Could this system be used in the US to build a profitable new network of short haul rail service (separate from current big time railroading)?
http://www.transportation.siemens.com/ts/en/pub/products/cm.htm
I doubt it. It’s cheaper and easier to buy a truck.
They’re handy for MoW work though as they can be fitted with any number of different types of equipment, a bit like Thunderbird 2 in that respect.
This is one of the European horizontal transloading systems – research “INHOTRA” to start finding out more about them. They are intended principally to reduce delay time for road/rail exchange performed under catenary (or when vertical access, e.g. by Mi-Jack or even Letroporter, is constrained). Europeans are often keen on this stuff because they have to work intermodal trains into traffic patterns with frequent high-speed electrified passenger service – see the 80mph freight train thread for a bit more on this.
My guess is that the capital requirements of the specialized system would far outweigh any practical benefit to its use in American practice, even assuming no special training to yard crews or truckers were required to use the equipment. I’d be glad to be proved wrong in the field – as long as the experiment was done with OPM… ;-}
At present, I think CargoSpeed, or something like it, is a far more useful approach: it can use unmodified trailers, handles spine, well, and skeleton cars, and has the capability of multiple simultaneous approach and departure loading – something that few of the horizontal-transfer systems provide effectively.
“Cargospeed” Is actually known as Cargosprinter, a system currently in operation in Germany,France, and Australia. I have not seen any reference to any interest in trialing it in North America,perhaps because the system is designed for high speed, short haul traffic,something that the Big Six don’t seem to feel is profitable. Still it is an innovative system, and one that may finnd a U.S or Canadian Market. Interestingly, CSX and CP spent considerable money developing a similiar integral train concept, the Iron Highway, although this was designed to carry trailers rather than containers. It never got much beyond the prototype form, although CP has a number of pig car sets which uses the ramp system from Iron Highway(allowing circus style loading of regular highway trailers).I recently read that the prototype equipment has been purchased by an Australian logistics company(the current Australian operator of a number of Cargosprinter trainsets), who plan to develop it there. Both these systems seem to be developments of John Kneiling’s Integral Train concept, which he wrote about extensively in TRAINS in the sixties,seventies, and eighties.
As far as the Siemens idea, I think getting FRA approval to operate unmanned vehicles on American rails is not something will see in the shortterm. And the Unions would flip…
At least Siemens is thinking[:)]
dd