FYI to anyone still following this thread to here:
This discussion has apparently shifted over to the above-linked thread, which is titled "Will Futuristic Railroad Yards Be Called Yards?", starting at the 2nd post up from the bottom on Page 1 of 4 (presently), with a post by greyhounds on 03-13-2009 at 1:15 AM:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/3890.aspx?PageIndex=1
- Paul North.
Bucyrus croteaudd, I see you have been down this road before: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/3890/20596.aspx#20596
croteaudd, I see you have been down this road before:
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/3890/20596.aspx#20596
Led to the same bridge-out sign, too.
RWM
Ed --
You're a little high on the cost. But that only is the cost for handling the car -- the labor, utilities, maintenance, capital, amoritization, interest, and taxes, of building, operating, and maintaining the yard, divided by the number of cars it handles. The inspection would be charged anyway because of the mileage requirement; you can't always hold it against the yard. The capital cost of the car itself that is consumed while it is in the yard is not included either.
But the number is only useful to compare one yard against another yard. On the plus side of the ledger is the value the yard creates, because it enables reduction of train miles, locomotive miles, and demands on main line capacity. Just saying "that yard costs us $XX per car!" implies to some people the existence of a wonderful alternative where there is no charge at all, but in truth the alternative to the yard -- no yard -- usually costs much more.
This is the best thread of the year, at least educationally for me. Thanks for the input. This has been quite a primer on yard operations and other aspects of the industry.
What is involved in "car inspections"? How detailed are the inspections and approximately how long does it take per car?
Also, back in the LTL days all aspects of the movement cycle were assigned costs including P&D, terminal handling, break bulk handling, line haul, and administration. I am sure this information is used for railroads.
Does anyone know what it costs to handle a single carload thru an efficient hump yard? Just to clarify, this is not what is charged a shipper, but what a railroad has determined it's costs are to classify a car. No doubt those cost vary by railroad and specifically by the efficiency of a yard, not to mention the number of cars classified by yard, but a rough idea would be neat to know.
My guess is somewhere in the $100 per car range. But, it is only a guess.
ed
Bucyrus croteaudd Paul North, Concerning your post of March 12, 8:44 A.M.: Congratulations on your ‘hijacking’ slickness! But, I don’t mind. What fascinates people is a fascination in itself.The original thread’s purpose was for the forum to possibly field efficiency savings that might be able to be tapped in order to get railroaders back to work. But, it has turned into a ‘sorting facility’ discovery thread. But, discovery simply will not be successful here. Everybody may as well howl at the moon! Nevertheless, Paul, I can’t fault you for trying.It must be admitted that for those unfamiliar with railcar brakes, this thread has really given them an education. croteaudd, I see you have been down this road before: http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/3890/20596.aspx#20596
croteaudd Paul North, Concerning your post of March 12, 8:44 A.M.: Congratulations on your ‘hijacking’ slickness! But, I don’t mind. What fascinates people is a fascination in itself.The original thread’s purpose was for the forum to possibly field efficiency savings that might be able to be tapped in order to get railroaders back to work. But, it has turned into a ‘sorting facility’ discovery thread. But, discovery simply will not be successful here. Everybody may as well howl at the moon! Nevertheless, Paul, I can’t fault you for trying.It must be admitted that for those unfamiliar with railcar brakes, this thread has really given them an education.
Paul North,
Concerning your post of March 12, 8:44 A.M.:
Congratulations on your ‘hijacking’ slickness! But, I don’t mind. What fascinates people is a fascination in itself.The original thread’s purpose was for the forum to possibly field efficiency savings that might be able to be tapped in order to get railroaders back to work. But, it has turned into a ‘sorting facility’ discovery thread. But, discovery simply will not be successful here. Everybody may as well howl at the moon! Nevertheless, Paul, I can’t fault you for trying.It must be admitted that for those unfamiliar with railcar brakes, this thread has really given them an education.
With similar word games, non-answers and non reesults.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Bucyrus - Thanks for that reference.
Croteaudd
Considering how little fact you have offered you have sure kept the pot stirred. For those who have better things to do, I offer the following summary of your posts.
#1 March 2 You offer the hypotheses that yards are ineffecient because they delay cars.
#2 March 3 You confirm your concern is car delay.
#3 March 4 You point out that cars cost money.
#4 March 5 You claim that railroad management is too busy to think. You offer a rant about "profiteers". You opine that great forces are at work to hinder the new. You call for the unification of management and labor.
#5 March 5 You admit that you had no idea of what real transit times are. You claim to have figured unidentifed things out 25 years ago that are just now happening.
#6 Nothing new.
#7 March 8 You finally make clear that you have in mind some revised hardware to replace yards. You do not want to bleed off cars. You admit it will take a long time to design and constuct your new hardware.
#8 March 9 You discuss "moniterily wicked" railroad.
#9 March 11 You tell us that railroad management is too stupid to adopt your insights.
Several others have tried to get through to you. This is my last attempt. You have made no case. You have offered a hypothesis, made acusations, and insulted some of us, but you have not offered a solution to the problem you have identified. We have no clue how you would shorten yard dwell time or restructure the carload network. If what we got is what you presented to railroad, or any other management, you are lucky to get away with a yawn.
When you tell people they are stupid and you are smart you better be able to demonstrate your smarts. We are all, pros and amateurs alike, awaiting that demonstration. Are you related to Futuremodal? He too was smarter than everyone else, but he would at least reveal his superior ideas.
Mac
PNWRMNM I am sure Carl enjoys going home every night, presuming of course he has enough whiskers to hold a day job.
I am sure Carl enjoys going home every night, presuming of course he has enough whiskers to hold a day job.
My signature speaks the truth, Mac--nobody's going to bump me off this job! I would have replied sooner, but I had to work...
Yard air: The car inspectors usually lace up the hoses with air on (at least to some degree); it assures them that the air is flowing.
Bleeder rods: The old AB brake valves required holding the bleeder open until the blow stopped, draining everything. The air usually wouldn't stop until the piston was all the way in. These bleeder rods were distinguished by a 90-degree angle, serving as a handle. In the early 1960s, the ABD brake valve began to be used; it incorporated a quick-release feature, and also didn't exhaust all of the air from the brake system (someone will have to remind me which half of the reservoir remains full). So, you just had to bump the rod and the air would come out until the piston went in. At least that's the way it was supposed to work. A faulty diaphragm somewhere might change that, and the piston would come out again. Then you had to hold to bleed until all of the air exhausted. Not very pleasant, since they changed the bleeder rod to a little curl at the end of a straight rod to distinguish these.
One thing I was told is that if you pulled the bleeder rod on an ABD-equipped car that had been bled, it's possible that you could actually set up the brakes. It's not supposed to happen, but occasionally does--and I've seen the pistons lengthening as the cars go by and die on the lead.
Another rumor I heard (but could never substantiate) was that a train could be put into emergency by bumping the bleeder rod while the trainline was charged. I can't think of any reason anyone would even want to try it.
ABD valves have often been superseded by ABDW, ZIAW, and Goodness-only-knows what other portions of the alphabet, but they all bleed off pretty much the same. You probably won't find too many cars with AB valves left, except possibly in non-interchange or non-revenue service.
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)
MP173 Earlier in the thread a quick reference was made to RPM (used as statistics). What is it and where? [snip] ed
What is it and where?
[snip]
ed - and others -
I haven't seen where anyone replied to your question yet, so here it is:
RPM = "Railroad Performance Measures", at:
http://www.railroadpm.org/
Here's an excerpt from the intro page:
"Welcome to the Railroad Performance Measures site, where weekly performance statistics are voluntarily reported by these major North American freight railroads:
We began reporting weekly performance measures in January 1999 as part of our commitment to improve communications with our customers. Please refer to the Definitions page for an explanation of the three measures:
• Cars On Line
• Train Speed
• Terminal Dwell (Hours)Railroad Performance Measures are published each Wednesday at 2:00 Eastern Time."
Although CN apparently no longer belongs or reports, similar information is available on its website, if you're interested in that.
Hope this is helpful. Thanks much for your continuing participation in this discussion - it's been very informative.
And in RE: to the bleed rods thing - I was always under the impression that if you only bled the car off enough that the cylinder starts to go in that you could (somehow) end back up with the brakes applying.
They always told us / trained us to make sure the car was COMPLETELY bled off before trying to switch without air for that reason.
This space reserved for SpaceMouse's future presidential candidacy advertisements
I'm jealous of you guys that have facilities where you can flat switch, or kick cars,or use a hump to classify stuff.
The yard job that I work on occasion is on a downhill slope to the north and we're not allowed to kick, drop, etc. Everything has to be "pushed to rest" on a track.
clarkfork I hope somebody on line knows a lot more about airbrakes than I do. However, it seems to me that on the ABD and newer "triple valves' one can bleed the air out of the brake cylinder without bleeding all of the air out of the auxilary or emergency reservoirs. To just bleed the brake cylinders one would just give the rod a jerk. If one wanted to bleed the air out of the auxilary and/or emergency reservoir as well, he would pull on the nbleed rod for a longer time -- say 15 to 20 seconds. I think the ABD valve came along in the 60s and the the replacement ABDW valve came along in the 70s. I don't know what they are putting on cars today. If I remember correctly an emergency application puts about 50 pounds into the brake cylinder but still leaves 50 pounds in both the auxilary and emergency reservoirs. Thus when air pressure is put back into the system the car's reservoir pressures start from something like 50 pounds, not from zero. Bottling air brakes on a train has resulted in a number of run aways.
I hope somebody on line knows a lot more about airbrakes than I do. However, it seems to me that on the ABD and newer "triple valves' one can bleed the air out of the brake cylinder without bleeding all of the air out of the auxilary or emergency reservoirs. To just bleed the brake cylinders one would just give the rod a jerk. If one wanted to bleed the air out of the auxilary and/or emergency reservoir as well, he would pull on the nbleed rod for a longer time -- say 15 to 20 seconds. I think the ABD valve came along in the 60s and the the replacement ABDW valve came along in the 70s. I don't know what they are putting on cars today. If I remember correctly an emergency application puts about 50 pounds into the brake cylinder but still leaves 50 pounds in both the auxilary and emergency reservoirs. Thus when air pressure is put back into the system the car's reservoir pressures start from something like 50 pounds, not from zero.
Bottling air brakes on a train has resulted in a number of run aways.
You may be correct, but it is news to me. I thought the ability of some bleeder control rods to stick open if you give them a quick bump was to just save time by allowing the switchman to move onto to bleeding the next car without having to stand there and hold the bleed control for the entire length of the bleed.
I have never heard that when the bleed control rod is holding open on its own, that it only bleeds the cylinder and not the reservoir. Can anybody else confirm that?
Sheesh, with all this trollin', hijackin', gamblin', and yard stuff there's never a yard bull when you need one...
LC
RWM Thanks. Guess I can put off asking my doctor about Aricept.
My compliments to those who have taken the time to spell out details on all the functions and activities in the modern rail yard. It should be clear to anyone following this thread that even when everything is going just right, the individual steps can be very time consuming.
"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
Carl, RWM, and Mac -
Thank you ! very much for your extensive, thoughtful, and detailed replies. Taken altogether, they are pretty much the kind of thing I wanted to know, as you were able to discern. Clearly, the relationships are pretty complicated inside that "black box" of an operation - even though it's actually out in the open for all to see. RWM, I particularly liked your paragraph about the dichotomy of road vs. yard operations. I'm a sucker for that kind of observation, analysis, and turn of phrase, so now I've got something else to think about while my mind is less fully occupied*, and the next time I'm eating lunch or otherwise watching the action at the NS Allentown Yard. Again, thanks to all of you - also to jeaton for the "Yard Air" question.
[* Anybody else hear the report on "Doodling" and its apparent performance-enhancing effect on brain activity that was on NPR's Morning Edition today ?]
Murphy, RWM, and LC - I'm still chuckling every time I think about each of your responses above. I'll have to knock it off or people will wonder what's so funny today. Each time I look at RWM's, the end keeps seeming to want to be "White Rabbit" instead ! Grace Slick had some voice, eh ? I think you left out the ending, though - "Feed your head . . . feed your head !" - which is what this thread and Forum are all about, as far as I'm concerned. I'm also wondering what the results would be if a thread were started on our favorite songs/ music/ tunes, and why - if there would be some commonality among us. But I've already inadvertently done a slick enough job of hijacking this thread while we're waiting for a substantive response on "sorting" from the orignal poster, so maybe I'll do that later sometime. In the meantime, I've got several backlogs to work through.
Thanks again, guys. Have a good day !
Limitedclear Railway Man 122 posts and 2,000 views so far, and we're still on the title page of the White Paper. RWM When the trolling stops we can get back to fishin'... LC
Railway Man 122 posts and 2,000 views so far, and we're still on the title page of the White Paper. RWM
122 posts and 2,000 views so far, and we're still on the title page of the White Paper.
When the trolling stops we can get back to fishin'...
Oh ye of little faith....
I've asked croteaudd to explain to us, exactly what it is he's trying to explain. That way, we'd know if he was serious, or just playing word games with us. I'm awaiting his reply. If he replies and wants to explain his viewpoint, then I guess we have something to talk about. If he doesn't...well, these things usually digress into one of those weird threads about Monty Python quotes and such.
I think we're all being "stringlined" through the apparently "learning curve" that none of us can comprehend
You saw correctly, Jay. It comes under the heading "Yard Air" and describes a (usually) fixed compressor and air distribution system to at least one end of all the departure tracks. I don't know of a yard installation or reconstruction in the last 20 years without it on the Departure Tracks. We put in yard air at terminal elevators, flat-switch class yards, autoramp tracks, intermodal terminals, short-line interchange tracks, ethanol plants, coal plants, coal mines, and large industrial plants -- any place where trains are departed frequently and have to be broken apart. It saves a lot of time because now the power doesn't have to be there at the same time as the car men. About the only place we won't put it in is at a location that's irregularly manned and unsecured, because the compressor tends to disappear.
Speaking of ways to boost the process... I seem to recall seeing air hoses at ends of the tracks in the out bound yard for the south operation at the Illinois Central's Markham yard. (The imagination of a dimning memory?) If real, I assume they provided compressed air from a fixed compressor in the yard and could have the train line charged before the road engines came down. I don't know if that got trains out faster, but it might have helped prevent penalty payments to crews for initial terminal delay. At the time-it was the days of 5 man crews- payments were made at an hourly rate if crews did not get out of the yard with their train in something like two hours after the call time. Any authoritive comments?
Pual,
While I am no longer in the belly of the beast as is Carl, I have been and in a number of locations. I will attempt to answer your questions in a general way based on an "ideal" hump yard with separate arrival, hump, and departure tracks.
While Carl is correct in saying that how long it takes to do things is variable one can work with averages or usuallys. In fact each yard has a rythym. The loud beats in the rythm are departure of the "symbol" freights. For talking purposes these are the ones that the superintendent and the chief dispatcher pay attention to. These trains have a routine call and departure time. How much of a yard's trains dispatched is in that category varies from yard to yard. Lesser beats are departure of other long haul freights and whatever locals, transfers, and/or city switchers the yard originates. The other long haul trains have routine call and departure times but the powers that be care less about them. The locals, transfers and city jobs have standing call times so they happen at the same time every day. Think of getting these trains out as "what we have to do".
To put trains out you have to get them in. The symbol trains inbound should arrive about the same time every day. The bosses have their eye on them. The lesser trains get there when they get there but they will usually hit in the same window. That window may be 4-6 hours. Extras show up whenever. Your inbound locals, transfers, and city jobs also have practical arrival windows. These are your raw materials. You have no control over them except to hold trains out if you are plugged, a very bad thing that we will discuss no more.
The first thing that happens is landing the train. This is the time from when the head end goes by your yard board or entrance switch until the train is all in the track and power is out of the track. Half an hour or so should be typical if no hitches, more if very large or very busy yard.
Next thing is inbound inspection. This generally has two parts, waiting for the carmen and actual inspection time. Waiting depends on what else they have to do and priority of inbound train. Could be nothing to several hours but there are patterns. If "normal" train and things are not backed up say 2-4-6 hours wait time. Inspection is function of number of cars, how far away the shack is from the inbound cut, how he gets there, and does he walk or ride the inspection. I would figure at least two hours for a 100 car 6,000 foot long train. They can inspect almost as fast as they can walk. You need to walk to do a worthwhile inspection.
Actual humping is probably about an hour. This is based on Carl's 600 cars per shift and on time to run to arrival yard and shove to the hump to start plus hump time at about 1 or 2 mph. At 2 feet per second and 60 foot long cars, you are pinning one evey 30 seconds which seems about right. 100 cars takes 50 minutes on the hump start to finish if all goes perfectly.
As Carl says dewll time in the bowl can be anything from zero to days. Average average is probably about 12 hours. Trim out is relatively quick but that bowl track must be locked out so no cars are humped into it during the triming. This is an operation, like most others to which it has been applied, that the Radio Controlled switcher has slowed down. The time here depends on how many cars and how many joints have to be made in the track. I would guess 30-45 minutes per cut and that might be quick. Next variable is how many cuts. Smaller cuts are easier to handle than big ones and the limit is very yard specific. It depends on power and grades. Most hump yards have a saucer profile so the cut has to be lifted out of the bowl. A four axle unit will start to have trouble around 4000 tons. Stopping with only the independent is even more exciting. The point is your train will likey have four or five cuts so it could take three hours just to gather up the cars and get them together on your departure track.
Time for outbound inspection is mirror image of inbound except here you are subject to having to throw a random bad order or two out of the train. Maybe 10% of trains and half hour average once you get the engine there. Wait for engine is highly variable. As part of outbound inspection carmen may or may not do air brake test before the road power ties on. If not, then there may be another delay waiting for carmen and at least an hour to do the air test. If you find a bad order during air test go back to throwing a bad order out.
Now you are ready to go. If the dispatcher is ready for you and if the lead is clear and if the conductor has made it to the train. Delay here, nothing to hours.
All in all the only reason they get cars through a hump yard in 24 hours or so is rhythm and practice. Because of practice everone does what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Unless it is cold, snowing, there is an accident, or you have a flock of newbees. I am sure Carl enjoys going home every night, presuming of course he has enough whiskers to hold a day job.
Carl said about 99% of what I could.
All I can add is this:
Paul_D_North_JrFrom a post on 03-03-2009, shows at 12:12 PM: CShaveRR 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. [snip] Carl - If it isn't too much trouble sometime (and doesn't involve disclosing proprietary or otherwise sensitive information), I'd appreciate a "refresher" on the steps / activities/ operations/ processes - and approximate time frames for same - that a typical "loose car" would undergo as it progresses through your (or a typical) hump-type classificiation yard, along the lines of your response to Mookie (above). I know I've read such things in the standard references - such as John Armstrong's The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does, but that's dated, and I'd rather have the benefit of an actual,operator in the trenches" such as yourself. What I have in mind is something like the following: 1) Car arrives at Arrival Yard - from inbound local, terminating manifest, or block dropped-off by through train, etc. 2) Wait for Arrival Inspection: _ to _ hours. 3) Arrival inspection: _ hour 4) Wait for humping: _ to _ hours 5) Hump and sort: _ hours 6) Trim and consolidate in bowl tracks: _ to _ hours 7) Wait for pull to Departure Yard: _ to _ hours 8) Pull to Departure Yard: _ to _ hours 9) Wait for make-up into / for departing train or block of cars: _ to _ hours 10) Make-up as departing train or block, including departure inspection: _ to _ hours. 11) Wait for departing train/ block pick-up: _ to _ hours 12) Couple locomotives to cars, install FRED, initial terminal airbrake test, wait for departure clearance, etc.: _ to _ hours Of course, you should feel free to edit or modify this list as appropriate to provide a more accurate outline of how this goes. Ed Blysard, RWM, and anyone else can feel free to add in to this as you see fit, too, if you like. It might be interesting to see the differences. Thanks ! - Paul North.
From a post on 03-03-2009, shows at 12:12 PM:
CShaveRR 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. [snip]
Carl -
If it isn't too much trouble sometime (and doesn't involve disclosing proprietary or otherwise sensitive information), I'd appreciate a "refresher" on the steps / activities/ operations/ processes - and approximate time frames for same - that a typical "loose car" would undergo as it progresses through your (or a typical) hump-type classificiation yard, along the lines of your response to Mookie (above). I know I've read such things in the standard references - such as John Armstrong's The Railroad: What It Is, What It Does, but that's dated, and I'd rather have the benefit of an actual,operator in the trenches" such as yourself. What I have in mind is something like the following:
1) Car arrives at Arrival Yard - from inbound local, terminating manifest, or block dropped-off by through train, etc.
2) Wait for Arrival Inspection: _ to _ hours.
3) Arrival inspection: _ hour
4) Wait for humping: _ to _ hours
5) Hump and sort: _ hours
6) Trim and consolidate in bowl tracks: _ to _ hours
7) Wait for pull to Departure Yard: _ to _ hours
8) Pull to Departure Yard: _ to _ hours
9) Wait for make-up into / for departing train or block of cars: _ to _ hours
10) Make-up as departing train or block, including departure inspection: _ to _ hours.
11) Wait for departing train/ block pick-up: _ to _ hours
12) Couple locomotives to cars, install FRED, initial terminal airbrake test, wait for departure clearance, etc.: _ to _ hours
Of course, you should feel free to edit or modify this list as appropriate to provide a more accurate outline of how this goes.
Ed Blysard, RWM, and anyone else can feel free to add in to this as you see fit, too, if you like. It might be interesting to see the differences.
Thanks !
Paul, I hate to disappoint you, but the numbers in those blanks would vary so widely for any number of reasons that any figures I'd quote would be meaningless. Besides, I'm in my own universe up there, and the only reason I can really figure out how long a train has been around before it gets humped is either that I look up a specific car that I'm curious about, or recognize the train as something I watched go past my window (or block me on the way to work). I don't know how long they budget for one team of car-knockers to inspect each car--and they can probably double-team a train if the receiving yard is light.
Humping the train also has a lot of variables: anything that I have to take into consideration--weather, rollability of the cars, rollability of the tracks, fullness of the tracks, availability of tracks or of space on the tracks, wind direction, the type of cars we're humping, eptitude of the conductor (to coin a phrase), or operator attentiveness--could all affect our operation. A sixty-car hump shove could pour over in about 20 minutes, or it could take more than an hour.
Once a car is classified (stipulation that it's not bad-ordered, misclassified, or otherwise diverted), it could sit in the bowl for anywhere from a few minutes to a day or more--lots more if the next outbound for that destination doesn't leave for a day or three. It used to take about a half hour for a pulldown crew to couple a track in the bowl, but that seems to take even longer nowadays. Doubling up the tracks prepares the train in block order, and they're either pulled directly to one departure yard, or pulled out and shoved back into the other one.
In the departure yard, the cars have to undergo inspection once more (this is where brake shoes get changed out if needed), and the possibility that bad-order cars have to be set out of one of these trains may add a bit of time to the process. If an air test has to be repeated, that could take a lot of time. A couple of trains that I notice take four to five hours from bowl-track lockup to departure, but I can't break that down further, nor comment on how typical that time is. The planned departure time of manifest trains is highly regarded, and events like bowl pulldowns, paperwork, crew and power availability, are all geared toward this time.
As necessarily vague as this has been, I hope it's helpful. I doubt that our yard is typical, mainly because we originate or terminate virtually anything that requires classification--even North Platte can't say that!
croteaudd Murphy Siding,March 9, 2009 11:22 a.m.:You are absolutely correct! However, it is unknown if you think this way or not, but I believe stockholders are only the Queen, whereas the "will of the people" is the King ...
Murphy Siding,March 9, 2009 11:22 a.m.:You are absolutely correct! However, it is unknown if you think this way or not, but I believe stockholders are only the Queen, whereas the "will of the people" is the King ...
And the white Queen is walking backwards..when .the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go.....go ask Alice, when she's 10 feet tall! I'm starting to see why your neighbor sometimes has trouble understanding what you mean.
Can we cut to the chase here, and quit playing word games?
You have proposed the following (if I understand what you're saying...): 1)That railroads should change the way they operate their yards/switching to move more freight faster. 2)That doing so, would make it possible for railroads to keep more people employed(?) 3)That railroads have almost willfully ignored a system to *fix* this problem, in order to preserve the status quo. and 4) That you are the person that has this valueable info to *fix* it all, but no one will/would listen to you.
Am I on the right track so far? I would contend that the railroads are doing all they can to improve their systems. You suggest that nobody is listening to what you have to say. Here's your chance. You say you have a way to *fix* it all. Let's hear it. If it is as good an idea as you say it is, surely it can withstand a little bit of questioning and opinions on a railfan forum. If you can't, or won't share it, I'll presume that you just like playing games with words, and we'll leave it at that.
The ball is your court. What do you have to say?
PNWRMNM So, apparently, has croteaudd. I still have no idea how he is going to sort cars more quickly than conventional techniques, nor what it will cost, nor the benefits. Mac
So, apparently, has croteaudd. I still have no idea how he is going to sort cars more quickly than conventional techniques, nor what it will cost, nor the benefits.
He is like so many of the "NEW" high speed rail advocates. He sees the promise of fuel efficiencies, green technologies and adds a dash of put the workers to work in a down economy in an attempt to cook up something new. Problem is he has n't let it cook on the right setting long enough for it to be edible...
Paul_D_North_Jr But it's different now. So if you do have a revolutionary new technology for car sorting, the intellectual ground for adopting it in the railroad industry is much more fertile today, than it was barren back then. I encourage you to actually market and introduce it, instead of just posting about it here. - Paul North
But it's different now. So if you do have a revolutionary new technology for car sorting, the intellectual ground for adopting it in the railroad industry is much more fertile today, than it was barren back then. I encourage you to actually market and introduce it, instead of just posting about it here.
- Paul North
Johnny
croteaudd [snip] Yes, we had put very much time into this years and years ago, because back then we were trying to make a buck. But, the railroads didn't even want to take a look. So, we gave up. In light of the fact that railroads are slowly and progressively adopting what we had perceived years ago, they'll probably figure it all out in 30 years ... Just in time to save themselves from being pinned against the wall by the money system. [snip]And, you probably won't have any idea either, at least for decades! Please reread the first paragraph in the message to Bucyrus above. Thanks ...
30 years ago = 1979, which was a different world entirely. Back then, the struggle was merely to survive - innovation was a nice concept, but had to be subordinated to more pressing needs. We didn't even know if the industry was really going to survive, let alone as private or nationalized. (See The Men who Loved Trains, by Rush Loving.) From the technology standpoint, for example, no one would have believed that double-stacks would occur or take over as much as they have, nor Roadrailers, nor concrete ties, nor computer-aided dispatching, nor 2-man crews, nor remote/ radio control units, among others. (Many other aspects have been "evolutionary" rather than "revolutionary" though - coal traffic, unit trains, multi-levels, large Class I mergers, etc.)
Bucyrus The world is not going to beat a path to your door just because you say you have a better mousetrap.
On the other hand, there will people claiming that it is proof that the advancement of mousetrap technology is being blocked by a secret conspiracy among mousetrap manufacturers.
Croteaudd,
Any new idea is always met with some skepticism, and perhaps treated unfairly, but you are not going to convince anybody that you have a better way of sorting cars if you don’t tell them what it is. Are we supposed to just figure it out like you did just because you say there is a better way?
The world is not going to beat a path to your door just because you say you have a better mousetrap.
Murphy Siding,March 9, 2009 11:22 a.m.:You are absolutely correct! However, it is unknown if you think this way or not, but I believe stockholders are only the Queen, whereas the "will of the people" is the King ...Oltmannd,March 9, 2009 11:48 a.m.:I agree. And, that railroad is to be commended. But, if the railroads were able to utilize miracle time saving techniques now, it would be so much easier for everybody.Bucyrus,March 9, 2009 12:19 p.m.:Yes, we had put very much time into this years and years ago, because back then we were trying to make a buck. But, the railroads didn't even want to take a look. So, we gave up. In light of the fact that railroads are slowly and progressively adopting what we had perceived years ago, they'll probably figure it all out in 30 years ... Just in time to save themselves from being pinned against the wall by the money system. Economics does have a very dark side to it, as attested to by history. Has any country lasted to 2,000 years old? I rest my case.How would electric brakes work with sorting facilities? They are just quicker. The statement was intended as an irony ...To PNWRMNW,March 10, 2009 9:53 a.m.:And, you probably won't have any idea either, at least for decades! Please reread the first paragraph in the message to Bucyrus above. Thanks ...
Thank you, Paul. That is what I remembered, but my memory was not good enough to even attempt to describe it. I thought of this when I saw the wheel within a wheel plan for clasifying cars.
I see you have gone back to your old avatar; did the chicken not taste good?
The cover of one of these issues was a cow-and-calf hump engine in silhouette at night - it was an almost all-black image.
Regarding Johnny's question: First - a cautionary note for anyone involved with present-day mainline railyard operations, such as RWM and CShaveRR, Don, and others - you might want to be sitting down, and make sure you haven't just sipped any liquids near your computer keyboard, before you read any further. If I recall correctly:
What was proposed resembled something that might have been doodled up by a 6th grader as a model railroad layout, or maybe by a mad electrician, or someone whose vision of an orderly schematic process superseded reality, to wit: The concept plan was essentially a huge circle - miles across - with a series of 4 double-ended yards around its perimeter. One end only of each yard connected to the circle, tangent to the circle for a smooth connection - and the other ends of the yards were outwards, kind of like a giant pinwheel fireworks. It was never completed in that configuration - I believe that only 1 of those yards was built, and that became "Clearing Yard". After that, other events and schemes intervened, and the development of yards around Chicago went along other routes - fortunately.
I have a memory of a Clearing layout that was a bit different from that of all other yards; apparently it did not work as well as the planner(s) thought it would. Does anyone else remember it as it was reported in a history of Clearing in Trains many years ago?
I fold!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Guys, guys, c'mon, you have to see the beauty of this new "sorting" system. It would be a great new management tool that could completely replace six sigma,ISO 9002, One Plan and the Thoroughbred operating plans. The guys in Jacksonville, Norfolk and Fort Worthless would just be orgasmic over it, to say nothing of the gang in Omaha who might get an extra ten minutes for lunch...lol...
First, we would start with the heart of the "Sorter" (Hump Yard). The hump crew would have a few name changes with the hump engineer now known as "Chute". The hump switchman (pin puller) would now be called the "Dealer" and the hump conductor in the tower would be the "Pit Boss". Out bound train crews would be known as "Players". Each car would be assigned a suit and value from duce (2) to Ace (A). The cars would be shuffled (52 pick up) by the trim crew and given to the Chute. Each train crew would have a "draw" and the crew with the best train (hand), after bad orders were set out and replaced with new cars ("draw"), would get out first and get the best route and signal indication followed by the others in order. Shippers could bet on their train crews or railroads on a giant board for lower rates and additional services. A KENO game would be set up for intermodal trains and unit trains would not be subject to betting...
I think we could really do better with this "Sorting" system, don't you??!? It would be at least "Wicked" and maybe even "Fresh"...
Place your bets...
croteauddBucyrus:Reference your March 9 7:52 A.M. post:You are just too smart for my trying to be evasive … Let me throw this at you: Electric brakes would be a smashing success with sorting facilities, however the sorting facilities work!
I don't understand why you are trying to be evasive. It sounds like you have put a lot of thought into this.
Electric brakes with sorting facilities???
How would that work?
croteaudd but the railroad will suffer badly when business returns but the railroad cannot handle it for lack of trained crews.
The RRs don't need any new technology to do this. At least one road I know is trying very hard to keep as many jobs on as possible for exactly the reason you state.
croteaudd BaltACD There is only one thing that gets more railroaders back to work! MORE TRAFFIC. BaltACD,Yes, railroads in a monetarily wicked environment do just as you said!What I am suggesting, however, is that profits from new efficiencies temporary be used to retain present trained employees.If the railroad is wicked, the new methodology’s extra profits will be pocketed for themselves; but the railroad will suffer badly when business returns but the railroad cannot handle it for lack of trained crews. Doesn’t my more righteous approach sound a bit more practical?Bucyrus:Reference your March 9 7:52 A.M. post:You are just too smart for my trying to be evasive … Let me throw this at you: Electric brakes would be a smashing success with sorting facilities, however the sorting facilities work!
BaltACD There is only one thing that gets more railroaders back to work! MORE TRAFFIC.
There is only one thing that gets more railroaders back to work!
MORE TRAFFIC.
BaltACD,Yes, railroads in a monetarily wicked environment do just as you said!What I am suggesting, however, is that profits from new efficiencies temporary be used to retain present trained employees.If the railroad is wicked, the new methodology’s extra profits will be pocketed for themselves; but the railroad will suffer badly when business returns but the railroad cannot handle it for lack of trained crews. Doesn’t my more righteous approach sound a bit more practical?Bucyrus:Reference your March 9 7:52 A.M. post:You are just too smart for my trying to be evasive … Let me throw this at you: Electric brakes would be a smashing success with sorting facilities, however the sorting facilities work!
Now, that would certainly depend on who decides what is wicked and what is righteous. Since about 1776, our belief in capitalism has led us to believe that that decision is in the hands of the stockholders that own the companies. If you suggest that should change, you are in the minority.
BaltACDThere is only one thing that gets more railroaders back to work! MORE TRAFFIC.
croteaudd Greetings Bucyrus,Concerning your March 7 post at 8:06 a.m.:Your Q: But I am really curious about your sorting system. Please clarify whether you are referring to a revised methodology using conventional classification yards, or revised hardware that replaces conventional classification yards. My A: The second of the two choices.Your Q: Please explain how you would sort cars without bleeding the brakes.My A: As with a hump yard, tracks would be level and railcars thereon would not initiate movement by themselves with or without line air pressure. Depending on the particular situation, because a railcar’s reservoir would not have been emptied by a carman, but have air in it, air lines could be filled quickly and cars could be on their way in no time.
Greetings Bucyrus,Concerning your March 7 post at 8:06 a.m.:Your Q: But I am really curious about your sorting system. Please clarify whether you are referring to a revised methodology using conventional classification yards, or revised hardware that replaces conventional classification yards. My A: The second of the two choices.Your Q: Please explain how you would sort cars without bleeding the brakes.My A: As with a hump yard, tracks would be level and railcars thereon would not initiate movement by themselves with or without line air pressure. Depending on the particular situation, because a railcar’s reservoir would not have been emptied by a carman, but have air in it, air lines could be filled quickly and cars could be on their way in no time.
croteaudd,
So I understand that you are proposing a car sorting system that replaces conventional classification yards. I would think that any railroader would be most receptive to hearing your ideas. Convincing them might not be so easy, however.
As jeaton has mentioned, in order to keep the air bottled up in individual reservoirs, you would need to close the anglecock on each end of each car before uncoupling them. Then upon recoupling the cars, coupling their air hoses, and opening the anglecocks, air must flow back into the hoses, so there would be some loss in trainline pressure from re-pressurizing the hoses.
If this technique were applied to switching, you would have to consider that some cars stay together during switching. Sometimes cuts of many cars remain together. So your technique of bottling the air would suggest that you would not need to close the anglecocks between cars that will remain coupled. However, hose couplings often leak to varying degrees, so air that is bottled up in cuts of cars will often quickly leak down through the hose couplings and allow the reservoirs to set the brakes. This would suggest that if cars are to be switched, all anglecocks be closed even if some cars will remain coupled.
I would be interested to hear if others know of certain types of moves that are routinely done with the air bottled up. I have very little experience with it.
croteaudd Your Q: Please explain how you would sort cars without bleeding the brakes.My A: As with a hump yard, tracks would be level and railcars thereon would not initiate movement by themselves with or without line air pressure. Depending on the particular situation, because a railcar’s reservoir would not have been emptied by a carman, but have air in it, air lines could be filled quickly and cars could be on their way in no time.
Your Q: Please explain how you would sort cars without bleeding the brakes.My A: As with a hump yard, tracks would be level and railcars thereon would not initiate movement by themselves with or without line air pressure. Depending on the particular situation, because a railcar’s reservoir would not have been emptied by a carman, but have air in it, air lines could be filled quickly and cars could be on their way in no time.
Sorry, but if you want to leave the reservoirs charged you have to close the anglecocks at each end of the car before you separate the cars. Otherwise you get brakes firmly applied. Of course you could move the cars about with the brakes on and that would certainly put people to work changing out wheel sets.
zardoz Railway Man zardoz jeaton Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double. Not possible. The trains, at least during 'rush hour', are generally running on each other's signals as it is. The only way to add more trains would be to add more tracks. I'm pretty sure Jay was being sarcastic. RWM
Railway Man zardoz jeaton Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double. Not possible. The trains, at least during 'rush hour', are generally running on each other's signals as it is. The only way to add more trains would be to add more tracks. I'm pretty sure Jay was being sarcastic. RWM
zardoz jeaton Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double. Not possible. The trains, at least during 'rush hour', are generally running on each other's signals as it is. The only way to add more trains would be to add more tracks.
jeaton Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double.
Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double.
I'm pretty sure Jay was being sarcastic.
Wasn't intended as such. Actually I hadn't thought about the probable need for more track to double the schedule. My point was and is that a mass transportation service needs to get together a large bunch of people or freight to get a cost that will make the service competitive with the the methods of moving one's and two's directly from the very start of the trip to the final destination. I use people movement to illustrate the concept as I think it is somewhat less mysterious than railroad freight operations and more often already understood by those interested in railroads.
Greetings Bucyrus,Concerning your March 7 post at 8:06 a.m.:Your Q: But I am really curious about your sorting system. Please clarify whether you are referring to a revised methodology using conventional classification yards, or revised hardware that replaces conventional classification yards. My A: The second of the two choices.Your Q: Please explain how you would sort cars without bleeding the brakes.My A: As with a hump yard, tracks would be level and railcars thereon would not initiate movement by themselves with or without line air pressure. Depending on the particular situation, because a railcar’s reservoir would not have been emptied by a carman, but have air in it, air lines could be filled quickly and cars could be on their way in no time. Furthers:It must be remembered that this topic was originally slanted towards finding ways of saving railroad jobs. A sorting facility in itself would not have immediate labor benefits, as it would require much time for technical design and construction.
RWM, you have some 'splainin' to do regarding the new avatar--is it worth trying?
Railway Man Words for once fail me! RWM
Words for once fail me!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
zardozjeaton Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double. Not possible. The trains, at least during 'rush hour', are generally running on each other's signals as it is. The only way to add more trains would be to add more tracks.
MP173 United flies to Moline, either out of Chicago or Denver...or at least they did. ed
United flies to Moline, either out of Chicago or Denver...or at least they did.
Ed -
Thanks. So far I have found that Delta/Northworst and Air Tran seem to fly there too. I'll have to start prospecting for some flights.
CShaveRR Dyslexics of the world--untie! LC, I wouldn't mind meeting you if you happen to be in Chicagoland again, with a little better transport. Or you, Paul--or Norris! Most of the people I've met through this Forum I'm pleased to have made their acquaintance, and if I don't hold the record, I'm pretty close to it.
Dyslexics of the world--untie!
LC, I wouldn't mind meeting you if you happen to be in Chicagoland again, with a little better transport. Or you, Paul--or Norris! Most of the people I've met through this Forum I'm pleased to have made their acquaintance, and if I don't hold the record, I'm pretty close to it.
I'll see what I can do. Best bet will be later in the year. Hopefully, things will pick up a bit by then...
Mookie LC - now my palms are sweating.....Believe it or not - I am shy about meeting people for the first time.
LC - now my palms are sweating.....Believe it or not - I am shy about meeting people for the first time.
Mookie LC - now my palms are sweating.....Believe it or not - I am shy about meeting people for the first time. (Ask Mudchicken. Altho..... I nearly knocked him off his feet the first time - a tackle right to the chest!) Well, maybe he isn't a good example. Ed and Carl, I was a little more reserved.....
LC - now my palms are sweating.....Believe it or not - I am shy about meeting people for the first time. (Ask Mudchicken. Altho..... I nearly knocked him off his feet the first time - a tackle right to the chest!) Well, maybe he isn't a good example. Ed and Carl, I was a little more reserved.....
No need to sweat it Mook, just a cranky ol' railroader... MC is one of my favorite folks. I've been to see him in Denver and elsewhere too. Kathi Kube is a lot of fun too. Gotta convince her to get to the Vegas meeting this year. In the RR biz we don't listen to Obama on where to hold our meetings. Don't think there'll be any corporate jets there this time though...
Despite the de-err-recession my travel schedule is still nuts. I guess I need to fly to Moline in July. Anybody know who flys there?
She who has no signature! cinscocom-tmw
CShaveRRPaul, it's neither "inside" nor a joke. SJ has always displayed all of the attributes I would like to have had in a little sister--smart, witty, and curious and excited about something that means a lot to a big brother. It didn't take me long for me to "adopt" her. We hit it off quite well when we met, and our respective spouses get along, too. Cousin Ed and I are both railroaders (and yes, Sis and I have met him in person, too). Meanwhile, I've been getting along a lot better with my little sisters in real life since adopting SJ. Don't know what that says, but I'm not knocking it.
As an aside, I'm looking forward to meeting the three of you at some point too. I keep trying to get to Houston, but it hasn't worked for me yet. I'm thinking sometime in the next year or so. As for Chicago, I was there for a fly in/out a few months back, but as I was at O'Hare and carless it wasn't gonna happen.
P.S. Where can I find this guy Jose? Sounds like he can replace a three man section gang and my wreckmaster.
croteaudd Bucyrus croteaudd, Sounds to me like you should talk to these people at Railcars Sequencing Turntables, LLC: http://www.freightturntables.com/home They have it all worked out and will explain the details. Their website will load a demonstration in a minute or so. It is as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 When you get done checking that out, come back and tell us what you think of it. Bucyrus,Thank you for the awareness of the turntable group’s efforts and website.The website demonstration was most fascinating and totally mesmerizing.The turntable’s cost itself seems unbelievably enormous. But, it is difficult to evaluate the costs without knowing the A to B operating premises that would be used.Finally, I couldn’t help but wondered if centrifugal force would flip boxcars over at the outer ends of the turntable! The website’s demo was great, but it is unimaginable (at least to me) that such a large, real turntable could safely shift positions that fast.
Bucyrus croteaudd, Sounds to me like you should talk to these people at Railcars Sequencing Turntables, LLC: http://www.freightturntables.com/home They have it all worked out and will explain the details. Their website will load a demonstration in a minute or so. It is as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 When you get done checking that out, come back and tell us what you think of it.
Bucyrus,Thank you for the awareness of the turntable group’s efforts and website.The website demonstration was most fascinating and totally mesmerizing.The turntable’s cost itself seems unbelievably enormous. But, it is difficult to evaluate the costs without knowing the A to B operating premises that would be used.Finally, I couldn’t help but wondered if centrifugal force would flip boxcars over at the outer ends of the turntable! The website’s demo was great, but it is unimaginable (at least to me) that such a large, real turntable could safely shift positions that fast.
I agree that starting and stopping a 1000-foot-diameter turntable carrying thousands of tons of rolling stock could be problematic. It would need to be driven and braked from its perimeter. It poses questions that need to be answered.
But I am really curious about your sorting system. Please clarify whether you are referring to a revised methodology using conventional classification yards, or revised hardware that replaces conventional classification yards.
And please explain how you would sort cars without bleeding the brakes.
Bucyruscroteaudd, Sounds to me like you should talk to these people at Railcars Sequencing Turntables, LLC: http://www.freightturntables.com/home They have it all worked out and will explain the details. Their website will load a demonstration in a minute or so. It is as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 When you get done checking that out, come back and tell us what you think of it.
MP173 The earlier comment about a butterfly in China and thunderstorm in Philadelphia is a great analogy. A broken knuckle on a single track stretch, or a car on the ground on track 48 at Proviso will have ripple effects down the line. Same as a thunderstorm at OHare at 5pm. Or a financial failure based on too much leverage. Systems can fall down in a hurry. ed
The earlier comment about a butterfly in China and thunderstorm in Philadelphia is a great analogy. A broken knuckle on a single track stretch, or a car on the ground on track 48 at Proviso will have ripple effects down the line. Same as a thunderstorm at OHare at 5pm. Or a financial failure based on too much leverage. Systems can fall down in a hurry.
And the there is the Spanish Inquisition!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSe38dzJYkY
Mac:Quite an answer. I really appreciate your taking the time and sharing your industry knowledge. The larger the tool, the more difficult it is to have a spare sitting around. Let alone get it spotted. Trucking is obviously much easier to provide service, assuming the equipment and manpower is available, as there are so many routing possibilities.
What I am beginning to understand is the nonrandomness of this industry. Cars just dont move around. There is a definate flow and order. I was very fortunate and lucky to spend a couple of hours in a major hump yard watching and listening to the activity. How many millions of dollars of GNP passed by in that short time? It is staggering.
MP 173
I will give you overview of how "general service" cars are handled. I will use your scrap gon example.
First most railroad owned cars are assigned to a pool. It may be very specific, such as Schnitzer Steel at Portland Oregon, or very broad such as system scrap. High class gons are very likely in other pools. The Schnitzer Portland pool will contain a specific number of cars based on expected traffic levels and historic turn times, usually calculated load to load. For example a customer who reliably orders 10 cars a day with a 15 day turn time requires a pool of 150 cars.
Problems crop up immediately. The loading facility breaks down so empty cars bunch up at loading end. If facilty is physically restricted to about the planned loading rate, say 12 cars a day, it will take a week to work off one lost loading day while empty cars sit in the yard that supports the origin customer. On the unloading end the radiation detector picks up a hot car. Have to move it to a different spot and unload it peice by piece taking an extra five days. Unoading facility lets one end of a cut run over the derail which ties up the whole place until the railroad gets Jose and the gang out to rerail the car and fix the track. Railroad yard track has wide gauge and cars drop in. Call Jose again. All routine problems, but they all create variability, random disturbances which generally lenghten car cycle.
Most customers are not that consistent. One week they want one car the next week they want 10, the next two weeks they order nothing. How many cars would you buy to support that customer? As a matter of practice most customers order on a weekly basis and hope for 1/5 of order to appear each day, holidays and weekends excepted. Fortunately with many customers weekly orders tend to a weekly mean value, as do car cycles, but changes in either can leave railroad over supplied with cars or short. If short, the shipper calls his congressman. If over no one but railroad bean counter cares.
Actual orders are typically filled by a computer working on a program designed to fill all orders from the appropriate pool with a minimum of empty car miles and empty car days.
Consider the same minimill that gets scrap from Portland. The mill is located on a UP shortline in Western Oregon and is also buying scrap from California. They want 10 cars per day from five different vendors in California with varrying capacity and availablity of scrap. The mill buyer contracts for constant volume in total, but varrying as between origin points on a weekly basis. Expected car cycle is different from each location. Some shippers are on UP and some on BNSF. While BNSF has obligation to supply cars, if anyone is paying attention the last order they will fill is the short line haul to UP interchange. For that reason the UP pool used to supply the California origin cars may or may not include the BNSF origin(s).
The preceeding is all short term. Long term the question is how should the fleet be adjusted? The answer is so as to maximize contribution margin per dollar invested. Contribution margin is revenue minus variable costs.
How much will you invest to protect the short haul traffic? As little as possible since the move is only 50 miles by road but 200 by rail with a shortline involved. Truck cost will limit rail rate. Depressed rail rate means low to nonexistant contribution margin. The solution is to assign cars that are one step away from the scrapper to this pool if you have them. If not, raise the rate since if you base your costs on new cars the traffic is a looser, that is the traffic has a zero or negative contribution margin. The polite term for this is "demarketing".
How much do you invest to protect the long haul traffic? Here your circuity is not bad. The haul is too long for private or contract truckers to seek the business because your rate is lower than their costs. If a rate low enough to hold the traffic gives a good contribution margin, and you expect the customer to stay in business for the 40 year life of the cars, you make the investment, say 150 cars at $60,000 each, or $9,000,000.
The ideal is obviously to have just enough equipment to use the last car to fill the last order. It never happens. Operations change shortening or lengthing the expected car cycle. Random problems, and we have barely scratched the surface about what they are, always lengthen car cycles. The known unknows can be planned for with more cars. The unknown unknows can not be planned for.
Car shortages result from unexpected increases in traffic offered, or changes in traffic patterns. Longer shipments imply longer transit times and more cars to protect a fixed volume. Car surpluses result from lack of traffic, say a bad grain crop, a customer's plant is shut down, loss of business to a competing railroad, barge line or trucker, or a financial panic.
There are really two issues; car disrtibution or how do I fill the car orders that I have, and car supply or how many cars should I have in the fleet to protect the traffic that makes money for me?
If I did not hit what you really want to know, let me know and I will try again.
Railway Man Ed -- I digress here, and this is absolutely not directed at you, because you clearly understand economics. Railroading is the cheapest overland transportation method by far, is that not satisfying to anyone? Rail enthusiasts have built a straw man out of the evil truck, expect the railway to burn the straw man every day, and then -- having created a challenge for which railways themselves did not ask -- are disappointed and blame the railways when the railways don't fulfill their fantasies. I know of no other hobby where the participants spend quite so much time and effort setting themselves up for disappointment and unhappiness. John Kneiling made enemies because he had a soapbox from which he could issue scorn and judgment without fear of ever having to make good on his theories. He had no skin in the game, and I don't think anyone ever offered him a ticket to the dance, either. From that you could conclude that either John's prescriptions were snake oil, or that railways were vast conspiracy and threatened by John. John was an outstanding columnist, in that the purpose of a columnist is to stir things up a little, entertain us, and sell magazines. (OK, that paragraph used four cliches, and that's overquota for today.) RWM
Ed -- I digress here, and this is absolutely not directed at you, because you clearly understand economics. Railroading is the cheapest overland transportation method by far, is that not satisfying to anyone? Rail enthusiasts have built a straw man out of the evil truck, expect the railway to burn the straw man every day, and then -- having created a challenge for which railways themselves did not ask -- are disappointed and blame the railways when the railways don't fulfill their fantasies. I know of no other hobby where the participants spend quite so much time and effort setting themselves up for disappointment and unhappiness.
John Kneiling made enemies because he had a soapbox from which he could issue scorn and judgment without fear of ever having to make good on his theories. He had no skin in the game, and I don't think anyone ever offered him a ticket to the dance, either. From that you could conclude that either John's prescriptions were snake oil, or that railways were vast conspiracy and threatened by John. John was an outstanding columnist, in that the purpose of a columnist is to stir things up a little, entertain us, and sell magazines. (OK, that paragraph used four cliches, and that's overquota for today.)
I'm going to stick up for Mr. Kneiling here.
First, I don't believe the statement that "Railroading is the cheapest overland transportation method by far" is true. Railroads are now niche players in the transportation market. They've got some very good niches, and they've recently been financially successful (which may change soon thanks to our Federal Government), but trucks have long dominated the movement of goods in the US. There's only one real reason for this dominance, on an "all in" cost basis trucks are cheaper to use for most freight.
That was one of Kneiling's main points. He hammered on things like total logistics costs which were beyond the range of comfortable thought for most railroaders of the day. Making people leave their comfort zone of thought always upsets them. Kneiling was very successful at doing that. But he once said: "Making you feel good is another profession."
Kneiling also hammered poor utilization of equipment. He was right about that one. I once had a C&O trainmaster flat out tell me that "They don't cost us anything, we own 'em" with regard to freight cars. If somebody understood the costs at headquarters they weren't getting the word out to the field where the decisions were made.
At the ICG it was painfully obvious that the operating people didn't take equipment costs seriously. Cars that went bad order in Jackson, MS on Friday afternoon waited until Monday for repair. The cost of having a car just sit over a weekend didn't apear on the mechanical department's expenses, so they just let it sit.
We tried to improve service on paper and chemicals from Louisiana to the northeast. Cars were moved to Centrailia where three blocks were made for Conrail yards. The blocks were moved to Effingham where Conrail trains destined to those yards picked them up. This necessistated making a Centrailia block at Geismar, LA. Geismar was making eight blocks on eight classification tracks. The Centrailia block would be the 9th to be built on eight tracks.
Now you can do this easy enough. But no. They just quit making a Birmingham block. This sent the Birmingham cars into the Memphis yard. It added about two days to the cycle time of some assigned cars which were getting particular attention. (The operating people took a step back to go with the step forward of improving service to the northeast. They degraded service to the southeast.) We squawked pointing out that this would require the assignment of more cars to the service.
They had effectively spent capital funds without thinking about it. (We got the Birmingham block back.)
Kneiling was pointing things like this out. It made people think, and often folks just hate that.
Kneiling was right about concepts approximating double stack container trains, shuttle grain service and high performance coal trains. These things make up large successful niches of today's railroading. He missed on details. But everything changes from initial concept to implementation.
I think he had the big picture in focus. As to tact, he aparently didn't find it useful.
Murphy:Thanks for the update on Dale. His ability to provide information is world class. Let's hope his system gets quick, soon.
Paul:Keep those links coming. The multimodalinc algorithm link was a very good overview of what we are discussing.
Ok, bear with me on this next question. Lets assume that a railroad has pools of different types of cars that it knows will be used in the operations. These cars may be specifically built to handle certain types of freight (hi cube box cars for auto for example). That pool of cars probably move in fairly regular rotations from specific shippers to consignees and return.
Lets deal with a more general type of car, perhaps gondolas, used in handling scrap metal. You know the kind...30 years old with rusting sides which have had considerable abuse over the years. How does the railroad control the movement of empties to handle shipper requirements? Often the scrap metal folks have their own fleet, but let's just say these are NS cars moving within their system.
Is there an algorithm system in place that is based on historic needs that indicates how much car inventory needs to be available at specific locations? Could this be part of the issue the OP could be indirectly referring to? We have determined that asset managment is critical to the profitability of a business. Too much and margins erode. Too little and opportunity are lost. How does the railroad determine the tools they will need? Probably such as any other business, with input from the sales and marketing people based on customer needs.
So, is part of the problem not that the cars move inefficiently, but there is an oversupply of cars to handle high water marks in business cycles? Thus, there will often be cars sitting, waiting the next load.
To make a long story even longer, how do railroads handle the movement and placement of empties?
MP173 BTW, completely off topic, but I havent seen Dale lately (Naomini (sp)). He reference ability was amazing. Anyone know anything about him? ed
BTW, completely off topic, but I havent seen Dale lately (Naomini (sp)). He reference ability was amazing. Anyone know anything about him?
MultiModal's home page: http://www.multimodalinc.com/
From "White Paper" on Algorithm-Based Blocking Plan Analysis
April 12, 1999
Carl Van ***
Marc Meketon
"Over the years a series of tools have been developed to assist in the modeling, evaluation, and design of railroad blocking or marshalling plans. This discussion will focus on the capabilities of this type currently found in MultiModal Applied Systems’ MultiRail product. Variations of these capabilities can also be found in the Automated Blocking Model software family maintained by ALK Associates and in the real-time Algorithmic Blocking and Classification System (ABC) used by Norfolk Southern. Every major U.S., Canadian, and Mexican carrier currently utilizes MultiRail, and the blocking logic it contains for strategic analysis and planning."
See:
http://www.multimodalinc.com/pdfs/algorithm.pdf
Earlier in the thread a quick reference was made to RPM (used as statistics).
Rail Applications Special Interest Group - "RASIG" - of "operations research" by mathematical and statistical methods: http://www.muten.com/rasig/ and http://www.muten.com/
RASIG's current website could not be accessed, but here's their "Archives" page with links:
http://www.muten.com/rasig/meeting.html
And a typical meeting's agenda / program: http://www.muten.com/rasig/atlanta2003.html
Railroading's hidden half: the yard, part 1 Trains, June 2002 page 46 what yards do and how they work ( "KRAFT, EDWIN", OPERATION, YARD, TRN )
Railroading's hidden half: the yard, part 2 Trains, July 2002 page 36 yards of the future ( "KRAFT, EDWIN", OPERATION, YARD, TRN )
Thanks for reminding me of these - think I'll go find and re-read them over the weekend. Also do the Google search.
AnthonyV I sit outside the industry but I do not criticize it, nor have I suggested the railroads should do anything differently. I do not know enough about the business - plain and simple. I enjoy reading posts from industry insiders because I learn more about the tradeoffs that explain why the industry operates as it does. Experience has taught me that when a particular industry operates in a manner that leaves me scratching my head, it is most certainly due to my lack of understanding rather than idiotic industry executives. Those who assert the industry is doing everything wrong would probably end up operating it the same way if given the chance. Regarding the cost issue, could you provide a breakdown of costs? Thanks Anthony
I sit outside the industry but I do not criticize it, nor have I suggested the railroads should do anything differently. I do not know enough about the business - plain and simple. I enjoy reading posts from industry insiders because I learn more about the tradeoffs that explain why the industry operates as it does.
Experience has taught me that when a particular industry operates in a manner that leaves me scratching my head, it is most certainly due to my lack of understanding rather than idiotic industry executives. Those who assert the industry is doing everything wrong would probably end up operating it the same way if given the chance.
Regarding the cost issue, could you provide a breakdown of costs?
Thanks
Anthony
Good question -- but I am not sure how to get at in a simple fashion. Could you try a different approach to the question?
Railway Man Ed's point was that rolling stock cost is relatively small in the whole scheme of costs. I agree. My point is that rolling stock cost per trip is already so low that there is very little opportunity to make it smaller. A car-handling scheme that saves a whopping 25% of the car-cost per trip only makes sense if it can be done for around $25 or less in capital cost, variable cost, interest, taxes, and amortization. I'm avid to see the numbers for an alternative. It's easy to sit outside the industry and criticize it, but if there's not a spreadsheet showing the proposed savings, and a fully thought-out plan to implement it, then it should not be surprising if the critics are ignored. This is not a simple industry with simpletons running it. RWM
Ed's point was that rolling stock cost is relatively small in the whole scheme of costs. I agree. My point is that rolling stock cost per trip is already so low that there is very little opportunity to make it smaller. A car-handling scheme that saves a whopping 25% of the car-cost per trip only makes sense if it can be done for around $25 or less in capital cost, variable cost, interest, taxes, and amortization. I'm avid to see the numbers for an alternative. It's easy to sit outside the industry and criticize it, but if there's not a spreadsheet showing the proposed savings, and a fully thought-out plan to implement it, then it should not be surprising if the critics are ignored. This is not a simple industry with simpletons running it.
RWM :
Mr North and Railway Man: My complements to you both for propriety and decorum. It brings a certain sense of Decency and Good Order to our Forum.
Kindest regards Gentlemen,
PL
Railway Man AnthonyV croteaudd Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. I think the fundamental point of the original poster is correct - railroad cars spend much of their time standing still. I recall that the average number of loads a railroad car hauls in a year is 12 to 15. Is this accurate and how does this compare to truck trailers and containers? Anthony His observation was that rail cars spend much of their time not moving. His premise was that this was unnecessary and wasted money. His point was that railroads could make cars move faster and quit wasting money. We're waiting for his proof of concept. [snip -emphasis added] RWM
AnthonyV croteaudd Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. I think the fundamental point of the original poster is correct - railroad cars spend much of their time standing still. I recall that the average number of loads a railroad car hauls in a year is 12 to 15. Is this accurate and how does this compare to truck trailers and containers? Anthony
croteaudd Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards.
Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards.
I think the fundamental point of the original poster is correct - railroad cars spend much of their time standing still.
I recall that the average number of loads a railroad car hauls in a year is 12 to 15. Is this accurate and how does this compare to truck trailers and containers?
His observation was that rail cars spend much of their time not moving. His premise was that this was unnecessary and wasted money. His point was that railroads could make cars move faster and quit wasting money. We're waiting for his proof of concept.
[snip -emphasis added]
That (above) is a nicely done piece of analysis and rhetoric - a depth of thought and perception not often seen, and not really manifested in the original post - and concisely summarized.
We weren't taught how to do that in engineering school, not even in the required English courses - or in several other institutions of higher learning that I've spent some time in.
RWM - For the benefit of those of us who care to improve how we read, write, and think - can you share with us, where and how did you learn to do that ? Were you an English major, on a debating team, or write a lot of history papers ? Or whatever you care to tell us.
That I'm taking the time to write this post speaks to how much I admire it, I hope. A lot more people could benefit from those skills.
For some interesting reader on railway classification yards checkout Dr. Edwin R. "Chip" Kraft's articles in trains magazine.
A google search turns up some interesting stuff using his name too.
RWM:I knew the "inefficiencies" would bring out a comment, that is why I hedged it just a bit.
Railroads are efficient and are really starting to flex that efficiency. It will be interesting to see how this recession affects their operations and future investments.
Gotta run to a basketball game (I do live in Indiana), but regarding your comment of hobbies that disappoint...how about astronomy?
I cannot tell you the number of failures when seeking Messier 51 from my backyard with my 90mmETX (in light pollution). But, there is always something out there to keep us going. To me, it always seemed good to be outside at midnight with my scope and hear an NS or CN blasting thru town. There is nothing quite like looking thousands of years into the past and hearing a train cross town in the present.
MP173In a way, the railroads have built in for their inefficiencies. Look at the railroad tariffs and one will notice there are rates for railroad provided equipment and lower rates for private equipment. One may argue this is not accounting for "inefficiencies" but for the transfer of assets to the shippers. I wont split hairs on this one. However, a number of very large shippers now own their equipment, in fact in certain industries it appears to be standard practice. Somewhere on this thread I thought there was mention of the number of car cycles per year that cars generate. I cannot find it. If someone has that info, particularly for specific types of cars (covered hoppers, boxcars, etc) I would like to take a look at that. This thread has really turned into a very good discussion on the car hire, car cycle, asset utilization subject. During the 70's John Kneiling had a monthly column in Trains in which he discussed the inefficiencies of the industry. He made a number of enemies with his views. Much of what he had to say was related to this discussion. Paul, your last post regarding the modeling of the yard operations, from an engineer's viewpoint is interesting. Obviously there are models which analyze traffic flows. I recall reading that NS had such a system. On another forum, members are discussing NS's operation changes during the past year due to the economy. They seem to have a pretty good handle on how to move their carload traffic between major terminals and are often starting/terminating OD points. Years ago Hunter Harrison of CN mentioned the goal of having their yards empty. We discussed scheduled railroading on other threads and briefly touched on it here. Somewhere out there is the key to what makes this works. Most of us on this thread do not have the tools available to us. Those are proprietary tools to a railroad or within the industry. We might be given glimpses of those tools from time to time (investor relations sometimes briefly discusses these tools), but for the most part it isnt for us to know. A decade ago we were allowed to trace individual cars, now due to 911/security that is not available (understandedly so). A book I read on the Missouri Pacific stated they were at the forefront of developing a transportation control system back in the 60's. That evolution has been quite astounding in a few decades. ed
In a way, the railroads have built in for their inefficiencies. Look at the railroad tariffs and one will notice there are rates for railroad provided equipment and lower rates for private equipment. One may argue this is not accounting for "inefficiencies" but for the transfer of assets to the shippers. I wont split hairs on this one. However, a number of very large shippers now own their equipment, in fact in certain industries it appears to be standard practice.
Somewhere on this thread I thought there was mention of the number of car cycles per year that cars generate. I cannot find it. If someone has that info, particularly for specific types of cars (covered hoppers, boxcars, etc) I would like to take a look at that.
This thread has really turned into a very good discussion on the car hire, car cycle, asset utilization subject. During the 70's John Kneiling had a monthly column in Trains in which he discussed the inefficiencies of the industry. He made a number of enemies with his views. Much of what he had to say was related to this discussion.
Paul, your last post regarding the modeling of the yard operations, from an engineer's viewpoint is interesting. Obviously there are models which analyze traffic flows. I recall reading that NS had such a system. On another forum, members are discussing NS's operation changes during the past year due to the economy. They seem to have a pretty good handle on how to move their carload traffic between major terminals and are often starting/terminating OD points.
Years ago Hunter Harrison of CN mentioned the goal of having their yards empty. We discussed scheduled railroading on other threads and briefly touched on it here. Somewhere out there is the key to what makes this works. Most of us on this thread do not have the tools available to us. Those are proprietary tools to a railroad or within the industry. We might be given glimpses of those tools from time to time (investor relations sometimes briefly discusses these tools), but for the most part it isnt for us to know. A decade ago we were allowed to trace individual cars, now due to 911/security that is not available (understandedly so).
A book I read on the Missouri Pacific stated they were at the forefront of developing a transportation control system back in the 60's. That evolution has been quite astounding in a few decades.
I have to take issue with "built in for inefficiencies." You could just as easily say, "built in for efficiencies."
Ed, I deeply respect your thirst for knowledge and your awareness of the limits of your expertise, and that's why I like to participate here. The manner in which you pose questions, without nastiness or condescension, and with precision and reason, makes me think a little harder, and that's good for me.
Paul_D_North_JrRWM - Thanks for the replies to my previous posts regarding yards, velocity, handlings, etc. I've been considering them and the other detailed comments and responses in the meantime, and keep coming back to 2 thoughts: 1) Yard Operation Models, of which more below; and, 2) "Continuity Equation" concept analysis - which is beloved by engineers of the fluid mechanics, hydraulics, hydrology, environmental, and other types, as well as accountants and diverse others - as applied to the closed sub-system of a yard. This essentially recognizes that for incompressible flows, over a longish period of time, "Volume / Carloads Out" has to equal "Volume Carloads In". Otherwise, there would be a net gain or loss of Volume/ Cars to the system /yard, and in a system / yard of fixed capacity (tracks), such a gain or loss can't happen. This concnept can be written as a mathematical algebraic equation in terms of flows in and out, and augmented by adding concentrations to each flow and volume the same as the environmental people do, because the concentrations would be analogous to the proportion of cars for a particular destination or block, etc. Further, they like to do differential equations to this to see how each of those concentrations change over time - but I digress, and all this needs some more thought before I want to post it. Back to my Yard Operations Model inquiry: Can you tell us if you are aware of any, and if any of the large railroads use them with any regularity - like annually - to analyze and refine the operations of their yards ? I might be a whole lot less concerned about the apparent inefficiency of, say, 1,000 cars sitting in a yard with an average dwell time in the 24-hour range at $25 car hire per day - i.e., $25,000 per day in the aggregate = about 20 crew-starts, each and every day - if someone would tell me that this is indeed studied and actively managed, the same as crew starts and locomotives and fuel used, etc. Does any of the major railroads even monitor or track on a regular basis the number of car-days consumed by each yard on their system ? You've mentioned using the Rail Traffic Controller model in several threads - as does the STB in the Operations portion of the Minor Environmental Impact Assessment (? terminology) in the CN-EJ&E transaction review. But I don't recall any mention of a similar tool regarding yard operations. About 10 years ago I had a phone conversation with a senior person at Multi-Modal and my recollection is that at the time he said there wasn't any such thing in widespread use*. It may well be that this kind of analysis is the traditional province of the industrial engineer "time-and-motion" types, and/ or is so specialized for each railroad and yard that it doesn't lend itself to portability or being used in situations or conditions other than with the parameters for which it was specifically designed. (Compare with your recounting in the Location thread of the earthwork grading software that was demonstrated to you several years ago and which resulted in an essentially unusable, unoperatable, continuously curving alignment with a roller-coaster profile, etc.) What this leads to, of course, is whether there is a model of a node or hub operation, as contrasted with - and teamed up with - the RTC modeling for the spokes or line-haul operations. The next step would be to integrate the two models, so that the Yard Model feeds the RTC model, and vice-versa. Which is why I ask - I figure you should know, if anyone does. When you have a moment, if you can. In the meantime, best wishes for the weekend. - Paul North. *-Somewhere in that long-ago conversation was a discussion about programming computer code in the Fortran IV language. I have a suitable prize for anyone else who can remember the nuances of that.
RWM -
Thanks for the replies to my previous posts regarding yards, velocity, handlings, etc. I've been considering them and the other detailed comments and responses in the meantime, and keep coming back to 2 thoughts:
1) Yard Operation Models, of which more below; and,
2) "Continuity Equation" concept analysis - which is beloved by engineers of the fluid mechanics, hydraulics, hydrology, environmental, and other types, as well as accountants and diverse others - as applied to the closed sub-system of a yard. This essentially recognizes that for incompressible flows, over a longish period of time, "Volume / Carloads Out" has to equal "Volume Carloads In". Otherwise, there would be a net gain or loss of Volume/ Cars to the system /yard, and in a system / yard of fixed capacity (tracks), such a gain or loss can't happen. This concnept can be written as a mathematical algebraic equation in terms of flows in and out, and augmented by adding concentrations to each flow and volume the same as the environmental people do, because the concentrations would be analogous to the proportion of cars for a particular destination or block, etc. Further, they like to do differential equations to this to see how each of those concentrations change over time - but I digress, and all this needs some more thought before I want to post it.
Back to my Yard Operations Model inquiry: Can you tell us if you are aware of any, and if any of the large railroads use them with any regularity - like annually - to analyze and refine the operations of their yards ? I might be a whole lot less concerned about the apparent inefficiency of, say, 1,000 cars sitting in a yard with an average dwell time in the 24-hour range at $25 car hire per day - i.e., $25,000 per day in the aggregate = about 20 crew-starts, each and every day - if someone would tell me that this is indeed studied and actively managed, the same as crew starts and locomotives and fuel used, etc. Does any of the major railroads even monitor or track on a regular basis the number of car-days consumed by each yard on their system ?
You've mentioned using the Rail Traffic Controller model in several threads - as does the STB in the Operations portion of the Minor Environmental Impact Assessment (? terminology) in the CN-EJ&E transaction review. But I don't recall any mention of a similar tool regarding yard operations. About 10 years ago I had a phone conversation with a senior person at Multi-Modal and my recollection is that at the time he said there wasn't any such thing in widespread use*. It may well be that this kind of analysis is the traditional province of the industrial engineer "time-and-motion" types, and/ or is so specialized for each railroad and yard that it doesn't lend itself to portability or being used in situations or conditions other than with the parameters for which it was specifically designed. (Compare with your recounting in the Location thread of the earthwork grading software that was demonstrated to you several years ago and which resulted in an essentially unusable, unoperatable, continuously curving alignment with a roller-coaster profile, etc.)
What this leads to, of course, is whether there is a model of a node or hub operation, as contrasted with - and teamed up with - the RTC modeling for the spokes or line-haul operations. The next step would be to integrate the two models, so that the Yard Model feeds the RTC model, and vice-versa. Which is why I ask - I figure you should know, if anyone does.
When you have a moment, if you can. In the meantime, best wishes for the weekend.
*-Somewhere in that long-ago conversation was a discussion about programming computer code in the Fortran IV language. I have a suitable prize for anyone else who can remember the nuances of that.
Without getting into proprietary items ...
Paul_D_North_Jr Paul North.
Fortran IV? Where's my stack of punch cards?
I haven't used fortran since college where we had to model the level in a water tower with 4 independant pumps that turned on and off at different levels for a 24hr period. The prof provided differing water demands to check our models (like a simulated 4 alarm fire at 7am). That was 25 years ago. I don't remember the first step anymore except to define the variables (integer, floating, fixed) and memory usage.
AnthonyVMP173 Asset turnover is always a factor in any business. Grocery stores turn their assets quickly...to determine asset turnover, divide the assets of a company by it's yearly revenue. Their margins are fairly thin. Jewelry stores on the other hand do not turn assets nevery as quick, but have very high margins. Obviously the sweet spot in business is to turn assets quickly with very high margins. A few companies do this, but most do not. I believe that railroads have addressed this issue over the years. One method of addressing this has been the transfer of cars from railroad owned to private fleets. Overall, rolling stock is going to be a fairly small portion of the assets of a railroad, the land and track would seem to be a much larger asset pool. Thus, it would seem that the ideal situation would be to increase the productivity of those assets (ROW) by maximizing the revenue on that segment. Thus, you have the mix of high margin (carload) and lower margin (intermodal) plus the unit train moves. Carload freight supports some very costly functions - local pickup and delivery and yard classification, while intermodal does not. ed Ed: Money invested in rolling stock is not small by any means. Assuming a present-day average car cost of $50,000 and a fleet of 1.3 million cars, the replacement cost is $65 billion dollars. Assuming a 40-year life, the average annual replacement cost is $1.6 billion. I must admit these numbers are surprisingly high. Anthony
MP173 Asset turnover is always a factor in any business. Grocery stores turn their assets quickly...to determine asset turnover, divide the assets of a company by it's yearly revenue. Their margins are fairly thin. Jewelry stores on the other hand do not turn assets nevery as quick, but have very high margins. Obviously the sweet spot in business is to turn assets quickly with very high margins. A few companies do this, but most do not. I believe that railroads have addressed this issue over the years. One method of addressing this has been the transfer of cars from railroad owned to private fleets. Overall, rolling stock is going to be a fairly small portion of the assets of a railroad, the land and track would seem to be a much larger asset pool. Thus, it would seem that the ideal situation would be to increase the productivity of those assets (ROW) by maximizing the revenue on that segment. Thus, you have the mix of high margin (carload) and lower margin (intermodal) plus the unit train moves. Carload freight supports some very costly functions - local pickup and delivery and yard classification, while intermodal does not. ed
Asset turnover is always a factor in any business.
Grocery stores turn their assets quickly...to determine asset turnover, divide the assets of a company by it's yearly revenue. Their margins are fairly thin.
Jewelry stores on the other hand do not turn assets nevery as quick, but have very high margins. Obviously the sweet spot in business is to turn assets quickly with very high margins. A few companies do this, but most do not.
I believe that railroads have addressed this issue over the years. One method of addressing this has been the transfer of cars from railroad owned to private fleets. Overall, rolling stock is going to be a fairly small portion of the assets of a railroad, the land and track would seem to be a much larger asset pool. Thus, it would seem that the ideal situation would be to increase the productivity of those assets (ROW) by maximizing the revenue on that segment. Thus, you have the mix of high margin (carload) and lower margin (intermodal) plus the unit train moves.
Carload freight supports some very costly functions - local pickup and delivery and yard classification, while intermodal does not.
Ed:
Money invested in rolling stock is not small by any means. Assuming a present-day average car cost of $50,000 and a fleet of 1.3 million cars, the replacement cost is $65 billion dollars.
Assuming a 40-year life, the average annual replacement cost is $1.6 billion.
I must admit these numbers are surprisingly high.
oltmannd Bucyrus croteaudd, Sounds to me like you should talk to these people at Railcars Sequencing Turntables, LLC: http://www.freightturntables.com/home They have it all worked out and will explain the details. Their website will load a demonstration in a minute or so. It is as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 When you get done checking that out, come back and tell us what you think of it. Oh, my!
Oh, my!
I hope croteaudd has had a chance to check it out. I think it is the very kind of out-of-the-box thinking that he is alluding to in this thread. I am waiting to hear back from him.
AnthonyVAssuming a present-day average car cost of $50,000
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
If they really wanted to, I guess railroads could buy a bunch of 200-300 horsepower engines and run one or a few cars essentially non-stop directly from the shipper's dock to the consignee's facility. Maybe those engines could have a little sleeping compartment behind the engineer's position and with a two man crew each man could trade off running and sleeping.
That would solve the problem of cars standing still-except when loading or unloading-and certainly would provide plenty of jobs. I suppose that the railroads would have to figure out a way for these little trains to pass each other when coming in opposite directs on single track routes. They would also have to solve the problem of how to get a faster train to pass a slower train going in the same direction.
Don't know why someone hasn't thought of this, but maybe instead of having the engines and cars running on flanged steel wheels on tracks, these trains could run on flat hard concrete or black top pavement, perhaps using rubber tires. That would solve the passing problem. Even better, since federal, state and local governments have built a very extension route system or hard, flat roads, it wouldn't even be necessary for the railroads to build additional capacity to handle all the added trains involved in the new method of operation.
Oh, wait... Nevermind!
Those who suggest that railroads would be better off running short, fast and more frequent trains really fail to grasp the concept that railroads are a mass transportation system. The underlying and compelling economic factor is in the economy of scale produced by running long trains pulled by engines producing no more that maybe a couple of horse power per gross trailing ton and operated by two men. Consider that a 100 car train will have maybe 8 to 10 thousand tons of freight, the tonnage to manpower ratio is 4-5 thousand to 1. Compare that to a typical tonnage ot manpower ratio of about 40 to 1 for and over the road truck. Also, you won't find many 100 HP tractors pulling those trucks.
You might ask, if the ecomomics of the long train are so superior to motor trucks, why do the railroads not haul everything. The answer is they do, if the long train consists of one consigment from one shipper to one consignee. (Think coal, grain and other product unit trains.) If the train is made up of hundreds of consignments running between about as many origin destination pairs, then the railroad has an unavoidable operating and facility expense to gather all those cars place them on long trains and disperse them from the trains to the consignee's facilities. That adds a cost element to the shipment that lets a motor carrier to often be cost competitive. It also explains why, as noted in posts above, that the railroads work hard to build facilities and design operations to reduced the costs on that part of the business.
To get a better handle on the concept, consider that commuter railroads are also a form of mass transportation service with people instead of freight. Does anyone think it would make any sense if Chicago's Metra Service suddenly doubled the frequency of its trains? The trains could be half the size and might have slightly faster schedules, but the cost per rider would certainly be greater since the total number of crew personnel would just about double. A large number of riders might benefit since since the service would come closer to meet their specific individual starting and ending work schedules, but would they be willing to expend more for such convenience? Further, would anybody consider the design of a commuter rail sytem that had stations within walking distance of every potential rider to be economicly rational or feasible? In much the same way as trucks gather freight in trailers and containers to haul to the train "station" to be put on long trains, we all use cars or buses to get between our countless actual origins and destinations and the commuter train station. Those who do commute on trains usually do so because riding together with a train load of other people is less expensive than driving a car between the house and the job.
Sounds to me like you should talk to these people at Railcars Sequencing Turntables, LLC: http://www.freightturntables.com/home
They have it all worked out and will explain the details. Their website will load a demonstration in a minute or so. It is as simple as 2 + 2 = 4
When you get done checking that out, come back and tell us what you think of it.
croteauddMurphy Siding,Admittedly, as stupidly simple as the logistical aspects of the previously promoted rail operating concepts were, they were very difficult to see and comprehend, which may explain their absence in railroading today.It may be like an experience I once had. A neighbor just could not see what I was trying to get across to him. Why? I don’t know. But how many times does one have to state 2 + 2 = 4 for it to sink in? After an hour of basically saying the same thing with slight variations, the light popped on in his head. “Oh, I see what you are saying,” he humbly stated. Some of the stupidest simple things are hard to see.Most fascinatingly, things I thought of 20-25 years ago are slowly making their way into the industry. Necessity is the mother of invention, some say. Economic necessity is forcing the industry to look hard to find, and finding, new efficiencies. But, why do railroads see now what I saw 20-25 years ago? You can be the judge on that one, but if you reason it out, you may start thinking like I do …Hey, I’m curious, Murphy Siding. Did you take on the name after a Murphy Siding near you?
Murphy Siding was near where I lived as a kid, on the Milwaukee Road in western S.D.
croteaudd“Sorting facilities” that allows quick reshuffling of long or short sets of railcars are believed to be much better than “yards” where virtually nothing moves. In sorting facilities, no railcars would have their air deliberately bled by car workers.
From that little hint, I gather that the cars in your sorting facility would be sorted in a way that does not have them running on tracks with their wheels turning. I guess you must put the cars on special dollies that can run them in any direction of a big flat sorting table, place them into lines, and then run them back onto tracks.
Some stats: For general service box car loads, typical actual transit times, dock to dock, in days:
(note: this includes time held at customer request)
MP173 One my favorite current trains of recent years was the NS217/218 pair between Chicago and Greensboro, NC. Up until last fall, all trailers, no stacks; quite a bit of UPS, Schneiders, and US Express (also EMP and JBH's). 217/218 always intrigued me. Even in the good economic times in the mid decade there would only be 50 - 60 trailers/containers. At $1000 per unit (maybe) it seemed like thin money.
One my favorite current trains of recent years was the NS217/218 pair between Chicago and Greensboro, NC. Up until last fall, all trailers, no stacks; quite a bit of UPS, Schneiders, and US Express (also EMP and JBH's).
217/218 always intrigued me. Even in the good economic times in the mid decade there would only be 50 - 60 trailers/containers. At $1000 per unit (maybe) it seemed like thin money.
217/218 runs via the N&W, so no stacking - at least until the Hearland Corridor work is done.
MP173 Don:Thanks for the explanation of the intermodal operations. One NS train I have always wondered about is the 25A. It runs from Chicago daily to Ft Wayne and then south. The destination is not clear. I have heard it runs to Danville, Ky. Is that another block swap location?
Don:Thanks for the explanation of the intermodal operations. One NS train I have always wondered about is the 25A. It runs from Chicago daily to Ft Wayne and then south. The destination is not clear. I have heard it runs to Danville, Ky. Is that another block swap location?
Yes. Danville does a lot of block swaps for intermodal and multilevel trains and, I think, some merchandise trains, as well. It's a good "wide spot in the road" to do this type of switching.
croteaudd: I'm not a railroader, I'm a railfan, just like you. From what I've read over the years about the history of the industry, and it's evolution, I'd wonder if you're seeing the big picture here. Over the past 170 or so years, the industry has been all about evolution, innovation, and improvement. Railroad history is full of people who were/are always trying to build a better mousetrap. I'm not sure where you get the impression that there's a simpler, better way to do things, and that the only thing keeping it down, is some sort of evil force fueled by money. I disagree.
Railway Man AnthonyV croteaudd Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. I think the fundamental point of the original poster is correct - railroad cars spend much of their time standing still. I recall that the average number of loads a railroad car hauls in a year is 12 to 15. Is this accurate and how does this compare to truck trailers and containers? Anthony His observation was that rail cars spend much of their time not moving. His premise was that this was unnecessary and wasted money. His point was that railroads could make cars move faster and quit wasting money. We're waiting for his proof of concept.
Hadn't bothered reading this thread before. Now that I have, I see his point. And so do the railroads.
Does the term "velocity" ring a bell?
I appreciate the explicit explanation of your ideology. That helps me to understand your position.
To Murphy Siding,Concerning your March 4, 7:57 a.m. post: The following bold letterings are your questions, but the normal type wordings are my replies … You suggest to use 1/2 the equipment to do 100% of the work. Who wouldn't want to do that?You would be surprised! It must be remembered that railroad management decision makers are highly paid and their time is at a premium, and, in my opinion, do not want to look at anything they can’t immediately figure out but consumes their time. Also, anyone that perceives that their income generating or profit making ability could be interfered with would resist and/or cause trouble. It is always risky to propose ideas that go against the established profiteers. But, those that developed the new concepts perceived how the economy worked and why people so often were pitted against each other, thus ways were masterminded to circumvent and eliminated the threatening, divisive issues altogether. But, people who feel the slightest bit threatened, but in reality would not be, don’t want to even hear anything or even take a chance.But.....how exactly do you plan to do that?It could be accomplished through an operating reorientation from “destinational” to “directional” thinking. Concepts can be proven with short term tests.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.What CEO wants to possibly jeopardize their career with radical, non-traditional ideas? The status quo is the safe route. Also, as already mentioned, there are great forces at work to hinder anything new. That is an absolute historical fact.I'm curious to hear the details of your plan.I’m surprised! Since when does anyone connected with railroading want more information on this?Nevertheless, even though the effort has long been given up, here are a few recalled details:First: Railcars could be in near constant motion, and as previously mentioned, an A to B directional reorientation is believed to be best, and would dramatically speed-up service.Second: “Sorting facilities” that allows quick reshuffling of long or short sets of railcars are believed to be much better than “yards” where virtually nothing moves. In sorting facilities, no railcars would have their air deliberately bled by car workers.Third: A unification of management and labor must be done, so that they both perceive themselves on the same side against the mechanisms of the money system, a system that historically pits one against the other, and eventually causes the total demise of that civilization, a phenomena that has been repeated over and over. In understanding fully what is working against them, railroad management and labor thus can work as a team to protect themselves.So, Murphy Siding, I hope I’ve answered your reply post at least halfway adequately in light of the limitations of a forum format and the time constraints my personal life has placed upon me. Like it was stated above, the effort to get the attention of railroading has long been abandoned. This topic was concocted to just make people think. It is so sad to see railroaders furloughed and without a paycheck for feeding their families. Perhaps this topic can give the railroad brotherhood ideas to, in someway, protect themselves from the historically very, very dark side of money function.
MP173RWM:Great explanation, thanks. I used the phrase "trailer" and actually should have used the term "truckload carrier". I am very much aware of the container movements by JBH and others...just my old trucking blood taking over. Your explanation of "everything to Chicago" makes sense. Just get it out of here and let someone else sort it out later. Now, getting back to KC and the Sunshine Band (sorry, I couldnt resist that), obviously it should be KC and NS...do you every see the time that route will be utilized for intermodal, as Chicago reaches a choke point and possible capacity eases as automotive manufacturing shifts from the Detroit model to who knows what? Do you know if UP is using their Rochelle intermodal as a possible staging area for building eastbounds to CSX/NS or is that strickly for local drayage. Is the interchange across Chicago still nearly all rubber rather than steel? No wonder the roads are such a mess now...potholes you wouldnt believe. It is really interesting looking back at old photos taken in the 70's of intermodal trains. First of all, I didnt see too many of them back then and it was a treat to see one. Second, they were all piggyback...the novelty of double stacks wore off pretty quickly after a few years. Third, the marketing graphics were really pretty neat, as were the boxcar graphics. One my favorite current trains of recent years was the NS217/218 pair between Chicago and Greensboro, NC. Up until last fall, all trailers, no stacks; quite a bit of UPS, Schneiders, and US Express (also EMP and JBH's). 217/218 always intrigued me. Even in the good economic times in the mid decade there would only be 50 - 60 trailers/containers. At $1000 per unit (maybe) it seemed like thin money. ed
RWM:Great explanation, thanks.
I used the phrase "trailer" and actually should have used the term "truckload carrier". I am very much aware of the container movements by JBH and others...just my old trucking blood taking over.
Your explanation of "everything to Chicago" makes sense. Just get it out of here and let someone else sort it out later.
Now, getting back to KC and the Sunshine Band (sorry, I couldnt resist that), obviously it should be KC and NS...do you every see the time that route will be utilized for intermodal, as Chicago reaches a choke point and possible capacity eases as automotive manufacturing shifts from the Detroit model to who knows what?
Do you know if UP is using their Rochelle intermodal as a possible staging area for building eastbounds to CSX/NS or is that strickly for local drayage. Is the interchange across Chicago still nearly all rubber rather than steel? No wonder the roads are such a mess now...potholes you wouldnt believe.
It is really interesting looking back at old photos taken in the 70's of intermodal trains. First of all, I didnt see too many of them back then and it was a treat to see one. Second, they were all piggyback...the novelty of double stacks wore off pretty quickly after a few years. Third, the marketing graphics were really pretty neat, as were the boxcar graphics. One my favorite current trains of recent years was the NS217/218 pair between Chicago and Greensboro, NC. Up until last fall, all trailers, no stacks; quite a bit of UPS, Schneiders, and US Express (also EMP and JBH's).
The only part of this I can address (due to either lack of knowledge, or lack of freedom to comment, or both), is your intriguing question about the future value of the former Wabash to Kansas City, should the recent decline in finished auto traffic from the Detroit area prove permanent. That's a very good question. I can't answer it.
Yes, a great deal of the Chicago interchange is rubber. That will transistion to steel wheel if volumes increase dramatically, enabling terminals at the ends of the network to economically build full trains and full shiploads for terminals at the other ends of the network. Much of the reason why intermodal trains originating at ports are not full trainloads for some other terminal is that the ships arrive mine-run, because their boxes arrive at the originating port mine-run. The volume of boxes seems enormous, but when you break it down into O-D pairs the volume between most of the pairs is really quite small. I did some recent analysis on O-D pairs in the carload business in one of the major Class 1 lanes, and it was remarkable how there were only 20 or so large O-D pairs for every 10,000 very small pairs.
AnthonyVcroteaudd Everything perpetually seems to stand still in railroad yards. I think the fundamental point of the original poster is correct - railroad cars spend much of their time standing still. I recall that the average number of loads a railroad car hauls in a year is 12 to 15. Is this accurate and how does this compare to truck trailers and containers? Anthony
The average number of loads per year a boxcar makes is around 15. The average number of loads a rotary gondola in unit train service makes is 50-plus. But so what? The goal of railroading isn't to turn cars fast, it's to make money. Measuring the number of trips per year and worshiping of that metric may actually reduce the amount of money a railroad makes.
It's grating to hear someone claim that we're all sitting on our hands not doing anything about car cycle times, especially when the claim comes without a proof of concept and has no apparent experience or science in support. But since there's doubt, let me assure you that for more than 150 years, somewhere around 2 million railroaders have been working long hours every day looking for ways to reduce the idle time on a boxcar, hopper, gon, or centerbeam in loose-car freight, and increase the number of cycles it makes. But not if it costs more money to do it then the money saved. Freight cars in the whole scheme of things are one of the cheaper inputs into moving freight. In raw, non-discounted numbers, if a centerbeam costs $50,000 and makes 500 trips in its lifetime, the cost of the car per trip is $100. That doesn't give much margin to play with here to seek alternative transportation methods for each trip to squeeze that $100 downward.
MP173Several points and a couple of questions: The trip log by RWM seemed a bit ambitious to me. But, I have no reference. Is that a typical real scenario, or best case?
Several points and a couple of questions:
The trip log by RWM seemed a bit ambitious to me. But, I have no reference. Is that a typical real scenario, or best case?
It's a simple case, and yes, it's a good case -- there are no blown connections, overtonnage trains, weather events, etc. The idea is to get consistency more than speed. I know of almost no shipper who would not glady trade a 14-day cycle for a 16-day cycle if it was always a 16-day cycle and not sometimes a 12-day and others a 22-day. Inconsistent cycles just kill shipper costs and management time.
Trains had a map awhile back showing carload movements from Houston area to the Northeast. That was an eye opener. Also, there was a Trains article about 7 years ago regarding carload freight adn the $$$ generated. I will attempt to find it. In the discussions of intermodal west and east of Chicago, it became very obvious the system is much more complex than originally thought. Considerable volume of intermodal moves to and thru Chicago. A couple of questions... 1. Is Chicago the major interchange point for W/E intermodal? What percentage moves thru Chicago vs St. Louis? Is Kansas City via NS much of a interchange? My initial impression that it is not, but that is only a guess. If it is not a major point, is that due to western carriers not wishing to short haul themselves, or is it more due to the nature of building the intermodals at Chicago and the system network that has developed there?
Trains had a map awhile back showing carload movements from Houston area to the Northeast. That was an eye opener. Also, there was a Trains article about 7 years ago regarding carload freight adn the $$$ generated. I will attempt to find it.
In the discussions of intermodal west and east of Chicago, it became very obvious the system is much more complex than originally thought. Considerable volume of intermodal moves to and thru Chicago. A couple of questions...
1. Is Chicago the major interchange point for W/E intermodal? What percentage moves thru Chicago vs St. Louis? Is Kansas City via NS much of a interchange? My initial impression that it is not, but that is only a guess. If it is not a major point, is that due to western carriers not wishing to short haul themselves, or is it more due to the nature of building the intermodals at Chicago and the system network that has developed there?
Chicago is by far the major gateway for intermodal. Second tier (and it's a distant second) is St. Louis and Memphis; then Meridian, then at a distant fifth, New Orleans. Memphis is a growth story; St. Louis is stagnant. Kansas City is purely an auto and carload play for NS. The reason for Chicago is not so much short-haul as that the infrastructure was already in place with spare capacity created when passenger trains evaporated, and more importantly, Chicago is an enormous load center in its own right. It makes a lot of economic sense to send as much traffic as possible to Chicago, and tag-along the through traffic with the Chicago traffic. The reason it's desirable to consolidate the Chicago traffic with the through traffic is the alternative is ugly -- it more than doubles the amount of space required at the ports, more than doubles the port dwell time, and more than doubles the intermodal terminal handling costs. Under the "everything goes to Chicago" model, the port flings everything onto the first available string of well cars and away it goes and clears out the port. Otherwise the port has to build two trains at the same time, one for Chicago and one for the other gateway, and the dwell time goes up and the space requirement doubles, and the handling costs more than double.
Also, St. Louis is a costly, slow terminal.
2. Is there much trailer (as opposed to stack) handled from west to east, or even Midwest to east that passes thru Chicago? Or is Chicago the line in the sand for trailers? For example, say Atlanta - Minneapolis or Omaha - Buffalo?
There's lots of UPS, TL, and LTL traffic through Chicago. But TL in general is under a lot of pressure from domestic container, or put another way, the line between TL and domestic container is blurry -- e.g., J.B. Hunt.
Paul: Carload earns very good money. Conventional wisdom five years ago was "carload is dead," but now the more progressive are thinking it's a huge opportunity for growth in volume, revenue, and profit, and you will see several billions of dollars invested into improvements in the carload business in the next 10 years, including several new hump yards.
The Class 1 railroad business mix moves as follows, in round numbers:
Multiple handlings are not unusual, and range from a per-trip number of visits to yards of 4 to 8, depending upon which Class 1 you're considering.
Here's a sample trip for a centerbeam of lumber loading on a western short line and moving long east through Chicago to a destination on an eastern short line.
Day 1: Generally the car will be released by the consignor in late afternoon, and the short line will pick it up that night.
Day 2: The car will arrive at the interchange early the next morning, and get picked up by a local. That local will move the interchange block to a regional yard arriving midday. The regional yard will generally build an outbound train and dispatch it eastward toward the first regional hump yard that night.
Day 3: The inbound train will arrive the hump yard yard early the next morning, and the train will be humped. Our car will go into a bowl track with a Chicago block probably specific to the next carrier. Those bowl tracks will fill with other inbound traffic during the day, and sometime about 12 hours after the first cars arrive, the tracks will will be ready to be trimmed and assembled in block order in the departure yard. Now our car is into a Chicago train that leaves that night.
Day 4-6: Train moves east, arriving Chicago late on Day 6. The train is steel-wheel interchanged to the eastern carrier, and moves to a hump yard for sorting into a destination yard on the eastern Class 1.
Day 7: The car leaves the hump yard east of Chicago and heads for a east-coast yard, arriving around midnight that day.
Day 8. The car is sorted into a train for a local support yard, and moves to that yard.
Day 9: The car is sorted into a local at that yard, and switched to the short line.
Day 10: The short line picks up the car and spots it to the consignee in the early morning hours.
Total transit time 9 hours, 4 hours, three interchanges -- there are a LOT of handlings here, but this is not excessive. If you think through how to reduce handlings, you're left with the interesting conclusion that the best way out of this hole is to build volumes, because with volume there can be larger volumes between each O-D pair and each intermediate point, and yards can be bypassed. Counterintuitively, the larger the volume becomes, the less you need yards. The unit train is best thought of not as a train that avoids yards, but as a train that outgrew the need for a yard. This is precisely why railways are becoming a cash-printing machine -- cut the rates, build the volumes, the efficiencies become tremendous, the cash flow becomes quite attractive.
oltmannd 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.
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.
At the risk of inviting all kinds of grief ("Fools rush in !", as my 12th grade calculus instructor used to yell at us) - but as my start to following-up on the above post and RWM's insights into velocity and car-cycle time:
"I have in my hand* . . . " a print-out from the BNSF website's "Carload Transit Schedules" page from Aurora, Illinois to Fullerton, California - 2 points at the opposite ends of its Southern TransCon that I picked just at random. That page/ application / print-out provides "Estimated Transit" times for car "Releases" on each day of the week, which range from 9 Days 12 Hours (released by 5:00 PM on Sun. & Tues.) to 10 D-12 H (Mon., Fri., & Sat.) 11 D - 12 H (Thu.), and 12 D - 12 H (Weds.).
Good grief - that's from 228 to 300 hours (also conveniently provided) for about 2,200 miles (my estimate), or an average speed of from around 10 MPH down to about 7.3 MPH. BNSF's road trains are around 20 MPH average for 110 hours, and Terminal (yard) Dwell times are around 20 to 24 hours average, so that's another 100 hours for say 4 yards, so I guess the rest 1 to 3 days - is for locals, system delays, etc.
This may not be the best example - BNSF might well be able to commit to a better transit time for a specific customer, known shipment and date, and a premium rate - but I thought it would be a useful example of what we're discussing here.
I need to head out now, but before I go, I'll add that we may also be worrying about "a tempest in a teapot", or the proverbial "tail wagging the dog" here. These days, the bulk of the rail traffic seems to be coal, intermodal, grain, and multi-level (autos) unit trains or big blocks of cars. The individual or small blocks of cars may just be the small change / scraps /leavings of the business, that look bad in isolation sitting in the yard, but in the overall scheme of things don't amount to much in the way of inefficiency. More on this later.
(* - Standard introduction to a question by 1950s Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his anti-communist hearings, I believe)
The St. Louis/Louisville line joins in at Danville, so is it possible it is combined to another train? Another possibility is it drops Cincinnati and Lexington in route.
The train handles double stacks and also intermodals, including UPS trailers. It is usually a pretty good sized train, 150 - 200 intermodal units is standard.
Murphy Siding 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! ( I'm not RWM, but I did sleep at a Holiday Inn last night ) 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.
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!
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.
Today's railroads are handling more tonnage with fewer cars and people than they ever have at ANY time in the past; which leads to the assumption that this trend will continue into the future.
Yes, let's hear the details!
mudchicken Kinda scary what they're teaching in those high school economics classes these days if the original premise holds.
Kinda scary what they're teaching in those high school economics classes these days if the original premise holds.
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?
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
23 17 46 11
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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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....
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 ? )
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 . . .
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
piouslion1 This could be interesting
This could be interesting
+1
Dan
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.
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.
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.
Whaaaa?
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