Trailing tonnage behind a tow truck.

[BaltACD]

SD70Dude

We get it, you hate employees and unions.

If you can get a robot truck to connect and disconnect air lines (both on the trailers and railcars), take itself on and off the track (human operated hi-rails have enough trouble with this), do air tests, line switches, get the railroad's managment to support you AND get the nasty FRA to approve this type of operation then have at it.  

As for timekeeping, it's not the distance or theoretical run time that eats up hours, it's congestion from having to work around other trains, especially in yards.  That's why it often takes us 7 to 10 hours to make a 100 mile run on 50 or 60 mph mainline track.  Most of the extra hours are eaten up waiting in yards or sidings.

If you can convince IAIS and whatever other railroads you deal with in Chicago to give you a clear path each and every day you can do this.  We have a couple branchline runs on 25 mph track that cover 180 to 200 miles in one shift, but they are normally the only train on the line and if anything happens (meets, heat/cold slow orders*) the crew runs out of time and either gets rescued or put to bed online, to come back and finish the trip 8 to 12 hours later.  

*A lot of our branchlines are restricted to 15 mph or less when it gets too hot or too cold.  Those restrictions are created by the Engineering department, Transportation would be quite happy to see them go away.  

BTW - if you left ICG while it was still called Illinois Central Gulf then you left at least a year before Hunter Harrison came there, which means you have zero personal experience with what PSR actually does.

Beyond everything else - how do the empty cars get to a position to be loaded?  Do they just magically appear?

[jeffhergert]

I will say that parts of PSR have always been around.  It's when things are taken to the extreme ONLY to cut costs, lower the operating ratio and keep the stock price high that the system collapses.

One other component of PSR hadn't been mentioned.  It's telling the customer when and how they will be serviced.  I have to disagree with Balt on the switching aspect.  PSR actually means MORE switching.  Switching because you are block swapping, which isn't always in proper blocks.  Cars tend to be shotgunned out of yards, set out at intermediate yards to be further sorted.  Switching also happens because some traffic that used to move in unit trains, generally from customers that may only build one every week or two.  That traffic now moves in smaller blocks in the manifest network.  Cars being picked up/delivered on the railroad's schedule.

Jeff     

[greyhounds]

BaltACD

how do the empty cars get to a position to be loaded?  Do they just magically appear?

I'll say you just take them back the other way.  Kind of like an empty coal train returning to a mine.

For example, if the railroads moved a load of Joslin origin beef to Tampa, they’re not going to get a load out of Tampa back to Joslin. But…

 

They could get a revenue load of orange juice, bananas, whatever, out of the Tampa Bay area going to the Chicago/Milwaukee metro area.

 

The IAIS would have to move the empty trailers/containers from Chicago back to the Quad Cities and then turn things over to the automated Brandt to move them to Tyson at Joslin.

 

It’ll be all covered by the freight charges. If that's not possible the whole thing won't happen.

 

 

 

 

 

[tree68]

jeffhergert

I will say that parts of PSR have always been around.  It's when things are taken to the extreme ONLY to cut costs, lower the operating ratio and keep the stock price high that the system collapses.

I have a 1963 New York Central ETT which includes a page concerning making connections.  The page is entitled "Oeration Sunset" "Protected connections pay off - let's roll as advertised."  The chart includes times.

Sounds a lot like "precision scheduled railroading..."

I agree that the impression I've gotten of PSR is that the emphasis is chiefly on cutting costs.  All too often it seems that potential consequences are either not considered, or ignored.

[Euclid]

My point in posting this excerpt from U.P. description of what PSR is on the previous page was not to clarify what it is, or to agree with the article.  Instead my point was to demonstrate how vacuous the entire explanation is.  All it does is cite various operational problems and say that PSR focuses attention on those problems with the aim of fixing those problems.  In my opinion, this piece from U.P. is the most bloated and platitudinous explanation I have ever seen.   

 

Since the beginning of railroads, everybody has known about the operational problems that the PSR explanation cites.  But what the article completely ignores is how PSR actually accomplishes goals such as a reduction in dwell time or an increase in fluidity.  There is a complete disconnect between making these improvements and the method of doing so. 

 

Consider this gem from the article:

 

“Where railroads previously focused on moving trains, PSR shifts that focus to moving cars. So, instead of waiting for a long train to be built, trains are always moving and cars are picked up on schedule, regardless of train length. Velocity and train length are still important to railroads, but now, the focus on moving cars takes precedence.”

 

How do you shift the focus from moving trains to moving cars?  It seems like the way to do that is by highway trucking.  The main point of railroads is to shift the focus from pulling individual carrying devices to ganging the carrying devices together and pulling many as though they were one.  That was the whole point of inventing railroads as a self-guiding roadway. 

 

Every pro-PSR explanation I have seen is just like this one from U.P.  It does not explain anything.  It just lists a bunch of pie-in-the-sky goals and claims PSR delivers those goals.  It makes me wonder if PSR is even a thing.  Maybe it is just a goal that has always been there.

[greyhounds]

SD70Dude

We get it, you hate employees and unions.

I really don’t. I try to keep hate out of my life. Sometimes that’s difficult. Vladimir Putin for example.

 

But if I hate it does nothing productive and is much more harmful to me than it is to the person I might hate. It also goes against my religious beliefs. I hope you’ll respect those beliefs even if you don’t share them.

 

But I’m also not a Luddite. If it’s more economically efficient to automate something, such as switching a facility, that automation should, and will happen.

 

People on this forum complain that the railroads don’t want to serve customers with switching. Well, why would the railroads not want to do that? I’ll reason that it’s because they see the costs of the switching as exceeding the benefits of the switching. They’re making a rational decision based on a cost/benefit analysis. The decision and analysis may be wrong, but they’re rational.

 

Reducing the cost of switching through automation will change the cost/benefit analysis in favor of more switching services.