new equipment, there is almost no money left for inovation. What money is available goes to projects with very high rates of return and almost no risk, such as expanding intermodal terminals.
I remember a guy at Conrail proposing and working out the rail ferry idea. The proposal was to ferry truckers,
What is business? I have never heard of business described as a no-risk form of venture. My area, a lot of trucks drive between Toronto and Buffalo and don’t use intermodal because it is quicker than to wait for CN to run a trains after they load it. The problem is that now the border waits are crazy and the traffic jams around the GTA are annoying. This was designed to fix this. If this would be an Amtrak thing in particular, than it would be a spin-off of the auto train. It could save the government and tax-payer money as it would decrease the conjestion on the roads (taxpayer pays for less gas from idling in traffic), increase safety on the road (maybe less insurance rate hikes), decrease air pollution from the trucks (air pollution increases more health care costs), decrease wear and tear on the road (taypayer spends less on road repair), and other reason. The ROI is not only financial to the taxpayer but cleaner air and increase in safety.
I consider Ed Ellis to be a friend of mine and I believe that the M&E business would have proven profitable and a big long term help to Amtrak if(a BIG IF) it had recieved the consistent strong backing it needed from Amtraks senior management in its critical first 5 years.
Very few businesses are instant winners, almost all need to be “spoon fed” for the first 3-5 years until they achieve the critical mass of volumne needed to be truly “profitable”.
I’m not privileged to know all the intimate internal details-but as an interested outside observer it was obvious to me that Ed and his team were never given the strong CONSISTENT support from senior management that was needed to make M&E work!!!
As has been suggested, I hope someone in the private sector will buy up the M&E hardware,make a haulage deal with Amtrak and prove that there’s a substantial market there waiting to be offered the proper product???
I also agree that it’s tough to be on the leading edge of any curve and I’m confident that Ed Ellis will make further substantial contributions to railroading!!
Ross Rowland
“Normal” practice in presenting… or ‘pitching’… these designs will be done with models anyway – certainly NOT with full-size prototypes! I would do the basic mockup and design work in HO, and perhaps use O to indicate some of the precise structural or operational detail that wouldn’t be clear (or would be too fragile) in the smaller scale.
Using pipe guides (or perhaps better, roller fairleads) could be made to work, but I suspect it would be better to have them on the ‘outside’ only as it’s edge contact you want to avoid. I believe TrailerTrain used refaceable (rubber or wood?) rails on their circus-type cars to keep drivers from dropping over the edge by mistake.
Almost all the difficulty in driving on and off would derive from the enclosure. I would suggest that you consider a two-part system, a bit different from what you’re looking at so far: side panels up to about waistline (parts of which could be slid, latched, or removed) with the pipe-supported fabric or pieces above that. Such composite design would give you almost all the ‘intrusion control’ of a full body, but allow a more open ‘feel’ for drivers. It would also help dramatically with the exhaust issues, particularly visibility when loading and unloading (The pipe frame is a logical place to put shielded lights for loading and unloading as headlights are likely to be blinding)
You’ll want to 'gin up some kind of cheap gauge to allow short ‘headway’ for trucks being unloaded… the one I developed years ago for a similar application is a cantilevered frame, attached to each trailer rear, with a dangling cord and brightly painted tennis balls which thump against the windshield of the following tractor if too close. A long version of ‘curb feelers’ with a bright ball on the end might do the same thing. The gauge should be easy to put on and remove, harmless if ‘forgotten’ (and cheap enough that you won’t miss ‘drive-offs’ much), and not cause problems if it should sag or drop unexpectedly.
Thankyou Overmod for the information. I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks the idea may work. I don’t see a problem with the idea of this kind of service, as long as its funded properly.
TF-
After reading Mark Hemphill’s comments, I had to look back at your original post (above). Where do you come up with this stuff?!? Have you ever run a business??? If you start a buisiness, and it doesn’t turn a profit in five (5) years, the IRS has a word for that. They call it a “Hobby” and tax you on it. So, I have no idea where your concept of 7 years to profitability being normal is coming from. It just isn’t so…
I would also point out that David Gunn has PLENTY of experience with freight from his days on the ATSF.
I guess I should just get used to you bellowing hot air, because that is all it is…
LC