Just curious what a typical trackage rights charge is. It is understood those agreements are contractual and typically not available for the public's eyes and knowledge. But, does anyone have any experience as to what these contracts might entail? Even a charge from a few decades ago would give a clue as to how these are administered and charged.
Are charges typically based on per car/mile or does tonnage a factor. For instance coal unit train would have more overall costs in operating than an autorack train.
CP reaches Chicago from Detroit via the NS. For years CP utilized the CSX before switching about 10 years ago. What factors could have driven the CP to make the switch? Service? Price? Capacity issues? The current CSX Michigan line is not extremely busy, while CP runs about 10 trains daily on the NS busy Elkhart line. The trackage rights costs for a Detroit - Chicago movement would be fairly steep, in my opinion.
Interestingly, CP runs it's Chicago - East Coast intermodal train pair on the CSX instead of the NS. Anyone have an idea as to why?Ed
Our tourist line pays car miles.
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There are dozens of different combinations of charges, car miles, ton miles, tons, trips, cars, trains, etc. Just depends on what the roads negoiated. A modern class one can have literally thousands of trackage rights agreements.
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Some of these questions are answered in this article here:
http://trn.trains.com/railroads/abcs-of-railroading/2006/05/trackage-and-haulage-rights
As I recall, when Amtrak greatly increased its fees on the NorthEast Corridor (circa 1982) to the order of $1.00 per car-mile or similar - like 4 to 6 times what it was before, or was for similar routes in the northeastern US - that's what essentially forced ConRail off the NEC except for unavoidable "last mile" type deliveries and pick-ups to/ from the industries and connecting freight route branches, etc. I believe W. Graham Claytor was President/ CEO of Amtrak at the time, and justified the increase on the basis of the added maintenance costs caused by the heavy, clunky freight trains to the high-speed (and somewhat fragile, highly-tuned) track structure of the NEC.
[EDIT] This fairly short thread on the same topic - "Trackage rights and how RR's pay?" - from 2006 contains some specific rates, and comments on the Amtrak rates that I mentioned above:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?2,1107511
This one - "Trackage Rights, How Do They Work?" - doesn't have any rates, but a few more insights:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2469080
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