Click to enlarge.
http://bakkenoilexpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/500000-BOPD-facility__-22.jpgm,
Drill 'em, frack 'em, pump 'em.
Direct link doesn't work for some reason - even though I got to the same webpage.
Try this one instead: http://bakkenoilexpress.com/home/our-facility/ - then click on the thumbnail image, and that should get you to the same place.
"The first multi-shipper unit train loading facility in North Dakota". It's multiple nested loops - apparently the trains will be kept intact, and just moved up as each group of cars is finished loading.
Someplace there must be toy train and model railroaders saying "That looks just like my layout !", or "The one on page XX of the Snap-Track Book of Simple Model Railroads for Beginners", etc., and they said that no real railroad would ever run in loops like that - including a planned future outer loop !
greyhounds, thanks much for sharing ! (notice how fast I got onto this one !)
- Paul North.
corrected link
http://bakkenoilexpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/500000-BOPD-facility__-22.jpg
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
I apologize for the bad link. I bought a new computer and Internet Explorer and the Trains site don't get along too well. I do the compatibility button.
I will try to do better in the future.
Not a problem - just wanted to alert and make it easier for others.
At the NW quadrant of the intx. of 115th St. SW and BNSF just west of Dickinson, ND per one of the articles on their website - at about these Lat./ Long. coords: N 46.86483 W 102.87701 Doesn't show up on regular Google Maps or ACME Mapper 2.0 yet, but the grading work is visible on the Bing Maps Aerial View.
Paul_D_North_Jr Someplace there must be toy train and model railroaders saying "That looks just like my layout !", or "The one on page XX of the Snap-Track Book of Simple Model Railroads for Beginners", etc., and they said that no real railroad would ever run in loops like that - including a planned future outer loop !
One of my first thoughts when viewing the website was that it looked one of the track plans in the first third of Lynn Wescott's "101 Layouts". No matter what the scale, e.g 3.5mm to 1', 1/4" to 1', 12" to 1', running trains around in circles takes less time and effort that switching cabooses -er- EOTD's and loco's.
- Erik
Yep - Watch'em cram everything in-between the aliquot lines with 10 degee curves. It takes an awful lot of real estate to turn trains around. BNSF allows a maximum of a 10 degree thirty minute curve and a 1% grade in unit train facilities. There must've been an awful lot of hand wringing at the oil company over the expense and the wasted real estate (inside the loops).
There you go again, talking 'surveyor' . . . (see "Commonly Used Terms" at the bottom of this webpage on The Public Land Survey System (PLSS): http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/boundaries/a_plss.html#three ).
Actually, 'turning trains around' is one notable omission of this layout. Are they even going to do that ?
The main line on either side is single track (there's a siding opposite the site, so it looks like double track here). Maybe BNSF will just run the oil trains 'directionally' - say, empty westbound on another line, then eastbound on this one to the facility, through it to load, and then continue on eastbound loaded - hence no need to reverse train directions or ends here.
If the ends are going to be swapped, then how ? There's no reversing loop/ diagonal track (yet). However, since the trains will be stopped for an hour or so at a time as each cut of tank cars is spotted at the rack and loaded, that would be more than enough time to uncouple the locomotives from the leading end, run them forward a few hundred yards to what was the former rear of the train, couple up again, move the EOTD to the other now rear end of the train, and perform a Class 1 air test (plus the shuttle of the EOTD from one end to the other just so no one has to physically lug it that far).
Notably, it appears that the guy who runs this operation has been elsewhere, and doesn't know or isn;t persuaded that loading tank cars on a loop track can't be done. (<sarcasm>) Evidently the productivity calculation is that the cumulative train "dwell time" waiting for all the cars to be loaded in sequential segments while still together is not much worse than the conventional wisdom of breaking the train down into several cuts of cars, loading each of those cuts at racks on multiple tracks, and then reassembling the train - plus a lot simpler. It would be interesting to 'stopwatch' it some day to compare.
I figured the land inside the loops would be used for more oil storage tanks, support facilities, labs, offices, other related businesses, sand and other supplies for the locos, etc. - maybe even a little car shop served by a trackmobile that can negotiate even tighter curves with just a couple of cars to deal with 'bad order' cars that need immediate attention before going anyplace else or minor repairs, etc.
You can just about count on the inside of a loop being unusable land because any at-grade crossing will be blocked. The fun with these spiralled out loading facilitites is that you can coil a trail up and gradually unwind it and pull out as you load. The crossover switches mainly see use at the beginning of the loading process when the empty train enters the facility and goes to the inward side of the loop.
(OK PDN- Get your jabs in back there in Metes and Bounds survey land while you can where nothing is square or uniform )
On the other hand, the railroad might have one or more power units on each end of the train. I understand there is this technology...
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
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