Mini Intermodal Yards?

[Junctionfan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ericsp

It seems like I heard something about an intermodal terminal dedicated (or nearly so) to the Eastman Chemical plant in Kingsport, TN.

Do they make plastic pellets or resins?

[ericsp]

It seems like I heard something about an intermodal terminal dedicated (or nearly so) to the Eastman Chemical plant in Kingsport, TN.

[ericsp]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

QUOTE: Originally posted by ericsp

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

QUOTE: Originally posted by broncoman

Aren't there times when traffic becomes so prohibitive that dealing with the 3/5 car spine issues isn't that bad compared with the delays of truck traffic going from intermodal facility to D.C. Its probably going to be really interesting in many places in the next couple of years with regards to it being easier to move things via rail as opposed to truck. I would think the port of oakland is going to be one of these experiments.
Does anyone know how the Wal-mart D.C in the Central Valley CA (can't remember exactly what town) is fed by? UP, BNSF?

Thanks
Dave

Porterville, CA .......RailAmerica SanJoaquin Valley RR (former ATSF line, ex SP nearby)

Actually, it is next to the ex-SP. The ex-ATSF through Porterville has been removed (from s/o Lindsay to Ultra). There is no spur going into the center.

The old ATSF branchlines through the San Joaquin Valley have been decimated. The only remaining portions are from Exeter to Lindsay, Ducor to Ultra, Visalia to Loma, and a branch from the BNSF main in Fresno to eastern Fresno (SP used trackage rights on this for part of its Clovis Branch), all SJVR; there is also a section from the BNSF yard in Fresno to an A&K Railroad Materials yard in Fresno and the Oakdale Branch.

Just don't stay at the Best Western in Front of the Wal-Mart DC in Porterville. The air conditioning never wworks and you listen to trucks going in and out all night![:(!]

It sounds like you speak from experience. I doubt I would stay at any of the motels in the cities and towns along Highway 65. I did notice a Best Western in Exeter that looked new. I have never seen the inside of it. Funny how topics get side tracked. It starts out about industries that load and unload containers themselves to motels on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley.

[Overmod]

AntiGates, welcome to the right side of the Force...

...but OS 8.0 was about as full of bugs as a New York apartment with peanut butter smeared on the walls... 8.1 was the first stable build of that OS, and that was a pretty good one, but it wasn't really 'til 8.6 that the thing got set up to be modern (e.g. with USB) and by then it was artificially jiggered not to work with the Windows dual-mode compatibility boards. (THAT was, I feel certain, engineered in collusion with Redmond somehow).

Legacy conversion is to 9.2.2 under 'pure' Mac OS; I don't have any particular hesitation in recommending OS X 10.3; won't switch to run Tiger until I'm convinced the little 'foibles' are out of the delivered code. I like the sentiment, though!

[Anonymous]

PHOOEY ON REDMONDITES!!

[BurlingtonJohn]

IIRC, there was a facility near El Centro California that used to have containers loaded with hay and then dropped into well cars ... it has been a long time since I was there, so things may have changed ...

Regards,
Burlington John

[Overmod]

Kneiling was a major formative influence on my thinking, in quite a few respects. I remember an extended correspondence regarding the implementation of MU gas turbines on intermodal trains (as he proposed in the late '60s) in the period before the first OPEC blowup in '73.

Regardless of what the CargoSprinter people, who seem to be the heirs of this kind of capital equipment, may say, you're going to put a significant kink into operations on most modern railroad main lines by stopping for any period of time required for side-loading operations. I think Mr. Kneiling was presuming a number of things in claiming the short transfer time, including 'perfect' equipment and training on the part of all the groundside personnel, as well as a well-aligned location where the truck (or unloading platform, would be in the required stable and relatively leveled alignment required for a relatively heavy ISO container. I think that, at the time, he was presuming the intermodal containers would be built with low tare weight (on the Flexi-Van model) whereas what actually got standardized at trailer length usually has marine-type, if not in fact full marine-strength, construction...

Of course, once crews got accustomed to working with Letroporters and similar transfer equipment, the presumed latch-on problems, lifting, etc. became comparatively insignificant, and the operating issues with maintaining something like top-spreader equipment (or, for that matter, big 'glorified-forklift' underlift equipment, will always be less than for ratcheting sideloaders capable of the same transfer speed. If you have the area for the rear of the Letroporter to swing, you can easily accommodate vehicles or situations not strictly parallel and close to the track; a disparity of train and vehicle/dock height; if your top spreader has lateral shift, you can neatly accommodate out-of-level situations as well as weight-imbalanced or shifted-load containers, SAFELY.

Oh, yes: you can work with stack-train consists, including those situations where you have to reach a container on the bottom. Don't even think about trying a side-loading transfer on something in a well car, or on two stacked containers at once, although there are technological methods for doing those things; it will be sooner, not later, that you have enough slack in your equipment or operating methods that you have an 'incident', which if you're lucky will only screw up train operations for a few hours or so and not hurt somebody badly. (Heck, the Canadians couldn't even keep the suspension or the hitches on the Iron Highway going for any length of time! ;-})

Much of the same applies with a bit different method when using a straddle-loader of appropriate design. While I don't expect to see these things cruising the highway in most of the United States, we've seen within the past few months how easily one can be packaged and sent via rail to a place where it could be reassembled. Shouldn't be terribly hard to design a loader optimized for transportation and remote use -- for precedent, see the forklifts designed for Home Depot and similar trucks, with enough capacity to handle construction supplies, but designed for extremely low tare and reasonable balance when being carried, and a simple but stable method for mounting and demounting from big straight trucks.

I feel somewhat qualified to discuss side-loading systems, as I've designed equipment for them. My preference is to use them primarily for fixed transfer points, with the specialized equipment (but not necessarily the prime mover supplying power for the equipment) located in a fixed scaffolded structure at trackside. Containers are quickly transferred to this structure, in parallel if appropriate to minimize dwell time, and trucks or other modes can reach even tightly-spaced containers simply by loading at slightly different times; the structures can also be adapted to adjust container height, attitude, etc. or to swivel them as needed for other forms of loading.

The primary problem with Dumpster-type loading is the significant tilt it puts on a container during loading. This could be at least partly overcome when using a 'dedicated' articulated chassis by using small bogie wheels on the trailer section and a relatively long angled apron behind that bogie with something like roller-table wheels, similar to what many sideloaders use. If you have the ability to pivot the container on the railcar, a la FlexiVan, you can do Dumpster-type loading on more or less the same level -- which is preferable imho. You're still faced with the need to rotate the container through an angle sufficient to get the chassis to bear on it -- not necessarily 90 degrees, but something not particularly advisable on a railcar that's part of a train with very low dwell time. (I won't speculate on how much 'fun' you could have skidding the containers sideways off the car using a cable-and-hydraulics rig, then repositioning the same chassis to load them Dumpster-style, except that you'd have lots of fun with corner castings.

[Junctionfan]

That reminds me, where is the tra***ofcs loaded? Those Colt cars (spine cars) seem to pop up all over the CSX and NS system on manifests.

[StillGrande]

In Alexandria, Va near Van Dorn Street there is a 2 track Norfolk Southern intermodal facility next to the UPS distribution center. They handle mostly trailers (from what I can tell from the road) but not just UPS stuff. There is usually 4-6 locomotives parked there during the day. The tracks are not terribly long and they have one or two mijacks to work the trains.

[daveklepper]

I did read just about all of Kneiling's comments. In fact when he ran the Joint Railfan Trip Committee in New York City, he ran some streetcar trips, and I was the designated teen-age pole-puller to speed up reverse movements. How he managed to talk the New York City transit authority into running an el train (open platform gate cars) with the gondola car with fans standing in it at the front pushed by the train I'll never know, but it did make the front page of the New York Times! He also ran a fantrip on the LIRR with one Gibbs car (the original electric cars built to the same design as the first steel IRT subway cars), one or two MP-54's (I think one arch roof and one cleristory) and one 1939-era double-decker, all in one train, no two cars alike.

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ericsp

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

QUOTE: Originally posted by broncoman

Aren't there times when traffic becomes so prohibitive that dealing with the 3/5 car spine issues isn't that bad compared with the delays of truck traffic going from intermodal facility to D.C. Its probably going to be really interesting in many places in the next couple of years with regards to it being easier to move things via rail as opposed to truck. I would think the port of oakland is going to be one of these experiments.
Does anyone know how the Wal-mart D.C in the Central Valley CA (can't remember exactly what town) is fed by? UP, BNSF?

Thanks
Dave

Porterville, CA .......RailAmerica SanJoaquin Valley RR (former ATSF line, ex SP nearby)

Actually, it is next to the ex-SP. The ex-ATSF through Porterville has been removed (from s/o Lindsay to Ultra). There is no spur going into the center.

The old ATSF branchlines through the San Joaquin Valley have been decimated. The only remaining portions are from Exeter to Lindsay, Ducor to Ultra, Visalia to Loma, and a branch from the BNSF main in Fresno to eastern Fresno (SP used trackage rights on this for part of its Clovis Branch), all SJVR; there is also a section from the BNSF yard in Fresno to an A&K Railroad Materials yard in Fresno and the Oakdale Branch.

Just don't stay at the Best Western in Front of the Wal-Mart DC in Porterville. The air conditioning never wworks and you listen to trucks going in and out all night![:(!]

[daveklepper]

Israel Railways has huge mobile rubber-tired straddle cranes that are moved to particular sidings for specific agricultural seasons for loading containers on flat cars, generally one 40-48 foot container or two 28-foot containers on a conventional 40-50 foot 8-wheel flat car, no double stacking. These trains run directly to the Ashdot or Ashkalon Ports, with tracks on the docks, so the containers can be moved directly to the ships to cut down ship-in-port time. It is an under 200 mile haul, sometimes as little as 50 miles, but the railroad the port authority figure it is worth it by cutting down ship-in-port time. The huge straddle crane might be seen at a particular siding or yard just of one week or three days, and then it is off to somehwere else, moving on the highway at around 2AM. Some of these locations are adjacent to commuter stations on coastal Tel Aviv - Haifa line, but there are others. I think even the freight trains now use airbrakes instead of vacuum brakes that were the British Mandate legacy, but they still use screw and chain couplers and buffers, although the passenger equipment now uses modern transit style couplers.

[Anonymous]

In Gloverstown NY the Walmart sits right next to the FJ&G right of way(Abondoned). There is about 300 trucks or more or less a day that come thru town. Now seeing that Walmart buys in such bulk could they get a boxcar of garden supplies or a Roadrailer train of DVD players? It would proably cost 12,000,000 to put the line back. If this were funded by bonds it certainly would improve the quility of life.

[MP173]

As a college student in the 70's, I never bought Kneiling's book, but certainly did read his monthly columns. He was on the money with many of his ideas. It was very entertaining to read the reactions in the letters to editor a month or two later.

I may have to go back a read a few again.

ed

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

I never bought "Integral Train Systems" when it was published by Kalmbach (the price was a bit steep for a high school student) but I did read his columns regularly. It usually took a couple of readings to understand him, but his main asset was a willingness to think outside the box. While railroading has yet to run an actual integral train, it has inched closer to that goal over the years.

I've observed over the years that my willingness to embrace many of the changes that have occurred in railroading (especially after de-reg) have put me in a minority.

[Anonymous]

Maybe the RR's need to reinvent the wheel with wally world which seems to do a pretty good job at making $.....

[Paul Milenkovic]

Kneiling's idea was that an intermodal "integral train" would be just like a passenger train. A passenger train makes stops, and at some stops only a few people get on or off, but by an large passenger trains have fixed consists and are not switched. Oh, there are famous exceptions regarding sleepers, diners, or even entire sections being switched on and off from passenger trains, and there was Amtrak's experiment with switching head-end cars on passenger trains, but these exceptions prove the rule as it were because switching passengers trains was almost always an operational as well as a passenger-service quality headache.

Where the Stedman gear comes in is that you can stop a train in a siding with little more than a road running alongside, and you have random access to pull or add containers to the train, just like individual passengers can vacate or occupy seats at a station stop. Kneilings point was that stopping a train was not a big deal but switching or otherwise breaking up a consists was a very big deal -- coupling shocks on down the line. A fixed consist also allowed tightlock couplers, distributed motive power, two-pipe brakes, electrical activation of brakes, and all of the other features we now take for granted on passenger trains (yes, some passenger trains have distributed motive power in the form of MU cars or locomotives at both ends for performance reasons).

Kneiling argued that the side-transfer system was much lower labor cost than certain crane systems. Don't know the name of the front loader tractor gizmo that grasps a container or trailer and lifts it up, but in the day that was the "new thing" which Kneiling pointed out needed an operator along with two spotters because the operator had the container or trailer in his face when lifting it.

The disadvantages of side transfer I can think of are 1) the trucker carries around the active part of the gear, so there may be a cost/tare weight disadvantage at the trucking end, 2) the gear may require a lot of skill to operate, 3) the transfer rate may favor handling small numbers of containers rather than big volumes.

As to the skill level and capital costs, there is one area where sliding transfer gear dominates the market: garbage. A Dumpster is not just a bin you throw garbage into; it is part of a material handling system where a truck has the gear to tip and drag the Dumpster on to a platform. It is in widespread use and is the prefered "intermodal" system for garbage. No one comes around with one of these intermodal terminal style cranes to pick up the Dumpster and put it on the truck or to empty the Dumpster at the landfill site.

Kneiling was of the mind that the reason railroads were resisting the side-transfer system is that they were wedded to TOFC instead of COFC. Nowadays, so much stuff is COFC that this issue needs to be revisited. As to the double stacks, I believe Kneiling had an opinion on that, that it was better overall to single-stack and use the side-transfer gear as far as effectiveness of the overall system, but then John Kneiling had an opinion on just about everything as it was.

Am I the only "old timer" around here he read all his Professional Iconoclast columns in Trains and read Integral Train Systems? The railroading community thought him to be a crackpot back in the day, but I am surprised Kneiling and his ideas don't have that much of a following among us "crackpot railfans."

[Overmod]

I was waiting to see if anyone else remembered Stedman side-loaders.

Basically, the Letroporters and Mi-Jacks took away most of the business model. Chief advantage of intermodal containers is precisely that they go from railcar to truck underframe, and are then intended to be 'yarded' in the same manner, and via the same infrastructure, as any other truck. The thought of expensive intermodal trains being stopped, or worse yet, switched in cuts into sidings, simply to transfer containers chills my blood! When you have a 'central' facility to accompli***he intermodal transfer, economies of scale permit the use of capable, fast, flexible container handling solutions.

Oh yes: it might be amusing to see how Stedmans could be adapted to handle stack trains...

A better technology in this respect might be the CargoSpeed (NOT that CargoSprinter stuff) that was developed in Europe. This could be adapted to containers fairly easily, in conjunction with some form of 'sideloading' transfer table at trackside (similar to the kind of infrastructure I developed for gang sideloading, but adapted to handle the extended container as swiveled). Of course, it might be still better to use simple drop-pocket spine cars and van trailers for such a service, with a cheap drop-center ramp at the point where the trailer will be lifted and swiveled...

Something to remember about gang-sideloading is something I never saw Mr. Kneiling discuss: the access to the doors. As mentioned above, if you leave the container on the railcar for loading or unloading, you have to have clear access to the door end of the container (and provide clear swing and positive latchback for those doors, too.) The CargoSpeed approach would at least swing the containers through an angle which gets all the doors lined up to open past each other with the container ends staggered, in not much more 'footprint' than containers all in a line. I would not wait up nights for the introduction of ISO-compliant 48' and 53' containers with side doors... ;-}

[Paul Milenkovic]

What ever happened to the side-transfer gear that John Kneiling was touting? That would seem to be well-suited to serving an industrial siding with a string of COFC cars.

[Anonymous]

Here in Erie we have a siding that feeds a local industry. Erie Foods Intl. We ship to Japan, Aust, Russia and India. We also receive from same. In late seventys up to 85 we used to load/unload containers and boxcars. They would load containers on flatcar with doors to the center, with a 12 foot space between them. We would run a ten foot aluminum ramp out to car then drive forktruck with pallets out to center. Usually a 20 footer would have 800 55lb. bags of dry milk product onthem. A crew of 5 guys could unload in about 2 hours. Then we would reload with soy product for Japan or wherever. Would have 4-5 cars on thesiding. We spotted the cars with a Ford tractor. We used to hate to unload boxcars. They were usually loaded with 100 lb burlap bags from Russia. Made for a hot, itchy day. Then they switched to running the containers out by truck from Chicago yards. Now with Rochelle inter yard, they are talking to enclosing the siding and going back to the old way. BNSF is probable not going to like it cause they park their MOW equipment there, and that will require some switching on the main line.

[ericsp]

QUOTE: Originally posted by mudchicken

QUOTE: Originally posted by broncoman

Aren't there times when traffic becomes so prohibitive that dealing with the 3/5 car spine issues isn't that bad compared with the delays of truck traffic going from intermodal facility to D.C. Its probably going to be really interesting in many places in the next couple of years with regards to it being easier to move things via rail as opposed to truck. I would think the port of oakland is going to be one of these experiments.
Does anyone know how the Wal-mart D.C in the Central Valley CA (can't remember exactly what town) is fed by? UP, BNSF?

Thanks
Dave

Porterville, CA .......RailAmerica SanJoaquin Valley RR (former ATSF line, ex SP nearby)

Actually, it is next to the ex-SP. The ex-ATSF through Porterville has been removed (from s/o Lindsay to Ultra). There is no spur going into the center.

The old ATSF branchlines through the San Joaquin Valley have been decimated. The only remaining portions are from Exeter to Lindsay, Ducor to Ultra, Visalia to Loma, and a branch from the BNSF main in Fresno to eastern Fresno (SP used trackage rights on this for part of its Clovis Branch), all SJVR; there is also a section from the BNSF yard in Fresno to an A&K Railroad Materials yard in Fresno and the Oakdale Branch.

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by broncoman

Aren't there times when traffic becomes so prohibitive that dealing with the 3/5 car spine issues isn't that bad compared with the delays of truck traffic going from intermodal facility to D.C. Its probably going to be really interesting in many places in the next couple of years with regards to it being easier to move things via rail as opposed to truck. I would think the port of oakland is going to be one of these experiments.
Does anyone know how the Wal-mart D.C in the Central Valley CA (can't remember exactly what town) is fed by? UP, BNSF?

Thanks
Dave

Porterville, CA .......RailAmerica SanJoaquin Valley RR (former ATSF line, ex SP nearby)

[broncoman]

Aren't there times when traffic becomes so prohibitive that dealing with the 3/5 car spine issues isn't that bad compared with the delays of truck traffic going from intermodal facility to D.C. Its probably going to be really interesting in many places in the next couple of years with regards to it being easier to move things via rail as opposed to truck. I would think the port of oakland is going to be one of these experiments.
Does anyone know how the Wal-mart D.C in the Central Valley CA (can't remember exactly what town) is fed by? UP, BNSF?

Thanks
Dave

[greyhounds]

QUOTE: Originally posted by HighIron2003ar

Walmart cannot handle the intermodal.

Sorry. Thier current model is a L shaped warehouse one side to take Frozen and Reefer trailers, the other side dry goods and grocery.

The distribution centers usually will need new rail and infrastructure to reach them.

And Kalamah Box lifters will need to be purchased and people trained to operate them. For some reason I cannot stomach a mental image of one of these moving a cargo of breakable stuff. Maybe it is from what I have seen at the piers years ago.

What we CAN do is build a intermodal yard, establish a local Chassis operation and transload the boxes from train to truck and take it to the walmart.

Yes, that's just what the Florida East Coast did at Ft. Pierce, FL to serve a Wal-Mart DC.

They build a new intermodal terminal focused on the DC. It will serve other business, but its focus was Wal-Mart. It's huge step in the right direction. I'd like to see similar at Tomah, WI, etc.

You're not going to put a siding into a Wal-Mart DC, but you can deliver off an intermodal terminal and that DC will provide the volume to support such a terminal.

"Fragile" things can move intermodal. It just isn't a problem. We hauled TV's, bottled and canned beer (can't sell a dented can), fresh fruit that bruised easily (bananas), bottled bourbon, appliances, everything moving UPS, etc. Didn't have much of a problem. We cooked some bananas once, and froze some beer - but that was about it. Just please don't hump it.

The real problem was cigarettes. You know the deal. If you want to make a trailer leak, just load it with cigarettes. They'll claim water damage every time. Even in a drought. Everybody on the dock gets free smokes on the carrier.

[Anonymous]

grrr....the wal-mart distribution center we have next door is a sore subject

[Anonymous]

Walmart cannot handle the intermodal.

Sorry. Thier current model is a L shaped warehouse one side to take Frozen and Reefer trailers, the other side dry goods and grocery.

The distribution centers usually will need new rail and infrastructure to reach them.

And Kalamah Box lifters will need to be purchased and people trained to operate them. For some reason I cannot stomach a mental image of one of these moving a cargo of breakable stuff. Maybe it is from what I have seen at the piers years ago.

What we CAN do is build a intermodal yard, establish a local Chassis operation and transload the boxes from train to truck and take it to the walmart.

I see no improvement in walmart's ability to absorb 100 new loads a day that is going to slug em.

I see a potential for Walmart to shift everything onto thier own boxes and away from third party motor carriers anyway.

Nah. Walmart will not spend that kind of money, they need to finance the low wages on the already very low prices they have in the stores.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

When TOFC was re-invented in the 1950's, there was a tendency to put ramps in a lot of places that didn't really have the traffic to justify it. I seriously doubt that the circus-loading ramp on ATSF at Fort Madison IA loaded that many trailers. The phasing out of circus loading and the hardware related to it (bridge plates, full-length flatcar decks, etc) contributed to the shutdown of many of these ramps. At any rate, those small ramps were the TOFC equivalent of the small-town freight house.

Since most loading requires straddle cranes or other large devices, it takes a high-volume terminal such as Willow Springs to justify the capital expense. I don't see any individual warehouse and distribution operations that would have that kind of volume.

[mudchicken]

You can put them anywhere where you are willing to pay for the mechanical inspection after loading. This is the main reason why you do not see this outside of dedicated publicCOFC/TOFC facilities anymore. (ie-you have to have the volume to pay for the mechanical inspection, the railroads don't tend to donate the manhours)

[Anonymous]

There are some applications where a mini ramp might make sense, but there is a challenge for the RRs.

Lets say that the customer is a receiver of goods, like a WalMart Distrubution Center. Those hundreds of trailers are coming from hundreds of places. At some point or possibly at multiple points, the RR would have to consolidate these many trailers coming from many locations, into one train to get to the customer's ramp.

This get more complicated with the 3 pack or 5 pack cars used these days. If the RR has a 5 pack of car of trailers but only 3 are destined to the customer ramp and two are not, they have to do some rework. Then, once they get the train all sorted out and consolidated, they need a switch job or local job to get it to the customer. The delays and rework from all this would likely mean that it would be higher cost and slower than just using a rail ramp in the region.

The alternative is the customer that ships outbound. You have the same problem in reverse. Can they load a 3-5 pack car / cars / train all for the same destination? If not, again the RR has to take it somewhere, rework it and add parts to trains going to the respective locations = cost and delays.

If a shipper / recvr could initiate or receive a substantial block or full train which goes point to point (all same orgin and destination), then you might be able to make it work (basic units train.) But then you've got to have the volume to justify the lift equipment and you're going to have to pay car-hire on the flats or well cars while they sit on your siding. Car hire on some all purpose well cars runs $100 per day. There again, eating up the saving. Tough issues.
- - Stack