BRAKIE Heres a interesting read that sheds some interesting light and I urge you to take the few mintues it takes to read this.. http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=customers.ag_grainexpress
http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=customers.ag_grainexpress
The UP has essentially the same thing (train sizes are larger and time based on arrival) called the "shuttle" program. The grain trains have a prefix of "S", so a regular grain train would something like GLABHO (grain load Abilene to Houston) while a shuttle would be GSABHO (grain shuttle Abilene to Houston).
These programs turn cars so quick and haul so much grain that the railroads actually had hoppers stored because they didn't need them to meet demand.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Heres a interesting read that sheds some interesting light and I urge you to take the few mintues it takes to read this..
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
mreagantCan't say I've ever seen any other train with a uniform consist of cars, which is what I thought of as 'a unit train'. Be intresting to see how many cars with similar contents it takes to make a 'unit.'
A unit train is multiple cars operating on the same waybill from one origin to one destination.
Many railroads ran solid trains of a particular commodity, but that doesn't make them "unit" trains because they are not moving on the same waybill.
A real unit train isn't the car type, isn't the car initials, isn't the car series, its the billing on the cars. Unit trains were pretty much unknown prior to the 1970's.
An auto train or intermodal train will look like a unit train BUT the cars aren't moving on the same waybill from the same origin to the same destination so are NOT a unit train. In the 1970's some units were made of groups of 25 or so carsbut as time went on that became less and less common.
mreagant Can't say I've ever seen any other train with a uniform consist of cars, which is what I thought of as 'a unit train'. Be intresting to see how many cars with similar contents it takes to make a 'unit.' Makes me wonder if those loooong 10,000 gal tank car trains of WW2 era would qualify as 'unit' trains.
Can't say I've ever seen any other train with a uniform consist of cars, which is what I thought of as 'a unit train'. Be intresting to see how many cars with similar contents it takes to make a 'unit.'
Makes me wonder if those loooong 10,000 gal tank car trains of WW2 era would qualify as 'unit' trains.
Let me give an example from one area I know a little about, iron ore railroading. Back in the natural ore days, a railroad like the DM&IR would make runs to the mines of 30-40 cars to drop off empties and pick up loads. These would then be assembled into 180-220 car long ore trains that would run from Hibbing or Virginia or another yard to Proctor MN. These trains would all be Missabe ore cars, except for the caboose on the end. However, it wouldn't be the same cars in the same order all the time, the cars were switched together on the iron range yards and would be broken up at Proctor and not all taken together to the ore docks. So it's not a unit train...it doesn't function as a single unit.
If you had a taconite facility where the ore pellets were loaded into the cars in a balloon track, and unloaded the same way without uncoupling the cars from each other or from the engines (like Erie Mining Co / LTV Steels double-ended ore dock), that could be considered a unit train.
Unit tank trains did come along in the eighties. The "Tank Train" concept had all the cars connected together with piping of some kind, so you didn't have to load each car separately, the oil or whatever would flow from car to car while loading. Otherwise, a string of identical looking tank cars like in WW2 would be a train of tank cars, but not a unit train of tank cars.
Unit grain trains are more like the unit coal trains. With that advent, it was cheaper and easier for Acme Grain Products Inc. to have it's weekly requirement of 4,500,000 lbs. of corn shipped by rail. In this the 50 box car unit train would be shipping to one location. Modern days are a little different. As stated before a unit train could be made from multiple elevators, now adays grain elevators are purposley built to handle loading 110 car unit trains (24,200,000 lbs using 110 ton cars). Of course, these unit trains can also go to destinations like Chicago where it's loaded onto a ship and floated off to Argentina or something.
dehusman mreagant Can't say I've ever seen any other train with a uniform consist of cars, which is what I thought of as 'a unit train'. Be intresting to see how many cars with similar contents it takes to make a 'unit.' Can't believe that in Austin, Texas you haven't seen at least one rock train since the UP runs 1 to 5 unit rock trains at day in and out of San Antonio-Taylor area to projects in the Gulf coast region. 8-) Typically unit trains run with 50 or more cars depending on commodity. Coal trains range from 105-150 cars, grain trains are usually in the 100-120 car size, rock trains in the 50-100 car range.
mreagant Can't say I've ever seen any other train with a uniform consist of cars, which is what I thought of as 'a unit train'. Be intresting to see how many cars with similar contents it takes to make a 'unit.'
Can't believe that in Austin, Texas you haven't seen at least one rock train since the UP runs 1 to 5 unit rock trains at day in and out of San Antonio-Taylor area to projects in the Gulf coast region. 8-)
Typically unit trains run with 50 or more cars depending on commodity. Coal trains range from 105-150 cars, grain trains are usually in the 100-120 car size, rock trains in the 50-100 car range.
Believe it or not those 'rock' trains don't show much here unless it is after dark. I really was thinking along the lines of what Stix described, and in particular 'units' of cars all showing the same ownership and more or less permanently hooked together. Guess I'll have to look more carefully for rocks.
FWIW, the CN automotive train I used to see regularly in my neck of the woods ran from Detroit to Chicago. It would make stops at auto plants and yards near auto plants all along its route and do pickups. The consist was mostly racks with a few 86' boxcars, power could be CN, BNSF, or UP. The empties coming back were worked the same way. Sometimes the power would cycle, sometimes not.
Since the economic slowdown, the racks & boxcars have moved to a general manifest train. I don't think that train works the plants.
Glad that overall, I could provide an interesting topic (as compared to sounding like the proverbial village idiot), and thanks to everyone for all the information. It helps me with what I need to figure out concerning the roughly dozen grain trains that run through "as needed" on the CSX Dothan Sub (area I'm modelling).
I have a video of a promotional film BN put out in IIRC 1984 about building the Gillette-Orin cutoff in the Powder River Basin of Wyoming, where they talk about this "new concept in railroading"..."the unit train". I believe the term originally was in fact coined around that time to specifically mean a train of cars that were kept together and operated from one point to another and back as a solid unit without ever being switched or broken up, particularly a train of coal cars which could use loops at the point of loading (like the Powder River Basin) and unloaded in a similar loop of track without needing to uncouple the cars.
As sometimes happens, in time the term has come to be used in a less exact way to mean any train that was made up of all the same type of cars, like a train of covered hoppers hauling grain for example. But they're not exactly the same thing, a solid train of refrigerator cars going from California to Chicago isn't really a "unit train" because it isn't the same set of cars going back and forth without being separated or switched at either terminal or on route.
Things like that happens all the time with language, meanings change or broaden over time...for example in music today, doing a "cover" of a song has a different meaning than it did 50 years ago.
What a great discussion! I worked in the electric utility business for more years than was good for me or the American utility customer, and I never thought of unit trains as anything but 127 100 ton hopper cars full of Powder River Basin Coal all going from point A to point B. Since the UP runs at least two through Austin I've learned the reporting marks and as I travel I've spotted and figured the ownership of several others.
Yeah, I did know that autoracks and intermodal weren't considered "official" unit trains, but more single comodity trains.
Depends. Coal and rock generally cycles with the train. Grain may cycle with the train. Auto trains and intermodal don't necessarily cycle with the train. By the way, auto and intermodal trains aren't "unit trains", they are just single commodity trains.
I kinda figured that's how it went. I model "today", so my unit trains will be most likely single origin, single destination. It was something I was curious about though since I've been able to find a list of trains. Both regularly scheduled, and those that run "as needed" (in this case rock, grain, and autoracks) that run through my modelled area (Montgomery to Dothan, AL), and I've seen where the trains run through various towns/cities/areas, so I didn't know if the "typical" unit trains (130 or so cars plus locomotives) were all going the same way or not.
Of course, now this brings up another question. What about the engines that haul a unit train, once they reach their final drop point, do they just move light back to the nearest yard, or would it be more likely that they'll pick up empties and run as another train back to the yard to be re-sorted and sent of their merry way?
Occaisionally a "unit" train will set out cars at more than one facility. The UP had a coal train that would set out smaller blocks of coal at smaller utilities (they called them "grocery trains"). Some of the cement plants in Texas have one train from Wyoming with coal for a couple plants. And there is an example of a coal train for one utility that carries an extra block of coal a couple times a month for a cement plant.
In the early days of grain unit trains it wasn't unusual for one train to have several blocks of 25 or 50 cars from different elevators..
Having said that, the vast majority of unit trains over time have been one origin to one destination. So if you are modeling the 1970's or even 1980's, yes you might have one out of couple dozen unit trains with multiple origins or mulitple destinations . The newer your time frame the less likely it will be.
What makes a unit train is defined more by the paperwork than the equipment. All the cars on a unit train are moving on the same waybill. Back when waybills were carried by conductors, each car would have it's own waybill, but all the information including waybill number would be the same for each car.
On grain trains, at one time railroads would allow mutiple elevators to ship to the same destination. Say 4 elevators on a line get together and each load 25 cars for the same destination. Once the last elevator is pulled you now have a 100 car grain train. Some railroads may still do this, but many times the rate isn't as good as if one elevator would load 100 cars by itself.
We used to handle a coal train for ADM that would set out cars at a couple of intermediate points. These were blocks going to some other ADM facilites. (It's not just utilities that burn coal for power) Usually, the lion's share of cars went thru to the final destination. One time most of the train was set out at the second intermediate stop. This resulted in a coal train with 2 engines, 6 cars and 1 more engine on the rear in distributed power mode. A pike size coal train or a coal train you can model.
Jeff
It does help some. I kinda figured that coal would be the primary for having a single end-point, but what I really was a little more curious about was grain and the autoracks primarily (area I model doesn't have any unit coal coming through it, so, yeah). Thanks for the information, although any other information, and comments, would be welcomed.
The coal trains will unload the entire train at a particular power plant. The plant needs at least a one week supply in case something should happen to their supply chain. On grain, it depends. It would probably need to be the same kind (wheat, corn, etc.) to go to one destination. Where I live, there is a short line that takes wheat to a river port in Oklahoma and unloads it to shipped by barge to Louisiana and Mississippi.
I am not sure about the autoracks. I imagine they go to a distribution center and the entire train is unloaded so the vehicles can be delivered to the dealers by transport truck.
Hope this helps.
Will
This may sound like a stupid question, and if it is, I apologize in advance. I was wondering if a unit train, be it unit grain, coal, rock, autoracks, etc, all go to one final end point, or does the unit train ever break down smaller and smaller along the way? I'm sure that there are some unit trains that do all go to one end-point and drop, but I was just wondering if the other situation named was true too.