BaltACD Ulrich Bankrupcy wasn't an issue for UP and I don't think D&RGW either to my knowledge. Yes, it was a different era and a different marketplace; however, the same basic tenets of customer service remain true today as they were then. Today, railroads have more leeway in how they run their businesses. They can opt to run long mega trains that tie up everything else in their system and in their path... or.. they can chose the more enlightened approach of running shorter trains and foccusing on overall improved systemwide velocity. Speed and execution are everything... plodding along (at anything) is a recipe for failure if not disaster. All of our customers expect us to respond in seconds (not minutes) and most consider overnight door to door service a basic requirement and nothing special. That's what we're up against..and that's where the money is. Long trains might be fine on dedicated mine runs.. but if you're going to compete on the better paying merchandise freight the service requirements are much higher...there's just no room for plodding along with a bunch of low paying freight. Don't know who your 'overnight' customers are - by and large, they are not railroad customers that the Class 1's deal with. Where it makes economic sense for the customer and the carrier there are daily turnaround services. The carriers, in the post Staggers era, work with their customers to design services that are mutually beneficial to both parties. Railroads are not competing against UPS and FedEx, they are customers and the railroads are providing those customers the level of service they expcect and demand! Loose car railroading is a declining business model. Just like Mom & Pop businesses are the decling business model when compared to Wal-Mart. One can hate Wal-Mart all you want - they have become the yard stick for American merchandise sales as they kill small shops wherever Wal-Mart builds stores. High value consumer products are now being moved in trailers and containers rather than box cars. Trailers and containers are being hauled on designated intermodal trains get expeditied handling and are also charged premium rates. With the contraction of the American automobile manufacturing business, the JIT warehouse on wheels operations that supplied numerous automobile assembly plants no longer exist as those plants no longer exist.
Ulrich Bankrupcy wasn't an issue for UP and I don't think D&RGW either to my knowledge. Yes, it was a different era and a different marketplace; however, the same basic tenets of customer service remain true today as they were then. Today, railroads have more leeway in how they run their businesses. They can opt to run long mega trains that tie up everything else in their system and in their path... or.. they can chose the more enlightened approach of running shorter trains and foccusing on overall improved systemwide velocity. Speed and execution are everything... plodding along (at anything) is a recipe for failure if not disaster. All of our customers expect us to respond in seconds (not minutes) and most consider overnight door to door service a basic requirement and nothing special. That's what we're up against..and that's where the money is. Long trains might be fine on dedicated mine runs.. but if you're going to compete on the better paying merchandise freight the service requirements are much higher...there's just no room for plodding along with a bunch of low paying freight.
Bankrupcy wasn't an issue for UP and I don't think D&RGW either to my knowledge. Yes, it was a different era and a different marketplace; however, the same basic tenets of customer service remain true today as they were then. Today, railroads have more leeway in how they run their businesses. They can opt to run long mega trains that tie up everything else in their system and in their path... or.. they can chose the more enlightened approach of running shorter trains and foccusing on overall improved systemwide velocity. Speed and execution are everything... plodding along (at anything) is a recipe for failure if not disaster. All of our customers expect us to respond in seconds (not minutes) and most consider overnight door to door service a basic requirement and nothing special. That's what we're up against..and that's where the money is. Long trains might be fine on dedicated mine runs.. but if you're going to compete on the better paying merchandise freight the service requirements are much higher...there's just no room for plodding along with a bunch of low paying freight.
Don't know who your 'overnight' customers are - by and large, they are not railroad customers that the Class 1's deal with. Where it makes economic sense for the customer and the carrier there are daily turnaround services. The carriers, in the post Staggers era, work with their customers to design services that are mutually beneficial to both parties. Railroads are not competing against UPS and FedEx, they are customers and the railroads are providing those customers the level of service they expcect and demand!
Loose car railroading is a declining business model. Just like Mom & Pop businesses are the decling business model when compared to Wal-Mart. One can hate Wal-Mart all you want - they have become the yard stick for American merchandise sales as they kill small shops wherever Wal-Mart builds stores.
High value consumer products are now being moved in trailers and containers rather than box cars. Trailers and containers are being hauled on designated intermodal trains get expeditied handling and are also charged premium rates.
With the contraction of the American automobile manufacturing business, the JIT warehouse on wheels operations that supplied numerous automobile assembly plants no longer exist as those plants no longer exist.
Carloadings for bulk as well as intermodal are way down. You actually made Ulrich's point, namely that his (trucking) customers are different than yours. If the rails do not change their model (bulk, slow schedule, long trains, cost-cutting) their revenues will decline even more. The Staggers Act is ancient history and WalMart and other bricks and mortar retailers are hurting, thanks to internet. If it weren't for groceries, now their biggest sector, WalMart woild really be in trouble soon.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Check out the 7-day monthly carloadings graph on page 3 of 9 from the UP presentation yesterday...
http://www.up.com/cs/groups/public/@uprr/@investor/documents/investordocuments/pdf_up_boa-slides.pdf
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Ulrich Lots of customers are willing to pay more for service... hence the very existence of the trucking and air freight industries. If it was all about price the highways would be empty and there would be no such thing as air freight. No riddles or mysteries... go for the higher value freight and step up service levels big time...i.e. short(er) trains and increased velocity throughout the network. UP and D&RGW had the right idea 40 years ago.
Lots of customers are willing to pay more for service... hence the very existence of the trucking and air freight industries. If it was all about price the highways would be empty and there would be no such thing as air freight. No riddles or mysteries... go for the higher value freight and step up service levels big time...i.e. short(er) trains and increased velocity throughout the network. UP and D&RGW had the right idea 40 years ago.
40 years ago railroads were operating under ICC restrictive regulations.
36 years ago Staggers Act deregulation that let railroads in the US operate as businesses - pricing their product in accordance with the service provided.
40 years ago bankruptcy was a very real discussion among all carriers - even those who were skimping on maintenance so they could show they were 'profitable' to their stockholders. I suspect, had all carriers maintained their properties to level of 'well maintained' all of them would have been showing Red Ink on their financial statement. Penn Central, with all the maintenance they differred still couldn't get near the black.
The transportation marketplace of 40 years ago is not the same as it is today, nor are the railroads.
Ulrich Good customers are willing to pay alot more for better service. Compare the cost of mailing something to what Fedex charges, for example. Fedex is a great example of a company that provides over the top service and charges for it. Same principle applies to rail. Provide over the top service and charge accordingly. Of course I'm not talking about ALL customers... there are plenty who want five star dining at fast food prices.. forget those guys. The better ones understand the immutable law of business... you get what you pay for.
Good customers are willing to pay alot more for better service. Compare the cost of mailing something to what Fedex charges, for example. Fedex is a great example of a company that provides over the top service and charges for it. Same principle applies to rail. Provide over the top service and charge accordingly. Of course I'm not talking about ALL customers... there are plenty who want five star dining at fast food prices.. forget those guys. The better ones understand the immutable law of business... you get what you pay for.
Railroads (at least mine does) provide 'over the top service' and there are basiclly only two customers that are willing to pay for it - UPS & FedEx - other trains may sit in sidings for hours to provide a route for these priority trains. I have to trust that what UPS & FedEx pay for their services cover the delay costs incured by other traffic that is held to insure the priority trains have cleared routes.
BaltACDShort and fast only makes economic sense when you have customers that are willing to pay the true costs of what is involved in such an operation. Customers really don't want to pay any more for transportation - they want the cheapest freight rates they can get. Cheap rates and high cost service are mutually exclusive.
Setting aside the customer's willingness to pay, are you saying the short and fast is more costly to the railroad than longer and slower?
I don't exactly recall, but when I read about D&RGW deciding in favor of fast and frequent trains, they anticpated higher profits just from their operating factors, and not from customers willing to pay higher prices.
Railroads are bottom line economic entities.
Ulrich There must be some advantage to running shorter faster trains. Back in the 60s and 70s Union Pacific was known for short and fast trains, usually with an enormous amount of horsepower on the point to make it happen. Maybe that advantage is nolonger as relevant in this day and age of unit trains. Denver & Rio Grande Western was another railroad that liked to run short fast trains with alot of power. Given that trains (other than unit trains) take time to be assembled and disassembled, short and fast makes sense from a customer service perspective.
There must be some advantage to running shorter faster trains. Back in the 60s and 70s Union Pacific was known for short and fast trains, usually with an enormous amount of horsepower on the point to make it happen. Maybe that advantage is nolonger as relevant in this day and age of unit trains. Denver & Rio Grande Western was another railroad that liked to run short fast trains with alot of power. Given that trains (other than unit trains) take time to be assembled and disassembled, short and fast makes sense from a customer service perspective.
Short and fast only makes economic sense when you have customers that are willing to pay the true costs of what is involved in such an operation. Customers really don't want to pay any more for transportation - they want the cheapest freight rates they can get. Cheap rates and high cost service are mutually exclusive.
I suspect that a major factor is consistent velocity. Railroads work best when all the trains are running similar speeds.
Here in the east, I doubt you're going to see any 70 MPH unit trains.
Ask any dispatcher who handles Amtrak how he likes threading a 79 MPH passenger train through a forest of 50 MPH or 60 MPH trains of all sorts. There's a reason for the "halo" that surrounds the arrival of an Amtrak train at a given station.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
I agree that most customers won't notice if their cars came in one long train or in two shorter trains. All most customers will see is the local/industry job that spots or pulls their cars.
Besides, should service get worse (is that even possible?) and customers decide to go to trucks, I'm not sure some of the railroads would even care. They would probably welcome it and just cut off more jobs, reduce or close more facilites and store more power.
Jeff
Euclid I suspect that if you double the train size, you cut the crew cost, but it more than doubles the rest of the operating expense. That is in addition to the cost of longer sidings and a possible loss of business due to compromising service.
I suspect that if you double the train size, you cut the crew cost, but it more than doubles the rest of the operating expense. That is in addition to the cost of longer sidings and a possible loss of business due to compromising service.
Now you have 1/2 the number of trains competing for track space and time.
Remember the basic tenant of railroad operations - daily service to the customer at the customers agreed upon switching window. Operating two or more trains beteen Origin-Destination (customer) pairs doesn't buy you anything. As long as the customer is getting the car turnaround and agreed upon switching windows - the customer doesn't care if the carrier is running one train or ten to provide what they want.
Additionally there are customers that only get served 1, 2 or 3 times per week - they also don't care how many trains, big or small, the carrier operates as long as they get their service.
The key word is optimization, which is the opposite of "one size fits all". Rio Grande found out that the short, fast train was not a solution in and of itself. A priority intermodal can be a shorter length with a higher speed limit and lots of power while 10,000+ tons of coal can be relatively long, rather slow and just enough power to get over the road. The size of a train depends a lot on what it is hauling.
I think the question comes down to, how efficient do you have to get? When does attention to the bottom line become greed?
The rails' vaunted "efficiency" consists of two things: the comparatively frictionless movement of steel wheels over steel rails and the ability to move hundreds of truckload equivalents with only two people (with, admittedly, changes every couple of hundred miles).
I have trouble believing that you have to run two-mile trains to make this proposition pay. If so, you're (1) paying too much for your crews or (2) in an obsolete mode that might as well quit in favor of trucks.
If neither of the above is true, some hotshot executive may be trying to burnish his reputation, and inflate his bonus, at the cost of customer service and the long-term health of the business.
Ulrich Shorter more frequent trains make more sense than one long behemoth of a train. The shorter trains can fit into shorter sidings if needed, and if something goes wrong you're tying up the entire mainline with a 250 car train.
Shorter more frequent trains make more sense than one long behemoth of a train. The shorter trains can fit into shorter sidings if needed, and if something goes wrong you're tying up the entire mainline with a 250 car train.
It likely comes down to dollars and cents. Which is cheaper - crewing three trains on a regular basis or building/expanding sidings to handle the longer trains.
In two-track territory, it's not really a problem, as long as everything is running at near the same speed.
I'm thinking that there are two separate questions about RR xings being blocked by long trains. The first is in response to normal operation where the crossings may be blocked for several minutes for each train on a daily basis. The second is in response to blockage due to unusual events (e.g. broken knuckle, locomotive failure, derailment) lasting much longer.
For the normal operation case, it would be reasonable to ask what was there first, the road or the railroad? In the case of the former, the RR's would have more of a moral (and perhaps legal) obligation to mitigate the problem. In the case of the latter, the onus would or should fall on the local governments.
As for blockage from abnormal events, I'm wondering how is this much different from the case where a major highway is blocked because of an accident? We had an incident a week and a half ago where a semi jackknifed on I-5 about 4AM and I-5 was backed up for over 20 miles by the time the accident was cleared up around 9AM.
rockymidlandrr mudchicken Check the myoptic political warped slant pov at the door before entering the forum please. Don't assume- what I stated are first hand observations of what my carrier/employer is doing. Learn a thing or two before you reply with assumptions.
mudchicken Check the myoptic political warped slant pov at the door before entering the forum please.
Check the myoptic political warped slant pov at the door before entering the forum please.
Don't assume- what I stated are first hand observations of what my carrier/employer is doing. Learn a thing or two before you reply with assumptions.
Reasonable advice. Let me extend it just a bit. Don't assume that someone's comments are directed at you when they are not. And learn a thing or two about a poster's background and experience before you reply with snotty-sounding comments about their understanding of the railroad industry.
Dont assume- what I stated are first hand observations of what my carrier/employer is doing. Learn a thing or two before you reply with assumptions.
It's a rare yard that has adjacent land available for expansion. NS is starting an expansion project at its 47th Street intermodal facility and there are still a handful of parcels that they haven't been able to acquire. Some of those property owners won't sell at any price so eminent domain proceedings may be required.
Here is a BNSF monster with 22,000 HP on the drawbar. But if one could actually count the wells I think it would still come up short of 2 miles. But maybe close.
rockymidlandrr rrnut282 I hope railroads will realize that labor costs to run more trains is cheaper/better in the long run than sinking costs into longer sidings and upgrading every terminal to handle these longer trains. But, since that most likely isn't true, they will continue to invest in the physical plant in hopes of bigger revenues later. You would think that, but right now they don't seem to care. They want all they can make today, even though tomorrow itll cost them. They're goin to keep running them long and even longer trains and refuse to spend a dime on track. Right now trains are have to triple and sometime even quadruple out of yards and there doesn't seem to be a sign of that stopping.
rrnut282 I hope railroads will realize that labor costs to run more trains is cheaper/better in the long run than sinking costs into longer sidings and upgrading every terminal to handle these longer trains. But, since that most likely isn't true, they will continue to invest in the physical plant in hopes of bigger revenues later.
I hope railroads will realize that labor costs to run more trains is cheaper/better in the long run than sinking costs into longer sidings and upgrading every terminal to handle these longer trains. But, since that most likely isn't true, they will continue to invest in the physical plant in hopes of bigger revenues later.
You would think that, but right now they don't seem to care. They want all they can make today, even though tomorrow itll cost them. They're goin to keep running them long and even longer trains and refuse to spend a dime on track. Right now trains are have to triple and sometime even quadruple out of yards and there doesn't seem to be a sign of that stopping.
The typical myoptic vision of a "mature" industry.
Ever since steam stopped being the prime motive power for the carriers, trains that are run have routinely exceeded the track capacity of the terminals to handle the trains in a single move either departing or arriving. The more effective the diesel lomotives become, the bigger trains they are being asked to move.
While the carriers are investing in capacity improvement projects - most of those projects are on line of road - very few of the projects focus on terminal improvement. The biggest reason for this is that the terminals have become constrained by their neighbors building up to the carriers property lines - to make any meaningful expansion of the terminals, real estate acquisition costs have to be added to any track and/or signal improvements that are to be made.
blue streak 1So what happens when a 2 mile train goes across a auto crossing then immediately goes into a 2 mile siding with only a restrictive signal?
I'm thinking that there may be some political pushback from the delays to the motorists and the railroads so far seem to be ignoring it. It will become an itch that will spark some kind of legislation that may prove costly to the RR's. How long it will take to raise to the threshold of action remains to be determined. It was one of the issues raised in towns along the EJ&E when the CN bought it and increased the traffic on the J.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.