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[quote user="owlsroost"] [quote]Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed?  More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion?  I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries.[/quote] In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases).[/quote] That's an interesting take.  In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads.  The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost.  Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished.  By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's.  The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold.  Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road.  The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper. It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls.
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