HIgh Speed Rail for Freight - "Time is money" (or is it?)

[Anonymous]

Remember when the BN was experimenting with carrying a fuel tender (tank car) in the locomotive consist? The fuel was piped directly from the tank car to the locomotives. I wonder why that operation did not catch on?

[dehusman]

You can gain more time/speed by not stopping a train (or reducing the time its stopped) than by raising the speed for the track.

Lets say a train is stopped for 2 hrs and then runs 300 miles at 50 mph. 2 hrs delay + 6 hrs running time = 8 hrs. 8 hrs to cover 300 miles = 37.5 mph.

Reduce that to delay to 30 min and then run the train at 50 mph for 300 miles. .5 hrs delay + 6 hrs running time = 6.5 hrs. 6.5 hrs to cover 300 miles = 46.2 mph.

By reducing the delay you have "raised the speed" of the train almost 10 mph. Without spending a dime on the track.

Dave H.

[kevarc]

Question - is the cost of fuel that different between the 2 states? I seem to remember cases where UP (?) was fueling engines in certain states to avoid high taxes in others.

[spbed]

I put this in a file captioned newspapers errors. [:)]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

Was reading through the latest Seattle Times news story regarding the overhyped fuel spill at the new BNSF fuel depot in Hauser Idaho.....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002200230_fuel08m.html

....and came across these statements:

"The depot also would significantly speed refueling for a company where shipping time is money. Refueling in Seattle can take up to eight hours, compared with 30 to 45 minutes at the new depot.

Speed freight, create jobs

Business groups on both sides of the state line rallied behind the project as a way to speed freight shipments and as a source of 40 new jobs."

In our past discussions on increasing speeds for freights, it has been pointed out that the slower speeds are okay, since what's really going on is a sort of warehousing while in transit. As long as the shipment arrives just in time, there is no need to develop rail freight corridors with higher average speeds.

Yet, assuming the author of the news item spoke with railroad officials, he must have had enough information from these officials to include statements affirming that rail speed is important, thus the need for the $40 million high speed refueling depot.

If saving 7 hours in transit is that important, why is there not more emphasis on speed over load factor? It seems the railroads are trying to decrease transit time by things such as high speed refueling depots, extending crew districts, etc., basically everything but actually increasing the track speed.

[oltmannd]

I'l bet the 8 hour figure is for fueling from a smaller delivery truck where the truck has to make multiple trips in order to fuel an entire locomotive consist.

As for "time is money", the value of the commodity being shipped determines the optimum trade off between trip time and cost. Coal can afford to go slow. Autoparts need to go faster. Electronics, faster yet.

[Overmod]

Remember that the time estimate was given as 8 hours 'maximum'. I think there are several elements to this, including the time involved with cutting power off a through train, going to the fueling point, conducting the refuel, and returning to get the train ready for departure. I'd also suspect that the new facility has multiple hose stations at appropriate spacing, so that all locomotives in a consist can be simultaneously fueled -- and multiple consists can be accommodated, with trains, in parallel or in opposite directions with minimal waiting.

I get the strong impression that much of the media attention to this story is following the general line of "everyone told BNSF there would be trouble if they built in Hauser; they pooh-poohed it and rammed it down the throats of The People; now... what a surprise! ... it's leaking and there are new distressing details for us to report almost every week." I agree with jeaton that few people in the 'general public' would have interest in the positive aspects of a 'fancy gas station for plain old freight trains'...

[jeaton]

I would guess that the only reason that facility is making any news outside the trade is because of the groundwater contamination caused by the leaks in the containment system. Long before the invention of environmental protection that area was subject to unique regulations, such as locking toilets in passenger cars while trains crossed over the aquifier. Overhyped? Maybe. But to the people that drink water from that aquifier, it's important news.

It is not likly that either the reporter or the general public would understand or have much interest in the real justification for the expenditure, part of which might actually have been a net reduction of the number of employees. And then, it is possible that the reporter just expanded with his own perception of the benefit of the improved transit time.

[Hugh Jampton]

I'm surprised nobody has quieried this 8 hours to refuel a loco rubbish. By my calculations (assuming a 3000 gallon tank) that's a flow rate of 6.25 gallons per minute. The pump at the gas station where I fill up delivers at twice that rate. Or is there something specific about Saettle that I'm unaware of.

[Anonymous]

7 work hours for across us say 100 locomotives - can haul a tad more the $40 mil of freight. Or save on a purchase of few $1.2 mil locos, or cut a few jobs.

[Anonymous]

Overmod,

I was being a little bit facitious. The railroads of late haven't made much of an effort to improve transit times, and they are in a position to tell the shippers when it will get there give or take a few days, so why go to all the pr trouble and expense of constructing this new fuel depot to save 7 hours in transit, when they can just tell the shippers to eat the extra 7 hours and save themselves $40 million and counting? It's one thing if it's time to replace scattered aging fuel servicing plants with a consolidated plant amid the funnel, and if that's why BNSF built the plant when and where they did then that makes sense, but not if the main reason was to cut 7 hours off transit time.

[Overmod]

I think part of the answer is that stoppages and delays have a much more significant impact on both the overall point-to-point running time and the precision of delivery than cost-effective increases in track speed do.

Take a look at how much your average track speed would need to increase to make up that 7-hours-plus worst-case refueling delay. And how the train resistance, fuel burn, etc. go up disproportionately with speed, as does the need for track geometry precision, maintenance cost, and so forth. Makes much more sense (in almost all cases) to give 'faster' service by cutting delays to a minimum rather than running bullet trains as oil approaches $80 a barrel. Saving time by pushing the envelope of the physically practical is a very different thing from saving time by cutting useless waste.

We might also include waiting in sidings (or on the main trying to get into a yard) and functionally inane cab rides for timed-out crews (while the train sits idle) as examples of places to make meaningful operational changes before implementing high-speed freight operations.

[csxengineer98]

what happend to your comments on the montana farmers issue..im still waiting for the awnsers to my questions i asked some days ago....or is that old news already
csx engineer

[Anonymous]

Was reading through the latest Seattle Times news story regarding the overhyped fuel spill at the new BNSF fuel depot in Hauser Idaho.....

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002200230_fuel08m.html

....and came across these statements:

"The depot also would significantly speed refueling for a company where shipping time is money. Refueling in Seattle can take up to eight hours, compared with 30 to 45 minutes at the new depot.

Speed freight, create jobs

Business groups on both sides of the state line rallied behind the project as a way to speed freight shipments and as a source of 40 new jobs."

In our past discussions on increasing speeds for freights, it has been pointed out that the slower speeds are okay, since what's really going on is a sort of warehousing while in transit. As long as the shipment arrives just in time, there is no need to develop rail freight corridors with higher average speeds.

Yet, assuming the author of the news item spoke with railroad officials, he must have had enough information from these officials to include statements affirming that rail speed is important, thus the need for the $40 million high speed refueling depot.

If saving 7 hours in transit is that important, why is there not more emphasis on speed over load factor? It seems the railroads are trying to decrease transit time by things such as high speed refueling depots, extending crew districts, etc., basically everything but actually increasing the track speed.