What is SIT

[Anonymous]

Ed, you touched on something interesting so I opened a new topic on it. What is SIT? Is it limited to only Plastic's? Who own's the cars?Sounds like you would need a big yard, are they?How do they know what they have in inventory,by car numbers?Do other railroads use this method? Are the different products seperated? Does one yard store one product and another yard store something else? Why would they not work for coal?
TIM A

[edblysard]

Wow, where to start.
SIT stands for storage in transit. I do not know if other products are handled like this.
The cars are leased from trinity, acf, others..
You see them in every train, the big gray hoppers.
Yes, you need a big yard. There is one in Dayton Texas, at least a mile long, it can hold over a thousand cars. I belive Trains Mag did a story on it. The company who owns this yard is CMS,
I belive, but dont hold me to it, that the name of the company is Comerical Materials Storage.
Maby this will help. Lets use on of the PTRA's customers, Phillips. They make the plastic pellets I was refering to.
They make eight or nine diffrent types of plastic, Derlin, polycarbonate, PVC, in pellet and powder form, you get the picture...
Their's is a huge complex, about two miles on a side. When they set up to make a certain type of plastic, they cant make just a few cars loads, due in part to the way plastic is made, the time and personel needed, the sheer volume of raw product & no real way to store the product.
It would be like GM making a thousand car bodies before anyone needed them. Phillips cant wait till the need or demand for the product appears, as the logistics of making then moving that much stuff in a time frame suitable for the buyer is next to impossible. So, like a grocrey store, or WalMart, they anticipate the demand for a product, and set their production accordingly. New home sales going up, bet they start making lots of PVC for plastic pipe.
If you could set how much product a hopper really holds, you would be astounded. I have seen one on it side, and it looked like it snowed plastic pellets. We were wading knee deep thru this stuff, and it was at least 50 feet by 50 feet.
Now, the cost of changing over from one type of plastic production to another is high, so Phillips make hundreds of thousands of tons of one type before retooling Their plant.
Now, where do you store that much stuff?
Unless you have a silo, like for grain, you have to have some where off site or plant property. And a silo even a huge one, wouldnt be big enough.
A building would have to be huge, and then you would have to have someway to keep the plastic clean, it goes straight from the hopper to the buyers production machines.
So the solution was to store the plastic in the hoppers.
Its cheaper for Phillips to lease the hoppers, fill them with product, and pay a railroad a fee to store the cars.
Phillips keeps track of what plastic is in what car by the reporting marks of the car.
The cars, at least here on the port, are not kept seperated by product, although in a large yard like CMSs, they are, due to the space they have.
When the sales people at Phillips sell a certain volume of a certain type of plastic, their railroad clerks call ours, and arrange for that car(s) to be pulled. We add the car or cars to whichever outbound carriers train the buyer uses.
And to add to the fun, have you ever heard of a team track?
Its is a track, often but not allways, in a town which lacks a rail yard. So say the plastic buyer only nees a few ton of PVC but not an entire hopper full and does not have a rail spur near his plant, and his town dosnt have a railroad yard in it. The railroad spots the hopper full of PVC in the team track, a siding off their main line, and the buyer has a truck pull up to the hopper and unload only the amount of PVC he needs. The railroad, when Phillpis lets them know, picks up the car, and depending on what Phillips wants to do with it, returns it to the SIT yard or to Phillips plant to be refilled.
I assume the term "team track" came about because several companies use the track at the same time, like a team playing on a field, several people on the field at the same time. You can find team tracks just about anywhere, you often see them beside a major road.
They look like a plain old siding with a road up to the edge of the track, because thats what the are, a siding used to hold cars to be unloaded. You will find a plastic hopper, a bulkhead flat with pipe on it, a cement car and of course boxcars spoted there.I am sure you have seen a hopper being unloaded by a vacume truck somewhere, and that most likley was at a team track.
It make sense for Phillips, (the manufacturer) as they dont have to build and mantain a huge storage facility. It makes sense for the buyer, he dosnt have to wait for Phillips to make a large or small quanity of the product he needs, he can buy just as much as he wants, and have it delivered. It makes great cents, (pun intended) for the railroad, and us in paticular, as we charge Phillips per switch move. We get to collect "rent" on the spot in our SIT yard where the cars are, we get paid to put them there, paid to pull them and add them to a class 1 train, and if the buyer is using our team track in our north yard, we charge per day for the spot in our team track. We even get paid to put the car back into the sit yard.
I am certain other railroads have similar facilities, and I am sure they have another name for it. I have never heard it referred to as anything else but SIT.
And lastly, for coal. I would assume, but dont know for certain that coal hauling railroads have sometype of yard like this for coal. It does come in diffrent grades, low sulfer, high sulfur, hard and soft? I would bet both UP and BNSF have some huge yards in the powder river basin, but I also would bet, with the need for coal right now, that as soon as the train is loaded, its gone...
Out there somewhere is someone who has worked for a local road which services a SIT facility, I dont know if the Class 1 have them or not.
If not a railroader, then someone who has worked in the shipping dept of a large company like Phillips and has more info....can we hear for you?
Hope thai helps you out Tim,
Ed

[Anonymous]

Ed, your posts are always informative and I thank you for this. Team tracks are named for a track which doesn't serve a particular customer-a customer would receive a car on that track and send a wagon with a "team" of horses or mules, unload the car and wagon the product to it's destination, hence the team track designation. Many of the customers of the railroad for which I work receive their product in this manner, especially lumber, but of course trucks have replaced "beasts of burden." Again, many thanks Ed.

[Anonymous]

Back to SIT. Several of our customers will store their product on our line. It's not exactly SIT, but they know their product is readily available. This goes for products such as plastics, to corn syrup, etc. When they're ready for another car, they'll release an MTY, and ask for another car to be spotted. The customer will generally be notified of what cars we have on line for them.

[edblysard]

Hadnt heard of that explaination for the name, but make more sense than any of the other reasons I have heard. Do you remember where you found this info?
Thanks, Ed

[Anonymous]

To add my 2 cents: I have not seen any storage of coal in cars (thats not to say that it never happens). I worked briefly on the PWR Basin. The only storage that I seen were sets that were not in use due to lower demands by the utilities. I do know that the utilities do however stockpile coal at their plants during non peak usage seasons as a buffer for the peak seasons......

[Anonymous]

Ed I have to agree with you on them coal trains even if they are slow and more often underpowered at .4-.6 horsepower per ton both the BNSF and UP likes to keep them moving as they pay more revenue than the intermodle on the BNSF here in Illinois the average coal train is 125 cars with some of them having 140 with only (2) SD70MAC`S pulling or in the case of dp pushing and pulling I also bet the empty hopper`s have the same priorty I know they do on BNSF as soon as we coppy the track warrent we give the dispatcher our fuel readings and he ok to run track speed. Up here on the territories that i run on we have some SIT tracks used to store empty tank cars for cargill for corn syrup and alchol. Rodney conductor BNSF

[Anonymous]

A team track is a public siding open to anyone receiving a shipment by rail that can be unloaded at that spot. The most common example would be a station house track. That is the siding off the main or branch that is near a local station or where one used to be. It is correct as one of the other posts here mentioned that the name come from the teams of mules or horses used to pull freight wagons. Also, a teamster is one who loaded and unleaded the wagons and drove the mule or horse teams. These were much more common at the turn of the 20th century than the 21st.
This whole topic is bordering on demurrage and storage charges as well as various types of switching (interplant, intraplant, inter terminal, intra terminal, etc.) Like many other railroad topics, this can get pretty involved and it could be a yawner for you. But, if you'd like to open this up, respond and I'll kick it off.

[edblysard]

Hey Rodney,
We have a plant down here that ships molasses and peanut oil, they ship them overseas somewhere. They have their own yard next to their dock on the ship channel. During the day, when its hot outside, you just about cant stand downwind of this place, that smell of molasses, mixed with peanuts will put you off pancakes for a long time..

[edblysard]

Do it.
As a terminal road that switches a lot of industries, we charge for inter and intra plant switches, and inter/intra yard moves. Let the people intrested see just how much money a railroad can generate. Its funny, but my salary, and the salaries of my engineer and helper, plus the cost of our health insurance are "paid for" with the first track we switch.
Ed

[edblysard]

Forgot to add that we weigh cars also, at $500.00 a pop. So you can see what weighing a 100 car train generates in revenue. Even when you consider your capitol expenses and payroll, the money is there. And it only takes about 30 minutes to weigh one.

[Anonymous]

OK Ed, tell you what...Since even the briefest of summaries on the topic of switching, demurrage and storage and as you pointed out, weighing, goes into some detail, I'm going to open a new topic and call it "Misc RR Revenue". That way, if anyone wants to continue with SIT they can without slogging through this other stuff. As always, I look forward to others' points of view, especially those of train crews, since they do the actual work. I'm going to try to keep it brief and not bore everyone to tears...will use multiple posts to the topic. That gives all those interested a chance to comment along the way.
gdc

[Anonymous]

Ed, I spoke to several buyer's who work for several plastic mold injector manufacture's here in the Northern Chicago area. They had some interesting things to say about SIT. First, they love it. It gets the manufacturer as close to just in time as you can get.Plastic mold companies do not want to store pellets either. When they go for a build of a perticular item they inform Phillips about 10 day's in advance. (It takes about 10 days to get it from Houston Texas to Chicago on the U.P.). I asked them how much of the plastic they buy comes from Texas.Surprisingly they told me less then half.
They buy most of there plastic out East.They would love to buy more from the SIT companies BUT it seems that several years ago when everyone was buying plastic down south the Railroads down there got broken.Instead of taking 10 day's to get plastic out of Houston it was taking 2 months.Alot of the molding companies got burned and lost contracts because they couldn't get pellets. Alot of plastic's companies went out East to get there material at a higher price for they have to help the pellet manufacter's off set the retool costs. They did say that the source of this problem is slowly starting to get there act right with some respectable delivery times out of Houston.(This source is a major Railroad and I do not wi***o offend anyone.) All the buyers said that SIT is the way to go for all railroads.
Thank you again for the education!! TIM A

[moelarrycurly4]

Hey Ed What Switching RR do you work for I used to live in Houston and I am very familiar with things there. HB&T changed names and or owners did they not? ( well I guess since the owning raods went down to two that would answer my own question) Is Port Terminal still around?

[edblysard]

Hi there,
The HBT was disolved, and the northern side went to UP, the south to BNSF.If you drew a line diagonaly from the northwest to the southeast straight acroos Houston, Up on the right, BN on the left.HBT was a joint venture, owned by the member lines.
And you bet, PTRA, (Port Terminal) is still here, that where I work, in North Yard, clinton at wayside drive. Setagast, Englewood, East yard, Hardy street repair shop, Booth and Basin yard are all UP now. BN has both the New and Old South Yards. And Union Station is now a baseball staidum, (Enron field).
The building is still there, but its part of a wall of busineses forming the southwest wall of the ball park. Shame...
But the Port isnt owned by the railroads we service. Its land and trackage are owned by the Harris County Navagation District, and it charter is under the Port Authority of Houston. The PTRA is managed by a board of directers, One from each of the current member line, one from: Harris County Navagation Distric, Port Authority of Houston, City of Houston and the President of the PTRA, who is appointed by the Board. It has over 400 miles of line, most is industry trackage, 32 miles of "running rail" and three small yards, Penn City yard, American Yard, and Old City yard, plus two major yards, Pasadena Yard on the South Side of the Ship Channel, and North Yard, on the north side, at the edge of the ship channel turning basin. North Yard is also our "home terminal. We been there since 1924.It has it own web site if you want more info and pictures, type PTRA in your search.
Take it easy..
Ed

[moelarrycurly4]

I am very familiar with Wayside at Clinton.
Englewood and such. I used to take pictures at Englewood and would get kicked off the property. (i just could not stand in the parking lot SP was nice about it. I could stand on the road.)

Yes it is a shame that Union Station became the ball field. I can remeber that a model railroad group had a big layout in Union Station. I think they moved to Manvel.

I used to live in Pearland on the (SF) BNSF line.

Thanks for the info.

Moe

[edblysard]

Well, Up now has a connection from setagast to east yard and to the old TNO main, and the small yard behind hardy repair shop is gone, hope you took photos..the only passenger station is the old sp at washington, an amshack now. Still has the passanger car yard behind the post office though, the circus train uses it each year.
The passenger yard at union station is gone, it left feild now ,and congress yard is gone too. They even pulled up the old HNS traction/trolly tracks around downtown. Good thing is they are laying a light rail line from the medical center down main to old hwy 90 at 610 loop.
Have a good one, Moe,
Ed

[cabforward]

i read your discussion abot sit and saw the 'team track' explanation.. as you are in houston, and my interurban experiences came from there, i want to mention that i thought team track was a designation for the mow team that was responsible for a stretch of track.. in houston, there is an intersection of market st. and sheffield rd.. during the interurban era, a sign was posted, 'sheffield road team track'.. your description fits what was there, the siding, etc.. another myth blown to pieces..

[edblysard]

Hi Train,
From my experience, on small roads, like HNS, or the PTRA where I work, the MOW crews bring their equipment back to the yard each day. We have a short track behind the roundhouse where they park them. On larger roads, it would make little economic sense in terms of fuel, wages and time to bring all the equipment back, so the MOW crews get the use of a siding, tie down all their machines, lock the switches fro the siding, and cab back to the terminal. The equipment will remain out in the field untill the work is done. Thats why you sometimes see a lot of MOW equipment in the same siding night after night. Sorry about the myth....
Ed