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[quote user="nbrodar"] The main issue with the 700 mile limit  is speed.   High speed intermodal trains are the bane of smooth traffic flow.   Especially on single track.  When that hot intermodal guy comes on your sub, everything, and I mean everything stops for it.   I often have trains sit in the siding for an hour or more waiting for the UPS train to pass. So you get the idea of how fouled up this is,  it takes between 2 and 3 hours to cover my subdivision at track speed. To compete, you have to be as fast or faster then the truckers.  This includes, not only the point to point running time, but also time need to pick up and drop cars, place the cars for loading/unloading and the time needed to lift and drop the trailer.  And don't forget the time required to get the trailer to and from the drop site. The capital return on intermodal is slim.   You need to be priced competitvely with the truckers, which holds revenue down.  Intermodal is also a capital intensive game.   You need lots of people and equipement avalable around the clock to make it work. It's one of those things.  Everyone wants the business, but no-one wants the traffic.  Nick  [/quote] I'll ask the same question I've asked over and over again:  Why can't it all move at the same high speed?  The only reason those hot intermodals foul up the system is that everything else is moving too slow.  I mean, the railroads have been dragging their arses at about 25 mph average speed for decades now.  Will we ever see a significant improvement in this key performance indicator in our lifetimes? Every other transport mode has it's "hot" players and it's not so hot players moving at the same relative speed - Gravel trucks move at the same 65 mph as those UPS trucks down most Interstates.  Grain barges and container barges move at the same speed up and down the Columbia-Snake River Waterway (in fact, they move in the same barge tow).  Container ships and break bulk ships move at the same speed (although if Fast Ship ever gets going, it will bust that axiom!).  Air freight and passenger jets move at the same speed. Why can't (or why doesn't) rail do the same?  Is it this obsession with fuel economy?  If so, is optimizing fuel use worth the lost business? And as this thread has implicity stated, intermodal doesn't have to be capital intensive, the railroads just seem to prefer it that way, for any number of misplaced reasons.  If a trailer can't be lifted onto a spine car by a big expensive crane, forget it!  (insert comic voiceover here[:-,]) We don't need no stinkin' roll-on/roll-off trailers with their Frenchie circus ramps and one tractor at a time on the consist waiting games (nevermind that Iron Highway cut the circus style loading time in half, and my parallel side loader idea would cut loading time to minutes).  We don't need no stinkin' bi-modal trailers with their lack of actual railcars and subsequent prime load factor.  If we can't hump it, dump it!  And for that matter, we don't particularly like having to deal with your trailers anyhow.  Put it all in a container so we can double stack it.  (end comic voiceover here[swg]) Nevermind that double stacking domestic containers is the most capital intensive form of intermodal, and the one that is least preferable to the trucking companies.
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