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Why do railroads run intermodal so fast?

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by gabe It may seem like there is an obvious answer to my question. But, please read on. I was watching an interesting show about the Panama Canal last night. It was showing ocean liners carrying intermodal containers and it talked about the transit times of these ships. Think about it: The time it takes to transport the containers from the factory in China to an intermodal port, the time it takes to load these containers onto the ship, the time it takes for these ships to transport these containers several 1000s of miles at 15 knots, the time the ships spend waiting for a berth to open up in port, the time it takes to unload them, the time it takes to sort them, and then the time it takes to load them on the train. It seems to me that the time saved by running the train at 60-65 mph instead of 40 mph is so meaningless compared to the overall time it takes to ship the container that the benefit is almost unnoticeable. It is like trying to save $1 by buying the small beer at a NFL football game after you have already spent $300 on the tickets and $200 on the other over-priced amenities. Furthermore, running trains at significantly different speeds makes for greater dispatching problems and cuts into line capacity. I understand why some purely domestic trains, roadrailers, and UPS trains are run faster than normal, but Maserik intermodal containers? I don't get it. Hope to have an excellent discussion with everyone to make up for that other topic that the evil genius out smarted us all with . . . again. Gabe [/quote] Hehe, I watched that too. I think I caught the late one because it was like 1 A.M. Anyways, did you also notice they called the locomotives there high-powered and able to put up to 35 tons? I don't consider that too powerful, but thats just me... [:D][;)] There was two on last night, were you watching the history channel or the discovery channel?
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