The Future of Freight Railroading

[Anonymous]

Maybe this is a dumb question but I don't get the sense from reading "Trains" that the railroads see much change in the future. So I wonder what people think freight railroads will be like in 50 years?

Be safe

[csxns]

I hope it is good.

[Anonymous]

They will probably scab more work out to podunk shortlines to reduce their wages paid out.

[edblysard]

Very general concept.
UP, BNSF, NS and Whoever buys CSX running coast to coast and big city to big city trains, with hub points throughout their systems.
More short lines, regionals, belt and terminal railroads will appear to handle the local distribution and switching, maybe doing a transfer run to the hubs.
Class 1s will give up the local work in favor of the more profitable big runs, and the smaller roads will handle the rest, due in part to the fact that the smaller roads are more adaptable.

KCS will run the majority of the north south business, and have a major part of the Mexican cross border traffic.

Large intermodel and bulk/unit trains the norm, with the general freight consolidated into large, daily cross country trains, very much like a unit train, dropping off the pre blocked units at the hubs, for distribution by the local road.

Class 1 roads will succeed in creating the one man train, engineer only, with a second engineer riding in a sleeper, ready to relive engineer #1 for non stop coast to coast runs.

Not much change in the equipment, its crude and primitive, but thats the reason it works now, it can take a beating and survive.
Locomotives have pretty much reached the end of the developement line, with the exception on steerable trucks and additional electronics, GPS and PTS.

Just a general concept.
Ed

[TH&B]

Sounds to me that's only 10 years from now.
How about plastic rail, trains with no wheels, smart single cars or cuts of cars each moving along on their preprogrammed journey. No such thing as TOFC or lineside signals (too crude). But all still compatible enough to run an historic steam engine with coaches (insurance premiums permitting) .........

[edblysard]

You would think its only a few years away, but remember, we didnt go to had held radios until the late 70s, yet they had been available since WWII.
Major technoloical advances for the rest of the real world take a long time to show up in railroading, due in a large part to cultural inerita, we do resist change, even when its for the better.
Think about this.
How long has cell phone technology been around?
You can pick up a small, very small lightwieght phone, and from the deep southeast end of Texas, dial direct to and speak clearly to a person in Hong Kong.
Yet we use a very heavy, limited range handheld radio, that cost more than the cell phone, breaks even more easily, has a battery that runs down in less than 8 hours, and might have a usable range of 4 or 5 miles, on flat land.
Some of them barely work on line of sight!
Comunication, which is so necessary in todays railroad, is still in the decade before last.
Why?
Because the culture of railroading is so resistant to change, from management on down.
Management wont invest in the new technology, until they have no choice, and labor resist change just on general principles.
Dont look for any radical or major change to take effect until there is no other option left for the railroad to follow.

Want to know something sobering?

The On Star system, on most new GM cars, is more dependable, more reliable and cost less than the radio in todays locomotives, yet nothing like that, or the cell phone technology, have even been considered seriously by the industry.

You have better comunication technology in your new 2 ton pick up truck than in a new 200 ton locomotive, draging 150 loaded grain cars at 60 mph.
Go figure.
Ed

[Anonymous]

Ed,

That's really sad. Being afraid of change is not good in this world. But I'm not really suprised. Just from reading "Trains" I can see that the railroads aren't very forward thinking. Even the trucking companies who are terrible at maintenance and capital improvements have started using GPS to keep tabs on the location of trucks. Metra is using GPS now too but because the system only uses GPS data, they can't tell what track a given train is on.

I can see where they would want to farm out short haul stuff. I wonder if that will mean more or fewer jobs? Or would the jobs just migrate to the short lines? It seems like freight business has been growing. Is that growth mostly in short or long haul? Also, will mixed freight die out in favor of intermodal?

If locomotives have evolved as far as they can, what about fuel cell technology? Also, I wonder if there would be any changes in freight operations in ROW maintenance was subsidized at the same level as highways and aviation?

Be safe

[Anonymous]

Well, I dont know. I have been hearing more and more about these remote contorl operated locomotive systems. Sounds too much like Model Railroad DCC systems made bigger to me though, and I dont know how far it will go.

[PNWRMNM]

Timberwolf,

Railroads do not need GPS. They have other systems to keep track of the cars and rail cars can not go anywhere like a truck can.

Ed is right about slow pace of technological change. We could debate forever whether labor or management is more responsible for this. I personally lean toward labor. Another reason for this is the need for interchangeability. You will not see much change in coupler technology since the new will have to couple with the old. Electro Pneumatic braking is an example of something that would bring big improvement in train handling but the just havent figured out how to do it cheap enough and reliably enough yet.

A practical improvement would be a coupler that would authmatically make the air joint too. They have them in transit service. Problem is interchangeablity and the rough service environment. Remember Ed's story about shaking up the yuppie hobo's. That stuff happens and even on a good day both hump yards and flat yards have lots of rough joints.

It is very difficult to make the elephant dance. Most of the problems are between people's ears.

Mac

[JoeKoh]

im hoping more changes in railcars.i dont think the boxcar will be around.i hope i am wrong on that one.as far as technology goes Ed is right.railroads wont use it until they have too.
stay safe
Joe

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by PNWRMNM

Timberwolf,

Railroads do not need GPS. They have other systems to keep track of the cars and rail cars can not go anywhere like a truck can.


Ed is right about slow pace of technological change. We could debate forever whether labor or management is more responsible for this. I personally lean toward labor. Another reason for this is the need for interchangeability. You will not see much change in coupler technology since the new will have to couple with the old. Electro Pneumatic braking is an example of something that would bring big improvement in train handling but the just havent figured out how to do it cheap enough and reliably enough yet.

I'd say its probably both management and labor. Management is all about cutting costs in the short-term these days and labor is always afraid (not without reason) that new technology will cost jobs.

A practical improvement would be a coupler that would authmatically make the air joint too. They have them in transit service. Problem is interchangeablity and the rough service environment. Remember Ed's story about shaking up the yuppie hobo's. That stuff happens and even on a good day both hump yards and flat yards have lots of rough joints.

Well, I understand that block occupancy signals can show that a given block of track is occupied. But does it also indicate which train is in the block?

It would sure be nice for yard crews to not have to wrestle with air hoses in the winter.

It sounds like the remote control belts will take a while to gain wide-spread acceptance. From what I've read, on issue that will have to be worked out is whether conductor/switchmen will be allowed to use them wheter they will be restricted to engineers. I was at an orientation/testing session conductor trainees for BNSF last week and the HR guy mentioned that learning the use a belt pack might be something that we would be trained on in the future but because he mentioned it in the same breath that he mentioned engineer training, I wasn't clear what trade it would fall under.

Is there any market for freight trains that average 70+ mph? Such speeds seem fairly common in Europe and UK.

[mudchicken]

PNWRMNM,timbrewolf,unihead, et.al...

The railroads are using GPS heavilly, the problem is most of what they are doing with it has nothing to do with PTS. In light of FRA's Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC) and 49CFR236, PTS and GPS has a LONG way to go in the reliability department. (GPS is not inherently reliable in trees, narrow valleys, tunnels, under bridges or anywhere else where it is not clear from horizon to horizon like KS/CO/WY/NE/IL. RSAC is not going to let ANY high tech safety system on the loose until its reliability is almost in the six-sigma range.

With GPS and radio telemetry, General Electric GETS in Erie PA can tell you where the newer locomotives are, how fast they are going and what is about to break. They monitor almost all newer EMD and GE locomotives across the country. Until sufficient HARN stations are erected accross the country (High accuracy GPS base stations for the High Accuracy Reference Network), the system cannot tell if trains are passing each other at a siding or colliding in farmer Jones' corn field (relative precision problem). That little Garmin handheld receiver that most folks see as GPS is grossly inaccurate (+/- 10-50 feet) and you don't go surveying with it. Surveyors need at least 2 sets of equipment to go Static, Rapid Static or RTK to get the accuracy they need and then they spend considerable time processing the collected data to guarantee accuracy and precision. (most folks don't know the difference between accuracy and precision, .....GPS & GIS either)...

From what I've seen and am aware of, the railroads GPS & GIS programs would embarrass the daylights out of the county and state organisations if they knew where the railroads are at in the process. (Light years ahead of most)

Mudchicken (Railroad Surveyor)

ps - In one of the other threads we have ragged-on what the misconceptions that the press, the public and marketers are fond of quoting about railroads. GPS is the same way - most folks have an extemely limited understanding of what they see as a black box technology...

[edblysard]

Yeah, I would love to have automatic air hose joints, but...
One of the major reasons somethings dont change in railroading is because they work, work well, and survive.
Take the coupler/drawbar.
The basic design and construction havent changed in what, 100 years?
Because it works, works well, and can survuve the beating it will receive in a switching yard, and the stress put on it when its pulling another 150 loaded cars behind it.
Sure, now we have shelf couplers and the newer design that keep the couplers together even when the cars derail, but the basic way a coupler works, and the way it is made hasnt changed.
Could it be redesigned, made more modern?
Maybe, but why?
It works just fine like it is, and its cheap, compared to anything else.

No major changes in car design either, for the same reasons.

So, how cars are unloaded, loaded may have changed, even what we load them with changed, but the basic shape and how they are constructed hasnt changed in years.
Some new designs and materials have come along, aluminun gons and such, but they still ride on the same basic trucks, same kingpins, same wheelset, because they are a proven design, and are easy to produce, readily available, and work very well.

We could come up with a way to automaticly uncouple cars, and in fact have, but every railcar made still has a cut lever on each end, because nothing is as efficent as me lifting a lever to perform the same function a very expensive piece of equipment would have to do.
And I can repeat that function thousands of times, needing no regular maintainance other than sleep and food.
(well, maybe a cup of coffee and a smoke every once in a while)

Sure, some aspects of railroading are primitive and crude, but thats the beauty of it, we dont have to make it any more "modern", its already as efficent as we need.

Could it be made safer?

Yup, but the cost of redesigning just those two simple things would drive up the cost not only of the railcar, but the service also to the point that no one could afford to do so.

Plastic rails?
Man, when you see the pounding steel rails take, you will be amazed that they survive a week, much less the decades that is normal.
Maglev?
Not really, its good for moving people, but the pounding freight duty puts on equipment would destroy it.

If people could grasp how much mass and weight a single railcar has, they would be astounded the things ever move, much less how easily they do.

Go and really look at a piece of rail, its about 6" tall, 3" wide at the crown, and held in place by four spikes, each 5" long, driven into a wooden tie.
It sits on a base that 4" wide.
If you look at it for a few minutes, and didnt know the forces involved, the thing looks like it should just tip over the first time a SD70 passes over it.
But the same shape and size, and the same way its manufactured, hasnt changed for a century because it works.

Railroads basic equipment has pretty much reached the end of the refinment cycle, its the other end of the technology spread we need to focus on.

It isnt about how a railcar works, or how its switched, or even tracked, its how we can make the process more efficent, not the machines.

GPS cant do that, not at a cost any company can afford, unless they are willing to change all of the systems on all of the railroads to work together.

And even then, you still need the human factor, because like mudchicken pointed out, current GPS can be incorrect by 50 feet, and with railroading, 5" can make all the difference between a normal day of work, and a disaster.

Havent seen a gps systen that can poke its head out the window and look to make sure the rear of a train I am about to pass is in the clear.

Any major change in equipment cant really happen, can you imagine having to retrofit something major to every railcar, and every locomotive in exsistence?
The cost would be far above anything any railroad could bear.

Stay Frosty,
Ed

[PNWRMNM]

Ed,

Your are correct. Most of the hurtfull limitations associated with the railroads are in people's heads, management, labor, customers, politicians particularly.

The technology is sound. It can haul anything and go almost anywhere there is any economic need.

The high fixed cost means you need either high rates or a lot of volume to pay for the fixed plant. When you have to buy your own fixed plant, in competition with guys who are paying below cost rents, you are in an awful competitive box. That is the railroad's worst economic problem today.

[Anonymous]

Look for an "AT&T" style breakup of the rail oligarchy within 10 years, e.g. the infrastructure portions of the rail companies being separated from the operating portions. Once this "open access" concept is in place, look for the trucking, barge, and 3PL companies to eventually dominated rail business, with the current crop of rail companies going the way of the dodo bird.

[Train Guy 3]

" The future is whatever you want it to be. "

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Open access has been a mixed bag overseas. The railroad infrastructure and the operators in the UK have been separated and while it hasn't been a roaring success it does seem to work. In Australia you have a mixed system in which operators and infrastructure have been separated in some states but not others. It has also led to a certain amount of cherry-picking of business by some operators.
One problem with open access is that the infrastructure owners would have little incentive to upgrade the trackage for a specific operator unless such a provision is written into the operating agreement with that operator. Also, how would the owner bill multiple operators on a length of railroad when a small local freight operator has less need for Class 5 trackage then an intermodal operator or coal-hauler.
Open access could easily be described as guaranteed employment for lawyers.

[carnej1]

History tends to show that any attempt to forecast this far ahead in the future is ultimately pointless but I can't resist.
In 50 years:
The Fuel Cell locomotive may be a reality,either using Hydrogen as fuel of(more likely IMO) hydrocarbon fuels like methane(which can be extracted from a number of sources including coal and organic waste). I would not count out the Diesel engine for railroad uses as it is a versatile and efficient producer of power(and can also be modified to run on a variety of fuels) and there is still a lot of innovation that can be applied to it's development.
Locomotives may carry onboard energy storage systems utilizing technology such as superconducting,high speed flywheel systems which capture energy from the unit's dynamic brake system and store it for reuse(already in development by Bombardier and the Department of energy). Prime mover could be a diesel engine, a gas turbine, or a fuel cell.
I tend to think that freight and passenger trains will still have at least one live human operator onboard,but I suspect that this will be more out of liability concerns than technical ones(and if true artificial intelligence is developed in the interim than the "giant DCC model railroad" anology may be reality)
MAGLEV systems may be found worldwide, though these will probably take more business from regional airlines and express trucking companies than they do from conventional railroads.
The Integral train concept(or freight multiple unit as it's also known) as proposed by John Kneilling in TRAINS back in the 60's and 70's may come to fruition. This type of equipment(basically a modular,self propelled,lightweight intermodal train) is already in use in Europe and Australia(the CARGOSPRINTER) and was the subject of a development project by MK,CSX, and CP in North America(the IRON HIGHWAY system,now shelved but it could be an idea for the future).
It's hard to predict what the Industry will be like but open access seems plausible to me
Steam Turbine locomotives using alternative fuels such as biomass(i.e recycled paper and woodwaste):seems a long shot but there is at least one company in the us trying to develop the concept.
As I stated in the beginning of my reply though:you're guess is as good as mine(and I'm no expert,I just read a lot) with a time frame this long.

[TH&B]

John Kneilling, rememer him? very entertaining reading especialy now when things don't seem like how he predicted, but he was generaly always pushing a good point.

I don't think the boxcar will die, we will always find something to put in them. Although it may have inherent disadvantages it also has advantages; it fills out the loading gauge and can carry a heavier load and more cube space then containers or pigs and also has less wind resitance then most intermodal. Why not couple 5 packs together close with draw bars no slack like intermodal cars are and use them in dedicted unit train service? DO NOT HUMP OR KICK Not as flexible as loose cars or intermodal but cheaper if you can generate the volume point to point. So I say the future is still in boxcars.

My plastic rail idea I was just kidding, but you never know. Maybe one day even rail made of licorice, and vandal kids keep eating pieces of the rail ..... but you never know what the future holds.

[Anonymous]

Regarding open access, consider some of the new North American freight rail proposals that have been bandied about for the last few years, e.g. The Alaska Rail Connection, The Uintah rail project in Colorado/Utah, or the Lewiston-Missoula RailLink from western Montana to the barge ports on the Snake River. All these projects would connect with more than one current railroad on one or both ends. Since all these projects would require federal help, and since all shippers today are painfully aware of the need for competitive rate offerings, the most likely scenario for these projects would be to make them open access so that all the connecting railroads would have access to the new lines. Otherwise, the government ends up subsidizing one of the rail oligarchs, and the inefficiencies and indifference inherent in these oligarchs would end up botching up the whole project.