jeffhergertSecond, the linked article is about single unit vehicles that can link together at some point. Not small trainsets from one location to another, although the separate vehicles could at some point link together with others for the midpart (I guess) of the journey.
Even in the '70s, with centralized computer control, PRTs were designed to link into groups of two or more as easily as into longer trains. In the 1990s I was experimenting with something called the Salutation Protocol, which a consortium of Japanese companies were developing for functional as hoc networking of 'office devices'. This used a rough master-slave architecture (for example, a fax machine might connect to the printer engine of a copier to make hardcopy, but the next moment the scanner on the copier might use the fax machine's modem for a complex fax transmission). The significant point was that any compatible device could scan for available resources and functionality, including those previously 'unknown' to it, and then configure as the coordinating controller for what might be complicated tasks.
This approach translates economically to 'autonomous rail vehicles' -- any one of which can be the 'control intelligence' for a train of two or more vehicles, using sensors on (say) the lead and trailing cars for CBPTC train-length registration.
That doesn't in itself make the system cost-effective, or operationally superior to existing modalities. But it would make 'intermediate aggregation' on the fly, with zero required headway, inherently simple for any number of vehicles...
Here's how I'd start this Iowa Meat Express. I'd partner with a 3PL and a regional such as Iowa Interstate or a shortline like Iowa Northern. The 3PL could erect cold storage at an exiting logistics park. Instead of using intermodal. Let's start with reefer boxcars. I'd have the 3PL solicit this traffic for transload at their facility into reefer boxcars. If traffic grows add the intermodal option in later. Put these boxcars in Z-Train service. Or if the C1's don't want stop a Z. Use a guaranteed intermodal service. The Class 1's can do hook and haul since that is the direction they are heading in. We can do this without autonomous rail vehicles.
zugmannjeffhergert It all comes back to being the solution to the wrong problem. The problem isn't equipment. It's the railroads wanting such business (small volume car load/trailer /container load traffic, possibly shorter haul - under 500 miles) again. Repeating this for those in the back.
BaltACDSo we have 10 containers of pork - that is ONE 5-pack car. Not the kind of train 21st Century railroads would view as having profit potential.
Well, if they understand the whole marginal cost/marginal revenue thing they just might. They've got unused capacity. So, as long as the marginal revenue exceeds the marginal cost, it's a winner.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure the tunnel at E. Dubuque won't clear double stacks. So they'd have to use spine cars.
And, it's a CN line. CN is aware that excessive focus on the OR is not profit maximizing.
Paul of Covington greyhounds Could ten or so containers of pork originate in Waterloo, IA, run autonomously to an NS IM terminal in Chicago, and then add themselves to a regular ole freight train for movement east? How much would it help to make this business worthwhile if an agreement were to be worked out allowing trains of limited length and short distances to be run by a single operator and maybe a single locomotive? (For instance less than 25 cars and under 50 miles.) Unlike the proposal being discussed, it would not involve a big investment in new equipment.
greyhounds Could ten or so containers of pork originate in Waterloo, IA, run autonomously to an NS IM terminal in Chicago, and then add themselves to a regular ole freight train for movement east?
How much would it help to make this business worthwhile if an agreement were to be worked out allowing trains of limited length and short distances to be run by a single operator and maybe a single locomotive? (For instance less than 25 cars and under 50 miles.) Unlike the proposal being discussed, it would not involve a big investment in new equipment.
So we have 10 containers of pork - that is ONE 5-pack car. Not the kind of train 21st Century railroads would view as having profit potential.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
This idea seems to crop up every couple of years on here.
Isn't making much headway.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
What do we think the operating ratio of this new service would be?
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
jeffhergertIt all comes back to being the solution to the wrong problem. The problem isn't equipment. It's the railroads wanting such business (small volume car load/trailer /container load traffic, possibly shorter haul - under 500 miles) again.
Repeating this for those in the back.
zugmann But you still have a lot of bulk commodities carried by RRs sharing the same lanes.
But you still have a lot of bulk commodities carried by RRs sharing the same lanes.
There are many parallel and feeder lines with underutilized capacity. The point is to recapture even a fraction of the business from trucks. This is especially true because the coal tonnage is rapidly going bye bye.
greyhoundsCould ten or so containers of pork originate in Waterloo, IA, run autonomously to an NS IM terminal in Chicago, and then add themselves to a regular ole freight train for movement east?
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
The main reason why autonomous cars won't work is that maintenance and inspection costs would increase astronomically. Compare the average nomber of hors fevoted each year to even just a straight electric locomotive's maintenace and ispection with that of a typical freight car. Something like five-to-one.
ZSekmf-[popelled vehivles of all types require more maintenace and inspection than trailers. On railroads even more so!
First, I don't think fully autonomous trucks are as close as those pushing them say they are. Railroads could be almost completely automated first, but I don't think I'll live to see cross country trains without at least one person on it. That person may not actually do much, except when the technology fails, but I think it will be a while before some of these things are politically possible.
(When UP first put remote control swithing locomotives in service in Des Moines a spokesperson was interviewed by a local TV news reporter. The UP person was asked if such operations would be used outside of yards. The UP person responded that it was not politically possible at that time.)
Second, the linked article is about single unit vehicles that can link together at some point. Not small trainsets from one location to another, although the separate vehicles could at some point link together with others for the midpart (I guess) of the journey. The vehicle in the article is clearly an open hopper, not a box car or intermodal carrier. I'm sure the box car variant is probably more to what the article is leaning to.
My take on the article is it's designed for freight to move in autonomous box car type vehicles (for at least part, if not all of the journey) to recapture car load business that now moves in either conventional box cars or trailers/container. For that to happen, there's going to have to be a lot of tracks reopened into facilites that once had them. Since being physically located on a rail line has not been a priority for small manufacturing or warehouse facilities for many years, I would wager that most manufacturing/warehouseing facilities won't be able to use what's proposed at this point.
They do say they are working on a intermodal unit. However, that's going to mean draying the trailer/container to/from the railhead for locations not located on a railroad. Depending on what's needed to load/unload their intermodal unit, that railhead may just be a siding or it may mean a small intermodal facility.
It all comes back to being the solution to the wrong problem. The problem isn't equipment. It's the railroads wanting such business (small volume car load/trailer /container load traffic, possibly shorter haul - under 500 miles) again.
Currently, most of the class ones are happy with what they've got. If most of the stockholders, by number of shares held-not by number of individual people owning shares, are happy with a strategy that leans to short term gains at the possible detriment to long term health, that's the strategy managment will take. That goes for any corporation, not just railroads.
That they could, or should, be handling more freight is (unfortunately) out of our (railfans and railroaders) hands.
Jeff
1) A marketing department that can identify, quantify, and evaluate opportunities. The US railroads are sorely deficient in this. Some are better than others.
2) A cost structure that allows them to charge lower rates than the truckers. The trucker is generally going to offer better transit times, for a lot of reasons. But everything in economics is a trade-off. A customer will often accept a longer, but dependable, transit time if the rail charge saves enough money.
3) Getting the needed investment. I reason that if #1 and #2 are solved this will follow. People are always looking for good investments. And it doesn’t have to be the railroad company that makes the investment.
1) Battery power
2) Autonomous operation
SD60MAC9500 BaltACD Euclid BaltACD One thing to remember - railroads get paid for the revenue tons they handle, not the number of trains it takes to move that tonnage between origin customer and destination customer. Why the distinction? If they were not paid by the renenue tons (or any other measure of quantity), how else would they be paid? Who ever stated that railroads get paid for the number of trains it takes to to move tonnage? Considering that railroads get paid by the number of revenue tons they haul, wouldn't the same be true of UPS or any other form freight transport? You and the other foamers think railroads exist to run trains for your enjoyment. They Don't. They run trains to handle the tons of cargo their customers are paying them to move - nothing more and nothing less. If they can meet the customers expectations hauling fewer bigger cars in fewer longer trains they will be expending less on the variable costs of operation. Today's railroads are not designed to handle half a dozen passenger trains each way daily moving in concert with 2500 foot freight trains - that world ended in the 1940's - the 1940's are not coming back. +1
BaltACD Euclid BaltACD One thing to remember - railroads get paid for the revenue tons they handle, not the number of trains it takes to move that tonnage between origin customer and destination customer. Why the distinction? If they were not paid by the renenue tons (or any other measure of quantity), how else would they be paid? Who ever stated that railroads get paid for the number of trains it takes to to move tonnage? Considering that railroads get paid by the number of revenue tons they haul, wouldn't the same be true of UPS or any other form freight transport? You and the other foamers think railroads exist to run trains for your enjoyment. They Don't. They run trains to handle the tons of cargo their customers are paying them to move - nothing more and nothing less. If they can meet the customers expectations hauling fewer bigger cars in fewer longer trains they will be expending less on the variable costs of operation. Today's railroads are not designed to handle half a dozen passenger trains each way daily moving in concert with 2500 foot freight trains - that world ended in the 1940's - the 1940's are not coming back.
Euclid BaltACD One thing to remember - railroads get paid for the revenue tons they handle, not the number of trains it takes to move that tonnage between origin customer and destination customer. Why the distinction? If they were not paid by the renenue tons (or any other measure of quantity), how else would they be paid? Who ever stated that railroads get paid for the number of trains it takes to to move tonnage? Considering that railroads get paid by the number of revenue tons they haul, wouldn't the same be true of UPS or any other form freight transport?
BaltACD One thing to remember - railroads get paid for the revenue tons they handle, not the number of trains it takes to move that tonnage between origin customer and destination customer.
One thing to remember - railroads get paid for the revenue tons they handle, not the number of trains it takes to move that tonnage between origin customer and destination customer.
Why the distinction? If they were not paid by the renenue tons (or any other measure of quantity), how else would they be paid? Who ever stated that railroads get paid for the number of trains it takes to to move tonnage?
Considering that railroads get paid by the number of revenue tons they haul, wouldn't the same be true of UPS or any other form freight transport?
You and the other foamers think railroads exist to run trains for your enjoyment. They Don't. They run trains to handle the tons of cargo their customers are paying them to move - nothing more and nothing less. If they can meet the customers expectations hauling fewer bigger cars in fewer longer trains they will be expending less on the variable costs of operation. Today's railroads are not designed to handle half a dozen passenger trains each way daily moving in concert with 2500 foot freight trains - that world ended in the 1940's - the 1940's are not coming back.
+1
The Ur-foamer, legendary Trains Magazine editor David P Morgan thought quite differently.
His view of this, expressed over several years in his editorials, was that not only was the passenger side of the railroad business in the US in serious decline by the early 1960s, with business-as-usual, the freight side was soon to follow, which it did with the collapse of the Penn Central and other Eastern railroad bankruptcies by the 1970s.
In giving a platform in the form of the Professional Iconoclast column for consulting engineer John Kneiling, editor Morgan indeed viewed one function of the railroad industry as providing enjoyment to foamers. Mr. Kneiling had other solutions in mind than the autonomous intermodal trainsets described on this thread getting pushback, but the Professional Iconoclast column annoyed many a railfan and a railroad insider alike, and editor Morgan stood up in front of this criticism claiming that something had to be done to arrest the slide in the railroad industry or in a few decades or even a few years, there would be no railroad industry to employ the insiders and no railroads for the railfans to watch the trains go by.
Arm-chair railroaders coming up with new ideas and "foamers thinking the railroad industry is there for their enjoyment" is an important element of Kalmbach Publishing history and why this Forum even exists.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
zugmann charlie hebdo Ken:. Surprise!! I agree with you that it could work if you can overcome the typical "can't be done" obstacles you are so familiar with. Railcars need to be tough. They are not treated with kid gloves by anyone (RR or customers alike). Making them autonomous self-propelled vehicles sounds like a whole new level of care needed that just doesn't exist in the real (industrial) world.
charlie hebdo Ken:. Surprise!! I agree with you that it could work if you can overcome the typical "can't be done" obstacles you are so familiar with.
Railcars need to be tough. They are not treated with kid gloves by anyone (RR or customers alike).
Making them autonomous self-propelled vehicles sounds like a whole new level of care needed that just doesn't exist in the real (industrial) world.
The rough environment was fine for hauling unit trains of coal, a business in serious decline. That approach doesn't work for carrying sensitive, high-value cargo, which is why Ed Kyle's observation and Ken's post are germane.
OK, but then we'll have to add I-71 and I-70 and US 30 and so on. The end result nationally will be Trucking ~60+% and Railroads ~10% market share by tonnage, with a much bigger skew by value. My view is that the rails have much unused capacity (more every day as their existing traffic stagnates or shifts to trucks) that could be employed, perhaps using ideas like that mentioned in the first post of this thread.
- Ed Kyle
BaltACD So those 400 cars may also be handling 1200 boxes (2 20 footers on the bottom and a 40, 48 or 53 footer on top), that would require a truck and driver to haul them otherwise. And While you are only talking about the former NYC line you are overlooking the former B&O Main that is handling nominally a like number of cars on their trains which in intermodal service could also be 1200 boxes. Therefore the railroad are hauling nominally twice the number of boxes that the Ohio Turnpike handles.
So those 400 cars may also be handling 1200 boxes (2 20 footers on the bottom and a 40, 48 or 53 footer on top), that would require a truck and driver to haul them otherwise. And While you are only talking about the former NYC line you are overlooking the former B&O Main that is handling nominally a like number of cars on their trains which in intermodal service could also be 1200 boxes. Therefore the railroad are hauling nominally twice the number of boxes that the Ohio Turnpike handles.
charlie hebdoKen:. Surprise!! I agree with you that it could work if you can overcome the typical "can't be done" obstacles you are so familiar with.
greyhounds PNWRMNM These guys do not understand the problem, which is aggregation and disaggregation. They do offer a solution to the aggregation issue, short, direct, single purpose trains. Their marketing problem is that the solution can be attained with conventional locomotives. There is no technical reason that the IC can' run a day's worth of intermodal traffic from Waterloo to Chicago behind one unit. If these guys can automate their vehicles, the rail carriers can automate their trains. The problem with their solution is that if widely adopted, the results will be many more train movements. On a single track line increasing the number of movements increases the number of meets by the square of the number of trains per unit of time. Can you spell gridlock? Well, they can't take the railroad to gridlock. And there must be MofW time. But many rail lines have some unused capacity and this just might be a way to use that capacity profitably. Let's go with Waterloo, IA - Chicago interchange. And do not forget to add in Cedar Rapids - Chicago interchange. The big Kahuna in Waterloo would be Tyson pork. I don't see one train per day meeting the market need. A telling complaint that I've heard more than once is that if a shipper is 20 minutes late to an IM terminal it will cost 24 hours delay because they'll have to wait for the next day's train. Not good. With this equipment it MAY be possible to run inexpensive short intermodal trains east after each Tyson production shift. And possibly such trains could hold for a load that was going to be a few minutes late to the terminal. The target market in Cedar Rapids would be breakfast cereal from Quaker and General Mills. These IM trains could "Convoy" right after the Waterloo trains. East and south of Chicago the equipment could move in regular train service. This would add four trains per day to a line that could certainly use some more traffic. (I'm counting the "Convoy" as one train.) It may or may not work. But it seems to deserve thoughtful consideration.
PNWRMNM These guys do not understand the problem, which is aggregation and disaggregation. They do offer a solution to the aggregation issue, short, direct, single purpose trains. Their marketing problem is that the solution can be attained with conventional locomotives. There is no technical reason that the IC can' run a day's worth of intermodal traffic from Waterloo to Chicago behind one unit. If these guys can automate their vehicles, the rail carriers can automate their trains. The problem with their solution is that if widely adopted, the results will be many more train movements. On a single track line increasing the number of movements increases the number of meets by the square of the number of trains per unit of time. Can you spell gridlock?
Well, they can't take the railroad to gridlock. And there must be MofW time.
But many rail lines have some unused capacity and this just might be a way to use that capacity profitably. Let's go with Waterloo, IA - Chicago interchange. And do not forget to add in Cedar Rapids - Chicago interchange.
The big Kahuna in Waterloo would be Tyson pork. I don't see one train per day meeting the market need. A telling complaint that I've heard more than once is that if a shipper is 20 minutes late to an IM terminal it will cost 24 hours delay because they'll have to wait for the next day's train. Not good.
With this equipment it MAY be possible to run inexpensive short intermodal trains east after each Tyson production shift. And possibly such trains could hold for a load that was going to be a few minutes late to the terminal.
The target market in Cedar Rapids would be breakfast cereal from Quaker and General Mills. These IM trains could "Convoy" right after the Waterloo trains.
East and south of Chicago the equipment could move in regular train service.
This would add four trains per day to a line that could certainly use some more traffic. (I'm counting the "Convoy" as one train.)
It may or may not work. But it seems to deserve thoughtful consideration.
I'd like to think that that's possible out of Cedar Rapids as well. The thing is, you could also - in theory anyway - consolidate intermodal trains out of Waterloo and Cedar Rapids at Manchester.
Don't forget about the NS (ex-NKP) line.
Ed KyleIf maximum revenue ton miles is the goal, the goal is fading. Coal is dying and carloads in recent years are decreasing. It isn't working! A better goal for our current national and worldwide situation (for society if not for the railroads) might be to maximize ton miles per ton of carbon emitted. With falling carloads and decreasing traffic share, rail, which should be the most efficient mode, is failing at that goal big time right now. The old NYC mainline across Ohio might see 1-2 trains per hour average, hauling, what, 400 cars or so? Meanwhile, something like 1,200 trucks per hour run on the nearby Ohio Turnpike. - Ed Kyle
A better goal for our current national and worldwide situation (for society if not for the railroads) might be to maximize ton miles per ton of carbon emitted. With falling carloads and decreasing traffic share, rail, which should be the most efficient mode, is failing at that goal big time right now.
The old NYC mainline across Ohio might see 1-2 trains per hour average, hauling, what, 400 cars or so? Meanwhile, something like 1,200 trucks per hour run on the nearby Ohio Turnpike.
Ed Kyle Meanwhile, something like 1,200 trucks per hour run on the nearby Ohio Turnpike. - Ed Kyle
Meanwhile, something like 1,200 trucks per hour run on the nearby Ohio Turnpike.
If maximum revenue ton miles is the goal, the goal is fading. Coal is dying and carloads in recent years are decreasing. It isn't working!
BaltACD - the 1940's are not coming back.
Fringe benefit is that many types of collisions between large conventional trains and smaller units will be precluded too.
Of course there is the issue of dead space between container tops. I believe Euc (and certainly some others) have designed approaches to gainfully address this issue and handle some enhanced LTL and express on the side...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ5PC2ip7-o
Appropriate location for the idea, too.
Ed Kyle I like the general line of thinking. Just stand trackside along today's supposedly busy mainlines. At Berea or Rochelle, for example, where two vital double track mains cross or run alongside one another, you can sit for 2-3 or more hours sometimes without a train in sight! Of course there are plenty of less-busy rail lines that see far fewer trains per day, and in some cases where train counts are in single numbers per week. That's when the idea starts to make sense. Why shouldn't these rails be as truck-busy as the nearby Interstates! - Ed Kyle
I like the general line of thinking. Just stand trackside along today's supposedly busy mainlines. At Berea or Rochelle, for example, where two vital double track mains cross or run alongside one another, you can sit for 2-3 or more hours sometimes without a train in sight! Of course there are plenty of less-busy rail lines that see far fewer trains per day, and in some cases where train counts are in single numbers per week. That's when the idea starts to make sense. Why shouldn't these rails be as truck-busy as the nearby Interstates!
Sometimes you can sit for an hour or two and not see anything BECAUSE the line is busy and bottlenecked/clogged.
The be able to be handle a lot more short trains, capacity has to be built into the infrastructure. Running fewer longer trains, not more shorter trains, is the railroad's goal, which is totally opposed to the autonomous promoter's goal.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
greyhounds"For example, empire builder James J. Hill said in an interview with Frank L. McVey at the turn of the twentieth century ‘that railroad income is based on ton miles and the expense of operation on train miles. The object is to get the highest rate [operating revenue] on the ton-mile and the smallest rate [operating expense] on the train mile. In this statement is concentrated the theory of railroad management of the present day.’”
It does make economic sense... if you can get your customers to accept 'slower but cheaper' and you can, in fact, inexpensively deliver JIT on that timed schedule. That model goes in the can, with regrettable quickness and 'positive action', if conditions are, well, like the conditions at East Coast ports in the runup to American entry into WWI, now with the shipping-driven difficulty in the other direction. As greyhounds will have noted in his thesis, most of the difficulty stemmed from regulation preventing even the appearance of collusion (e.g. the pooling arrangements for car handling proposed in the months before the USRA 'takeover')
It's a bit amusing to see the breakdown of container handling in the far-less-regulated world of... well, post-USRA 2.0... although far less amusing to see a situation only remediable with carrots being addressed primarily with ever-less-relevant sticks.
What 'government' needs to prioritize is secure landing storage both within port facilities and within strategic 'turn' distance for dedicated shuttle equipment, combined with subsidized production of a 'Railbox'-style set of high-speed road-capable (and imho sideload able) container underframes or chassis. If there are sticks, apply them to 'underperforming' longshoremen and other port handlers, to expedite movement BOTH of loads and equipment in and out of the physical area where intermodal ship/shore transfer has to take place. Then be sure the off-site 'ports' where bulk shuttling becomes intermodal land transport are staffed by comparable longshoremen's unions... as an extension of 'ports inland' instead of some low-dollar version of 'inland ports'.
These not incidentally represent the first best use of either wired or battery electrification or zero-carbon motorization, as I doubt they involve more than nominal track mileage...
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