BT CPSO 266 henry6: You are punny BT CPSO 266! But it is the managers of the private investor railroad who make the determination of what and where a railroad will build or improve based on the need to serve their definition of railroad and service. The public can demand that trucks come off the roads but that will not build nor improve track unless the public is also willing to pay for it. And if the railroad company thinks something is needed to make money they will add it, if they don't see how it will help make money, they won't, "Financially fruitful" ventures is what investment is all about. Now when you say "public is also willing to pay for it" are you speaking in terms of the business community or government investing for the benefit of the public?
henry6: You are punny BT CPSO 266! But it is the managers of the private investor railroad who make the determination of what and where a railroad will build or improve based on the need to serve their definition of railroad and service. The public can demand that trucks come off the roads but that will not build nor improve track unless the public is also willing to pay for it. And if the railroad company thinks something is needed to make money they will add it, if they don't see how it will help make money, they won't, "Financially fruitful" ventures is what investment is all about.
You are punny BT CPSO 266! But it is the managers of the private investor railroad who make the determination of what and where a railroad will build or improve based on the need to serve their definition of railroad and service. The public can demand that trucks come off the roads but that will not build nor improve track unless the public is also willing to pay for it. And if the railroad company thinks something is needed to make money they will add it, if they don't see how it will help make money, they won't, "Financially fruitful" ventures is what investment is all about.
Now when you say "public is also willing to pay for it" are you speaking in terms of the business community or government investing for the benefit of the public?
And therein lies the rub.
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henry6 You are punny BT CPSO 266! But it is the managers of the private investor railroad who make the determination of what and where a railroad will build or improve based on the need to serve their definition of railroad and service. The public can demand that trucks come off the roads but that will not build nor improve track unless the public is also willing to pay for it. And if the railroad company thinks something is needed to make money they will add it, if they don't see how it will help make money, they won't, "Financially fruitful" ventures is what investment is all about.
Maybe it's the "vision thing." Some managers/executives are very good at maximizing profits within the status quo; others (not many) are able to project their company into the future, investing R&D dollars in new projects that may or may not pay off for years.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
henry6 "It seems unless a third party get involved with the funding of increased capacity, we are not going to see faster speeds on much of the rail network. " Third party involvement has nothing to do with it. If the need is there, and there is a return on investment, the money is there to do it. This is frieght not passenger rail, so it would be done if the product was in need of the speed and the client would pay enough to recover the cost of building and maintainence, ie, ROI or Return On Investment. And, yes, "back in the day", there was a lot of 100mph running. Some sanctioned but more often than not, not. Railroaders knew their railroad, thier equipment, and their job. Management knew its railroaders and who among them they could count on to deliver. It was not as romantic as Freeman Hubbard and David P. Morgan would have you believe, but rather nuts and bolts operations.
"It seems unless a third party get involved with the funding of increased capacity, we are not going to see faster speeds on much of the rail network. "
Third party involvement has nothing to do with it. If the need is there, and there is a return on investment, the money is there to do it. This is frieght not passenger rail, so it would be done if the product was in need of the speed and the client would pay enough to recover the cost of building and maintainence, ie, ROI or Return On Investment.
And, yes, "back in the day", there was a lot of 100mph running. Some sanctioned but more often than not, not. Railroaders knew their railroad, thier equipment, and their job. Management knew its railroaders and who among them they could count on to deliver. It was not as romantic as Freeman Hubbard and David P. Morgan would have you believe, but rather nuts and bolts operations.
My train of thought was coming from the perspective of how more people want freight to move on a faster rail network, really should not assume that the railroad companies are just going to add capacity because it is "needed" vs. being financially fruitful for the railroad company.
On a slight tangent: I spent a couple of months each in 1967 & 1968 in the Utica, NY area, and was impressed with the speed of the freights on the NYC. I remember my car rocking side to side at a grade-crossing from the wind stirred up. Does any one know what speeds were common in that area around that time? Seemed like about 90 MPH to me, though I don't think it's likely.
_____________
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Railway Man oltmannd: Railway Man: Generally we have calculate this on spreadsheets. Think about 60-100 linked pages into which we substitute "what if" values and see what happens to the discounted cash flow. RWM I hope you start with RTC. It's a capacity problem, primarily, no? Yes. But as you know RTC just tests the performance of a given infrastructure/train combination, not whether it makes money or not.
oltmannd: Railway Man: Generally we have calculate this on spreadsheets. Think about 60-100 linked pages into which we substitute "what if" values and see what happens to the discounted cash flow. RWM I hope you start with RTC. It's a capacity problem, primarily, no?
Railway Man: Generally we have calculate this on spreadsheets. Think about 60-100 linked pages into which we substitute "what if" values and see what happens to the discounted cash flow. RWM
Generally we have calculate this on spreadsheets. Think about 60-100 linked pages into which we substitute "what if" values and see what happens to the discounted cash flow.
RWM
I hope you start with RTC. It's a capacity problem, primarily, no?
Yes. But as you know RTC just tests the performance of a given infrastructure/train combination, not whether it makes money or not.
60-100 linked spreadsheets pages is scary to contemplate! Ever think of building the application onto a more robust platform?
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
When I rode UP City of St. Louis with my parents "back in the day" near Green River, WY, we were in the diner and the staff kept dropping dishes. My Dad said we have to be going faster than normal, because they are used to serving as the train is moving.
We were running late and when we went up to the Dome car after dinner, Dad talked to a man who was tracking mileposts with his stopwatch. He said we'd been running about 100 mph. Not something that would be allowed today. That's my experience with "high speed" rail.
Railway Man:
I assumed capacity was a key problem against increasing train speeds, but does it seems there is no point in increasing speeds without suitable capacity. It seems unless a third party get involved with the funding of increased capacity, we are not going to see faster speeds on much of the rail network.
Thanks for the info.
oltmannd Railway Man: Generally we have calculate this on spreadsheets. Think about 60-100 linked pages into which we substitute "what if" values and see what happens to the discounted cash flow. RWM I hope you start with RTC. It's a capacity problem, primarily, no?
beaulieu A question for Railway Man, is increasing train length running up against a problem of diminishing returns? It has been commented that the return from going to 315k freight cars from 286k , was significantly less than the gain going from 263k to 286k. Part of the problem was increased rail wear, and part of the problem was tare to weight ratio dropped slightly.
A question for Railway Man, is increasing train length running up against a problem of diminishing returns? It has been commented that the return from going to 315k freight cars from 286k , was significantly less than the gain going from 263k to 286k. Part of the problem was increased rail wear, and part of the problem was tare to weight ratio dropped slightly.
I think that for most main lines on most railroads, train lengths are already at or close to the maximum that the infrastructure will reasonably allow, dictated mostly by siding length and terminal R/D track lengths. Thirty years ago there were some length limits that were dictated more by train-handling concerns and low-strength couplers than by infrastructure. Since 1980 the advent of DP, more uniform consists, air brake improvements and high-strength couplers have enabled train lengths to approach what the infrastructure will allow. I think we will see a continued steady increase in train length, though to what upper limit I don't know. (But clearly there is one.) Current planning envisions 175-car bulk trains within the next 3-5 years, and new sidings at 12,500 feet.
Increased weight limits are more dictated by metallurgy and rail/wheel interface. The closed-system Australian iron ore lines have successfully reached the 315K plateau, but the methods used to do so are not readily transferred economically to North American open-network railroading. The Australian iron ore lines found that if they pay very close attention to wheel profile and rail profile it's possible to achieve 315K economically without uneconomical rail and wheel wear, or rail failures, but they can do so because they control the car fleet and there are no bad-actor cars.
Railway Man Generally we have calculate this on spreadsheets. Think about 60-100 linked pages into which we substitute "what if" values and see what happens to the discounted cash flow. RWM
BT CPSO 266 So it has been brought up that maintenance cost is a key factor in deciding to maintain Class 4 of 5 track, which most of us seem to already know. So the question I have know is what exactly is factored in to find out that maintenance cost? Does the overall length of the trains have any sort of impact on what kind of maintenance is going to be needed? Now lighter trains (like intermodal trains) do tend to have higher speeds. So even if not all of the trains on the route have to operate at 70 mph, how much of an affect is it to insure certain trains can operate at high speeds?
So it has been brought up that maintenance cost is a key factor in deciding to maintain Class 4 of 5 track, which most of us seem to already know.
So the question I have know is what exactly is factored in to find out that maintenance cost? Does the overall length of the trains have any sort of impact on what kind of maintenance is going to be needed?
Now lighter trains (like intermodal trains) do tend to have higher speeds. So even if not all of the trains on the route have to operate at 70 mph, how much of an affect is it to insure certain trains can operate at high speeds?
The short answer is that maintenance cost of a track segment is influenced most strongly by four independent variables: its location; FRA track class that it's maintained to; gross tonnage (typically measured in million gross tons per year, or MGT); train frequency; and desire for operating reliabilty, as follows.
You mentioned that intermodal trains are light. TOFC trains and RoadRailer trains might be, but when I think "intermodal" I am typically planning for double-stacks loaded right to the capacity of those 125-ton center trucks on the well cars. Backhaul trains in particular are often loaded to the load limits of the containers with grain, seed, scrap materials, or ore concentrates. Backhaul containers are loaded beyond street-legal and can only be moved on rubber tires within the confines of the transload terminal and the port.
You asked about the effect on maintenance costs if only a few trains are operated at high speeds. The effect here will primarily be felt in tie defects, and more frequency of surface and line. Those in turn mean more time on track for machinery, which can start to bump up against available windows for track machinery. Track maintenance time is often the fatal flaw when one is thinking about adding passenger trains, along with overtake events, as described below.
For freight trains, track maintenance cost increase is usually NOT the factor that ultimately decides whether some trains will operate at higher speeds. More often, it's line segment capacity. It's impossible to run some trains at higher speeds than most of the trains on lines that have a large number of trains relative to their capacity, because it creates overtake events. On relatively empty main lines, if marketing says they want to put a pair of intermodal trains out there with 70 mph speeds, it might not to hard to get the manifests and locals out of the way. The question is whether the incremental revenue of the new intermodal trains is greater than the incremental cost of improving the track class. On a relatively congested main line, however, those fast trains will soon find themselves bumping up against the rear of the manifests and unit trains, which have no place to go to get out of the way. So the question then becomes whether the incremental revenue of the intermodal trains can pay either for new sidings and/or additional main track plus likely some terminal tracks, so the fast trains have some running room, or whether the revenue from the fast trains can overcome the loss of revenue from the manifest and unit traffic that will have to be pulled off the line in order to make room for them.
Its simple: will you make more money if track speed at a given point is 55, 60, 70, whatever miles per hour. If you don't get a return on the traffic your carrying, it's not worth the extra cost of faster track.
And if it is 70 mph for five out of 100 miles it certainly not worth it, But 70 out of a hundred miles might depending on cargo carried.
Paul, I well remember the article
"The Fast and Frequent Railroad - An operating ratio isn't necessarily holy writ" by Frank E. Shaffer, Trains, September 1968, Vol. 28 No. 11, pgs. 20 - 23 inclusive. The financial and statistical comparisons in the 'sidebar' "D&RGW must be doing something right" at the top of pg. 22, cols. 1 - 2 is interesting.
When I took my first ride on the RG, in July of 1972, I was looking forward to seeing such freights--but I do not recall seeing a single freight on our way from Denver to Salt Lake City.
As to current speeds, the California Zephyr makes good time when it is not going up or down mountains, especially around Grand Junction and west into Utah. Of course, the Gilully Loops (south of Provo), the Front Range, and the canyons east of Glenwood Springs make for slow travel for both freight and passenger service.
Johnny
The CSX 'Chicago Line' (nee, CR/NYC Water Level Route) through Utica routinely sees 60 MPH freights, as evidenced by the reports from the Whitesboro defect detector.
But I've never heard anything faster, Amtrak notwithstanding.
The 2008 CSX timetable lists 50 for freight and 60 for intermodal for most of the line between Selkirk and Buffalo, with a few assorted slowdowns for stations, yards, and special features ("Big Nose Curve" at MP QM192.5 gets 45).
Dewitt Yard garners 30, and Rochester 45 for through trains.
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More pertinent to the topic of this thread, the "Fast and Frequent Railroad" referenced above says that back then, of the D&RGW's 564 rail miles from Denver to Salt Lake City, 2/3 (372 miles) were posted for freight speeds of 60 MPH, and 1/4 (130 miles) for speeds up to 70 MPH (pg. 20, cols. 1 - 2).
On page 22, there's another 'sidebar' - "The West Corners The Speed Market" (cols. 1 - 2), but that is based on the number of miles included in recent years in Trains' then-annual "Speed Survey" by Donald M. Steffee. In that year's article "Setting The Stage For Speed" in the June 1968 Trains (Vol. 28. No. 8, pp. 24 - 37), the thresholds are 50 and 55 MPH for extended distances between yards or crew change/ train service points, etc. - "Race Of The Redballs" (pgs. 30 - 32), and "Table of Aggregate MIleage" (pg. 33). In the latter, the U.S. "Freight" total for "55 MPH Or Over" was 7,185 miles for 55 "runs" = a specific train's schedule that operated at 5 times weekly, so an indiividual route segment could have been counted or included more than once, which is of course different from the Original Poster's question. Similarly, the U.S. Freight total for "50 MPH Or Over" was 32,083 miles for 236 "runs".
The annual "Speed Survey" was discontinued sometime in the 1970's, supposedly because poor track conditions were limiting the number of miles with high-speed running, as I recall. In addition, the passenger trains that were the mainstays of the Survey's review anad reader interest had been cut drastically by the May 15 (?), 1971 advent of Amtrak, which also slowed down some of those schedules. Further, the 1974 fuel crisis led to other slowdowns of all kinds of trains - and I suspect that the 12 to 14 pages that the Survey took in each issue were too much for most of the readership's interest, and could be put to better use. Certainly I have yet to read any of those Speed Surveys in its entirety - they seemed like a lot of dry numbers and analysis of trivia, kind of like the railroading version of sports statistics . . .
- Paul North.
Railway Man henry6: Another way to achieve faster freight schedules was what the D&RGW did years ago: shorter trains. Yeah, more trains, more crews, but got over the road faster, got better locomotive/equipment utilization, better crew utilization, less overtime, satisfied customers. Win/win/win/win/win situation. But bottom liners saw longer trains meant fewer trains, fewer crews, maybe only a couple fewer locomotives, and less money spent therefore higher return. But that higher return was on investment and not repeat business. Larger locomotives, larger cars, better equipment technology of course allows for longer trains, but still, I don't think it matches fast, reliable service to the customer (who will pay for the service) nor for the equipment utilization. [snipped out "fleeting"] Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits. It didn't work and was abandoned; D&RGW reverted to long-slow-infrequent trains. Under the short-fast-frequent concept, crew costs went up, fuel costs went up, and locomotive costs went up. Car hire went down a little. Revenue per car did not go up. It could not; railroads were regulated at that time! Because costs per car went up, but revenue per car could not go up, every carload of additional business attracted by the faster service (which was not much faster, nor was much new business attracted) was a carload hauled at a lower margin, in some cases at a negative margin. You cannot lose a dollar on every carload and hope to make it up on volume. Bottom-line types -- which is what railroaders are supposed to be, because this is a business -- looked at the numbers and concluded that it didn't pay. [snip] RWM
henry6: Another way to achieve faster freight schedules was what the D&RGW did years ago: shorter trains. Yeah, more trains, more crews, but got over the road faster, got better locomotive/equipment utilization, better crew utilization, less overtime, satisfied customers. Win/win/win/win/win situation. But bottom liners saw longer trains meant fewer trains, fewer crews, maybe only a couple fewer locomotives, and less money spent therefore higher return. But that higher return was on investment and not repeat business. Larger locomotives, larger cars, better equipment technology of course allows for longer trains, but still, I don't think it matches fast, reliable service to the customer (who will pay for the service) nor for the equipment utilization. [snipped out "fleeting"]
Another way to achieve faster freight schedules was what the D&RGW did years ago: shorter trains. Yeah, more trains, more crews, but got over the road faster, got better locomotive/equipment utilization, better crew utilization, less overtime, satisfied customers. Win/win/win/win/win situation. But bottom liners saw longer trains meant fewer trains, fewer crews, maybe only a couple fewer locomotives, and less money spent therefore higher return. But that higher return was on investment and not repeat business. Larger locomotives, larger cars, better equipment technology of course allows for longer trains, but still, I don't think it matches fast, reliable service to the customer (who will pay for the service) nor for the equipment utilization.
[snipped out "fleeting"]
Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits. It didn't work and was abandoned; D&RGW reverted to long-slow-infrequent trains. Under the short-fast-frequent concept, crew costs went up, fuel costs went up, and locomotive costs went up. Car hire went down a little. Revenue per car did not go up. It could not; railroads were regulated at that time! Because costs per car went up, but revenue per car could not go up, every carload of additional business attracted by the faster service (which was not much faster, nor was much new business attracted) was a carload hauled at a lower margin, in some cases at a negative margin. You cannot lose a dollar on every carload and hope to make it up on volume. Bottom-line types -- which is what railroaders are supposed to be, because this is a business -- looked at the numbers and concluded that it didn't pay.
[snip]
I believe this is the article that RWM referenced above - it's the only one I'm aware of, anyway:
A couple years later in 1970 a pair of 'companion' articles - to me, at least - by Robert A. Le Massena were also published in Trains, as follows:
"Is GTM/TH Valid? - Tonnage x Speed = Deception", April 1970, Vol. 30 No. 6, pgs. 37 - 39 inclusive; and,
"SHORTER+STEEPER=FASTER+CHEAPER - Survival as It Relates to Distance and Gradients" (also "Can Steep Be Speedy?" on the cover, and "Steeper Equals Faster" in the Table of Contents), August 1970, Vol. 30 No. 10, pgs. 44 - 46 inclusive.
The tracks in the San Juaquin Valley from Bakersfield to Stockton is flat and pretty straight and is definetly capable of 70MPH trains. I do not know what speed Amtrak runs its trains at along this corridor to Sacramento.
For 20 or 30 years, I have been of the opinion that speed, i.e., time in transit for freight, has been a bogus issue largley promoted by United Parcel Service. But, if I can be a conspircy therorist, the concept was also pushed by my fellow bean counters who looked at the short term interest rates of the 1980's of 15 to 25% and concluded that inventory carrying costs demanded that everything had to get to the destination faster. The argument has merits if the time is weeks versus days. But more often the issue became confused with the concept of "just in time", which when effectively employed means how long it takes to get here is irrelevant, so long as we don't have to stop our further processing waiting for the shipment to arrive.
Any good professional in the business of buying transportation service-traffic or transportation managers, purchasing agents, production and logistics managers, (now all known as "supply side" managers)-are very capable of planning deliveries to keep the internal operations of their businesses running smoothly. The one who is always on the phone yelling he needs to have a shipment buy 6:00am tomorrow probably should be contemplating a future career as a Walmart greeter.
As for general public consumers buying on-line, I have to wonder how meany actually know that their package arrived two days later than the advertised schedule. (I do. My my January Trains has yet to be delivered, but I am special).
Just because they are in competition with very time efficient over-the-road trucking service, railroads have to be dealing with transit times on intermodal service. While the speed of intermodal trains is a factor in the business, it appears to me that terminal operations have been recognized as the low hanging fruit. Compared to just a couple of decades ago, I suspect with improvments in terminal design, handling equipment and IT, the time to get a shipment through an intermodal terminal has dramatically dropped.
Moving back to the original subject of this thread, it is worth noting that FRA regulations specifiy maximum freight trains speeds of 60MPH for Class 4 track and 80MPH for Class 5. I will leave it to the engineer types here to confirm, but it is my understanding that the jump in building and maintaining track from 4 to 5 is big. The jump in fuel cost for running 80MPH vs. 60MPH may be even greater. Grade and allignment is always a critical limiting factor, but I don't read or hear much about investments to modify or improve those conditions. At the same time, I don't pick up any indication that the Class 1 railroads are reducing freight train speeds.
On the other hand, there some recent technology improvements being put into place that are said to improve the efficiency of train movement. Norfolk Southern has started to install an information system designed as a dispatch aid. Admiting some initial skepticism, NS CEO Wick Moorman now believes that the system can improve average train transit times by 10%.
Canadian Pacific has taken an interesting approach to the issue of train frequency as an impediment to over the road time by implementing a plan to substantially increase train length using available technology for remote controled locomotives strategically distributed in the train. Recognizing that a mechanical break down of a long train can caise serious disruptions to operations, they are focusing on the development of technology to identify mechanical weakness before failures. CP President Fred Green said that the goal is to move people who now look for mechanical problems to fixing the problems before failures.
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Railway Man Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits.
Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits.
My recollection was 1968 (think I have good memory, but know it isn't perfect), will be easy to check once Kalmbach gets the index back on-line. You did get the right decade.
Short and fast makes more sense for passengers than freight.
-Erik
zardoz Railway Man: Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits. It didn't work and was abandoned; D&RGW reverted to long-slow-infrequent trains. Under the short-fast-frequent concept, crew costs went up, fuel costs went up, and locomotive costs went up. To begin with, I am going to call a train 'short' if it is under 75 cars lengths long (regardless of tonnage) and assuming proper train blocking and no distributed power. As long as everything is working correctly, then I agree with what you say. However, when things start going wrong, the longer the train--the slower the problems get resolved; and let's not forget to factor in weather-related delays. In addition, some operating territories are more favorable to different size trains.
Railway Man: Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits. It didn't work and was abandoned; D&RGW reverted to long-slow-infrequent trains. Under the short-fast-frequent concept, crew costs went up, fuel costs went up, and locomotive costs went up.
Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits. It didn't work and was abandoned; D&RGW reverted to long-slow-infrequent trains. Under the short-fast-frequent concept, crew costs went up, fuel costs went up, and locomotive costs went up.
To begin with, I am going to call a train 'short' if it is under 75 cars lengths long (regardless of tonnage) and assuming proper train blocking and no distributed power.
Which is why when it dropped below zero we split trains in two, as I think your road did also?
I cannot see how shorter trains on the DRGW increased costs, at least in its' mountain districts. When factoring in time needed to add/remove helpers, the cost of the additional helper crew, and the limited time on duty vs miles covered, not to mention the increased likelihood of a break-in-two, I sure do not see savings.
Additionally, the big train will have to be handled with kid gloves the entire trip due to the complexities of operating a huge train over difficult terrain. Whereas a short train can be run much quicker account less slack action and less occurrences of some cars of the train going uphill and some cars going downhill and further along in the train more cars going uphill, etc., all at the same time. Perhaps on the wide-open prairies with flat profiles and limited curvature a long heavy train would not be as likely to have problems.
To have to stop a 9000' 12000-ton train to line a switch into a siding, then pull out of the siding and either reline the switch or leave it open (thereby stopping the next train) takes a good deal of time in nice weather; in the cold and snow--forget it.
Also not mentioned in these discussions is the amount of time it takes to assemble a long train in the yard. Doubling, tripling, and quadrupling a train together, charging the trainline, then pulling the monster thru the yard at restricted speed (prepared to stop for each switch which translated into about a 2-3 mph speed thru the yard--well, you get the idea. There have been many times I went on duty at Proviso and died on my hours before ever seeing the main line. Then factor in the delays to other trains due to the monster's problems. I've put together 11000 foot train at Proviso, where my head end was at North Avenue yard and the hind end was still deep into East 5. In effect, we had most of Proviso tied up, including the diesel ramp.
Regarding the speed issue: a VP once told me that the one place the railroads could save money was by making the yards more efficient, instead of making the main line capable of higher speed. He pointed out that to go 200 miles at 60mph takes 3 hours 20 minutes, but at 40mph it takes only 1 hour 40 minutes longer. However, the costs of maintaining the track at 60mph capacity vs 40mph are huge (or so I've been told). However, I'm sure there are other factors I have not considered, which might blow my arguments out of the water.
Terminals are also (in my opinion) the major bugaboo. We've done a lot to fix line-of-road capacity and throughput problems. But terminals have not been improved as much (also in my opinion) in part because railroads regard them as perennial money drains that just cost money and don't earn it. But more important is that terminal operations are much more difficult to quantify, allocate costs to, and understand, than line-of-road. It's hard to justify spending money improving a piece of infrastructure when you can't explain how it works, why it costs what it costs, or even how to measure performance before and after a project. There's an understandable fear that you can throw hundreds of millions of dollars at a single terminal and accomplish nothing, and given that this exact scenario has happened more than once, people in my level of the organization are very gunshy about taking on the risks of terminal investment.
henry6 Interesting thoughts, RWM. But I wonder if today, shorter and faster trains would possibly be more productive if the need for such large power was also reduced. Would an SD40 like locomotive, or two, be better with 50 cars than two behemouth 7000hp units with 125 or 150 cars? What would the cost impact be on crew cost and use from the 4 and 5 man crews of the 60's to the 2 man crews of today? Computerized traffic control, wayside dectection, today's technologies in track and train? All could mean a different dynamic and different outcome. Even a chance to look at crew fatigue and home resting.
Interesting thoughts, RWM. But I wonder if today, shorter and faster trains would possibly be more productive if the need for such large power was also reduced. Would an SD40 like locomotive, or two, be better with 50 cars than two behemouth 7000hp units with 125 or 150 cars? What would the cost impact be on crew cost and use from the 4 and 5 man crews of the 60's to the 2 man crews of today? Computerized traffic control, wayside dectection, today's technologies in track and train? All could mean a different dynamic and different outcome. Even a chance to look at crew fatigue and home resting.
The cost studies we do continually demonstrate that longer trains are the way to go, as do the line-of-road capacity studies. We've certainly looked at short-frequent concepts. We will continue to look at short-frequent concepts. I am pretty sure after I retire in a few years that the people I've trained will continue to consider short-frequent concepts. It's easy to do and the payoff if it works, compared to the cost to run these studies, is potentially enormous, so we're not about to not turn over that stone just because we might not have done it that way before. We haven't found one that pencilled out yet.
As to fast, we haven't been able to demonstrate either with capacity simulations, or with real-world experience, that shorter and more frequent was able to do anything other than suck up crews and kill track capacity. It really falls apart on single-track railroads because there's a greater frequency of meet-pass events, and those are time killers.
This is not to say that there's no upper limit to train length. There is. Every subdivision has a sweet spot on train length versus cost versus revenue, and going off the deep end on too long is not a good idea either. Lots of eager young operating officers have tried to run trains longer than their physical plant would support, and I imagine that 100 years from now there will be still be the same people trying to do the same thing, and rediscovering the same limits, and having to admit that, oh, doing things like running two non-clearing trains toward each other is a guaranteed dog-catch for one or both trains.
henry6 First note that Knieling's statements were based on track and train dynamics of the 60's and 70's and that much has changed since. So his statement cannot be as easily applied today as back then. In fact, I am led to believe that there actually is a greater disparity between passenger and freight train dynamics today than used to be. Size differentials, stablizing differentials, etc. all contribute to track differentials both cronlogically and physically.. There is less superelevation needed for today's freight cars, for instance. Back in the 1970's D&H President Bruce Sterzing was able to boast he got a 50 mile per hour freight railroad instead of 35 when Amtrak improved his route to Montreal. Such might not be the case today. But I do wonder if some of the freight train speeds were lower because of the needed stopping distances rather than the track ability to carry the loads?
First note that Knieling's statements were based on track and train dynamics of the 60's and 70's and that much has changed since. So his statement cannot be as easily applied today as back then. In fact, I am led to believe that there actually is a greater disparity between passenger and freight train dynamics today than used to be. Size differentials, stablizing differentials, etc. all contribute to track differentials both cronlogically and physically.. There is less superelevation needed for today's freight cars, for instance. Back in the 1970's D&H President Bruce Sterzing was able to boast he got a 50 mile per hour freight railroad instead of 35 when Amtrak improved his route to Montreal. Such might not be the case today. But I do wonder if some of the freight train speeds were lower because of the needed stopping distances rather than the track ability to carry the loads?
Track/train dynamics is not my area of expertise, but comparing my manuals from the 1960s to my manuals of today, I'm not seeing much difference in the net result on track design such as superelevation, spiral length, tangency between curves, etc.. I certainly am not finding any significant difference in the amount of superelevation that is required for freight trains or passenger trains for a given speed, for a given degree of curvature, for a given unbalance.
Re stopping distances. In and of itself, stopping distances matter only for wayside signal spacing on a line of road equipped with ABS or CTC. In dark territory, it matters not. (I have dispatched dark territory using manual block rules with a 60 mph maximum freight train speed, but I don't think there is any of that left in the U.S. now) If the signals are not far enough apart for the desired maximum speeds, that can be mitigated by changing the signal aspect progression, e.g., having two hard yellows in a row, two flashing yellows in a row, etc. The line capacity is diminished somewhat because trains can't follow as closely, but that is usually not viewed as a problem. I have never heard of a subdivision where someone said "we'd like to have a zone speed of 70 mph but we can only get 65 mph because of signal spacing." Today we are assuming a greater number of tons per operative brake than we did in the 1960s. The forumulae we use today assume 315K cars, whereas in 1970 people were using 286K or 263K. That means that signal spacing is slightly greater today than in the past for a given speed limit. But it's fairly uncommon to discover existing wayside signal locations that don't "space out" properly for 315K for the given aspect progression and speed limit. When we do, we change the aspects or in rare cases respace the intermediates. Many of the intermediates in the U.S. were respaced in the 1950s, by the way, in order to enable longer heavier trains that were enabled by dieselization.
One significant difference today is that bridge ratings now use dynamic loads. Those have only begun to be considered within the last 10 years or so, I think. But I have yet to see an instance where it made a difference in the maximum allowable speed across bridges on a high-volume main track.
Passenger-train speed is mostly limited by the amount of unbalance that the operator wishes to tolerate, and by adherence to the vertical and horizontal geometry that is mandated for each FRA track class.
What matters MOST for speed limits are the following:
Back to the original question about freight train speed, the answer is there is a substantial amount of main track in the U.S. (and Canada, but less so Mexico) that could nominally support 70 mph freight trains based on horizontal alignment considerations, and outside of terminals. It might take a T&S (ties and surface) program to gain the next higher FRA track class. But the usual reason it's not done is that the prospective marginal revenue increase from faster trains is not offset by the net of greater track maintenance cost, greater fuel cost, greater equipment and crew utilization (if any), and greater track time occupancy for maintenance activities. The latter is often a major problem for passenger operations that want to be hosted on freight railroads -- by the time the additional track time for suface and line is figured in, you can come into a case where you actually have to add some double track so you can maintain one track while you run on the other. And often the greater speed that might be gained on the line-of-road cannot be brought down to an actual improved schedule to any significant degree or in a way that means anything to the customer. For example, if you currently have a fifth-morning delivery for a domestic intermodal product, getting the box to the destination ramp at 5 pm on day 4 instead of 4 am on day 5 doesn't mean anything for a customer who doesn't open his warehouse dock to receive trailers until 7 am in the morning.
Railway Man Short-fast-frequent trains on D&RGW is one of those stories that captured the railfan imagination following an article in Trains (circa 1964, as I recall), and subsquently amplified, celebrated, and held up as an example to us by numerous railfan pundits. It didn't work and was abandoned; D&RGW reverted to long-slow-infrequent trains. Under the short-fast-frequent concept, crew costs went up, fuel costs went up, and locomotive costs went up.
As for fleeting...I see a lot of back up in Binghamton these days with the new single track operation west to Owego, NY and, in reality I think, all the way to Waverly, distances of 25 and 45 miles. I will admit there is still track work being done...pick up and clean up of track 1 still in progress. There are grumblings already about the missing track for the 45 miles but I think that it is only because of the work being done. By next Spring the single track program will be in place all the way through as the interlocking is in at Owego to cross over and send everything west on 2 and is in fact being done. (What is surprising to me is that the Herzog train runs track one to pick up and clean up track 2 from the side rather than one train working one direction picking up from behind...seems to me quicker without stopping for traffic or interfearing with traffic flow in general.) Another problem here is that east of Binghamton you have two different traffic patterns, one south and east to Scranton, Allentown, or Harrisburg, the other northeast to Albany, Montreal, or New England. Westbound service for fleeting would be dependent on both feeds being in the same time frame. Add to that the 3 times a week feed from the NYS&W, too.
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