OvermodWhat would be interesting would be Z-train speed with dedicated blocks of reefers handled in consist, something that I'd think ought to be technically possible,
The UP has actually done that. Tropicana reefer cars were modified to be able to operate at 70 MPH. They took orange juice from Floirida to California and were handled in 70 MPH intermodal trains.
The RailEx-Cold Connect appeared to me to be an internal company 'power struggle' probably involving peak train speeds and expedited operation vs. using PSR to 'assure' things like longer-but-precise delivery time.
In practice, one of the PSR "imperatives" is to facilitate operations at restricted notch -- and this can be done in a way that actually 'saves fuel' rather than just the kind of feel-good speed reduction that Don Oltmann and some others have commented on. This is turn facilitates maintaining the 'railroad' for 45-55mph maximum speeds, and this is just as consequential for civil as it was in the days of William H. Vanderbilt.
If intermodal business, now, can be precision-scheduled at lower peak road speed, and I suspect UP knows much better than I do what its shippers actually require in this regard vs. what they're willing to pay for, then it begins to make sense to run 'merchandise' blocks in with the specialized intermodal equipment ... provided there is no serious unanticipated delay in yarding the intermodal equipment correctly for automated container or trailer exchange vs. those 'other' cars.
This ought to make us remember all the myriad ways the Amtrak MHC concept failed ... and what practical things might have been done to make it work.
If PSR is not correctly implemented -- and it's my impression that UP was comparatively late to the table with this PSR-priority planning, and perhaps not particularly skilled or experienced in what it actually implies vs. what analysts or other arb-type saprophytes 'enforce' it as being -- then you'll start to see blocks of convenient opportunity shoved on "intermodal" trains that merely slow them down, as I suspect was one of the issues with the Rotterdam Cold Connect service. Does anyone have the actual metrics of speeds and delays/dwells for Cold Connect consists, particularly on that part of CSX from east of Chicago to the point on the Chicago Line there is observable excess capacity much of the time?
What would be interesting would be Z-train speed with dedicated blocks of reefers handled in consist, something that I'd think ought to be technically possible, perhaps with some vehicle improvements. The logistics, including scheduling and delay handling, shouldn't be difficult or particularly arcane to develop. Something of this sort might be a potential opportunity for certain of the routes to disparate destination points out of the facility or facilities that receive the block traffic out of Cedar Rapids -- or the smaller blocks for some of the other originating traffic mentioned so far.
Those trains were run for Railex. UP bought them and turned it into Cold Connect, which they shut down last year. The loading/unloading points for RailEx/Cold Connect still show in the reefer network. However, there is no dedicated train and I haven't seen any blocks of reefer only traffic in intermodal trains. (It does seem westbound intermodals are more likely to fill out with manifest traffic than east bounds.)
I first noticed something was up soon after UP bought RailEx. I didn't know that had happened at the time, but one day we were held for a long pool train to go around us. It was the salad shooter with a large block of regular manifest business. Then soon after they started combining the California and Washington trains east of Green River or Cheyenne. Then they went away and blocks started moving in intermodals.
I still see (reading train lists) that there are reefers moving to Selkirk/Rotterdam, but it's in manifest trains. I don't know how the volume compares now against the time it was RailEx.
Jeff
SD60MAC9500The unit train concept is one that was used to death.
Another problem is that they don't fit into the "land barge" concept of operations. I believe most unit train facilities are set up for ~100 car trains. Nowadays, such short trains are unusual, at best. It's not unusual to to see two such trains turned into one. Trains of 13,000 feet are common under PSR.
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...
Jeff:
I have noticed that the CSX UP train to NWO (Q192) typically will have about 30 manifest cars, heavily concentrated with refer cars.
A few years ago UP/CSX ran dedicated "apple train" about 3x weekly from California and Washington to the Albany area for distribution into the Northeast. These were typically 40 - 60 refer cars. These trains are gone. Do you know if the business went away or is it in regular trains?
Ed
The unit train concept is one that was used to death. The C1's are so used to having a one track mind... They forgot how to market and service individual customers.. Imagine if coal was never the savior of the railroad industry? Unit trains makes sense only where the volumes exist demanding that service.
Supposedly the UP is hiring more marketing people. I'm afraid though that it will be more of answering phone/e-mail inquiries instead of actually going out and beating the bushes. Also will they continue the long haul only mentality? Hopefully I'm wrong.
Unit trains really are out. While they want to run large trains, they are trying to move as much unit train business into the regular manifest trains as possible. One of their mantra's now is it's about moving cars, not trains. While some customers are still better served with unit trains, they aren't above moving manifest business cut into unit trains. Especially on the unit train's empty leg.
Even some intermodals are carrying blocks of manifest business. I should note that blocks of auto racks and reefers have moved in intermodal trains. By manifest I mean box car, hopper (covered or not), tank car, and gondola traffic.
MP173The key words are "a few years ago". Back then the rails were packed with crude oil and coal. Today, not so much crude nor coal. My guess is the UP would be more receptive in 2021 than they were a few years ago. Probably needs to go to a Logistics Park somewhere in Ca.
What percentage of domestic COFC/TOFC is reefers? I don't see a whole lot.
Greyhound:
The key words are "a few years ago". Back then the rails were packed with crude oil and coal.
Today, not so much crude nor coal.
My guess is the UP would be more receptive in 2021 than they were a few years ago.
Probably needs to go to a Logistics Park somewhere in Ca.
BaltACDFeature that is not a UP blindspot - it is a PSR cardinal rule. PSR is predicated upon trainloads, not carloads.
Where they seem to have the 'problem' is in waiting for the traffic to come to their grand opportunity, rather than establishing it for different specific targets -- as greyhounds is doing -- and then actively soliciting for enough aggregate to start building blockloads to make trainloads.
They certainly need to expand into the areas concerned with effective point-to-multipoint logistics... but that is not particularly 'rocket science'. I suspect greyhounds and STCO alone could explain it in enough detail to set about implementing properly.
greyhounds SD60MAC9500 I concur with Jeff that the UP has no interest in touching this traffic, or any other C1 for that matter... As he mentioned before UP turned away cereal business that would have brought revenue to the bottom line. Though if what he mentioned about Vanguard is true maybe they will have a change of heart?.. Not holding my breath.. Agree. Some years ago, I was involved with a group consisting of railroad people of far greater stature than myself who took a good, at least in my mind, plan to the UP to haul Iowa/Nebraska meat. The UP’s response was pathetic to say the least. Forget the Chicago interchange. There’s a huge volume of such freight moving to the west coast. Both for domestic consumption and export. That’s long haul, high volume freight. I’ve got California alone bringing in 172 truckloads of red meat per day 365 days per year. California also requires 58 truckloads of eggs per day. And I calculate they bring in 157 loads of chicken per day. That’s a total of 387 long haul reefer truckloads. Please know the chicken does not come from Iowa. Chicken production in the US is centered in the southeast. But Georgia to California is a UP market opportunity. An empty reefer container in California is also an opportunity, not a problem. The UP marketing guy wanted to get the meat into a unit train. How dumb can you get? This isn’t unit train business. It’s going from a concentrated origin, that’s true, but it’s going to diverse destinations and that doesn’t work with a unit train. You can’t fix ignorance. The UP marketing people don’t know their markets and they don’t understand how the railroad can fit in to market requirements. The marketing folks should be the leading light for any company. After all, the company must sell its service/product. If it doesn’t know what service or product to offer for sale, it’s going to get in trouble. The UP is wandering in the wilderness. And there’s no manna from heaven to be found. If they started today it will take years to build a good marketing department. I won’t live to see them do that. I’m 70 with no pressing health issues. But I’ll be dead and gone before the UP could possibly get its act together. I tend to agree with railroad actions that other people throw a fit about. I often see the business logic in such decisions, or at least I think I do. But the Union Pacific, they don’t have a clue.
SD60MAC9500 I concur with Jeff that the UP has no interest in touching this traffic, or any other C1 for that matter... As he mentioned before UP turned away cereal business that would have brought revenue to the bottom line. Though if what he mentioned about Vanguard is true maybe they will have a change of heart?.. Not holding my breath..
Feature that is not a UP blindspot - it is a PSR cardinal rule.
PSR is predicated upon trainloads, not carloads.
PSR thought doesn't want to get involved in originating or terminating individual carloads. Carloads require terminal handling of one form or another and PSR wants to eliminate all Terminal costs in their operating plan. With all the hump yard closures it is manifestly evident that the PSR carriers want to distance themselves from carload freight. They will 'suffer' their existing 'BIG' customers carload traffic but will not seek out any new carload traffic, no matter how much it brings to the bottom line.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
SD60MAC9500I concur with Jeff that the UP has no interest in touching this traffic, or any other C1 for that matter... As he mentioned before UP turned away cereal business that would have brought revenue to the bottom line. Though if what he mentioned about Vanguard is true maybe they will have a change of heart?.. Not holding my breath..
Off topic but several of Dallas Northern Suburbs allow backyard chicken coups for the raising and consumption of fresh eggs, there is no limit on acerage and you can do so on a city lot. I believe there is a limit on number of laying hens per residence though. Never checked into myself, my suburb allows it but not a lot of people do it.
SD60MAC9500 I concur with Jeff that the UP has no interest in touching this traffic, or any other C1 for that matter... As he mentioned before UP turned away cereal business that would have brought revenue to the bottom line. Though if what he mentioned about Vanguard is true maybe they will have a change of heart?.. Not holding my breath.. Greyhounds your proposal would be better suited to the CRANDIC, and/or the Iowa Interstate.. Travero is building a logisitcs park in Cedar Rapids which will be served by the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City. CRANDIC could build the blocks at this LP handing off to the IAIR. Or since IAIR has trackage rights into Cedar Rapids on the CRANDIC via South Amana. They could make this an all IAIR move. IAIR doesn't have the high speed overland route, but it would be a low cost service and consistent. Let CRANDIC build the trains at CRLP. IAIR can move them for block swapping at South Amana.
I concur with Jeff that the UP has no interest in touching this traffic, or any other C1 for that matter... As he mentioned before UP turned away cereal business that would have brought revenue to the bottom line. Though if what he mentioned about Vanguard is true maybe they will have a change of heart?.. Not holding my breath.. Greyhounds your proposal would be better suited to the CRANDIC, and/or the Iowa Interstate.. Travero is building a logisitcs park in Cedar Rapids which will be served by the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City. CRANDIC could build the blocks at this LP handing off to the IAIR. Or since IAIR has trackage rights into Cedar Rapids on the CRANDIC via South Amana. They could make this an all IAIR move. IAIR doesn't have the high speed overland route, but it would be a low cost service and consistent. Let CRANDIC build the trains at CRLP. IAIR can move them for block swapping at South Amana.
The Iowa Interstate had a ramp at West Liberty IA, just east of Iowa City. They closed it a few years ago. They also closed their Newton IA ramp. I forget the time frame. I think Newton was after the Maytag factory was closed. West Lib was probably about the same time frame.
That being said, I agree that IAIS would likely be more receptive to Greyhounds' idea than UP.
Backshop I believe it stands for NorthWest OHio...in other words, North Baltimore.
I believe it stands for NorthWest OHio...in other words, North Baltimore.
That's correct. The folks on the Deshler webcam chat made the change because using "NB" for "North Baltimore" and for "northbound" got confusing. And I believe that is the official CSX designation is NWO, so it didn't just get pulled out of the air.
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greyhounds OK, I know I said I was going to talk about chickens. But I’ve been diverted. This is about eggs.
So now we know the answer to that age old question of which came first.
The eggs come first.
n012944 SD60MAC9500 To this day I still believe CSX's North Baltimore ICTF was built in the wrong location. I think this kind of thing is what NWOH is built for. Lets take Greyhound's 40 car double stack train coming off of the UP or CN in Chicago. The train only changes crews there, none of the power swap BS, and goes to NWOH. There it is broken up, trains depart from there to the east coast, southeast, Canada, even Detroit. A perfect setup to make this concept work.
SD60MAC9500 To this day I still believe CSX's North Baltimore ICTF was built in the wrong location.
To this day I still believe CSX's North Baltimore ICTF was built in the wrong location.
I think this kind of thing is what NWOH is built for. Lets take Greyhound's 40 car double stack train coming off of the UP or CN in Chicago. The train only changes crews there, none of the power swap BS, and goes to NWOH. There it is broken up, trains depart from there to the east coast, southeast, Canada, even Detroit. A perfect setup to make this concept work.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
tree68Remember that most of the population in NYS is in the city. Out here in the sticks, our ratio of eggs produced to eggs consumed is much higher. For that matter, I can get farm-fresh eggs from any of several local farmers. No need to go to the store.
Oh, for sure. I grew up in a small central Illinois town. We raised chickens for home slaughter but we bought our eggs from a local farmer. Illinois passed a law against buying eggs directly from a farmer. The law was ignored.
Such eggs do not show up in any government statistics. And I doubt that many of those cash transactions show up on income tax returns.
greyhoundsThe high population states such as California, Texas, Florida, New York, etc. don’t come close. So, they’re bringing in eggs from Iowa and some other states. (Indiana is #2 with 10% of US egg production.)
Remember that most of the population in NYS is in the city. Out here in the sticks, our ratio of eggs produced to eggs consumed is much higher. For that matter, I can get farm-fresh eggs from any of several local farmers. No need to go to the store.
Of note with all of this should be the reason the East India spice trade ended. Recall that one of the purposes for which clipper ships were built was for that trade.
The invention of the refrigerated railroad car was the reason - it was now possible to deliver milk and butter from "out in the sticks" in consumable condition. A major use for the spices was to cover the taste of the rancid butter...
I concur with Jeff that the UP has no interest in touching this traffic, or any other C1 for that matter... As he mentioned before UP turned away cereal business that would have brought revenue to the bottom line. Though if what he mentioned about Vanguard is true maybe they will have a change of heart?.. Not holding my breath.. Greyhounds your proposal would be better suited to the Cedar Rapids & Iowa City, and/or the Iowa Interstate.. Travero is building a logisitcs park in Cedar Rapids which will be served by the CRANDIC. CRANDIC could build the blocks at this LP handing off to the IAIS. Or since IAIS has trackage rights into Cedar Rapids on the CRANDIC via South Amana. They could make this an all IAIS move. IAIS doesn't have the high speed overland route, but it would be a low cost service and consistent. Let CRANDIC build the trains at CRLP. IAIS can move them for block swapping at South Amana.
SALfanThank you, Greyhounds, for puttiing up this very interesting and informative topic.
You're welcome.
Next, I'm going to talk about chicken.
Thank you, Greyhounds, for puttiing up this very interesting and informative topic.
MP173 Regarding one man crews...how is that handled when a train must be inspected due to equipment failure or hot box? Not against 1 man crew but that aspect has always puzzled me. Ed
Regarding one man crews...how is that handled when a train must be inspected due to equipment failure or hot box?
Not against 1 man crew but that aspect has always puzzled me.
For some things the engineer might be able to handle simple things, like a sticking brake or airhose. They'll probably need to change a few rules and practices, but they already do that. Bigger things like a separation or knuckle failure, you'll have to wait for help to arrive. Maybe minutes, probably hours.
That's why the late EEH was not for one person crews.
SD70Dude Renegotiating contracts is useless if the new run cannot be completed with the HOS limitations. We have a similar sort of scenario out here, about 25 years ago CN negotiatied the ability to run trains across two steam-era crew districts with a single crew, this practice being commonly referred to as "extended run" or "double sub". But most of our trains still change crews at all the old steam-era locations across western Canada, and there are very few lines where all trains are operated with extended run crews. Why? Because you cannot reliably make it over the road in 12 hours. Heck, it isn't exactly uncommon for single sub crews to run out of hours and get rescued before they have even gone 100 miles.
Renegotiating contracts is useless if the new run cannot be completed with the HOS limitations.
We have a similar sort of scenario out here, about 25 years ago CN negotiatied the ability to run trains across two steam-era crew districts with a single crew, this practice being commonly referred to as "extended run" or "double sub".
But most of our trains still change crews at all the old steam-era locations across western Canada, and there are very few lines where all trains are operated with extended run crews. Why? Because you cannot reliably make it over the road in 12 hours. Heck, it isn't exactly uncommon for single sub crews to run out of hours and get rescued before they have even gone 100 miles.
I agree with this. BNSF just recently put back it's crew change at Ashfork on the Peavine line from Phoenix. Prior to that it was a 300 Mile district between there and Winslow, AZ. Crews rarely made the entire district. I back one man as well on some trains, but what will it matter if they constantly run into HOS?
You can run those stacks into an exisitng train. No ones running 80 boxes on a dedicated shooter from Chicago to NWOH.. You'll only get treatment like that from BNSF during peak season and your name must be UPS.. NWOH would be a better fit in the Chicago area combining volumes from both UP, BNSF, etc.. Building those trains and block swapping enroute as they do currently. No need to touch those boxes more than twice.. Regardless of how you feel about him. Hunter Harrison made the right call to change the dynamic of NWOH.
greyhoundsUsing NWOH instead of Chicago is probably a good idea.
greyhoundsI want those large volume red meat loads going to Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. Can we just set those out in Chicago?
What are the reasons why the points named in the far southeast couldn't be preferentially reached via the National Gateway or likely connections? Can we negotiate reduction or elimination of 'misuse charges' if an assigned reefer container returns via a different route from the partially 'dedicated' arrangement it departed Cedar Rapids using? Things like this tell me the experts know their current business too...
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