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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by oltmannd [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by athelney [quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken There are quite a few places where you can run a freight train at 79 MPH.....railroads cannot get an acceptable rate of return to justify the extra expense in fuel and maintenance on railcars.....Doesn't pay? - Don't do it! [/quote] What about the time element -- ie A to B at least 10mph faster say with an intermodal -- doesnt this translate into more dollars if you can get it there quicker! -- especially with so many Asia - Europe land bridge trains . [/quote] "Faster" only works if you can wring inventory out of the entire supply chain. An hour or two doesn't usually help much. If you take UPS traffic as an example. "Faster" only works if you can arrive a "sort" earlier. In most of thier lanes that move by rail, an additional 10 or 20 mph on the max speed (provided you could accomodate it without hammering your overall capacity) wouldn't do this. The UP/CSX train operated for UPS at 75 mph max. was an attempt to do this in one of the lanes where it would work. However, the complexity of getting the train over the road on schedule turned out to be untennable. Not sure there is really all that much land bridge traffic. Nearly all containers landing in US ports have US destinations. [/quote] Think of "faster" in the cumulative vein rather than the single trip idea. 2 hours on one trip means you're two hours earlier for embarking on the return trip, then another 2 hours saved on the return trip, after a week you might have saved 10 or 15 hours in your cycle, after two weeks you might have added another trip or two to your cycle......., in a year you've added 10, 15, maybe 20 extra trips to your annual cycle. It's all about rail car utilization, the more revenue trips per year the better your bottom line. It's all about better labor utilization, the more miles a crew can cover within the hours of service, the better your labor productivity. If it has to go at a snail's pace, put it in a barge or a pipeline. Railroad technology is intended to move bulk commodities at speed, otherwise it's a waste of national capital.
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