Amtrak Mail & Express to End.

[Anonymous]

I think the bottom line is (or, should I say "President Gunn's line): Amtrak is a passenger railroad and he wants to stay the course on that concept. Regardless if the roadrailers were netting an annual $15M profit, or not. As far as UPS considering change, it may be the 'ol "if it ain't broken, don't fix it".

[conrailman]

Where is all them Boxcars and Railroader going to.What Railroad is buying all them Cars, I think UP is buying all the Boxcars and NS is buying all the Railroader. I hope Amtrak gets alot of money for the sale of them cars and put the money to good use to fix all them cars at the Beech Grove Shop.[2c]

[Junctionfan]

So are you saying that UPS big-wigs are too lazy to use something that might work better? I don't understand the logic behind your arguements. Does it make sense in the operation sense? Would this solve UPS's problem with not being able to ship more by UP (up paying for ups to ship by trucks)?

It seems to me that through UP, or any other railroad that may be or is at capacity, the only other rail option is Amtrak since they already have running rights with the class 1s. Rather than spend the money on cranes or lifting equipment to lift the trailers on flats, they can use the MHCs for it and only run it as required. I would think UP wouldn't mind as Amtrak would be responsible for crew changes I believe and UPS would have to wait for UP finding crews and locomotives for their trains.

[conrailman]

Who is buying all them Boxcars and Railroader?

[oltmannd]

I agree with what Mark said 100%. Part of the problem of railroading is that it takes extraordinary effort just to make the ordinary happen every day. Every day is a different disaster. The challenge is to make as much of the ordinary happen by itself so that attention can be given making things better.

I'm sure that everything that goes wrong on the RR could be fixed, but at what cost? Take a hot box. There are very few burnoffs these days because of hotbox detectors, but there are more "false postives" than actual hotboxes. So, you might set a goal to reduce the "false positives" and all the delay assoc. with doing the manual inspection. This costs R&D money and any upgrade to detectors is competing with other capital improvement projects (more on this later). Burnoffs are a complete disaster, so maybe you want improved detection. You could investigate acoustic detection or maybe installl more thermal detectors, but you have the same problem - $$$.

If you can scrape up enough engineering support to come up with a workable improvement plan, you still have to find a way to fund it and you are competing for capital where most times it's hard to scrape up enough $$ to do the basics, like track replacement and locomotive overhauls. Capital $$ for improvments are very hard to come by. An example of this was Conrail building new or expanding intermodal terminals with stone parking lots instead of paving. Even though there was a positive rate of return to do the paving since you could elimate grading and dust control, there just wasn't the capital to do it.

[Junctionfan]

Do some of their sorting facilities have access to rail? Would a rail spur help?
I have a slight problem with your answer. In between the MHC cars and the trailers would be a building hopefully will level or a rampart in between the railcars and building. The building should have truck docks. As long as UPS puts there stuff on forkliftable crates, why wouldn't this be O.K., keeping in mind that some time would be made up with P-42s going passenger speed instead of the intermodal speed. Even if such a building doesn't exist, we have the technology to assemble ramps in between MHC and UPS trailer. Just don't unload them one at a time. Each pick up trailer has a driver; the driver can easily move crates to and from the MHCs and the trailers. UPS can train them, as most business do; or the terminal workers would have to do it for them if the UPS drivers for that job are bound to the can't move anything over 50 LBS rule which could be changed for this task.

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan

Why can't Amtrak and UPS work together. Instead of UPS using trailers on tofc, UPS should lease Amtrak's MHC cars. The MHC cars run by themself as an "as required" train. The UPS trailers can wait at terminals or empty passenger platforms; what ever.
This would likely benifit UPS in that P-42s can go faster than SD70s and Dash 9s. It also means that UP doesn't have to worry about fiting UPS into its capacity (crew shortage problems) and doesn't have to pay UPS to ship it by truck. Maybe they can find other parcel services like Federal Express, ICS Courier, and Purolator as potential customers to ensure a profitable existance.

Because UPS's service is designed around their trailers backing up to thier loading docks at their sorting facilities. Everything at UPS is time and motion engineered to the nth degree - nobody is more obsessed with industrial engr. than UPS. A transload from MHC to UPS trailer would most likely be cost prohibitive.

[Junctionfan]

Why can't Amtrak and UPS work together. Instead of UPS using trailers on tofc, UPS should lease Amtrak's MHC cars. The MHC cars run by themself as an "as required" train. The UPS trailers can wait at terminals or empty passenger platforms; what ever.
This would likely benifit UPS in that P-42s can go faster than SD70s and Dash 9s. It also means that UP doesn't have to worry about fiting UPS into its capacity (crew shortage problems) and doesn't have to pay UPS to ship it by truck. Maybe they can find other parcel services like Federal Express, ICS Courier, and Purolator as potential customers to ensure a profitable existance.

[Anonymous]

......and I'll go back to the good ole' irrefutable argument: You won't know if it will work or not unless someone actually tries it first. Take a chance, run the prototype, collect the hard data, run the numbers, then and only then will you have a basis for making a sound judgement.

Amtrak tried to supplement income with a nickel and dime M & E, but somewhere along the line someone must have realized that what they were doing was data collection of a prototype business model, meant to be applicable to a larger operation. I can't believe Amtrak really thought the M & E they were running was the be all end all of the freight supplementation for passenger service model. Any business person will tell you it's all about volume. Amtrak's failure with M & E was not taking it to the sustainable level (I know, I know, then they would have been in competition with the Class I's intermodal operations).

If that's the case (e.g. Amtrak can't run a true money making M & E due to unfair competition with Class I's), then the obvious solution to the "need" to have passenger rail in the U.S. is to do what should have been done 30 years ago: Instead of creating a national passenger rail company, the federales should have just subsidized the most useful Class I passenger operations (possibly with tax breaks based on passenger miles). Return passenger operations to the Class I's with enough tax and regulatory incentives to make it worth their while. Then we might see a revival of a true M & E operations in the vein of GN's Western Star.

[Overmod]

We covered some of this idea in a recent thread, "Team engineers". Go back and read the arguments there, and tell me if you're still enamored of this idea.

I had great respect for John Kneiling -- but I think he was mistaken in attempting to equate the tasks and skills of river towboat service with railroading. There might be more support if you were to schedule the service RELIABLY with exchanges so that crews could shuttle from home to away in, say, 36 or 48 hours total turn... but getting this coordinated in modern American railroading would involve precisely the kind of joke reliance on textbook precision that so many experienced railroaders on this forum scoff at most.

There is a possible advantage in setting up a crew dormitory, kitchen, rec/shower facility etc. in the front end of something like an Amfleet car, but you would then have to provide proper enclosed-corridor access to the locomotive from there, something that Genesis units are not particularly good at if you use more than one of them. Be fun to hear the excuses about 6000hp B-B express locomotives, won't it?

As pointed out elsewhere, the actual time expended for scheduled crew changes is minimal, and can easily be combined with the mandatory regular stops to check equipment. Where the 'advantage' of team crews comes in is in all those situations where the crew times out with the train in a less accessible area, and the van has to start making trips with relief personnel. Is it worth paying what's essentially more than time-and-a-half to provide continuous crewing against the cost of the time, van, and driver? I think most railroads can answer that pretty quickly...

There's a lot more involved in passenger service than 'tacking on another coach-sleeper'. First of all -- how many trainsets are we discussing here? Transcons would require a set for each 'train' -- that's going to be six or eight sets of equipment, and it's going where the containers or pigs go, which isn't going to be pleasant for the passengers a lot of the time. Consider the follies involved in a container train to LA that has to run into LAUPT... somehow... both inbound and outbound, with a trip down to the San Pedro area in the meantime. Leave the freight sitting while the pax section backs in and out? Break the train and use 'transfer' power?

And, in any case, where is the value of that 'hotshot running at passenger speeds' in today's economy? I can make some very good cases for *building* markets for this kind of service -- but it doesn't exist today in any form that a railroad can reliably exploit. Wi***he answer were different!

[Anonymous]

Remember John Kneiling's "ship train" concept? You put a passenger coach or two (for the crew during off time) with the lead units, tack on an extra fuel tanker or two, and have the crews work 12 hour on 12 hours off, 10 days on and 10 days off (or something to that effect), just like ship and riverboat crews do. That way your train can run through unnecessary stops like crew changes and refueling, and you don't have to ferry crews back and forth, and there is no train stopping out in the middle of nowhere due to a crew going dead (they just change with the new crew on the fly).

How much more difficult would it be to tack on another coach/sleeper or two for regular passengers willing to stay on board non-stop from terminal to terminal (e.g. Seattle to Chicago)? If this somehow could result in a Class I claiming "passenger service" for the sake of kicking Amtrak off the home rails, maybe it would fly. Imagine a non-stop mixed hotshot running at passenger speeds. How much time would that knock off the current intermodal schedule cross country?

[Anonymous]

Yes and no. I'm just trying to give an outside perspective of this whole Amtrak/Mail and Express thing. Amtrak's approach was that M & E would help pay for the inherent losses in the passenger business. To do this, you need a whole lot of M & E e.g. utilize economies of scale to overcome the underperformance of the niche market Amtrak was pursuing.

If Amtrak really wanted to come up with a way to engage in a freight business to offset passenger losses, they would have to run de facto intermodal trains and then tack a few passenger cars onto the consist to maintain the whole passenger concept. Of course, they're not going to do this, nor are the Class I's going to allow them to do this. But the idea has more merit than what they're doing now, and if Amtrak could somehow get away with providing an unfair competition for intermodal, they could use this model to get off the taxpayers' backs!

[Anonymous]

One other thing regarding the idea of running passengers with pigs. It would be advantageous for Amtrak to do this since it would allow more frequency of arrivals/departures for the passengers. Don't most of Amtrak's cross country trains run something like three times a week? If instead we ran three or so passenger coaches with the intermodals, we could have arrival/departures every six to eight hours, or whenever a hot TOFC is scheduled. This could end up attracting a larger passenger clientele.

Add this to the previous discussions of the logistical problems or running passenger cars with TOFC (most of which can be solved by use of distributed power), and we've just solved the whole Amtrak problem.

[conrailman]

UP maybe are buying all amtrak Boxcars and NS or BNSF is buying amtrak Roadrailers[2c]

[oltmannd]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Overmod

Regarding RoadRailer passenger:

Completely aside from the FRA impact standards, passenger safety et al. (which are all correct as noted above) there's the issue of suitability.

Railroads tried the bus approach in the '50s, with the Aerotrain and other boners. Has anyone looked at the accelerometer data from the latest generation of RoadRailers to see what the ride quality of one of these trailers, con-verted to passenger service, would be? I, for one, wouldn't want to see the arrangements that would have to be made for low-level passenger access (it's interesting to put a vestibule on a trailer, and bus steps aren't too good an option).

Of course, there WOULD be a substantial market for "passenger" trailers in the RV industry (anybody seen those modified Freightliner tractors already used as RVs?) -- think of 'em as ultra-goosenecks.

How are we to know that many of the existing TOFC moves aren't shackle-equipped prisoner trailers already? (You'd almost have to put shackles on RoadRailer passenger trains to keep the pax on board past the first stop ;-})

I've seen data from "Amtrak" roadrailers, which have swing-motion trucks, at speeds up to 100 mph. The ride was nearly Amfleet quality at speed. I actually got to ride a test train on the NEC up to 100 mph. Regular "freight" Roadrailers have std 3 pc frt trucks, so I would expect "freight quality" ride.

Funny you should mention Aerotrain - I had the same thought!

Concerning the whole UPS/passenger compatibility issue, as everyone has pointed out, there are serious logisitical, safety and commercial issues. But, on top of that, there are some serious economic issues. UPS uses rail on lanes where it has high volume AND where they can get schedules that fit into their package sorting network. In the vast majority of these lanes, the frt schedules are much slower than the passenger schedules. UPS would gain little by somewhat faster schedules, so would not be willing to pay more and I think the UPS schedules are generally too slow to attact passengers.

For example, take NS 215 from Chicago to Jacksonville via Cincinnati, Chattanooga and Atlanta with thru traffic to Miami on FEC. An excellent candidate for long distance service. Connects several large cities with a whole bunch of secondary population centers (Ft. Wayne IN, Macon GA and Lexington KY to name a few). Also goes to Florida - a huge leisure destination. Carries UPS traffic. 1150+ miles in 48+ hrs, avg speed = 24 mph! (excluding stop time, 28 mph)

[Overmod]

Regarding RoadRailer passenger:

Completely aside from the FRA impact standards, passenger safety et al. (which are all correct as noted above) there's the issue of suitability.

Railroads tried the bus approach in the '50s, with the Aerotrain and other boners. Has anyone looked at the accelerometer data from the latest generation of RoadRailers to see what the ride quality of one of these trailers, con-verted to passenger service, would be? I, for one, wouldn't want to see the arrangements that would have to be made for low-level passenger access (it's interesting to put a vestibule on a trailer, and bus steps aren't too good an option).

Of course, there WOULD be a substantial market for "passenger" trailers in the RV industry (anybody seen those modified Freightliner tractors already used as RVs?) -- think of 'em as ultra-goosenecks.

How are we to know that many of the existing TOFC moves aren't shackle-equipped prisoner trailers already? (You'd almost have to put shackles on RoadRailer passenger trains to keep the pax on board past the first stop ;-})

[Anonymous]

Mail has historically been a profit center for passenger trains. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well to operate a mail network with slow trains that on many routes pass by only once daily. In areas where there is greater frequency (such as certain corridors including the NEC) or no alternative transportation (Empire Builder route in certain areas) it would seem that mail by rail would make sense. I would expect that in time some of these areas will again see mail service via Amtrak. As to Express, that was an ill conceived idea that could never compete with either the freight roads or the UPS and other package shippers and truckers.

LC

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill

Aside from all the other problems:

1. Are the schedules between UPS and Amtrak even remotely compatible?

2. Who has priority on connections? Do the pigs wait for an hour while the passenger waits for a connection?

3. Who has priority when one falls down: does UPS miss its sort and its service commitment because a passenger gets sick en route and the train stops to transfer the passenger to EMS? Or does Amtrak hold the train for an hour for a late trailer?

4. Do you move the passenger platform to the pig ramp? Or the pig ramp to the depot? If not, either the pigs or the passengers are going to get a hit on each end. If you're lucky and the tracks line up just right, a straight drop, only 10 minutes. If you're not -- and most places, you are not -- it will be an hour minimum added to someone's schedule.

5. Passengers have to go ahead of the pigs -- HEP, slack, etc. Makes it awfully difficult to drop a coach/cafe-car for a connection.

As for Mark's points above, this could be solved by the use of distributed power: Lead unit + pigs + second unit + passengers. In fact, this use of distributed power could also solve some of the other logistical problems as mentioned in #'s 1 through 5 above:

1. Run the mixed on the UPS schedule (Didn't most of the Class I's old M & E's run it this way in the pre-Amtrak days?)

2. Run on the UPS schedule.

3. If a passenger gets sick and the passenger consist must stop, just separate the passenger section from the freight section, let the freight roll on while the passengers probably disembark via bus (like they do now when Amtrak has an unexpected delay). If a trailer is an hour late, so will the passenger consist.

4. Doesn't matter with distributed power. The passenger consist loads at the station with the main crew and the second unit, then they all roll up to the ramp to connect with the rear of the freight, the crew is shuttled up to the lead unit and off they go

5. With distributed power, the second unit at the rear of the pigs provides the HEP. This way they can add on or drop off a coach or two without breaking up the freight consist. Of course, this only happens if the freight is already scheduled to stop for a crew change or refueling, etc.

As for my comment about passengers losing money so why care if M & E loses money, that was just an observation about Amtrak's seeming charter, ie. It's okay to lose money on passengers since that's an accepted "fact" in the railroading world, but if the freight loses money....! The one way to fix it so the Amtrak M & E makes money is for the Congress to force the Postal Service to use Amtrak for it's ground service (one subsidized government entity helping another). I mean, if we are forced to spend 37 cents for a stamp to subsidize the postal service, why should that money be spent on a private intermodal company when Amtrak will suffice? I for one would be willing to pay twice that much for a good ol' RPO postmark.

[fuzzybroken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill

If you look at the morass these questions lead you into, it points right directly to some of the fatal flaws in the Amtrak M&E scheme. There were a lot more flaws than just this, though. The only time you can successfully mix two different businesses on the same platform is when one business can tolerate having lower priority. Trying to do two things at once to 100% performance levels -- which is the nature of both passenger and small-package express -- will accomplish neither.

Now you're going to tell me that the airlines do this every day. Yes, but, they also have an enormous army of people and mountains of equipment to pull it off. A dinky little airline like Frontier with 45 jets and all of 45 destinations has 4,500 employees! The railroads pulled it off to, 50 years ago. They also had armies of employees and mountains of equipment. They,and the airlines today, also give 100% priority to the passenger schedule. If you're UPS, why would you want to give up any control when you already have enough market power to run your own trains and one of the world's largest airlines?

OK, I'm not totally against the idea, as long as you hire me and my friends to run it. There will be lots of overtime, and the coordination meetings to coordinate the uncoordinatable will be endless. I can sit around and argue all day for the right money.

I like it! I'll volunteer for a position in the venture as well.

Heck, I'm almost surprised UPS hasn't gone ahead and built its own railroad yet. I guess nobody picked up any "ideas" from the promotional train set they offered a few years back... [swg] I guess no railroad has provided substandard enough service for them to do this, but UP sure seemed to be trying...

Of course, why does this have to be UPS or USPS? DHL seemed to at least have the thought of rail service in their minds when they ran that one commercial...

Glad to provide more topic fodder,
-Mark
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill

... and shedding little aluminum feathers as they went.

and not a little glass and plastic

[conrailman]

Will amtrak cut some trains because of this Mail and Express in Nov. Timetable. Will amtrak keep train 40 and 41 from New York to Chicago. Amtrak should put 40 and 41 on the Capitol Limited from Pittsburgh to Chicago get it way from CSX .[^]

[morseman]

I understand Amtrak used to run a special mail only train from Boston on the NE corridor. What were it's intermediat stops? Where did it terminate? Is it still running? If it's still running will Gunn be getting rid of it also???????????????

[jeaton]

Mark-Interesting thought. I sure don't know if that was considered. On the downside, it cuts the revenue stream three ways, and as noted earlier, the freight railroads were not happy about Amtrak getting into the business at all.

Obviously if one has no business relationship with a competitor, a decision to go with something can be unilateral. However, if the potential competitor is also the provider of an absolutly essential piece of one's business-be very, very careful.

[fuzzybroken]

Hmm, too bad. Guess I'll have to catch a few #7s and #8s at Waterford Avenue before the M&E are all gone.

This kind of got me thinking, though. UPS intermodal trains are usually the top-priority trains after Amtrak, right? Could UPS trains combine with some Amtrak trains to (1) expedite both, and (2) run only one train for both services, thereby saving money? This would, of course, have to be a three-party agreement, with Amtrak, UPS, and the host railroad all agreeing to the service. That alone would probably kill the whole idea.

Anybody else got insight or ideas?

-Mark
http://www.geocities.com/fuzzybroken

[jeaton]

CSSH... Is exactly on point. When railroads were the primary mode of intercity public transportation, the Railway Expres Agency was their busines arm handling express, and the service was available almost anywhere. When the rail passenger service network started to shrink, first general commodity less-than-truckload carriers moved in with hard competition and when airplanes could start to handle some tonnages near today's levels, they and the air freight forwards also got into the business big time. Then folks like UPS, FedEx, DHL and even good old USPS got into the act. Does that sound like enough competition?

Those are just the big guys in the business. There are many little operators who have found a appearantly profitable niche. My on-line purchases from Staples often come by an off the wall courier service I never heard of. Probably a small firm that has a contract to run their business from stores in say the southeast part of this state.

Now you have Amtrak trying to get business and make money with a network that only hits 550 points in a world where the buyers want someone that goes every where. Dave Gunn may well have more smarts on the business and finance end of railroading than the collective knowledge of all the members of this forum. If there was any way the the M&E business could have been made to actually contribute to the financial goals of Amtrak, he probably would have moved in that direction. (In case you missed it, my previous comment about M&E blocking his view from the Beech Grove was a joke).

By the way, is there anybody out there that actually used the service to move a package?

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

In the good old days prior to May 1, 1971, mail and express was usually relegated to secondary trains or dedicated mail and express-only schedules without passengers. Most of the first-line trains carried little to no mail (one RPO at most) and no express.

Express traffic was handled by REA, who had their own infrastructure to handle pickup and delivery, sorting and all of the other related functions. Thr operating railroads just had to move the cars. Amtrak, on the other hand, had to do everything itself, which drives up costs. Amrtrak also has a pretty skeletal route structure to be operating an express service, anyway.

[TH&B]

I realy have a problem with Amtrak not able to make money with M&E. In fact I even the fancy European passenger trains don't have a kind of M&E. Airlines carry cargos to help the bottum line, so does Greyhound and other intercity busses. Trains have more capacity then these other modes, but for some reason passengers train must only carry passengers ?!?!?!? The "excuse" is that it doesnt make money.

[daveklepper]

I thought Amtrak should be in the Express and Mail business years before they did and wrote so, including a letter to Mr Hemphill at TRAINS (which was not published) . But if Mr. Gunn says it is a money looser and interferes with good passenger service, I believe him. He is a professional. He has a hard job. Hopefully the freight railroads in some cases where there is capacity on existing trains or to add new fast ones, will move in on this business. The Road Railer seems a natural and I would be very surprised in Triple Crown (NS trucking subsidiary) is not looking at the business opportunities.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill

M&E lost money. Period. Unless you gave it all of its expenses as a gift.

Whereas the passenger operation is just raking in the dough?! If Amtrak follows the same logic for its passenger operations as it did for the M & E, what will they do for fun next?

What ever happened to the axiom that freight makes money, passenger operations lose money?