A newspaper article said CN, has one of the most fluid networks on the continent. What exactly does that mean, and how is fluidity measured? Is fluidity even a word?
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CN is a system that has no fouling points, all lines keep traffic moving at all times without bottlenecks or hold ups. That's my guess.
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Murphy Siding A newspaper article said CN, has one of the most fluid networks on the continent. What exactly does that mean, and how is fluidity measured? Is fluidity even a word?
What newspaper was the article in, and do you think the writer actually knew what s/he was talking about or was just parroting company PR? - al
al-in-chgo What newspaper was the article in, and do you think the writer actually knew what s/he was talking about or was just parroting company PR? - al
Is being (reletively more) fluid a sign of better management, routes, traffic patterns, business level, or just plain luck?
There is no standard measure of fluidity. There is no standard measure of line capacity, either. But they are certainly topics of great interest to RRs. The biggest stumbling block is coming up with a meaningful theoretical maxium capacity for a line.
There are lots of things RRs measure related to these, train speed, train delays, trains operated, trains held out of yards, trains held for power, crew etc. but none of them directly measure either of these.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Probably a railroad operating veteran can say, "There might not be a generally-accepted definition for "fluidity" - but I know it when I see it". [like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous definition of pornography ]
That said - and I'll note here that I'm a big CN fan - for about the last 10 years CN is big on running a "scheduled railroad" by having trip plans for all car movements in its system, and integrating those with its train schedules. I can't quickly find an on-line reference or description of it - but they are out there, I'm sure. EDIT: Try this - description of "The Service Plan" at: http://www.cn.ca/documents/Investor-Factbook-Archive/FactBook2002_complete_en.pdf at pages 18 - 21 inclusive (Pages 20 through 23 of 80 of the "PDF" version there).
Also, CN's published "Terminal Dwell" times" for its Major Yards and the Entire Railroad are consistently much lower than anyone else's. I know - "definitions", "apples vs. oranges", and all that - but still - CN's is only about 1/3 to 1/2 of everyone else's, as follows for March 2009 (ranked in ascending order):
CN: 12.3 hours "Total Dwell - Major Yards", 8.3 hrs. "Total Dwell - Entire Railroad" (and less in the more recent April 2009 weeks) - see http://www.cn.ca/documents/Investor-Performance-Measures/perf_measures_en.xls
KCS: 16.1 hrs. for Entire Railroad
CPR: 20.8 hrs. for Entire Railroad
NS: 21.3 hrs. for Entire Railroad
CSX: 23.2 hrs. for Entire Railroad
BNSF: 23.3 hrs. for Entire Railroad
UP: 23.3 hrs. for Entire Railroad
Source: The "Railroad Performance Measures" website, at: http://www.railroadpm.org , then click on the specific railroad's page.
One result of this that I haven't looked into yet is "velocity" - the average number of days per carload trip, or the number of loads a car carries in a month or year, etc. That too would be an interesting statistic - I'll bet it's much shorter for CN than the others - by 20 to 30 % - though probably not as dramatically since the over-the-road train speeds are not much different (see below).
The fluidiity difference is not over-the-road train "Average Train Speed (Miles per Hour)" - it's not hugely different between the carriers, as follows - again, for March 2009, "All Trains" (same sources, ranked in descending order, same disclaimers about comparisons apply):
KCS: 28.2 MPH
CN: 27.9 MPH
UP: 27.4 MPH
BNSF: 26.5 MPH
CPR: 26.2 MPH
NS: 23.5
CSX: 21.4 MPH
But please don't tell anyone else. My IRA account loves CN too much.
- Paul North.
I suggest the CN benefits substantially vs the Big Four US Class 1's because it is essentially an east-west operation with much less interchange and enternal switching requirements. Of course their ventures into the US with the IC acquisition (Chicago for example) contributes to lowering their 'fluidity' numbers.
Is saying that your railroad is the most fluid, when there is no real way to measure it, akin to saying your railroad has the shiniest rails?
Railroad utilize a number of internal measurements to gauge their level of fluidity. Train speed is on, recrews of trains is another, terminal dwell time for cars and a number of other measures when viewed as a whole will gauge the fluidity of a railroad.
When gauging just speed, different territories generate different speeds that are dependent upon the kind of traffic being handled and the physical characteristics of the territory involved.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Paul_D_North_JrThat said - and I'll note here that I'm a big CN fan - for about the last 10 years CN is big on running a "scheduled railroad" by having trip plans for all car movements in its system, and integrating those with its train schedules.
When you compare dwell you can't compare railroad to railroad very accurately, you have to compare the trend of one railroad over time. This is lost on most people, so they read the statistics and make the assumptions you have made.
There are critical differences in the ways that the railroads measure terminal dwell. For example, the CN counts the dwell of cars that arrive and depart the terminal on the same train symbol, the big four US roads do not.
So if the CN and BNSF/CSXT/NS/UP each have 100 cars in the yard for a day and they both have a 100 car train that stops to change crews for an hour, identical situations, they will get different dwell. The CN will get 100 cars for 24 hours plus 100 cars for 1 hour or 2500 car hours on 200 cars or 12.5 hours dwell. The BNSF/CSXT/NS/UP will have 100 cars for 24 hours (they doesn't count the train), so they have 2400 hrs dwell on 100 cars or 24 hours dwell. The casual observer will think the CN is outperforming the BNSF/CSXT/NS/UP, but in reality they had EXACTLY the same performance. For the last couple years the big four US roads have bounced around between 21 and 25 hours dwell.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Dave - Thanks for pointing that out. I was aware that are some differences, but not that they were that extreme.
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Here are CN's definitions, from -
http://www.cn.ca/en/investors-shareholder-carload-weekly-performance-measures.htm - click at "definitions":
The average speed of mainline trains on CN is based on the total number of train miles divided by the total train hours accumulated. It includes system trains running on company lines and system trains operating on non-system lines under trackage/running rights or as a detour (e.g. system trains operating on CP lines in the Fraser Canyon). It excludes passenger, work and company service trains, yards, transfers, local trains, and road switchers; non-system trains operating on company lines under trackage/running rights or as a detour; and crew change time, other terminal time at crew change points, and delays at customer request.
This is calculated as the average time in hours between arrival and departure at a major terminal. It includes cars departing a major terminal preceded by a train arrival, transfer or local received at interchange, as well as cars on through trains. It excludes cars on work trains, cars where Load/Empty status changes at terminal, cars with dwell greater than 10 days, cars in local constructive placement, bad orders, heavy bad orders, hold, offered or storage status, and End of Train devices. [emphasis added - PDN.]
In contrast, here are the definitions for the other 6 railroads, from the "Definitions" page at:
http://www.railroadpm.org/Definitions.aspx
Train Speed
Terminal Dwell (Hours)
Terminal Dwell is the average time a car resides at the specified terminal location expressed in hours. The measurement begins with a customer release, received interchange, or train arrival event and ends with a customer placement (actual or constructive), delivered or offered in interchange, or train departure event. Cars that move through a terminal on a run-through train are excluded, as are stored, bad ordered, and maintenance of way cars. [emphasis added - PDN.]
Thanks again for pointing out this oversight.
Murphy Siding al-in-chgo What newspaper was the article in, and do you think the writer actually knew what s/he was talking about or was just parroting company PR? - al Oddly enough, the article was from The Financial Times ( http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=1547858 ) It was in the thread about CP and KCS working together. The part about CN being sounded like PR work, in the middle of an article about CP- their biggest rival. Is being (reletively more) fluid a sign of better management, routes, traffic patterns, business level, or just plain luck?
Re-reading the article (above), I'm inclined to think that the "fluid" part came from the reporter's apparent source - "Walter Spracklin, RBC Capital Markets analyst, in a recent note". He was mentioned or quoted in 3 of the last 5 paragraphs of the story, which bracketed the mentions of CN.
As to Murphy's question (above): I'd say that being "fluid" is a sign and the result of a fortuitous combination of all 5 factors that he set forth - until somebody comes up with a solid definition for "fluid" or "fluidity" in this context.
Any railroad that is not fluid with todays reduced traffic levels is in big trouble when traffic picks up.
Paul_D_North_JrAlso, CN's published "Terminal Dwell" times" for its Major Yards and the Entire Railroad are consistently much lower than anyone else's. I know - "definitions", "apples vs. oranges", and all that - but still - CN's is only about 1/3 to 1/2 of everyone else's, as follows for March 2009 (ranked in ascending order):
It's worse than "apples and oranges". More like "apples and crowbars".
CN counts car dwells at crew change points/crew change only events in their dwell calculation. All the other roads exclude this. Huge difference!
CN does not play well with others.....
Yes - that's pretty much the scenario in Dave H. / dehusman's example a couple of posts above - supported by the quoted definitions. I should have picked up on that earlier, but it wasn't jumping out at me. And, not being on the "sharp end" on a daily basis as you operating guys are, I didn't have the "skin in the game" that you do and as a result the intense personal interest in and insight that comes from that. Thanks for pointing it out (so kindly, too).
CN - so it would seem. I know that it used to be part of the Railroad Perfomance Measures website, but evidently CN dropped out to "play by itself" on its own website for this sometime over the last couple of years. In the meantime, it appears that the remaining 6 railroads have standardized on the common definitions for these metrics - they used to each have a separate page for their own.
Still looking for a good working definition of fluid or fluidity . . .
Murphy Siding A newspaper article said CN, has one of the most fluid networks on the continent. What exactly does that mean, and how is fluidity measured?
A newspaper article said CN, has one of the most fluid networks on the continent. What exactly does that mean, and how is fluidity measured?
It means you're having smoke blown up your drawers. The reporter has no idea what he/she is talking about. He/she is stating there is a fact called fluidity which is like weight, length, or volume, which has agreed-upon, consistent, concrete terms and a standard unit of measurement. But there is not. It's a vague, undefined term which sort-of means "the network runs more efficiently" but there's no cross-comparison possible between networks (and even between rail lines on the same network) because network efficiency is contingent upon details specific to each network such as geography, traffic, regulatory criteria, local fuel prices, labor rates, etc. Sure, there's people who claim they know fluidity from Adam, but I don't believe them.
I really don't care if my railroad has 12 hours of dwell time or 90 hours of dwell time on any specific car. I care about the return on investment on that carload. Some carloads will give you a better ROI with incredibly slow turns and some will give you a better ROI by running the wheels off them. It's highly specific to the individual shipper, lane, equipment, and market conditions. The notion that this can all be aggregated into some sort of magic system analysis tool called fluidity is as laughable as the notion that you could predict how well children will do in their future career earnings by measuring how high they swing on the playground swing. Again, there's people who claim they can understand ROI through arcane measurements such as fluidity, which has no consistent terms -- with the implication that if they are hired to run the railway they can improve fluidity and thus ROI. I don't believe them. They have no solid science to back them up.
To indulge your fancy, "fluidity" is bandied about as a measuring stick that purports to tell you if the railway is running efficiently. In a very gross sense, anyone can see that a railway with 0% fluidity (everything is at a standstill) has a very poor ROI, and a railway with 100% fluidity (nothing ever stops) also has a very poor ROI, because it can never aggregate carloads into freight trains and generate economy of scale. If it stopped them to build a train it's fluidity would decrease from 100%, horrors. It's in the middle where there's a sweet spot, where cars are held long enough to build trains that give economy of scale, but not so long that the expenses of car hire, market share, infrastructure cost to park the cars on, etc., overwhelm the cost savings of the trainload. Railways have more than 150 years of experience with that equation, but since it's dynamic and highly geographically specific, there's no simple way to measure it.
So, when I hear someone claiming Railway X is "more fluid because it's better operated, and I can prove it because their cars sit less time in yards," I appreciate hearing them say that, because it confirms that that person is someone I want my competitors to hire. He'll screw them up pretty good.
RWM
Murphy, RWM, and others -
Perhaps we're just not asking the right people to define "fluidity" for us.
Someone at BNSF and/or CREATE seems to know what it means. They must - after all, they used it in the news release about the Corwith Yard and Corwith Interlocking Improvements = CREATE Project WA5, emphasized as follows:
(from: http://www.createprogram.org/PDF/WA5%20Benefits%2002.25.09.pdf )
Project Benefits
The upgrade and reconfiguration of the Corwith Interlocking and new signal bridge providesignificant benefits to trains moving in and out of BNSF’s Corwith Yard, one of the busiest intermodal yards in the nation handling 800,000 domestic and international containers per year. Corwith Yard is the easternmost point for BNSF’s transcontinental route from Los Angeles to Chicago, the busiest intermodal route in the nation, and the location where trains are assembled to connect with CSX and NS for destinations to the East. The improvements increase fluidity and reliability in and out of the yard and enable train lengths at the connection with NS and CSXT to be increased from 5,400 feet to 8,000 feet.
As a result of this project, train speeds through the interlocking are increased, and the speed of interchanges between BNSF and its partner railroads is improved. The number of trains that can be handled in the yard has been increased from 122 to 134 per day. Switch problems, which were a particular issue during cold weather, have been eliminated due to the improvements. Freight movements are also improved into and from the BNSF Willow Springs Intermodal facility servicing the major UPS distribution facility in Hodgkins, Illinois.
We should have no trouble understanding it now, right ?
[Who was that Greek guy with the lantern in search of Truth, anyway ?]
RWM has it right.
Fluidity just sounds fancier than "most gooderest", as in "CN has the most gooderest network in the known universe".
Paul_D_North_Jr [Who was that Greek guy with the lantern in search of Truth, anyway ?]
That Corwith can handle more trains in one day than it could indicates that it is more fluid (or less viscous) than before. Is fluidity the inverse of viscosity? Or is it simply an expression created by someone who did not know any better way to express what he wanted to?
Johnny
Viscosity: Isn't it the measurement of molecular size....and the flow rate capability.
Quentin
Hey, Johnny -
Coincidentally, back when this thread originated I too thought for a while about attempting to define "fluidity" in terms of viscosity, merely as a way to perhaps get a better handle on the concept. However, I concluded that would probably just wind up as me talking to myself in my own little world . . . After further consideration, I'm still glad I didn't go there. But if I ever decide to explore that further, I''ll be sure to let you know !
- Paul.
P.S. - Yes, I thought that was his name, too, although your recollection of Greek mythology is a little better than mine because the "honest man" was indeed the object of his quest according to the legend, instead of "truth". - PDN.
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)
A couple of points here regarding CN and other railroads.
CN has for years marketed themselves, both in the transportation world and the investment community as a "scheduled railroad". We have discussed that often on these forums. Having lived for years in a CN community in Northwest Indiana, which also has a NS mainline, I have monitored both CN and NS's operations for about 5 years. CN, while being "scheduled" does not necessarily have the same discipline of timeliness as NS. For example CN 392 generally shows up in the mornings, but can have a several hour window of appearance.
NS trains are usually very reliable in their appearance. NS 306 is almost always hitting town around 7am these days.
As mentioned earlier, CN issues a "schedule" for each car generated. Doesnt all railroads do this? Isnt it doubtful that cars just randomly move from terminal to terminal?
It appears CN has marketed themselves quite well over the years in this aspect, probably better than the other carriers. Whether or not it has any relevance is unknown. Shippers probably want reliability more than speed, as has often been mentioned here.
Now, having said that, CN has simply outclassed the other carriers in "financial fluidity". The amount of money that flows down the income statement to net income and across the pages to the balance sheet and the statement of cash flow is much more fluid than others.
Their margins, ROI, ROA, return on invested capital, and free cash flow are much higher than others. Thus, the investment world has taken notice and the shareholder returns over the years have been excellent.
Now, can one connect the dots between "operations fluidity" and "financial fluidity". I am not that smart. But, they are doing something quite well and consistantly have for a number of years. They have done quite well in an industry which has a large appetite for capital.
My guess is as long as their operating ratio and their return on investment, assets, etc. remain high they will continue to be known as a "fluid" carrier, even tho it may not be exactly true. They have a reputation which has been earned.
ed
Paul_D_North_Jr Hey, Johnny - Coincidentally, back when this thread originated I too thought for a while about attempting to define "fluidity" in terms of viscosity, merely as a way to perhaps get a better handle on the concept. However, I concluded that would probably just wind up as me talking to myself in my own little world . . . After further consideration, I'm still glad I didn't go there. But if I ever decide to explore that further, I''ll be sure to let you know ! - Paul. P.S. - Yes, I thought that was his name, too, although your recollection of Greek mythology is a little better than mine because the "honest man" was indeed the object of his quest according to the legend, instead of "truth". - PDN.
Paul, I am confident that I injected something utterly alien into this thread when I brought the idea of viscosity up, for the liquidity under discussion really cannot be quantified. As I see it, had you attempted to relate liquidity and viscosity, your discussion would have added no light, and perhaps only heat as other people wondered, "What is he talking about."
As to Diogenes, he lived a little later than the times of Greek mythology–he and Alexander the Great lived at the same time. Indeed, he and Alexander had a brief conversation as follows. Alexander: "What can I do to help you?" Diogenes: "Please stand out of my light." The result was not as drastic as that when Archimedes asked a Roman soldier not to disturb his figures–the Roman soldier killed Archimedes. Apparently, Alexander moved, and increased the fluidity of the sunlight that Diogenes needed.
Quentin (Modelcar) asked if there is a relation between molecular size and viscosity. There is, and there is more. You need to consider other things, such as polarity and the nature of the molecule, which can also determine the rate of flow. Viscosity is one of the physical parameters of substances that can be measured exactly. It’s many years (more than fifty) since I had occasion to study physical chemistry, and the determinants of viscosity were covered briefly, if at all.
Carl has excellent points in his post.
Yeah, well, MY RR has laminar fluidity and YOURS has turbulent fluidity.
What's YOUR RR's Reynold's number?
Good one ! Caution: Engineer at work play here . . .
Has anyone thought of e-mailing CN's Public Affairs thru http://www.cn.ca/?
Ed --
Ways to make your railroad income statement more fluid, that require very little management perspicacity:
All good work if you can get it! And a good investment opportunity too, so long as you keep your finger on the pulse of all this dependency on others to agree to keep paying the bills. Nowhere in this does it require a more sophisticated operating plan, marketing plan, pricing plan, strategic plan, or deep thought. In fact, it might make up for lack of all of these.
In other words, it's a transfer of wealth from the someone(s) who are paying all these bills to the someone(s) that own the equity of the railway, a transfer that is earned only by the instrumentality of the railway being in existence, not through the sweat of anyone's brow.
RWM:
Now, that's quite a bit to think about. Each of those would not be a huge cost savings, but when added up could result in some real money.
The word "fluid" was once used by Trains Editor David P. Morgan to describe a yard where the hotshot freights had gotten out on time, all the bad-order cars were repaired and sent on their way, and none of the foreign-line cars had been in the yard long enough to start accumulating per diem charges, etc.
I saw it last night briefly, but did not write down the reference (I was looking for something else). It was for sure in his little introductory editor's paragraph on the right-hand side of the masthead page (pg. 3 ?), and I'm pretty sure it was the June 1960 issue. It may be a while until I get back there again, but if I remember to do so I'll confirm that cite and maybe post the whole quote here for eveyone's edification and amusement.
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