futuremodal wrote: owlsroost wrote: Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries. In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases). That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost. Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished. By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's. The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold. Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road. The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper. It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls.
owlsroost wrote: Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries. In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases).
Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries.
In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases).
That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost. Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished. By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's. The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold. Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road. The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper.
It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls.
Boy Dave, you contradict yourself more all the time. First you say that railroads are suffering from terminal time losses causing the average trip speed to be low. Then you state that railroads need to signifcantly increase the speed between terminals to increase average trip speed. Unfortunately, the terminals are causing these delays because of the bottlenecks at this point, and increasing speeds between terminals would cause a larger backup of traffic, increasing the bottleneck. Any tain that has to go through these terminals is going to lose time, and the worse the bottleneck, the more time lost. So even if they travel 100 MPH between terminals, the increase in terminal time is going to cut the average speed down until the problem of therminal time is cured.
And that's not even taking into consideration the increased maintenance and construction costs of building and maintaining the rails and rolling stock to allow these speeds. An additional increase in costs, and price to the shipper.
daveklepper wrote:Are not their any ports with tracks on the docks allowing direct to rail movement of containers? It would seem the a ship unloading to a dock filled with flat cars and locomotives to pull one string out and replace with additional empties anbd then to replace it with the loads intended for the ship would be a great way to reduce port time for ships. Is anybody doing this outside of one port in Israel?
That's a good point, and one in which the Europeans have a big advantage over the North American railroads. Clearance restrictions on European railways prevent double stacking, so it all goes single stack. Ironically, single stack is easier than double stack to facilitate direct ship to rail container transload, in that container weights don't have to be considered. On ships and US double stack consists, the heavy containers are on the bottom and lighter ones one top. The first portion of containers unloaded from a ship are the lighter ones, while the last portion are heavier, so to load from ship to a double stack consist would require all those lighter containers to be put aside somewhere until the heavier containers were reached, wherein the heavier containers would be loaded directly from ship to the bottom of the wellcar, then all those lighter containers would have to be brought back from where they were temporarily stored and then placed in the upper position of the wellcar. After all that, it just isn't worth the hassle for NA ports to try and facilitate direct ship to rail loading.
There was some talk a few years ago in which containers of similar weights would be kept interlocked together, and then both containers transloaded from ship to double stack well cars in one move. Logistically, this is very hard to accomplish, since container weights are not a constant that can be relied upon.
Ideally, for our European example, the containers would be loaded directly from ship onto RailRunner bi-modal chassis....
http://www.railrunner.com/
......already connected in rail mode, then railed to the eventual regional distribution city, wherein the chassis are disconnected from the rail bogey and trucked to the final destination. This way is both the quickest way to get the goods from ship to consumer, and the cheapest as well. RailRunner terminal modal transfer times average a few minutes per chassis, and depending on how many trucks are available and waiting, the whole consist can go from rail to road in as little as half an hour. And the rail to road terminal area can be just about anywhere with no need for a lot of terminal equipment, all you need is one free siding and a few loads of gravel over the siding to allow the trucks to hook up to each chassis.
TomDiehl wrote: futuremodal wrote: owlsroost wrote: Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries. In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases). That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost. Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished. By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's. The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold. Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road. The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper. It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls. Boy Dave, you contradict yourself more all the time. First you say that railroads are suffering from terminal time losses causing the average trip speed to be low. Then you state that railroads need to signifcantly increase the speed between terminals to increase average trip speed. Unfortunately, the terminals are causing these delays because of the bottlenecks at this point, and increasing speeds between terminals would cause a larger backup of traffic, increasing the bottleneck. Any tain that has to go through these terminals is going to lose time, and the worse the bottleneck, the more time lost. So even if they travel 100 MPH between terminals, the increase in terminal time is going to cut the average speed down until the problem of therminal time is cured. And that's not even taking into consideration the increased maintenance and construction costs of building and maintaining the rails and rolling stock to allow these speeds. An additional increase in costs, and price to the shipper.
Tom, Tom, Tom, we've explained this to you before. "Terminal time delay" refers to the amount of time it takes to physically load/unload cargo from rail to road and vis versa. Over the road trucks do not have this inherent intermodal delay factor, which is the one big advantage they have over rail. For rail to overcome this delay, one needs to increase the transit speed between terminals to the extent where the time saved during transit offsets the time cost of terminal transloading.
European railroads don't have an overabundance of freight on rail anyway, so your theory of terminal congestion due to increases transit speeds has even less merit than usual. It's a simplistic take, one that is not backed up by factual evidence. You seem to assume that all trains will arrive at the same time, forgetting that arrivals and departures are intermittent throughout the 24 hour day. Unless the fast freights are arriving one right after the other on top of each other, there is more than enough time between arrivals to get the transloading completed and the next train released before the next one arrives. Fluidity of terminal operations is enhanced by faster transit speeds, and conversely is degraded by slower transit speeds.
futuremodal wrote: owlsroost wrote: Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries. In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases). That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost.
That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost.
It's also a monetary cost. Cranes are very expensive and they have a finite lifespan.
Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished. By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's. The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold.
Yes, that is one determinant, there are many others.
Another is that as distances dock to dock get shorter the dray distance from dock to rail terminal, and from the other rail terminal to the receiving dock can become longer than the dock to dock distance. I think you would agree that the railroad is done at that point.
Let me cite others, lets take the case of the UK.
First off, the locomotive costs more than the tractor portion of the truck, second train paths have a basic cost, to which is added additional fees depending on factors such as weight and how hard they are on the track. Next you add for each freight car, now in the case of freight cars, the charge is based on the weight and number of axles, but you can get discounts for using trucks that lower the force on the track. Next your Train Driver (UK terminology) costs more than a truck driver. Enough for now. Now you have to balance these factors out.
Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road. The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper.
Let's take a hypothetical UK case, we'll use a maritime container and say that both the trucker and the railroad start out at the same point. The trucker has to go 100 miles with his container the train also has to go 100 miles, but the container then has to be trucked a further 10 miles to the customer. Further we will say that the train will load thirty containers and the trucker will get the 16th container unloaded,about as fair as you can get. So lets say that the train now has 15 on board and the trucker gets his container. Trucker departs, train takes 30 minutes to load its remaining containers and then it departs. Let's say the trucker averages 30 mph, It will take him 3 hours and 20 minutes to deliver his container. The train departs 30 minutes after the trucker. Let's say the train can average 45 mph. (It will hit 75mph). The train runs 2 hours 20 minutes. Let's say the right container is the 15th unloaded, 30 minutes after the train arrives, the trucker just arrived at the customer. The Railways container is still 10 miles away. My average train speed is probably a bit too high, to raise the average speed on such a short journey may require raising top speed to 90 mph. And there is another kicker not yet mentioned, the train was fully loaded at 2:00pm, the trains pathed departure time is at 2:20pm. So it can't leave for a further 20 minutes.
beaulieu wrote: futuremodal wrote: owlsroost wrote: Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries. In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases). That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost. It's also a monetary cost. Cranes are very expensive and they have a finite lifespan. Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished. By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's. The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold. Yes, that is one determinant, there are many others. Another is that as distances dock to dock get shorter the dray distance from dock to rail terminal, and from the other rail terminal to the receiving dock can become longer than the dock to dock distance. I think you would agree that the railroad is done at that point. Let me cite others, lets take the case of the UK. First off, the locomotive costs more than the tractor portion of the truck, second train paths have a basic cost, to which is added additional fees depending on factors such as weight and how hard they are on the track. Next you add for each freight car, now in the case of freight cars, the charge is based on the weight and number of axles, but you can get discounts for using trucks that lower the force on the track. Next your Train Driver (UK terminology) costs more than a truck driver. Enough for now. Now you have to balance these factors out. Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road. The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper. Let's take a hypothetical UK case, we'll use a maritime container and say that both the trucker and the railroad start out at the same point. The trucker has to go 100 miles with his container the train also has to go 100 miles, but the container then has to be trucked a further 10 miles to the customer. Further we will say that the train will load thirty containers and the trucker will get the 16th container unloaded,about as fair as you can get. So lets say that the train now has 15 on board and the trucker gets his container. Trucker departs, train takes 30 minutes to load its remaining containers and then it departs. Let's say the trucker averages 30 mph, It will take him 3 hours and 20 minutes to deliver his container. The train departs 30 minutes after the trucker. Let's say the train can average 45 mph. (It will hit 75mph). The train runs 2 hours 20 minutes. Let's say the right container is the 15th unloaded, 30 minutes after the train arrives, the trucker just arrived at the customer. The Railways container is still 10 miles away. My average train speed is probably a bit too high, to raise the average speed on such a short journey may require raising top speed to 90 mph. And there is another kicker not yet mentioned, the train was fully loaded at 2:00pm, the trains pathed departure time is at 2:20pm. So it can't leave for a further 20 minutes. It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls.
I would expect that the train in this example is a night freight or midday freight to avoid the morning and evening commuter rush. But let's also say we're using single stack bi-modal technology like RailRunner, and the port is using direct ship to rail container transloading. Now we have two time mitigating factors in favor of rail - (1)usually a container is unloaded onto a chassis which is then parked where the trucker can then hook on, or the container is lifted to a dockside stack and then later is lifted onto the over the road chassis or railcar. With direct ship to rail, the railway is able to bypass certain interport drayage activities, and although it is concievable to do the same for the over the road trucker, most ports don't want the over the road trucker driving around dockside, so his load is first handled by the longshore employee to the transfer area. Perhaps we've just saved 30 minutes over the over the road trucker by utilizing direct ship to rail container transfer. (2) With the RailRunner technology, when the train arrives at the destination terminal, there is no need to remove the containers one by
Beaulieu - It's no good, my friend.
I more or less explained this to FM on the BR operations thread several months ago, but still the arguement appears.
I've been keeping out of this until now (so has Hugh Jampton, who is very qualified to provide compelling arguments.)
Folks - the pivotal point is SCALE.
I am an unabashed Socialist. I would have found myself in prison in 50's America but I believe in open access in Europe because IT WORKS.
What needs to be understood is the population density, a consideration sadly lacking from this this thread. My postcode (zipcode) is BD2 1EA. Look it up on Google Earth.
Now - the closest station to me is Frizinghall - about .75 of a mile away. Have a look, if you would, at all the industries you can see, as well as residential property, within a two mile radius of my home.
Britain - and virtually everywhere else in Europe - can provide an intensive and cost effective passenger rail network because of the sheer number of people who turn to mass transportation, either through socio -economic necessity or to avoid the congestion that you can doubtless imagine on the road network.
Surely the very best way to serve such a large and willing market is to present them with a choice of transportation providers so that the consumer can make an informed decision. OK, we have'nt got to that stage nationally yet but there is the principle.
My local station sees six trains an hour, all day until the dead of night. Market economies say that this MUST be a viable station - who would provide such a frequency for a dead loss.
futuremodal wrote: TomDiehl wrote: futuremodal wrote: owlsroost wrote: Why can't all rail consists move at the same speed? More to the point, why not make all rail traffic move at the same speed, to avoid unidirectional congestion? I know part of it is to optimize fuel economy on tonnage moves, but even with lower fuel economy by having to increase the hp to t ratio, it's still preferable to not moving the tonnage by rail at all, e.g. back on the mode of last resort aka trucks nee lorries. In Europe, this would basically mean having freight trains with the performance of passenger trains - it's possible, but the extra equipment and energy costs would push up rail freight rates to the point where the truckers would be laughing all the way to the bank. A few shippers might be willing to pay the extra for few hours off the transit time, but most wouldn't (over the short distances - up to a few hundred miles - that most freight moves in Europe, trucking is already faster and cheaper door-to-door in many cases). That's an interesting take. In most cases, the ability of a railroad to increase it's average train speed is the key in drawing freight off the roads. The only real advantage trucks have over rail is the ability to go dock to dock, whilst railroads need to transload between rail cars and trucks at terminals, or add/remove trailers or containers at the terminal, e.g. an inherent time cost. Thus, the usual approach is to focus on trip length, because the longer the haul, the greater ability of the railroads to overcome the inherent terminal delay as the impact of the time differential is diminished. By increasing train speed, preferably to a significant degree over corresponding road trip times, the terminal time cost is overcome at some distance threshold, a break-even point if you will where the trip length turns from the trucker's favor to the railroad's. The faster the rail trip, the shorter the distance threshold. Therefore, it is possible for mostly short haul country like Great Britain to move certain types of freight by rail within the nation's borders, if that inherent terminal delay can be overcome by raw speed to a point where it is faster yet still more economical to ship a container or trailer by rail than by over the road. The economies of scale germaine to railroad technology should still be enough to outweigh a surmised increase in costs associated with freight moving at passenger speeds and overcome over the road shipper. It should be noted that in the US and Canada there is a healthy TOFC and domestic COFC trade over the long haul, but because of the North American railroads's embarrassing average velocity numbers (even for intermodal) our railroads are way behind the curve in drawing freight off the roads for the medium and short haul corridors as well as those time sensitive long hauls. Boy Dave, you contradict yourself more all the time. First you say that railroads are suffering from terminal time losses causing the average trip speed to be low. Then you state that railroads need to signifcantly increase the speed between terminals to increase average trip speed. Unfortunately, the terminals are causing these delays because of the bottlenecks at this point, and increasing speeds between terminals would cause a larger backup of traffic, increasing the bottleneck. Any tain that has to go through these terminals is going to lose time, and the worse the bottleneck, the more time lost. So even if they travel 100 MPH between terminals, the increase in terminal time is going to cut the average speed down until the problem of therminal time is cured. And that's not even taking into consideration the increased maintenance and construction costs of building and maintaining the rails and rolling stock to allow these speeds. An additional increase in costs, and price to the shipper. Tom, Tom, Tom, we've explained this to you before. "Terminal time delay" refers to the amount of time it takes to physically load/unload cargo from rail to road and vis versa. Over the road trucks do not have this inherent intermodal delay factor, which is the one big advantage they have over rail. For rail to overcome this delay, one needs to increase the transit speed between terminals to the extent where the time saved during transit offsets the time cost of terminal transloading. European railroads don't have an overabundance of freight on rail anyway, so your theory of terminal congestion due to increases transit speeds has even less merit than usual. It's a simplistic take, one that is not backed up by factual evidence. You seem to assume that all trains will arrive at the same time, forgetting that arrivals and departures are intermittent throughout the 24 hour day. Unless the fast freights are arriving one right after the other on top of each other, there is more than enough time between arrivals to get the transloading completed and the next train released before the next one arrives. Fluidity of terminal operations is enhanced by faster transit speeds, and conversely is degraded by slower transit speeds.
Dave, Dave, Dave, "terminal delay time," as you're using it, only applies to through or unit trains with a short enough run that they need no servicing enroute. Any fueling stop, change of crew, inspection, or other servicing, is "terminal delay time." Over the road trucks DO have the same thing especially if the run is over 12 hours. Simply running them faster between these points will cause a build up of trains waiting to be serviced. The time required for all this servicing must be shortened before any gains will be realized in terms of speed from one end of the run to the other.
To make things a bit more "simplistic" for you, a train travelling 500 miles between servicing stops at 50 MPH will require 10 hours end to end. A train travelling 100 MPH will require 5 hours. If the servicing terminal can't handle more trains per day, the 5 hour gain will be lost waiting for the their turn at the diesel pumps.
Since I never mentined anything about European railroads, I don't see how the entire second paragraph has anything to do with this.
Simon Reed wrote:Beaulieu - It's no good, my friend. I more or less explained this to FM on the BR operations thread several months ago, but still the arguement appears. I've been keeping out of this until now (so has Hugh Jampton, who is very qualified to provide compelling arguments.) Folks - the pivotal point is SCALE. I am an unabashed Socialist. I would have found myself in prison in 50's America but I believe in open access in Europe because IT WORKS. What needs to be understood is the population density, a consideration sadly lacking from this this thread. My postcode (zipcode) is BD2 1EA. Look it up on Google Earth. Now - the closest station to me is Frizinghall - about .75 of a mile away. Have a look, if you would, at all the industries you can see, as well as residential property, within a two mile radius of my home. Britain - and virtually everywhere else in Europe - can provide an intensive and cost effective passenger rail network because of the sheer number of people who turn to mass transportation, either through socio -economic necessity or to avoid the congestion that you can doubtless imagine on the road network. Surely the very best way to serve such a large and willing market is to present them with a choice of transportation providers so that the consumer can make an informed decision. OK, we have'nt got to that stage nationally yet but there is the principle. My local station sees six trains an hour, all day until the dead of night. Market economies say that this MUST be a viable station - who would provide such a frequency for a dead loss.
Simon Reed wrote: What needs to be understood is the population density, a consideration sadly lacking from this this thread.
What needs to be understood is the population density, a consideration sadly lacking from this this thread.
I tried to bring it into play, but someone jumped all over me for it.
Bert
An "expensive model collector"
Two types of bimodal equipment have been tested in Europe: Combitrailer and Road-Railer. AFAIK, neither has been a breakthrough. Perhaps, that is due to the European railroads inability to adopt one technology. Combitrailers and Road-Railers are not compatible.
beaulieu wrote: daveklepper wrote:Are not their any ports with tracks on the docks allowing direct to rail movement of containers? It would seem the a ship unloading to a dock filled with flat cars and locomotives to pull one string out and replace with additional empties anbd then to replace it with the loads intended for the ship would be a great way to reduce port time for ships. Is anybody doing this outside of one port in Israel?Let's take a large 6,000 TEU container ship arriving at Rotterdam Maasvlakte terminal. It left Asia with a full load, stopped at Antwerp and unloaded 1000 containers, and loaded 500 empties. Lets say it plans on unloading 2,000 of those containers here at Rotterdam. Of those containers 300 are for various destinations in the Netherlands, 800 for locations in Germany, 200 for Poland, 300, for Austria, 100 for Switzerland, and 300 for Italy. Lightest containers are on top, heaviest on the bottom,some of the Antwerp empties will have to be unloaded then reloaded. The container train can take 80 TEU, and you have 4 tracks holding 4 such trains under the cranes. The 4 trains will serve say 6 inland terminals. What are the odds that the first 320 loaded containers off the ship will fill any of the trains, near zero, and since the trains belong to different companies you can't sort the cars, takes too long anyway, much easier to sort the containers. The ship has to be kept in balance so it must be unloaded evenly, also some containers will have to be unloaded and then reloaded to reach the lower containers remember 3,500 containers are not getting off here, but lightest must be on top, very embarassing if the ship capsizes. The cranes movements are carefully planned, even the pile of containers stacked on the ground must be planned so that they can be reloaded in the right order and of course the opportunity is taken to load some containers while others are being unloaded. So even a large port like this does not load directly to train. They use unmanned robots to haul the containers away from the port cranes to holding piles, which correspond to the correct train load or for the trucking companies. In the case of the trains, they use dedicated road-trains consisting of a special tractor pulling 5 trailers each capable of handling 1 40ft. or 2 20ft. containers to get the containers from the holding area to the rail loading terminal. These run over dedicated roadways to the rail terminal, where two Portal cranes load the trains. The ground storage is also necessary because ships are frequently late, and time for the ship alongside the quay is more precious than loading tracks for the trains.
So are you saying you are opposed to the concept of direct ship to rail unloading? That's fine. But if you are insinuating that it's logistically impossible, guess again. This concept has been discussed in recent times in JOC, LT, TW, et al.......
"Direct discharge from vessel onto railroad car, road vehicle or barge with the purpose of immediate transport from the port area."
.....and like all new ideas will probably eventually find a modification that is applicable in practice.
In your example, how long are the 4 dock side tracks? Are they loops or spurs? If each single stack container train is 80 containers max, that's no more than 4,000 ft of train, so if the loop tracks are at least 16,000 ft, you can actually load 8 trains at a time, with two trains sharing each track. And even if you are loading direct from ship to rail, that doesn't preclude standard dockside operations to move around all the containers not bound for immediate outbound rail, e.g. it's not an all or none proposition.
Not sure what your "sulk" comment relates to, but if you think direct container discharge is incompatible as a subject matter for an OA discussion, well it is my belief that direct discharge is one area where competition between rail transporters would spark innovation, and direct discharge is one logical avenue by which a transporter can get a leg up on a competitor.
John,
Thanks for that post. Are there any double stacks at all on the Continent ? Are the wagons all single-well, or are there any 3 and 5 unit wagons like the cars over here ?
nanaimo73 wrote:John, Thanks for that post. Are there any double stacks at all on the Continent ? Are the wagons all single-well, or are there any 3 and 5 unit wagons like the cars over here ?
martin.knoepfel wrote: Two types of bimodal equipment have been tested in Europe: Combitrailer and Road-Railer. AFAIK, neither has been a breakthrough. Perhaps, that is due to the European railroads inability to adopt one technology. Combitrailers and Road-Railers are not compatible.
I suspect it has more to do with the specialist (=expensive) equipment compared to using standard container flats(rail)/skeletal semi-trailers(road) carrying swap-bodies (lightweight containers) for the same traffic. The extra terminal equipment to handle containers compared to bimodal only really amounts to a mobile container crane - basically an oversized fork-lift truck - at it's simplest.
Tony
owlsroost wrote: martin.knoepfel wrote: Two types of bimodal equipment have been tested in Europe: Combitrailer and Road-Railer. AFAIK, neither has been a breakthrough. Perhaps, that is due to the European railroads inability to adopt one technology. Combitrailers and Road-Railers are not compatible. I suspect it has more to do with the specialist (=expensive) equipment compared to using standard container flats(rail)/skeletal semi-trailers(road) carrying swap-bodies (lightweight containers) for the same traffic. The extra terminal equipment to handle containers compared to bimodal only really amounts to a mobile container crane - basically an oversized fork-lift truck - at it's simplest.
I am not familiar with the Combitrailer, the links from a web search either don't work or give sparse information. But the RoadRailers are not container haulers but dry vans and reefers, at least in NA, although there was a Chinese version of RoadRailer called ContainerRailer that was tried out a while back. The RailRunner system is simpler and superior to the RoadRailer technology for moving containers in a bi-modal fashion, and could move swapbodies (the European version of US-style domestic containers?) as easily as ISO containers. The biggest advantage of a RailRunner system in Europe is the ability to create an independent dispersion terminal on the cheap outside the constraints of established inland terminals, so a 3rd party OA operator would not have to conform to any potential restrictions of the public inland terminal.
futuremodal wrote: So are you saying you are opposed to the concept of direct ship to rail unloading? That's fine. But if you are insinuating that it's logistically impossible, guess again. This concept has been discussed in recent times in JOC, LT, TW, et al.......
It's not what I think its what the port does that counts. From preliminary diagrams the railterminal for Maasvlakte 2 will be just like Maasvlakte 1 separate from the port terminal.
"Direct discharge from vessel onto railroad car, road vehicle or barge with the purpose of immediate transport from the port area." .....and like all new ideas will probably eventually find a modification that is applicable in practice.
The railroad operators have zero say in the matter, I don't think any were consulted. All decisions were made by the Port of Rotterdam Authority, and the terminal operator, MPA a subsidiary of Maersk Sealand, soon to be just Maersk.
Tracks are dead-end spurs so that electric locomotives can pull out the trains without the cantenary blocking the loading.
trains are only 700 metres, 2300 ft. the maximum allowed in most of Europe, France and Italy are shorter. Couplings could probably take two sets coupled, depending on the loaded weight. I won't preclude the operators eventually going to better couplers but it isn't a panacea, and no operator is likely to have more than one set at the port at one time.
Dave,
Some figures on rail operations at Rotterdam Maasvlakte based on a recent article in Railmagazine, a Dutch railfan magazine with lots of prototype info ((De Maasvlakte anno 2006, meeuwen, wind en steeds meer containers,Railmagazine 234 pages 44-49).
The operators of the container terminals own the tracks on their property or, if not them, then it is the port of Rotterdam as the owner of the harbor.
Furthermore, one of the terminal operators, ECT (Europe Combined Terminals) grants access to its own terminals, not Pro Rail, the owner of the rest of the tracks. So, it decides if a train goes to the ORT (Oostelijke rail terminal or eastern rail terminal) or RTW (rail terminal west). ORT has 4 tracks but none dockside for direct discharge and a runaround. From a ship the container goes to storage, or on a MTS (multi-trailer-system, 5 chassis coupled together and moved by computer, 10 TEU total capacity). Then it goes to ORT or RTW. Usually the MTS's move close together and a train is (un)loaded quickly. RTW has 7 single end tracks.
The original yard Maasvlakte (or MVT) is used exclusively for coal and ore trains these days. On an avarage day 6 ore, 4 coal 23 container and 1 carload trains leave Maasvlakte. 203 trans in a week. Because almost no trains operate during saturdaynight, trainlength tracks are at a premium then.
West of MVT is the N15 road and west of that is the new container train yard with 18 tracks, MVTW (or Maasvlakte west, Dutch station names generally are shortened by using the first letter of each syllable). Connecting to this track is ORT (reached via a double track below the N15) and RTW and also a new track going further north to Lyondell Bayer (chemical company), DFDS Tor Line (ferry company). In future this line will reach the new Euro Max terminal The APM (Maersk) terminal is reached by MTS from RTW.
Number of containers moved by rail: 1998: 200.000; 2005: 315.000 or an icrease of nearly 60%. It is actually 43% since 2002.
Distribution of market share: rail from 10% to 16%, barge 25 % to 35 % and road 65% to 48%.
Note: if a train is unloaded but will not be loaded at the same time then it is moved to MVTW for storage.
Other customers:
Lyondell Bayer: 5-10 tankcars styrene monomeer (english word for that?) and propyleneoxide.
DFDS Torline: one train (Rail4chem) from Brescia Italy with mostly swap bodies. Ferries to Immingham near Hull England (6/week), Oslo Norway (2/week)
EMO: the ore and coal transloading company transloads about 33 million tons metric. It has one loader for ore trains which means 6 trains (to Dillingen, Saarland, Germany) a day max and 6 million tons a year. Ore is decreasing but coal increasing (closing of steelworks in Europe and closing of coal mines in Germany). There are 4 coal trains a day or 4 million tons a year. A new loader should increase the number of coal trains. The rest moves by barge on the Rhine.
Sources:
www.rolandrail.net
www.dfds.com
www.ect.nl
www.emo.nl
greetings,
Marc Immeker
By the way, if any of you are in the Netherlands during the weekend of september 1, 2 and 3 come visit the world port days and you can check out the operations at Maasvlakte and elsewhere for yourself. You can even get there by steam train! Or visit a refinery, or a container terminal or...
http://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/home/
http://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/news/events/events/worldportday.jsp?query=&event_date_month=2006-09-08&event_specification_type=Recreation
marcimmeker wrote:Dave, Some figures on rail operations at Rotterdam Maasvlakte based on a recent article in Railmagazine, a Dutch railfan magazine with lots of prototype info ((De Maasvlakte anno 2006, meeuwen, wind en steeds meer containers,Railmagazine 234 pages 44-49). The operators of the container terminals own the tracks on their property or, if not them, then it is the port of Rotterdam as the owner of the harbor. Furthermore, one of the terminal operators, ECT (Europe Combined Terminals) grants access to its own terminals, not Pro Rail, the owner of the rest of the tracks. So, it decides if a train goes to the ORT (Oostelijke rail terminal or eastern rail terminal) or RTW (rail terminal west). ORT has 4 tracks but none dockside for direct discharge and a runaround. From a ship the container goes to storage, or on a MTS (multi-trailer-system, 5 chassis coupled together and moved by computer, 10 TEU total capacity). Then it goes to ORT or RTW. Usually the MTS's move close together and a train is (un)loaded quickly. RTW has 7 single end tracks.
The MTSs are not computer controlled, the ACVs are the robots. What Dave doesn't understand is that they looked at direct on dock and rejected the idea as inefficient. The newest idea is called "High Quay" Were the main dock surface is about at the level of the ship's main deck. The idea is to reduce the distance that the container spreader has to move. This is also why they have rejected the idea of direct rail loading, they do not want the spreader having to move that far in traverse.
The original yard Maasvlakte (or MVT) is used exclusively for coal and ore trains these days. On an avarage day 6 ore, 4 coal 23 container and 1 carload trains leave Maasvlakte. 203 trans in a week. Because almost no trains operate during saturdaynight, trainlength tracks are at a premium then. West of MVT is the N15 road and west of that is the new container train yard with 18 tracks, MVTW (or Maasvlakte west, Dutch station names generally are shortened by using the first letter of each syllable). Connecting to this track is ORT (reached via a double track below the N15) and RTW and also a new track going further north to Lyondell Bayer (chemical company), DFDS Tor Line (ferry company). In future this line will reach the new Euro Max terminal The APM (Maersk) terminal is reached by MTS from RTW. Number of containers moved by rail: 1998: 200.000; 2005: 315.000 or an icrease of nearly 60%. It is actually 43% since 2002. Distribution of market share: rail from 10% to 16%, barge 25 % to 35 % and road 65% to 48%. Note: if a train is unloaded but will not be loaded at the same time then it is moved to MVTW for storage. Other customers: Lyondell Bayer: 5-10 tankcars styrene monomeer (english word for that?) and propyleneoxide.
its monomer, drop the extra "e" in English
DFDS Torline: one train (Rail4chem) from Brescia Italy with mostly swap bodies. Ferries to Immingham near Hull England (6/week), Oslo Norway (2/week) EMO: the ore and coal transloading company transloads about 33 million tons metric. It has one loader for ore trains which means 6 trains (to Dillingen, Saarland, Germany) a day max and 6 million tons a year. Ore is decreasing but coal increasing (closing of steelworks in Europe and closing of coal mines in Germany). There are 4 coal trains a day or 4 million tons a year. A new loader should increase the number of coal trains. The rest moves by barge on the Rhine. Sources: www.rolandrail.net www.dfds.com www.ect.nl www.emo.nl greetings, Marc Immeker
The maximum draught is 22.55 meters. I presume this is at high water.
See the website www.portofrotterdem.com/
nanaimo73 wrote:What is the tidal range for the port at Rotterdam ?
marcimmeker wrote:By the way, if any of you are in the Netherlands during the weekend of september 1, 2 and 3 come visit the world port days and you can check out the operations at Maasvlakte and elsewhere for yourself. You can even get there by steam train! Or visit a refinery, or a container terminal or... greetings, Marc Immeker http://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/home/ http://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/news/events/events/worldportday.jsp?query=&event_date_month=2006-09-08&event_specification_type=Recreation
Taking a cue from Simon Reed's contribution, my take on the privatisation/open access situation in the UK is:-
1. Open Access freight is probably the best thing to have happened to rail freight since BR was formed in 1948 - even allowing for economic growth and changing traffic patterns (e.g. power station coal traffic switching to imported coal with longer hauls) it's reversed the relentless decline in rail freight and made it a truly competitive (between operators) business for the first time since 1825.
2. To make open access work, I think you need to separate the infrastructure from the train operators and provide some sort of independant regulator to sort out disputes and keep the playing field fair and level - they got that bit basically right. One thing that seems to have 'matured' since privatisation is the attitudes of operators and Railtrack/Network Rail towards each other when problems happen on a day-to-day basis - they've realised (re-discovered ?) that the railway is a complex system and keeping it running smoothly needs co-operation, not laywers arguing with each other over the fine print in the contracts.
3. The big mistake was setting up Railtrack as a 'virtual' company as far as maintenance was concerned (it was all contracted out), and splintering the ex-BR maintenance function into so many small pieces. All this really achieved was increased costs and a crucial core activity which was far more difficult to control and monitor - and it's taken even more effort/money to put the maintenance function back together under Network Rail.
4. I think open access passenger operations could work here on a larger scale, now that the industry has recovered from the initial 'nuclear explosion' and has (in some cases) re-learnt how to run a railway. The big problem I see is how do you handle socially necessary subsidised services, without the subsidies directly or indirectly contributing to the profits of an open-access operator on the route - the franchise model seems to be the best compromise anyone has come up with so far. One thing to keep in mind is that there is actual competition between operators on some routes e.g. GNER, Virgin and TPE between York and Newcastle (while operators are required to sell and accept operator-agnostic tickets, they are free to sell cheaper operator-specific tickets if they want to, and run more trains than their basic franchise commitment mandates). I think the recent round of franchising changes have been a retrograde step in some cases because they've reduced the competion possibilities e.g. all of the services from Paddington (First Great Western) and Liverpool Street ('one' Railway) are now in the hands of a single operator where before they had different commuter and long-distance operators.
5. I suspect one reason why the politicians didn't want to risk more open access passenger operations at the start is because of earlier experiences when bus operations in most parts of the UK were privatised and de-regulated. It basically went from regulated monopolies through a period of instability (in some cases schedules and routes changing every week, lots of buses on prime routes and very few on others etc - not very useful if that was the only way you had of getting to work etc), then slowly the bigger operators either bought out or forced off the road the smaller ones (by undercutting the fares and/or swamping the route with buses) until we ended up with a different set of regional monopolists - e.g. Stagecoach, First Group and Arriva (sometimes known collectively as the 'bus bandits'). If the bus services in my area are typical, overall they have improved compared to pre-regulation, but things took a long time to settle down and in some cases there is a clear separation between commercial services (basically morning to early evening, mon-sat) and subsidised (run under contract from the local council) services at other times e.g. a different operator.
So, overall - I think it's been a successful experiment (but expensive), and I don't think I'd want to go back to BR - that had it's problems too.
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