The railroads have not been in the LTL business
MidlandMike A few years back, Amtrak tried to get more heavily into the express business, but then got out. IIRC there was much resistance from the freight railroads.
A few years back, Amtrak tried to get more heavily into the express business, but then got out. IIRC there was much resistance from the freight railroads.
Pure speed is a false god in surface freight transportation. To worship at its alter is to seek financial ruin. Give a good marketing person a 40/45 MPH schedule terminal to terminal and he/she will get the vast majority of the freight on the lane.
10 1/2 hours transit terminal to terminal, with some good marketing, between Chicago and the Twin Cities will own the lane. And don't bother me with passengers Twice daily departures will do it.
Any faster running times, or any more departures, will be a waste of money for the freight. Passengers, they be a different story. So do not bother me with them. Let them fly or drive.
Not so sure it will work in Europe, either. Maybe they would run them as separate entire trains in France. I doubt if they would run at all in Germany, where the station dwell time is usually 2-3 minutes, maximum.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Thanks for the input so far. As usual I am just kicking some ideas around based on my experience.
When I talk about including the cross-dock costs in the value proposition of handling pallets in such a way so that they can be sorted en-route here is a financial scale example.
Suppose you book Premium Domestic Rail Intermodal, at most you are paying $0.06/mile to move a pallet with the cost to move the trailer to the ramp extra. On some longer routes it can be faster than a truck at a similar expense.
Suppose you use team drivers with a double trailer truck, that might be $0.08/mile to move a pallet but the cost of the cross-dock facility, both in capital, labor, and transit time is extra.
Now, take a look at what the LTL carriers charge to move a light pallet from their terminal to another terminal a few hundred miles away (not delivery, just to the terminal they run as a cross-dock). It can run $0.30 to $0.40/mile to move the pallet, 5X the rail intermodal cost. The difference is partially profit and overhead, but I could see a lot of it is the cost of cross-docking.
So what if you charge $0.10/mile for the service I am talking about that eliminates the cross-docking and does the sorting to destination of the pallet on the railcar.
I really enjoyed Oltmann's post on what the mainline will look like in 2040 with increased automation. I also see cities being resurgent in the future, particularly if fuel goes up again with a recovering economy. Instead of applying automation to just loading containers at such a large full truckload scale, might it actually find a place in high return shipments that arrive near to a "station" with an easy pickup? Maybe this isn't the web-van of 2000 but it might be a disruptive enough technology combination to become successful.
There is a shift toward smaller shipment lots, and actually smaller stores overall, as the business model changes.
I can see this starting along the NEC owned lines, with branches onto commuter owned lines, with a few longer fingers streching out to the east and south from there to feed the dense distribution network in the northeast.
Couple of thoughts:
Seems to be a situation of a solution in search of a problem.
Would be something that works fine in the European Rain Environment, but on this Continent; not so much.
Palletazation, here in this North American Transportation environment is a challenge. Pallets are definitely time and labor saving, and to a large part standardized on the 40"x48" pallet. They can be utilized in warehouses, and when being transported in trucks. Highway trailers can be adapted to carry various forms of Air Cargo Containers, both cargo deck and belly cargo models, special handling while being loaded and unloaded and in the trailers ( roller beds and hydraulic lifts,etc). Adaptations cost money, and adjustments for handling improvements, at locations that do not regularly handle them. Somebody will pay for the addition of 'convenience'
Containerization on the Passenger Rails are a whole other set of issues and problems. Cargo can be loaded in a rial car to be unloaded at stop enroute. No problem with that. The problem starts with the additional facilities to handle that cargo on Passenger trains. AMTRAL took a beating when they had their "Cargo Ops".
Railroads screamed when their (AMTRAK's) business was so good it required more Special handling cars on the ends of scheduled passenger runs. Complaints were all over the place: Too many cars made longer trains, which effected everything from sidings to switching, to having manpower, and special equipment at the right place and ready to handle those cars and cargo. Which is why it did not last too long.
The there were issues with the Passengers, Charging fare for people to ride at premium prices on "Freight trains". Do you have the facilities to hook those 'Freight cars' to the passenger trains in advance of passenger boarding? Do you have long enough de-board passengers, and hold the whole train? Do you have to switch out the 'freight cars' in order to de-board the passengers in the stations? You get the problems!
The European Rail environment seems to be better adapted to utilize this kind of containerization, than the North American. Hope they can make it fly there... Not so sure that it would do it in North America.
schlimm Thanks. Sounds interesting, if rather dependent on a fairly high level of precision which seems unlikely in the application setting.
Thanks. Sounds interesting, if rather dependent on a fairly high level of precision which seems unlikely in the application setting.
I confess that what concerned me was the fun you would have accessing the pallets when the loader jams. Better bone up on your sightreading skills for Codabar or whatever! And lots of fun getting multiple pallets through the one door and then 'clear' when you only have the one person who was going to run the automated loader and push the little carts as they came off...
schlimm OvermodPresumably if you had multiple baggage cars, you could 'hand off' pallets between them, and still only need that 'last door' for the platform. how do you do that? And what about the dwell time?
OvermodPresumably if you had multiple baggage cars, you could 'hand off' pallets between them, and still only need that 'last door' for the platform.
how do you do that? And what about the dwell time?
Tou do that by having some 'interchange' between the pallet handlers running up the center 'aisle space' of the cars, through what would be the vestibule end doors.
If the handlers are self-powered, you might even arrange to run them 'past' each other, so that any handler in any car could move back to that one door. I'd be more inclined to design the system so that a handler in one car can pivot and 'hand off' the pallet to the loader in the adjacent car, instead of just being able to sideload it off its own car. (I confess I would also design that system so it would work while the train was in motion, so I could 'stage' the pallets for the next stop in the last car, as close to that rear platform door as possible, and minimize the actual, critical, handling time for a given stop).
Dwell time can be minimal. I'm sure some of the case being made involves very high speed, and precise action, by the handler equipment, perhaps starting to move the pallet up to the door opening before the train has reached a stop, and beginning acceleration with the door still open and perhaps with the handler not fully stowed...
I am tempted to extend this discussion to the 'pallet' equivalent of mail cranes. We've had fun with the general idea before -- giant inflated Mars-lander technology and all. But all kidding aside -- an automated sideloading handler could probably arrange to 'handshake' a pallet with lineside facilities from a moving train, if there were an economically-justifiable reason to do so.
schlimmGiven the fixed length of platforms at stations, many trains would require double stops to accommodate the express service ... lengthening platforms would be very expensive.
One of the points made in the original post: a major point for the automated 'pallet' handling was that it delivered everything 'sequentially' to just the last door on the 'baggage car' -- so any additional platform would be on the order of three or four feet at most, scarcely a hellish capital showstopper, although there would certainly need to be some extra handling onto the adjacent existing platform end once the train had departed.
There may be things to criticize about the logistics... but this problem was anticipated, and at least systematically addressed. Presumably if you had multiple baggage cars, you could 'hand off' pallets between them, and still only need that 'last door' for the platform.
I think the objections were time length of stops and platform length? The automated pallet systems move quick, with multiple pallets moving at the same time, so the stop could be no longer than current. The pallets would pass through the express car consist through the full width end doors to the car right before the passenger consist, so the existing platform might very well suffice if you already have room for a baggage cart.
All well and good, but you do not address, as far as I can see, the objections raised by BaltACD or myself.
The concept enables the minimization of needed buildings, and their associated crews and rents, such that practically none would be needed to provide the service. The sorting of pallets by destination would be done on the railcar, not at a terminal, a yard, or a drop-lot. I spend a good amount of time on the Interstates inspecting facilities, and there is a massive amount of over the road freight traveling in double, both package express and LTL. Why are they using doubles? To minimize sorting, as you can just rearrange the two trailers in a drop yard and keep on going without unloading.
In order to load a container of packages you have to have enough volume between the two endpoints to fill a container, as you don't have time to cross-dock a load mid way in most cases. Trucks can make multiple stops and do such, but in order to do that they also must have cross-docks. This concept would build volume by eliminating those cross-docks and charging a higher rate with part of the savings while moving faster.
Balt's observation seems to be a critical factor. Given the fixed length of platforms at stations, many trains would require double stops to accommodate the express service. The accumulated time delays would be unacceptable on many routes. Lengthening platforms would be very expensive. The primary mission of Amtrak is the transportation of people.
Any idea that contributes to the bottom line is worth exploring. Whether its pallets, auto carriers, express refrigerators, pullmans, roadrailers, railroad express etc it can help. The passenger train is occupying track space whether it is 4 cars long or 20 The railroad is stuck with the passenger train but the government is covering the lost they were responsible for prior to 1971. I would offer the railroads the first chance to invent or sponsor services coupled to an Amtrak train. If they don't want to get involved let private enterprise have a shot. Amtrak charge a flat rate ($2.00 per mile for a private passenger car as an example) and stay out of it. A private venture could lease locomotives to Amtrak to pull these additional services with the lease money coming from the per mile per car revenue charged.
BaltACD MidlandMike A few years back, Amtrak tried to get more heavily into the express business, but then got out. IIRC there was much resistance from the freight railroads. While there was resistance from freight carriers, the bigger problem was explaining to passengers why their train was stopping, shortly after it left the origin station, to pick up the express cars and why it was stopping shortly prior to it's destination terminal to set off the express cars. These actions delayed through trains 40 minutes to a hour over the full route. There is a lot of 'coulda', 'woulda', 'shoulda' - that could be applied to Amtrak's express business. Amtrak deamd their core business was moving people, not boxes.
While there was resistance from freight carriers, the bigger problem was explaining to passengers why their train was stopping, shortly after it left the origin station, to pick up the express cars and why it was stopping shortly prior to it's destination terminal to set off the express cars. These actions delayed through trains 40 minutes to a hour over the full route.
There is a lot of 'coulda', 'woulda', 'shoulda' - that could be applied to Amtrak's express business. Amtrak deamd their core business was moving people, not boxes.
In addition to the various issues mentioned above, it turned out that the express business paid its own way but not by much. The additional expenses ate up almost all of the additional revenue. The whole exercise was more bother than it was worth.
V.PayneBut the value proposition is it is not just transportation but the cross-dock destination sorting operation as well (all in the same railcar).
Can you illustrate with a specific Amtrak example where there is (sufficient) revenue in 'cross-dock destination sorting' to justify the complicated automatic loading system?
I'd at least wonder whether the system you describe would be better put into that 'full trailer [handled] by intermodal', with any cross-docking handled from it rather than a passenger train, and any break-bulk or LCL handling facilitated greatly by the rubber-tired chassis. Same for container mode if a sufficiently capable road chassis is available...
I just don't see enough advantage, in the United States, for a complex handling system that merely facilitates exchange of 'palleted' express between Amtrak station platforms (or facilities built immediately adjacent to them). Any other locations would re-create some of the operational disaster of the MHCs, some of which has been alluded to in this thread. So enlighten me further on where the revenue from this arrangement will come from, and how it will pay off the doubtless Government investment in providing the system and its adjunct handling, advertising, etc. costs?
"Actions To Increase Revenues.— Amtrak shall take necessary action to increase its revenues from the transportation of mail and express."
This most definitely would not be aimed at trailer/car load market. Instead it would actually be priced above what it costs to move a pallet in a full trailer by intermodal. But the value proposition is it is not just transportation but the cross-dock destination sorting operation as well (all in the same railcar).
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
V.PayneAn early study called Rolling Shelf explored a design similar to a centerbeam lumber car...
Not to hijack this thread for more than a moment, but I had forgotten what a TRIP the site which provides that report can be. Go to this section if you want a few hours of fascinating reading... not all of it railroad-associated, of course, but much of the technology discussed has potential railroad uses or implications.
Since Amtrak is buying all new baggage cars they may be built for some kind of containerization in the future. ? That might really speed up loading and unloading bags at larger passenger count stations ? definitely would probably need a baggage man if train lengths are increased 3 - 4 revenue cars ?
It's an interesting thought, but the logistics advantages for the only logical players (FedEx and the other express package services) aren't really there.
The chief advantage of having the automated 'pick and place' loader in the center of the car is that the infrastructure (compared to Rolling Shelf at al.) is truly bidirectional. The automated 'deloader' on a platform need only access the cars from the loaded side.
On the other hand, a three-wide system accessed from outside need only engage in a couple of 'blind' transfers to get to a container location on the far side; this only represents a few seconds, and the framing integrity of a stationary loader can be far more robust (and hence capable of high speeds) as anything that has to be built on the centersill of a revenue car. So I have to wonder where the 'big savings' is supposed to be, as opposed to smaller caster-borne 'pallet' subcontainers.
Meanwhile, where is the proposal to adapt the cellular 'frames' to standard containers, so that the equivalent of subcontainerized LCL can be applied easily -- and just as tellingly -- even to stack freight? That's certainly something I'd look into rather than throwing a great deal of capital at re-creating REA on a probably very limited 'network' of high-speed trains... at least in the foreseeable near future.
I don't think it's likely that a service like this will throw enough profit to justify re-establishment of very many passenger trains. One or two per day, perhaps, but that isn't going to get the numbers up to where the European examples (with higher, subsidized density per hour, and off-hours service) can operate.
Not that I don't like the idea, or wish it all the success it can garner!
I think this is far beyond the scope of ATK's mission and that the freight carriers would fight it tooth and nail.
Mac
The pictures below are from a test run of a group called EURO CAREX that is trying to roll out a pallet based cargo network on the LGV/HSR lines in Europe with a target date of 2017 from this site.
This particular service is mostly aimed at short haul air freight and package motorfreight between terminals. An early study called Rolling Shelf explored a design similar to a centerbeam lumber car with a "Batcar/Delorean" door and an automated external forklift that would transfer the pallets rapidly during a station stop.
Of course conventional rail freight is already loaded in Europe into curtainside containers/swap bodies on pallets for rail intermodal line haul, but not sorted in route as both of the proposals above anticipate.
I just have to wonder, given the limited station facilities still in existence here, if an enclosed pallet car that used some of the existing warehouse automated pallet moving systems would be suitable for North American use. The goal would be for the series of cars to be able to load and unload during regular stations stops, moving pallets throught the end doors of the cars in a two way conveyor loop.
There is always the question of consignment volume necessary to be financially viable. Essentially, any station that already had checked baggage would be ellibible for service, as a similar pallet would also be used for the baggage transfer, so extra pallets of USPS, UPS, FedEx packages and LTL pallets would have a low incremental cost. To be succesful, there would need to be only a single loading door/point near the passenger cars and of course electrical power to the cars, so they would be postioned behind the road power with HEP cables, with the door trailing so as to stay on the platform, while the road power stretched out ahead with the through pallet cars.
The automated pallet handelers in the car would bring the pallets to be discharged to the door and then accept the pallets being consigned. The station agent would then just be responsible for getting the pallets to a locked storage area nearby (two per platform for directionality) that would be remotely mointored by IP and unlocked once the local driver arrived at the truck dock on the opposite side. The service would also be open to individuals consigning a pallet at rates that did not gaurantee preference, with trailers for rent through a separate collocated office for the last mile.
Now such a network would need at least twice a day departures to be viable for middle distances (500-800 miles) and 3-4 departures a day for shorter distances (200-500 miles), so we are talking about this pallet service as a complementary tool to reestablish a intercity rail network with several origin and destination pairs. Of course it could be started on the eastern part of the country and spread out from there. At the major terminals the cars could just be flat switched in blocks, with the automated pallet handelers having sorted the pallets through the end of car doors to minimize terminal buildings.
My estimate is about a $8-9/trainmile contribution above costs toward joint costs of operating the train. Combine that with 50% greater passenger capacity on the order of 400-500 seats/berths total per train and you could get to the point where the system was operationally self-sufficient even at "conventional" speeds, needing only infrastructure capital, the concept of which everybody seems to like, at a lower rate than the Interstates.
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