At one time it was popular to have 5 or 3 Deep Well Container car sets. Did this pratice fall out of favor due to maintenance or other issues ?
Also has the N S roadrailer ended ? What led to it's demise ?
Thank You
john120/240At one time it was popular to have 5 or 3 Deep Well Container car sets. Did this practice fall out of favor due to maintenance or other issues?
I still see a great many of these; in fact I now see solid long blocks of stacked 53s as well as other nominal lengths. Note that a lane that is predominantly 40s or 48s loses a lot of capacity for given length and tare requirements if you run multiple sets of 53s -- there is no practical way to load all the incremental 'empty' space. On the other hand if you have smaller wells, you may also have much more tinkering to do to get longer containers stacked on shorter to use the capacity -- again, 5 being more constraint than 3.
Also has the NS RoadRailer ended? What led to its demise?
Something that is far more of a solution never quite finding enough of a problem was something I really, really wanted to work: RailRunner container-on-underframe equipment. Theoretically this would provide the advantages of container handling on top of those for TOFC; in practice the combination of too much tare of various kinds and balancing empty moves never works out profitably enough given the huge amount of specialized capital investment for even limited traffic that pays.
john120/240Also has the N S roadrailer ended ? What led to it's demise ?
They equipment was nearing the end of it's life and the business didn't support spending the capital to invest in new equipment.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
5 and 3 car articulated well sets are very much the norm.
10000 feet and no dynamics? Today is going to be a good day ...
john120/240At one time it was popular to have 5 or 3 Deep Well Container car sets. Did this pratice fall out of favor due to maintenance or other issues ?
Articulated intermodal cars started with ATSF's 10-pack "Fuel Foilers". It was an attempt to reduce tare weight (and to some extent, wind resistance) per trailer.
However, the trade-off is equipment utilization. You really don't save any tare weight over 89' flats if you're only loading 5 of the 10 platforms.
Since then, the industry has tried to find the optimum point for the number of platforms and wells per articulated car that balance utilization with tare weight (and to some extent, maintenace of fewer parts). Looks like it's settled out at 3 for well cars and 5 for spines.
oltmanndHowever, the trade-off is equipment utilization. You really don't save any tare weight over 89' flats if you're only loading 5 of the 10 platforms.
The principal point of the low-tare and pocketed-bogie spine construction was a little like 'super C 2.0' -- ATSF's advantage was high bridge speed, and the distinctive competence of the 10-pack Fuel Foilers was in doing that almost as well as container skeleton cars ... but with "ordinary" trailers (and with the added advantage that the trailer bogie suspension and some simple linkage at the hitch would handle much of the shock and NVH which might otherwise be reflected to containers from relatively ordinary three-piece trucks). I thought then, and still sorta do, that the assumption was that in a world of 55mph speed limits there would be no lack at all of 'trailers to fill' 10-blocks to any set of intermediate intermodal points on the ATSF transcon... with pricing done just to fill the last slot on the last block before departure. Where I think it foundered was on the long-term handling ... and the perceived absence of "enough"return on pure speed to justify the extensive capital handling requirements, as with the Super C experiment before it and the UPS accelerated Z-train experiments with Genesis power after it.
It's a bit amusing to reflect back on the subsequent age of HPIT and things like it; with the closing of Expressway it's as if the whole generation of 'future' that learned from the problem with trailers on rack flats had never been. Meanwhile there has been little but wackiness in self-loading pocket TOFC consists since; I'm not sure who's stupid enough to buy those sorts of solution for actual logistics that make money, but I have to conclude there are some, somewhere, at least for a while.
john120/240 ....Also has the N S roadrailer ended ? What led to it's demise ? Thank You
....Also has the N S roadrailer ended ? What led to it's demise ?
Road railers aren't dead, but they are digging a hole. There is only 1 route Detroit to Kansas City still running on NS. 255/256 don't stop in Fort Wayne to swap blocks as there are no other Triple Crown trains to swap blocks with it. I don't think it runs daily anymore.
While it made money, it didn't make enough to replace the equipment (roadrailer vans) and still have an acceptable ROI. Wick Moorman made the decision to cut the route network to one lane and run with whatever equipment is still serviceable.
I'll take pundit as a compliment, whether intended or not.
rrnut282I'll take pundit as a compliment, whether intended or not.
Used here in the sense that there are people here who have more interest in and knowledge of the details than I do, and whose participation in this thread will be valuable.
rrnut282 john120/240 ....Also has the N S roadrailer ended ? What led to it's demise ? Thank You Road railers aren't dead, but they are digging a hole. There is only 1 route Detroit to Kansas City still running on NS. 255/256 don't stop in Fort Wayne to swap blocks as there are no other Triple Crown trains to swap blocks with it. I don't think it runs daily anymore. While it made money, it didn't make enough to replace the equipment (roadrailer vans) and still have an acceptable ROI. Wick Moorman made the decision to cut the route network to one lane and run with whatever equipment is still serviceable. I'll take pundit as a compliment, whether intended or not.
Last time I checked they were temporarily abolished until Ford started production again. Here's the schedule for Triple Crown as follows:
Spines come in: 3-57', and 5-53' packs. 3 packs are more common back east it appears.
Well cars: 5-40', 3-53' Greenbrier did manufacture a protoytpe 5 pack of 53' wells back around 2015-16?. As far as I know it was pulled out of service sometime ago.
Cars with 53' wells are mostly set up as triples, either articulated or drawbar connected. The cars with 40' wells commonly come as articulated 5-paks. When loading a double stack set the weight of each container must be considered, especially with articulated sets where one truck will be sharing a portion of the weight of four containers.
One thing that gets overlooked by many railfans - the LOADED capacity of all Containers is within serveral hundred pounds of each other - no matter the size - 20 foot, 40 foot, 48 foot, 53 foot.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Overmod oltmannd However, the trade-off is equipment utilization. You really don't save any tare weight over 89' flats if you're only loading 5 of the 10 platforms. There is much more to it. A skeleton flat of that kind cannot be effectively circus-loaded; it is as dependent on specialized infrastructure as Flexi-Vans, just a different kind. And there was a long, almost verging on evil scam that ordinary trailers could be side-loaded or piggy-packed repeatedly on and off these pocket spine cars without damage.
oltmannd However, the trade-off is equipment utilization. You really don't save any tare weight over 89' flats if you're only loading 5 of the 10 platforms.
There is much more to it. A skeleton flat of that kind cannot be effectively circus-loaded; it is as dependent on specialized infrastructure as Flexi-Vans, just a different kind. And there was a long, almost verging on evil scam that ordinary trailers could be side-loaded or piggy-packed repeatedly on and off these pocket spine cars without damage.
Flexi-Van -- now that's a blast from the past.
I thought the whole point of Flexi-Van was a domestic-service container on a spine truck trailer rather than piggy back that carried along the truck wheels? It was meant to be "random access" rather then "sequential access" restricted as is circus loading? The Flexi-Van flatcars had some kind of turntables on them to facilitate side loading, and the truck's spine trailer needed some specialized hardware to work with this system.
I was under the impression that another element of Flexi-Van was highly skilled truck drivers who could perform the back-and-jackknife-the-trailer manuever to spot and load containers on the flat car turntables? That one of the advantages was no expensive gantry cranes or Piggy Packers, but with the disadvantage being cycle time of the transfer process along with the needed skills for the truck driver/operator?
John Kneiling was for a long time, a long time ago now, promoting a competing domestic container (as opposed to heavier ocean-going ship rated) side transfer technology and as much as touting owner-operator truck drivers entering the Intermodal Age by having the truck-trailer gear to perform the side transfers.
I have the impression -- maybe from Don Oltmann's remarks -- that letting individual trucking drivers/operators come into the intermodal yard to do their own transfers is a complete non-starter from the perspective of railroad intermodal operations. It would have to be a truck operator depositing a trailer in a lot and the railroad or its contractor having some kind of yard truck-tractor to position loads, whether container or truck trailer, for transfer?
I don't know the nature of the concern or enough about the intermodal interface to judge this, but I am guessing letting truck drivers/operators into the intermodal yard would be akin to letting airline passengers wander around the tarmac to find the plane they are supposed to board? Kind of a security, safety and liability thing?
It is at the mode interface that intermodal schemes get hung up, and this is also a problem with high-speed passenger rail unless you have good transit connections at both ends.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Very true. The loaded capacities can be very similar, but that does not necessarily mean they are all loaded to the weight capacity. Volume is often a more significant constraint, especially with consumer goods.
BaltACD One thing that gets overlooked by many railfans - the LOADED capacity of all Containers is within serveral hundred pounds of each other - no matter the size - 20 foot, 40 foot, 48 foot, 53 foot.
A friend of mine who was a traffic manager did mention that sporting goods (except for barbells) tend to cube out. I've also noticed that the underframes that handle 20-foot containers tend to have three axles, suggesting a lot of weight in a short length.
cx500Very true. The loaded capacities can be very similar, but that does not necessarily mean they are all loaded to the weight capacity. Volume is often a more significant constraint, especially with consumer goods. BaltACD One thing that gets overlooked by many railfans - the LOADED capacity of all Containers is within serveral hundred pounds of each other - no matter the size - 20 foot, 40 foot, 48 foot, 53 foot.
Well aware of commodities that cube out before they weigh out and vice versa. Every shipment is its own experience.
The volume issue is exactly why Canadian Tire is using 60 foot containers now. It gives them more room to ship those products that cube out before they hit the weight limit.
CSSHEGEWISCHI've also noticed that the underframes that handle 20-foot containers tend to have three axles, suggesting a lot of weight in a short length.
The Detroit-KC roadrailer is still running because Ford is still building F-150s at its Claycomo plant.
The auto industry has been the biggest user of Roadrailer and Roadrailer's demise coincides with the shutdown of auto/truck plants in places like Atlanta and St Louis which were destinations of Roadrailer trains.
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