Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. But, if there were a constant motion of freight cars, those cars could reach their destination whoppingly fast, saving much wasted money.
In hard economic times, such money savings could keep workers on the payroll. When the economy improves, the retained workers would be available to handle the traffic crush that will inevitably arise.
croteaudd Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. But, if there were a constant motion of freight cars, those cars could reach their destination whoppingly fast, saving much wasted money. In hard economic times, such money savings could keep workers on the payroll. When the economy improves, the retained workers would be available to handle the traffic crush that will inevitably arise.
Whaaaa?
This could be interesting
Your observation that 'Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards.', highlights your lack of understanding of what is required to handle the business of moving shipments from thousands of shippers to thousands of consignees; all at the same time and in a organized manner at minimum total cost.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
croteauddEverything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. But, if there were a constant motion of freight cars, those cars could reach their destination whoppingly fast, saving much wasted money.In hard economic times, such money savings could keep workers on the payroll. When the economy improves, the retained workers would be available to handle the traffic crush that will inevitably arise.
Whereas running more trains is the ultimate answer to yard congestion, it is not the answer to what you're thinking. The cars aren't standing still because of a lack of people to move them. I'm not sure how long you're standing and watching some stationary cars, but they're probably either being inspected, waiting their turn to be classified with facilities that are already at optimal size for efficiency (we only hump one train at a time!), or waiting for their scheduled trains to depart. Or perhaps you're looking at a storage or heavy-bad-order track.
Increasing trains to handle the same amount of traffic would probably be a bigger waste of money than letting them sit for the hours it might take for their scheduled train to be ordered and readied for departure. When the traffic returns (and I agree with you that that's inevitable), added trains will be run, and furloughed employees recalled. Yard jobs will be put on to build more trains, and perhaps some trains will be blocked to avoid yards that used to switch them out. Most railroads are now wisely spending the money to expand and improve their infrastructure, so they'll be ready.
P.S. To say that "Everything perpetually seems to stand still" is suggesting that at least a couple of regular, respected posters on this Forum aren't doing their jobs. You really don't want to go there.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
piouslion1 This could be interesting
+1
Dan
BC - expand on your job a little for me. A train comes into Proviso, you break it down so cars are sent on to their destination. (Trying to be brief) - So in an 8 hour time period, how many cars humped on average? (remember watching North Platte and it seemed they went through a lot of cars in a couple of hours)
I would assume you may have some through freights - like unit grain trains, but do you have any other trains that don't need "sorting" - just keep going? And are those routed around the outside of the yard like some our coal trains are here?
As for things looking like they are standing still, this is like me watching a BO set out on a coal train. I am only seeing the head end or 1/4 of the train. The real work is being done back in the yard where I can't see it. Ergo, it looks like trains stand or only move a little in a 30-60 min time period.
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
There's two approaches to the observation you made. One approach is to ask questions and gain insights. If history is any guide, the response would be generous and thorough. The other approach is to pronounce that the industry is wasting money, implicitly through its ineptness. The response to that approach, if any is made, will probably be hostile. I am left scratching my head why anyone would want to take the second approach, unless their idea of fun is to make other people angry.
RWM
Greetings CShaveRR,
What I am alluding to is way, way beyond present methodologies, so does not reflect poorly on anyone. The perspective spoken about embraces "sorting facilities" in lieu of "yards." Thus, arriving railcars would depart within just a few hours.
croteauddGreetings CShaveRR,What I am alluding to is way, way beyond present methodologies, so does not reflect poorly on anyone. The perspective spoken about embraces "sorting facilities" in lieu of "yards." Thus, arriving railcars would depart within just a few hours.
That would require operating more trains, with more crews, more locomotives, and more main-track capacity, and much higher main-track maintenance costs. Against which there would be some savings in car hire. In round numbers, if one entire day of car hire was saved at $25 per car, the total possible savings in your plan is $2,500, against an increased cost of about $5,100. (Three additional train-service crews at a cost of about $1,200 each, an additional locomotive cost of about $900 (4 units for 4 trains, 1 each, instead of 2 units for one train, an additional fuel cost of $300, an additional track maintenance cost of $300 (less time for maintenance-of-way, and so forth. ) I haven't figured in the cost of the additional sidings for all the new meet-and-pass events.
So why would anyone want to do that?
SJ, we try to hump over 600 cars per shift. A lot of factors can reduce this figure, but we've also gotten close to 900 on a good day. If the receiving yard is light, we're switching cars that arrived and were inspected earlier in the shift (a couple of times recently, we had trains come in by 11:00 and they were over the hump by the time I left at 2:30--rare, but doable). North Platte has the advantage of having a pair of hump yards.
Yes, we have coal trains, grain trains, perishable trains (a few), sulfur trains, ethanol trains, auto trains (and intermodal, which are handled a bit differently), all of which go past the "business" portions of our yard. Some of the incoming manifest trains set out blocks of cars that are forwarded on the appropriate trains for classification elsewhere. We also have manifest trains that run between North Platte and our eastern connections.
This whole discussion reminds me of something we saw here a while back--a sort of turntable within a turntable, with everything spinning every which way. I'm sorry, but somewhere, somehow, reality has to set in, and our system works pretty well at what I assume is not an unreasonable cost to the company.
croteauddEverything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. But, if there were a constant motion of freight cars, those cars could reach their destination whoppingly fast, saving much wasted money.
From this and your subsequent post, it sounds like you have a specific plan. Why don't you lay it out for us? The objective of saving money is always appealing, but it is meaningless without a workable method.
croteaudd Greetings CShaveRR, What I am alluding to is way, way beyond present methodologies, so does not reflect poorly on anyone. The perspective spoken about embraces "sorting facilities" in lieu of "yards." Thus, arriving railcars would depart within just a few hours.
A rose by any other name is still a rose. What you're calling a sorting facility sounds like a yard to me. What am I missing?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
First: Let's not be too quick to jump to premature conclusions here and take offense unnecessarily from the observations and questions in the posts by the person who started this thread, croteaudd (at least not yet). Please understand that I'm not being condescending or adopting his (her ?) viewpoint. Instead, I'm sensing that the original poster may well be a person for whom English is not his (her) original language. While this topic and the comments may well be provocative (see below), I'm willing to bet that his selection of words was not deliberately intended have that effect. I'm no linguist, but there's something about the choice of words, phrasing, and sentence structure here that's indicating that to me. I have some number of relatives and acquaintances from eastern Europe, and that's where I'm thinking this poster is from. So let's cut him some slack on our interpretations from the nuances of his wording, at least until his intent and purpose becomes clearer.
Second: I quite agree with piouslion1 and CNW 6000 that "This could be interesting" - with the understanding that they mean in an intelllectual sense (not like schoolboys sensing a pending fight in the yard). What the poster seems to be saying is essentially what John G. Kneiling said many times over - rightly or wrongly - over during his career in Trains, but now with the added aspect of keeping more railroaders employed during the present economic downturn. This is a topic I'm interested in, so this post may be one of those where "There but for the grace of God go I . . . ".
Third - the substantive merits of this (RWM's $ figures above): The savings side seems easy enough - "[O]ne entire day of car hire . . . saved at $25 per car, the total possible savings in your plan is $2,500". That implies to me that 100 cars are involved in this exercise - although no one has said as much yet that I saw. (Or did I miss something here ?)
On the cost side, I'm having a hard time following the analysis, though. As a recap: RWM seems to be saying that normally 1 train with 2 units and 1 train-service crew would be needed. But, RWM's undertanding of croteaudd's comment is that 3 more trains would have to be run to do as croteaudd proposes, for a total of 4 trains - each with 1 locomotive and 1 train-service crews - for a total of 4 crews and 4 locomotives. That's an increase of 3 crews (4 - 1 = 3) @ $1,200 = $3,600 and 2 locomotives (4 - 2 = 2) for $900 additional ($450 each ?), plus $300 for the fuel that those 2 locos would need, and $300 more for track maintenance = $5,100 as stated. So the math (only) works out.
Here are my difficulties/ questions, though: The 100 cars = about 1 train, normally. So the 2 units and 1 train crew normally needed ought to be enough to move these 100 cars, right ? Then why are a total of 4 trains needed instead ? I can see where the problem with this suggestion is that these cars will have to go in a separate train, as opposed to otherwise normally being merely "filling out tonnage" on the rear of the next several trains going in that direction that are light on weight and length (so they can still fit in the sidings) for the power that is being assigned to those trains. Is the scenario instead that these cars would move in 25-car trains, each with 1 loco and 1 crew ? (Note, though, that might result in an expedited schedule, since the loco-to-cars ratio would about double - from 2 locos to 4 locos for whatever size group of cars that we're considering.) Having to quadruple the train frequency to greatly reduce the yard "dwell time" might be a valid solution if the volume through that yard was only 100 cars a day, and there was no other way to move those cars. But I don't believe that's the kind of operation we're discussing here - instead, we should be considering something with a volume of from 1,500 cars per day (Allentown) to 2,500 (Proviso ?) to 3,000 North Platte = 1 - 100-car train every 45 to 90 minutes on average. Also, I can see the $300 additional fuel expense for the 2 addt'l. locos. (Even though they're not doing any additional work beyond the "normal" condition in the physics sense - same cars being moved the same distance - but the 2 more locos burn some fuel even while sitting still, and as noted above the power ratio would be about doubled, so OK on that.) The added track maintenance I also have a hard time understanding - again, same cars, same distance - unless the $300 is just an allowance for the incremental cost for the track wear caused by those 2 addt'l. locos going that distance ? (whatever it may be in this example) Finally, if the proposal is 3 more trains, then the additional sidings comment makes sense - but again, I'm not understanding how we got to needing that number of trains.
I need to go do some other things for a while. Let me come back later with a recast of this question, with some numbers based in a reality I can understand better. (Look, I'm an engineer, I don't do abstractions well - Work with me here, people - OK ? )
- Paul North.
P.S. - Mookie and CShaveRR - I take it that "BC" is Brother Carl" and "SJ" is "Sister Jen", or similar ? Don't mean to intrude on an inside joke or anything, but - don't laugh too hard, now - both of you had me looking for a couple of posts by a "BC" and an "SJ" that I thought I had somehow missed or overlooked . . .
Paul - many years ago when Carl and I were both fairly new to the forums, he commented on going to his mother's house for a visit. I teased him (think Smothers Brothers) that Mom always did like him best. It grew from there.
The real inside joke was that we had never even met at that point. We have several times since then. Now the joke is that I am his little sister, even tho I am older than he.
And then there is cousin Ed in Houston....
You're making this far too hard, Paul.
The problem as stated is "cars dwell too long in yards." But that is a red-herring metric that only approximates, often highly inaccurately, the true problem, which is "total car trip cycle time." The RPM website measures car dwell because it's a daily metric one can use to gauge system congestion on any given Class 1. When the RPM website came out, a lot of us groaned because we knew it would fuel the desire of people to misuse it for purposes not intended nor appropriate, such as presuming they could use it to analyze a complex system with a simple tool, kind of like doing needlepoint with a sledgehammer. And that is precisely what has happened, and as a result we have all sorts of opinions by newly minted experts being used to justify all manner of poor investment and public policy decisions.
There are only two solutions to reducing dwell time and car-cycle time: depart the cars more quickly from the yard, or avoid the yard altogether. The first solution requires more frequent departures, which requires smaller trains. For example, if the yard generates 100 cars a day for Chicago, and those cars trickle in over 24 hours, and one 100-car train a day is run, the cars dwell 12 hours on average. If the yard wants to reduce the dwell time to 3 hours on average, then it needs to run a train every 6 hours, which will be 25 cars long. 4x as much trains, 4x (or more) the train-mile cost (because you'll need a lot more sidings for meet and pass events), but we've saved 18 hours of car hire per car, on average.
The second solution requires trains that do not stop for sorting, which ALSO requires smaller trains. There is no way around this, except (1) demarketing those pesky customers, or (2) slashing rates and getting a huge increase in volume. And guess what, those are options that have been done, too.
The #1 way to reduce costs at a railroad is run bigger trains. Car-hire is a cost, but it is not the only cost. In the whole scheme of things it is not remotely even the largest cost.
Assume a big yard where theoretically there are lots of opportunities to reduce dwell time. When I look at the inbound lists for a big yard, I marvel at how MANY O-D pairs there are. Clearing Yard, for example, receives and builds about 24 trains a day, roughly 2400 cars. Those are scattered among about 500 O-D pairs on an average daily basis. I suppose we could run 500 trains a day, instead of 24 trains a day, and then we could scrap Clearing and put a Home Depot and a multiplex on it. I don't think the ROI would pencil out too nicely, though.
You may not realize this, but your example above alludes to the "bump along" method of car classification where all a yard does is insert its originating cars into trains, and remove its terminating cars, and sweeps everything out the door mine-run. That strategy entails an awful lot of yards, which entails an awful lot of dwell, and also entails an awful lot of cost. "Bump along" was popular before telecommunications existed because no one had to know what anyone else was doing; each yard could function as it's own little railroad. The practice since the 1930s has been to try to minimize the number of car sorts for each car's journey, and bump-along has diminished in use.
Would it be safe to assume that the industry has addressed this issue (indirectly) by the movement of a significant portion of the freight handled to intermodal?
There seems to be much higher frequencies of O/D movements via intermodal than carload.
I asked the same question years ago (regarding more frequent departures) and it was pointed out the carload volume between most points is quite small.
It is very similar to the airline hub and spoke system.
ed
RWM -
"Making this far too hard", eh ? Why is it I seem to have heard that before . . . .
But thanks for the - as always - informative and thought-provoking post. There's some aspects to this that I know I don't yet understand, and you've definitely touched on some of them. Let me digest this a little further, and see if I can either come to a better understanding of it all, or ask / comment with something more considered, rather than denial, repetition, mere rebuttal, etc.
Mookie & Carl - OK, thanks for confirming that. I thought that might be the case, but like I said, you had me going for a while looking for members that I didn't recognize but whom each of you thought had something to add on this . . . and in view of your participation here, if you thought it was worthwhile, then I thought I'd better see what it was. Take care - stay warm & dry.
To be continued (I think). Best regards to all.
MP173Would it be safe to assume that the industry has addressed this issue (indirectly) by the movement of a significant portion of the freight handled to intermodal? There seems to be much higher frequencies of O/D movements via intermodal than carload. I asked the same question years ago (regarding more frequent departures) and it was pointed out the carload volume between most points is quite small. It is very similar to the airline hub and spoke system. ed
Precisely.
The intermodal business model actually has more O-D pairs than the carload model, but the railway itself doesn't truly seem them because it's portion of the model only looks at the ramp to ramp O-D pairs. And even with that, the volumes in any given ramp O-D pair can be excruciatingly low. I recall a visit to one of the big Chicago terminals where the terminal superintendent pointed out two five-packs holding 20 containers arriving from Fresno, and remarking that most days those 20 containers had 15 to 16 destinations long east. He used this as illustration why the vaunted steel-wheel interchange through Chicago that a lot of experts say the railways should do, is in reality, not an economical solution. In other words, once you have the container off the car and on rubber, you might as well keep it there until it gets to a solid trainload heading to its destination, and use the Chicago street system to sort it all out.
(This is why so many small ramps were closed immediately after Staggers -- because their volume contribution to each lane was really awful).
Similarly, I fly a lot, and when the flight is late and the attendant reads off the connecting gates, it's interesting to see how 180 United passengers arriving Denver from Chicago can scatter into 40 or 50 connecting flights, all onesy-twosy. In other words, on any given day, the number of passengers flying, say, San Diego-Sioux Falls, might be 1. Or 0. But the system has to support even those because as an aggregate, it makes money. (Which leads us to marginal costing, ugh.)
If you think about it, the intermodal business model and the airline passenger model are essentially identical. Both use a very limited set of O-Ds and rely upon the passenger/container to get itself to the origin, and from the destination to their final destination. Both have very large market basins around their stations. Both use very thin O-D lanes to bolster volume in the aggregate. Both rely upon the object to sort itself out at the hubs -- the passenger is self-propelled and finds its own way between gates, the container rubbers its way between ramps. Schematically, the airline hub and the intermodal gateway hub are identical.
RWM:I have never compared the intermodal to airline hub/spoke but it does compare. The LTL trucking model and the carload railroad have always seemed very similar. Both have local terminals making pickups/deliveries (usually early morning/late afternoons to facilitate logistics patterns), movement to larger terminals (break bulk for LTL, hump yards for rails) for classification thru the system, and then local terminals again.
LTL terminals have dedicated doors where loads are built for local terminals, similar to yards which have dedicated tracks. LTL terminals and hump yards are fascinating places to watch activity if you are so inclined. The systems in place are science and art, technologies and experience.
Obviously UPS and FedEx have built very precise air freight models with Louisville and Memphis extremely hot places around midnight.
Logisitics is just fascinating.
RWM, I never realized those intermodal trains would have so many destinations. But, it makes sense. Eastbound from the west coast, the trains would be carrying Chicago and beyond...with "beyond" being the big bowl of spaghetti. It would be curious to know what percentage of a 200 container Long Beach - Chicago stack train has Chicago proper (drayage to destination) vs Detroits, Clevelands, Columbus, NYC, Boston, etc. Chicago eastbound on CSX or NS will obviously target major markets.
Do the eastbounds out of Chicago typically run point to point, or will blocks be kicked for intermediate points? In other words, is it cheaper (based on land constraints) to build several blocks daily for Cleveland, Buffalo, or Syracuse/Rochester rather than one daily to each location? There are so many Chicago - New Jersey stacks and intermodals, all with varying degrees of critical delivery times, based on UPS trailers, LTL's, and TL's. Are all of those Jersey trains exclusively for the region?
Having awakened with an extreme case of the absurds....
Did anyone eles wonder if he was simply basing his original assumption on having watched a SIT yard all day long?
23 17 46 11
What fraction of the typical overall trip time does a car actually sit in yards waiting to be sorted? Also, how many times is a car sorted on a typical trip?
Anthony
Railway ManThere are only two solutions to reducing dwell time and car-cycle time: depart the cars more quickly from the yard, or avoid the yard altogether. The first solution requires more frequent departures, which requires smaller trains. For example, if the yard generates 100 cars a day for Chicago, and those cars trickle in over 24 hours, and one 100-car train a day is run, the cars dwell 12 hours on average. If the yard wants to reduce the dwell time to 3 hours on average, then it needs to run a train every 6 hours, which will be 25 cars long. 4x as much trains, 4x (or more) the train-mile cost (because you'll need a lot more sidings for meet and pass events), but we've saved 18 hours of car hire per car, on average.
There is a third option. More blocks per train, provided you have multiple trains plying the same route. Example: Suppose Allentown makes a solid Conway train and a solid Elkhart train, one each per day and Conway makes a solid Elhart train, one per day. Instead of this scheme, you could run two Allentown to Elhart trains 12 hours apart on the clock, each carrying Conways and Elkharts, each setting out and picking up at Conway. Train productivity is unchanged, but yard work complexity is increased.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
On a large RR I am familiar with, the typcial number of intermediate handlings per trip, not counting the originating and terminating yards, is about one and a half.
For one complete cycle, a freight car will spend about 10% of the time on a through freight train, 25% at an intermediate yard and the rest getting to, from and at the customer which would include time at the origin and destination yards, time on a local train, and time at the customer's facility.
MP173 RWM:I have never compared the intermodal to airline hub/spoke but it does compare. The LTL trucking model and the carload railroad have always seemed very similar. Both have local terminals making pickups/deliveries (usually early morning/late afternoons to facilitate logistics patterns), movement to larger terminals (break bulk for LTL, hump yards for rails) for classification thru the system, and then local terminals again. LTL terminals have dedicated doors where loads are built for local terminals, similar to yards which have dedicated tracks. LTL terminals and hump yards are fascinating places to watch activity if you are so inclined. The systems in place are science and art, technologies and experience. Obviously UPS and FedEx have built very precise air freight models with Louisville and Memphis extremely hot places around midnight. Logisitics is just fascinating. RWM, I never realized those intermodal trains would have so many destinations. But, it makes sense. Eastbound from the west coast, the trains would be carrying Chicago and beyond...with "beyond" being the big bowl of spaghetti. It would be curious to know what percentage of a 200 container Long Beach - Chicago stack train has Chicago proper (drayage to destination) vs Detroits, Clevelands, Columbus, NYC, Boston, etc. Chicago eastbound on CSX or NS will obviously target major markets. Do the eastbounds out of Chicago typically run point to point, or will blocks be kicked for intermediate points? In other words, is it cheaper (based on land constraints) to build several blocks daily for Cleveland, Buffalo, or Syracuse/Rochester rather than one daily to each location? There are so many Chicago - New Jersey stacks and intermodals, all with varying degrees of critical delivery times, based on UPS trailers, LTL's, and TL's. Are all of those Jersey trains exclusively for the region? ed
The eastbound trains out of Chicago do handle traffic to interemediate points, based on the many factors you point out. Typically, the through intermodal trains will work a couple of small, intermediate terminals enroute. A Chicago to NY train may work at Toledo or Pittsburgh, for example.
On NS, there are two hubs in the intermodal network that handle quite a bit of block swapping between trains. Harrisburg/Rutherford and Atlanta both support act to gather up and distribute blocks to and from the terminals on the eastern edge of the system to and from the west. For example, Harrisburg will have trains from several terminals in Chicago plus St. Louis and KC arrive from the west. It will block swap (and even "filet" the stacks for Baltimore), to support trains to the North Jersey terminals, Morrisville, Phila, and Baltimore. In Atlanta, it's trains over Memphis, Meridian/Shreveport, New Orleans and out of Chicago being sorted by block for Jacksonville/FEC, Savannah, Charleston, and the small terminals along the Piedmont.
edblysard Having awakened with an extreme case of the absurds.... Did anyone eles wonder if he was simply basing his original assumption on having watched a SIT yard all day long?
It's like all those one track yards (Thornton, CO + Creede Branch + multiple others ) with all those stored cars that havve been in the news lately (WSJ et. al. - visual comment on the state of the economy) got together.....never mind.
Kinda scary what they're teaching in those high school economics classes these days if the original premise holds.
mudchicken Kinda scary what they're teaching in those high school economics classes these days if the original premise holds.
Hello RWM,The idea is, through new time and operating efficiencies, and with only half the rolling stock, to accomplish the same output.
It must be remembered that with present techniques in these hard economic times, nothing really benefits the railroads or their employees, only harms. On the other hand, having to maintain only half the rolling stock fleet because that half does twice the work, combined with resultant enhanced “time value of money” benefits to the railroad and its customers, more money would be available to retain employees, which happens to be the whole point of this topic in the first place.
So, the railroads would sacrifice their new ‘savings’ profits in the short term (that they wouldn’t get anyway with present methods), but reap much, much higher profits in the long term when economic prosperity returns!
croteaudd Hello RWM,The idea is, through new time and operating efficiencies, and with only half the rolling stock, to accomplish the same output. It must be remembered that with present techniques in these hard economic times, nothing really benefits the railroads or their employees, only harms. On the other hand, having to maintain only half the rolling stock fleet because that half does twice the work, combined with resultant enhanced “time value of money” benefits to the railroad and its customers, more money would be available to retain employees, which happens to be the whole point of this topic in the first place. So, the railroads would sacrifice their new ‘savings’ profits in the short term (that they wouldn’t get anyway with present methods), but reap much, much higher profits in the long term when economic prosperity returns!
OK, fine and well- you suggest to use 1/2 the equipment to to 100% of the work. Who wouldn't want to do that? But.....how exactly do you plan to do that? Why haven't the professional railroaders in our country figured this system out up until now? They've had 170 or so years to figure it out. I'm curious to hear the details of your plan.
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