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[quote user="gabe"][quote user="MP173"] Dave:Regarding your discussion of infrastructure speed limits,  for the most part those speed limitation have less effect on the overall transit time  than the terminal times involved in the operations.ed[/quote]Thank you.  For a minute, I was fearful to point out the 2000 lbs, in this case pink, elephant in the room that I thought I was seeing.  I really do not understand the relationship between an 80 mph speed limit and the collapse of the rail industry that I seem to observe in the 70s.  Whether a steamship is hauling intermodal containers for a three week voyage that then sits in a dock for a few days, whether it is grain that might take as much as a month to transport from a farmer's silo through grain bins and what not, or merchandise freight that dwells in a yard three days regardless of transit, I never saw how the 7 hour-benefit of an increased speed limit might rescue the industry.Added speed might help capacity.  But, the issue of the 70s was getting rid of excess capacity, not making room for more.Gabe[/quote]Well yes, this was pre 1960, but there was that *other* spector that haunted the rail industry - the loss of market share to OTR truckers.  Instead of nipping this unnatural economic weed in the bud, the railroads bungled it by characterizing trucking companies as the "enemy" rather than as a made-for-order customer.  Mastermiding an intramodel switch of freight from boxcars to TOFC trailers would have alleviated the railroads from the more mundane aspects of moving freight - consignment, dock loading and unloading, aka containerization before containerization became a buzz word - and would have allowed them to focus on the simplest and most lucrative aspects of transport.In order for the railroads to keep the majority of trailerload traffic off highways, they'd of had to beat the between terminal transit times of OTR's to conpensate for the intermodal terminal delays.Didn't the original Zephyr average around 80 mph between Chicago and Denver?  The average trucking time was probably more around 50 mph during the same period.  Thus, there seems to be more than enough of a rail speed advantage to make up for terminal transloading of trailers and still beat the OTR's dock to dock.
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