I am not trying to start a war either, but the Santa Fe had something to do with the concept of piggypack trains- i think they built the experimental 5-unit articulated flatcar in 1976(?) (at least that’s what i read)
No need for wars Santa Fe pioneered the concept of fast piggyback hows that? Diginox I think your looking about the time Super C was going on ( think todays z with a faster schedule!) Offering 36 hour or some real maniacal time from Chi to Los.
I do believe SF had the first fuel foilers back in the day. But piggyback was going on in the steam age on CGW as I think it was the book the Corn Belt route where I saw a 2-10-4 with a TOFC behind it going west!
sounds good to me. i know when passenger service ended on the SF they used the passenger engines to pull a high speed intermodal run(as you said), now does anyone have pics of their intermodal yards?
A large number of parts suppliers for the big 3 automakers get parts in containers delivered by truck. They are mostly 48 to 53 foot containers.
I work at the Pittsburgh Intermodal Terminal and it basically is a 3/4 mile long parking lot, with two working tracks and five support or storage tracks. The working area is asphalt , with a side gravel lot the full length of the tracks. The pad tracks are worked from one side only, with the unpaved area between the tracks holding light posts & car inspector access. The two tracks are referenced as #1 & #2 tracks. Trailer and mounted containers are parked perpendicular to #1 track and parellel or angled to #2 at the edge of the paving. Unmounted containers are usually stacked up to 3-high parellel to #2 & in up to 5 deep/3-high on #1. The gravel lot is used to park empty trailers and loaded or empty containers. At our busiest time of the year,(Labor Day to Christmas), there may be approximately 800 - 1000 pieces in the yard. There are also extra bare chassis stored outside of the fenced ramp area. In 2004, we did 75,000 lifts in Pittsburgh and 2005 was even busier. By comparison, BNSF Corwith in Chicago did about 400,000 lifts.The only concrete area is where the packers are parked and repaired. There is also a gatehouse for the railroad clerks,(they ingate/outgate the trucks, handle billing, & load plan the trains),a yardmaster and a trainmaster. There is also a 2-bay garage for jockey & trailer repairs and two service vans for mobile repairs. Freight that moves through Pittsburgh includes but is not limited to: beer, clothing, antifreeze, oil, jelly ,frozen chickens & produce, bottled juice & water, steel, birdseed, sporting goods, olive oil, plastic sheet, and even a Rolls Royce. Customers include UPS, Wal Mart, Kohls, ***'s Sporting Goods, Schmuckers, and many I am not aware of. Shippers handled include: JB Hunt, Schneider, Cosco, Hyundai, China Shipper, NYK, Hapag Lloyd, Mearsk-Sealand, OOCL, Evergreen, & Hanjin.
it did help- i may not concrete all 4 tracks now just 2 for the work area- it all depends on how much space this takes up http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3122 looks to me like it could straddle 2 tracks and a row of containers/trailers
Actually, “piggy-backing” can be traced back to 1895, when the Oakland San Leandro and Hayward Electric Railway handled express wagons (the horse-drawn kind) on flat cars between on-line points and Oakland, where the wagons were transshipped by ferry to and from San Francisco. The first hauling of semitrailers on flatcars (TOFC) was done in 1926 by the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee, because they couldn’t run boxcars on the Chicago Elevated. So, frankly, it all depends on how far back you want to go…
The Honda plant in Marysville, Ohio receives auto parts from Japan, then
backhauls premium grade soybeans in the same containers. There is a
huge need for them in the Japanese diet. The soybean program is a part
of Honda’s operation. There was a series of articles in the Columbus
Dispatch just recently.
I’m sure there are many industries that receive / backhaul, although it’s
probably products that the receiver manufactured in their facility.
My wife works for the Port of Houston and the UP, CFEX, and the Houston Belt & Terminal are the only railroads that handle the intermodal containers at the docks …there are a lot of companies that haul by truck…Gulf Winds, CSBL, JJ Flannagan, BCIS, Mersk, Fairway, Sealand, James Cooper, and just as many private contractors with their own privately owned rigs are used to haul the containers…so basically, they can go to just about any industry imaginable… one other note in case you don’t know already,…build all underpasses, tunnels and bridges taller and wider than you would for all other rail equipment for your railroad to handle the container trains, at least 4" height is needed …the container train rolling stock are higher and wider than traditional rolling stock equipment if you run them double stacked…chuck
To get back to the original question it will be difficult to find an industry that loads directly to rail cars. The big advantage of containers and intermodal is the railroads got out of the switching business which is extremely costly and concentrate on running cars which is extremely lucrative. I don’t know of any industry that receives railroad cars with containers. Best bet is a small intermodal yard in my opinion.
An intermodal yard is better than an industry, the containers and trailers could come from a local industry (by truck) and be sent by rail from the int. yard.
The only industry that I can conceive having its own intermodal yard is automobile.
Locally, we have an intermodal yard located on the northwest corner of Toronto. It has a Y connection to the CN mainline. The tailtrack continues on to serve the Chrysler plant. I don’t know what cars are delivered to Chrysler.
For a model, I would probably cut the yard down to one or two tracks with a roadway and a crane. (Any yard you can fit on a normal model railway probably isn’t big enough to afford the crane.)
my freelanced “illinois central railway” is rich (yeah right) and we can afforad a crane[:D]