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[quote user="daveklepper"]Are not their any ports with tracks on the docks allowing direct to rail movement of containers?  It would seem the a ship unloading to a dock filled with flat cars and locomotives to pull one string out and replace with additional empties anbd then to replace it with the loads intended for the ship would be a great way to reduce port time for ships.  Is anybody doing this outside of one port in Israel?[/quote] That's a good point, and one in which the Europeans have a big advantage over the North American railroads.  Clearance restrictions on European railways prevent double stacking, so it all goes single stack.  Ironically, single stack is easier than double stack to facilitate direct ship to rail container transload, in that container weights don't have to be considered.  On ships and US double stack consists, the heavy containers are on the bottom and lighter ones one top.  The first portion of containers unloaded from a ship are the lighter ones, while the last portion are heavier, so to load from ship to a double stack consist would require all those lighter containers to be put aside somewhere until the heavier containers were reached, wherein the heavier containers would be loaded directly from ship to the bottom of the wellcar, then all those lighter containers would have to be brought back from where they were temporarily stored and then placed in the upper position of the wellcar.  After all that, it just isn't worth the hassle for NA ports to try and facilitate direct ship to rail loading. There was some talk a few years ago in which containers of similar weights would be kept interlocked together, and then both containers transloaded from ship to double stack well cars in one move.  Logistically, this is very hard to accomplish, since container weights are not a constant that can be relied upon. Ideally, for our European example, the containers would be loaded directly from ship onto RailRunner bi-modal chassis.... <A href="http://www.railrunner.com/">http://www.railrunner.com/</A> ......already connected in rail mode, then railed to the eventual regional distribution city, wherein the chassis are disconnected from the rail bogey and trucked to the final destination.  This way is both the quickest way to get the goods from ship to consumer, and the cheapest as well.  RailRunner terminal modal transfer times average a few minutes per chassis, and depending on how many trucks are available and waiting, the whole consist can go from rail to road in as little as half an hour.  And the rail to road terminal area can be just about anywhere with no need for a lot of terminal equipment, all you need is one free siding and a few loads of gravel over the siding to allow the trucks to hook up to each chassis.
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