Title --- Is double track even enough?
Editorial has a lot of merit. The ability to maintain fluidity is becoming more and more important for the final destination customer. Although each section of track would have its own needs a third Main Track for portions of a route would give useable locations for breakdowns, train storage, HOS stops, maintenance, accidents, etc.
We never seem to hear of delays on UP's 3 MT route or even BNSF's speedway out of Chicago.
Intermodal appears to be the direction that much manifest traffic is leaning towards. Look at what happened when BNSF was no loger able to give reliable on time service for intermodals on the northern tier route. If a third main track is available reliable MAS of 70 - 75 MPH where possible for those trains requiring timely delivery can be accomplished more than 90% of the time. The higher HP per ton of the intermodals can easily pass the drag freights going in the same direction.
As well any passenger trains running 79 - 90 MPH that make stops that pull its average down to match the 75 MPH freights.
Double tracking a single track main line requires much consideration of traffic, maintenance, different speed trains, etc Then as well those items would have to be noted to justify a third main track either for whole section of at least a 3rd main passing siding of consideragle length.
Costs of course are always a consideration with a ROI hard to determine. It appears that the costs of fewer locomotives and cars also a positive consideration. One less $3M loco can go a long way toward building what 1 miles of third track.? Building a third track probably would not cause as many slow work zones much like the BNSF third tracking of Cajon. ?
Jim's figure of $1M per mile does appear low. What's sometime needed is additional ROW, Culverts, Bridges, and at most CPs four additional turnouts. Add signals and need to move some signals at CPs and dispatcher displays and controls.
Haven't seen Jim's editorial as yet, but the subject reminds me that most Class 1 railroads run on, at best, the trucker equivalent of a 2-lane 1950s highway. And many of their miles are 1-lane, with shoulders -- sidings -- for somebody to get out of the way.
To meet the competition, the rails really need the equivalent of the truckers' 4-lane divided highway (a la the New York Central's Water Level Route before the slimming down of the 1950s). Is such a thing affordable, to maintain as well as to construct, on critical routes? By the rails alone or via some kind of public partnership?
From my vantage point -
The problem is not so much Main tracks and/or the lack of enough Main tracks - the problem is terminals, terminals holding trains until power is available, terminals holding trains until crews are available, terminals holding trains until another terminal has space to handle a train (track space or crew availability).
Moving trains on Main tracks between terminals is akin to your juggler in a TV variety show (how long has it been since there was one on prime time TV?) When the balls are in the air, they are the trains on the Main tracks, when the balls touch the jugglers hands they are terminal handling. The more the juggler can shorten the terminal time, the more balls he can keep in the air.
The same principles apply to railroading - the more throughput at the terminals the more trains can be handled. Having to hold trains out of terminals - for whatever reason - creates line of road delays as the Main Tracks are for moving trains, not holding them.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD's comments are right on! I speak from experience from my times when I worked a road train (usually worked yard engineer jobs if I could hold them). More than once our train had a "golden warrant" straight through with no meets from CTC Boylston (just out of Superior, Wis.) to CTC Coon Creek (where the Superior line joined the Northtown-Dilworth main line). As we got closer to Coon Creek the DS would call us and give us a warrant to take siding at Andover (first siding north of Coon Creek) for a train that wasn't even out of Northtown yet. We couldn't go in 'cause there was no track available for us.
And, another item that bogs down trains getting through terminals is slow poke crews that take forever to do a crew change. Watching some of these clowns nowdays is enough to make one sick. If they can do a change in under 20 minutes they're doing well. Too much ratchet-jawing and standing around. We normally did a crew change in two minutes or less: For example, when we used to change at Staples the crew van would pace our train as I rolled along to the west end of the yard. As we slowed, my conductor was already out the door and in position to detrain when we made the final stop. The outbound crew then hopped on and I gave the engineer a quick briefing on the power as I was leaving the cab. As soon as I was off, the engineer kicked off the brakes and away they went.
Kurt Hayek
You hit one major hot spot on the head. Taxes. A large reason why railroads reduced or eliminated capacity, main lines and terminals.
I have spent many hours watching trains from the platform of the Alpine, TX Amtrak station. It is a crew change point for Amtrak as well as UP. The UP crews usually change in two or three minutes and have the train on its way in a jiffy. Interestingly, it is the Amtrak crews that seem to take the most time.
I've noticed that crews that will begin overtime at the 8 hour mark (runs 130 miles or less) tend to take longer to get changed out. Crews that have to run off their miles first tend to want to get going.
While I don't doubt that track work played a part for the pictured coal train being tied down (Grand Mound is a preferred place to tie down trains that they don't want to take. You can get 3 coal trains, and possibly a 4th train if it isn't too long, between the CPs at Grand Mound and West Calamus.) other reasons also play a part. Some of those reasons are foriegn lines not wanting to take a run through, UP yards unable to take a train, and don't forget the commuter curfew. Crew availability at Clinton also sometimes enters into the picture.
Just one reason, depending on the time factor, and they might just have the crew sit and wait. Throw a couple of reasons into the picture and they might just decide to tie the train down.
Sorting trains, which ones they want or don't want, can begin out in western Iowa. Last trip home I had a mty ethanol train going north. I went around two Chicago bound trains they weren't in a hurry for. First time in a long time that the homeward leg of a trip took less than 8 hours.
Jeff
ROBERT WILLISON You hit one major hot spot on the head. Taxes. A large reason why railroads reduced or eliminated capacity, main lines and terminals.
Taxes are a factor in business decisions, especially if the company's price/demand curve is highly elastic, which means that it cannot pass the tax burden on to its customers without running them off to a competitor.
In 2012 - latest verified numbers - the Class 1s paid $960 million in property taxes. It sounds like a lot of money. However, when looked at as a percentage of revenues, tons loaded, ton miles, etc., the picture changes dramatically.
In 2012 the average revenue per carload for the Class 1s was $2,390. The average property tax burden per carload was $33.84. Or 1.42 per cent of revenue! The average property tax burden per ton loaded was 55 cents, and the average property tax burden per ton mile was .00056.
Corporations don't pay taxes. They pass them through to the customer in the pricing mechanism, unless they are faced with the highly elastic price/demand curve mentioned above, which is unusual.
Given the relatively small amount of property taxes paid by the nation's Class 1s, I doubt that many decisions on how to ship, i.e. rail, truck, water, etc., turn on the property taxes paid by the nation's railroads.
I believe that in many cases, expansion of yards to eliminate hold-outs plus one-speed railroading, will be a more economical way of solving the problem.
Uncle JakeAs far as delays on 3MT lines, there was a picture in Trains about 20 yrs ago that showed trains parked on two of the tracks of BNs speedway, but that may have been due to flooding or something.
the center track on the UP's Geneva sub is often occupied by waiting inbound trains. They need more terminal capacity. You won't see many trains being held over on the BNSF as there few places with enough distance between grade crossings to hold them.
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