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CargoBeamer, a new German transshipment technology
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;">Let’s say you have one of these Beamer hubs set up to transfer fifty trailers to fifty railcars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hub is completely empty of trucks and railcars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are fifty pallets positioned for the arriving trucks.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;">One by one, the trucks roll in and drop their trailers onto the pallets and secure the trailers to the pallets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the fifty pallets all have trailers, a fifty-car train is brought in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All fifty railcars in the train are lacking pallets.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then, in one simultaneous motion, all fifty pallets with trailers on them are moved onto the railcars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And one big actuator simultaneously shifts the locks on the railcars to secure the pallets to the railcars.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;">Then the train stops here and there along the route at other hubs and drops off trailers on their pallets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So when the train is finally empty, it will be entirely free of pallets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the hubs will therefore have pallets arriving and departing, but not necessarily in balanced quantities.</span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;">Now you could have more pallets than railcars to help overcome spot shortages, but inevitably, pallets would need to be deadheaded back to where they are needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How big of a problem would that be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Railroads are always deadheading empties and even motive power, so couldn’t a strategy be developed to move empty pallets to where they are needed occasionally?</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;">If the pallet can become a structural element of the railcar in addition to being a structural element of the trailer, the tare weight of the pallet-less railcar could be reduced to the point where the pallet would not represent excess weight in the trailer/pallet/railcar package.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: verdana,geneva;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> </span></span></p>
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