Autonomous Rail Cars

[Backshop]

It's so cheap living rent-free in someone's head...

[charlie hebdo]

Euclid

 

 

daveklepper

Yes, absolutely.

1.  The one-car or group of automous cars train is not crewed.  Automatic train oprtation is sinmply never going vto be legal and safe on any railroad with infenced and at-grade right-of way.  Complete isolation  as in rapid transit systems and within land owned by the coirpration that is the customer and/or owner of the railroad are possible, and CN, former IC, western line c definitely fails the separation requirement.

2,   CN shoukld get off its lazy butt and go after the business.  Don't need automatic cars.  Sufficirny business for a regular daily train. 

 

 

 

 

This objection is stated every time autonomous operation is brought up, but it is never explained in a way that justifies it.  Can you please explain, for the first time ever, what a crew will do to overcome the safety issues that you see with autonomous trains? 

 

Tell me exactly why a right of way fence is needed for autonomous trains, but not for crewed trains. 

 

This point seems like an argument put forth by people who simply oppose autonomous running because it threatens labor. 

 

So far at least it does not appear that satisfactory, factual objections have been forthcoming.

[daveklepper]

Also, self-powered railcarsc require between five and ten times the time for inspections and maintenance than trailing cars.

 

[daveklepper]

Euclid--   This is so obvious that you really surprise me with a lack of understanding.    By fence, one that does not just discoyurage trsspassers, but actually prevents tresspassing.  And of course no grade crossings.

Withouit such separation, unforeseen incidents occur regularly, and automatic operation will never totally account for them.  My estimate would be reduction of unforeseen incidents from one per-hundred trips to one per-ten-thousand trips.

We are assduming in both cases very careful train assembly, no empty well cars separating  heafvily loadeed cars, etc.

[jeffhergert]

So do the potential customers, at both ends, have to invest in equipment to load/unload the containers off the rail vehicle? I guess they would have to have chassis available for the time the containers are off the rail and in the truck docks at their facility. Most already have yard tractors, so that's not a problem. Or will they run from intermodal terminal to intermodal terminal? That just adds more problems for handling from customer to customer. Not insurmountable, but not really convenient. 

Once, or maybe if, autonomous trucks are everywhere this will be obsolete. I'm not even sure without autonomous trucking this will take much off the highways. 

Like so many jobs or processes,  the techies see one part, usually the easiest part, to automate. They don't realize that often there's more than meets the eye.

Jeff

 

[Euclid]

daveklepper

Yes, absolutely.

1.  The one-car or group of automous cars train is not crewed.  Automatic train oprtation is sinmply never going vto be legal and safe on any railroad with infenced and at-grade right-of way.  Complete isolation  as in rapid transit systems and within land owned by the coirpration that is the customer and/or owner of the railroad are possible, and CN, former IC, western line c definitely fails the separation requirement.

2,   CN shoukld get off its lazy butt and go after the business.  Don't need automatic cars.  Sufficirny business for a regular daily train. 

 

This objection is stated every time autonomous operation is brought up, but it is never explained in a way that justifies it.  Can you please explain, for the first time ever, what a crew will do to overcome the safety issues that you see with autonomous trains? 

 

Tell me exactly why a right of way fence is needed for autonomous trains, but not for crewed trains. 

 

This point seems like an argument put forth by people who simply oppose autonomous running because it threatens labor. 

[daveklepper]

2.  Sufficient business for a daily train, anyway/

[daveklepper]

Yes, absolutely.

1.  The one-car or group of automous cars train is not crewed.  Automatic train oprtation is sinmply never going vto be legal and safe on any railroad with infenced and at-grade right-of way.  Complete isolation  as in rapid transit systems and within land owned by the coirpration that is the customer and/or owner of the railroad are possible, and CN, former IC, western line c definitely fails the separation requirement.

2,   CN shoukld get off its lazy butt and go after the business.  Don't need automatic cars.  Sufficirny business for a regular daily train. 

[greyhounds]

This has a whole lot of possibilities if it works, and the government doesn’t screw things up once more.

 

From the Trains newswire:

 

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/details-emerge-of-genesee-wyoming-plans-for-first-test-of-autonomous-container-equipment/

 

First, A “Trigger Warning.”  The contents of this post will likely greatly irritate Backshop. He may even be moved to post a mean, spiteful, false personal attack on me. Again. I suggest that he approach with caution.

 

Second, I do see some issues with the concept. Such as:  signal activation, the need to accommodate 53’ containers, the need for a higher speed, and the need to couple with conventional equipment if it breaks down. I’m sure many of you can add more issues if you’re interested. I believe the issues I see can easily be dealt with. Any issues that I don’t see may be significant and hard to deal with.

 

Let’s start with my favorite underutilized rail line. The CN Iowa line. The line runs west from Chicago and enters Iowa at Dubuque. The line continues across Iowa through Waterloo to Ft. Dodge. Just west of Ft. Dodge it splits into two lines. One line goes to Council Bluffs and the other goes to Sioux City. There are branches from Waterloo to Glenville, MN, from Manchester, IA to Cedar Rapids, IA and from Wall Lake, IA to Ida Grove, IA.

 

 

The line has only two scheduled manifest trains. One per day each way between Kirk yard (Effectively Chicago) and Waterloo. The line also handles unit trains of ethanol and grain.  Everything else is served by locals. There is no intermodal service offered on CN’s Iowa line. The line obviously has excess capacity that could be used by autonomous rail cars.

 

I see numerous opportunities for business development on CN’s Iowa line, but I’ll just select one as an example. And remember, Iowa is all about the production of food. (OK, there’s that ethanol.)

 

Cedar Rapids, located at the end of a branch, produces a lot of breakfast cereal. Quaker has what’s been labeled “The World’s Largest Cereal Factory” there.  The latest volume output figure I have seen for Quaker at Cedar Rapids was 100 truckloads per workday. There is no output (the cereal) from Quaker that is shipped by rail.

 

The other cereal factory in Cedar Rapids is a recently expanded General Mills facility. It isn’t the size of the Quaker facility. But it’s big enough to warrant attention.

 

Conventional railroading just isn’t working here. Maybe autonomous cars can work. If several platoons of the cars were dispatched eastward daily, they could motor right on into the CSX intermodal terminal at Bedford Park and the containers transferred to conventional rail cars for furtherance on existing trains to eastern and southern population centers.

 

Maybe the savings will be great enough to allow CN to split the platoons near Chicago and send cereal to Milwaukee, Green Bay, etc. Maybe, just maybe, the cost savings will be enough for the railroad to be truck competitive in the Cedar Rapids-Chicago market.

 

Anybody have anything to add?