Roanoke has been described as a place where Northern and Southside Virginia sensibilities meet...very warily. But the place does have a great transportation museum and it would be great if there's a VMT volunteer around here to clarify things from our perspective. The civilian news is sketchy and kind of loopy. The bit about disguising Tinker Creek as a "pretty" N&W shops building and the Smith Gap tipper as a train station (a real stretch) is amusing. Likewise for that little-front-end-loader-that-could. They're tossing millions around like confetti down there.
Pre-covid my after work routine was to check out this site, then the Roanoke webcam and then Railstream. I used to see that pretty green train with a bright red caboose almost every day. Never saw the return trip of empties but always wondered if it was a 33 mile shove move. At night? There are runaround tracks at the dump but still, why the caboose?
Rick
rixflix aka Captain Video. Blessed be Jean Shepherd and all His works!!! Hooray for 1939, the all time movie year!!! I took that ride on the Reading but my Baby caught the Katy and left me a mule to ride.
CSX has a movement of trash westbound on Selkirk - Columbus, Oh train Q635, usually 70-100 cars (daily) which is set off at Fostoria for delivery to Sunny Farms Landfill about 10 miles south.
Empty gons move back east on Q634 to Selkirk.
Origin of the trash is possibly NYC...unsure about that. Nor am I sure of movement from origin to Selkirk.
ed
It seems like landfills always have the most bucolic sounding names...
BackshopIt seems like landfills always have the most bucolic sounding names...
Staten Island had an unintentionally funny example of this -- now one of the largest man-made structures in the world. They innocently called it Fresh Kills.
As I learn more about the background of this story, I no longer conclude that it supports the premise of the original poster’s assumption; that being that trucking beat the railroad in competition for the business.
As I now understand it, the rotary dumper broke down approximately four years ago, and so the trash train has not been running during that interval. The contract with NS is apparently gives them the right to renegotiate during this this recent time, and the price they require for continued service is higher than what Roanoke Valley Resource Authority is willing to accept. The RVRA says they can haul the trash by truck for less cost than by rail. I see two possibilities regarding that claim:
It may not be the case.
It may have been the case since the inception of the rail hauling, and so not related to this latest renegotiation.
Regarding item #1, the RVRA is over a barrel with the dumper out of service and the price of getting it back on line. They cite studies that show trucking would be cheaper, but do they have any other option at this point? They are the public sector and a change in service pricing has to be sold to the public to some extent. The public is not going to want higher pricing for trucking just because the rotary dumper / rail operation failed and there was no backup.
Also statements indicate that RVRA claims NS is requiring a major price increase for continuing the service contract. The implication is that rail has priced itself out of the market, so trucking is now the cost effective alternative. But I have not seen any news that clearly verifies that premise. It may be that trucking was always the lowest cost, but was overruled by objections to road traffic, and the “greenness” of rail compared to roads and trucks.
And even if those benefits still prevail, what has changed is that RVRA simply no longer has the rail alternative. And that may not necessarily be due to NS increasing its price, but rather due to the loss of the rotary dumper which is essential for the rail option.
I think you are coming to a much more sound understanding of both the issues and the situation. Good work researching!
Murphy Siding Maybe the railroads just didn't want to haul the smelly garbage.
Maybe the railroads just didn't want to haul the smelly garbage.
Of course NS could have turned it over to a short line. Then the almighty Operating ratio "OR" would not rear its ugly head.
MP173 CSX has a movement of trash westbound on Selkirk - Columbus, Oh train Q635, usually 70-100 cars (daily) which is set off at Fostoria for delivery to Sunny Farms Landfill about 10 miles south. Empty gons move back east on Q634 to Selkirk. Origin of the trash is possibly NYC...unsure about that. Nor am I sure of movement from origin to Selkirk. ed
CSX also handles a block of Trash that orginates in the Toronto metro area off the CN via Toledo to this same landfill.
blue streak 1 Murphy Siding Maybe the railroads just didn't want to haul the smelly garbage. Of course NS could have turned it over to a short line. Then the almighty Operating ratio "OR" would not rear its ugly head.
I do not conclude that this change in service has anything to do with PSR or with NS deciding that the trash hauling business is not lucrative enough for them.
I suspect the change has been forced by decisions made by RVRA in developing their trash by rail plan from the start. They now say that trucking is the cheaper option, with an implication that this is due to the latest pricing from NS. We don't know how much that pricing has changed with the latest proposal. But, I wonder if trucking was not actually the cheapest option from the very start. It is possible that RVRA perceived more value in the rail option for reasons other than pricing of the rail service. They seemed to have paid a lot of attention to the image and styling of their trash handling operation. Also, the trash is loaded and dumped three times during the haul cycle.
Altogether, I do not believe this latest change to trucking means that this is another case of trucking beating rail in the competition for this hauling, as the original poster said, and always says. It is not evidence that rail will soon go out of business due to truck completion.
Remember -
Everyone wants FREE SHIPPING.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Seattle sends 5 unit trains a week to eastern Oregon via UP. I was surprised it wasn't BNSF. It is a distance of about 320 miles. I think my nearby city does the same via fairly obscure sets of tracks. So far as I know all of this runs with little notice or publicity.
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