Shenandoa Valley pipe dream

[E.M. Bell]

I dont really put much stock into all of this high speed rail crap, but they do seem to spend a lot of money on pretty pictures...which in my opinion is about as far as it will ever go..

check out the NS AEM7...

http://www.railsolution.org/News/what-s-new/craig-thorpe-lithograph.html

[VirginiaSouthern]

It is indeed an interesting looking litho.  Certainly not something I see happening anytime soon though.

[steveiez]

You hit that one on the head. Just get the trains back to the steam era speeds anf that will be enough!

[JCagle]

Anybody else notice the pigs have the truck on there too? If they were going to take some liberties like that why couldn't they have come up with a color other than black for an NS locomotive lol.

[Ed Fury]

Running passenger trains in and out of Norfolk on the Norfolk Southern rails not only is great PR but if done right might actually make money.

As for freight all they have to do is follow Uncle Pete's example and park the Amtrak in a siding so their hotshot Z trains can fly on by. Freight still arrives on time and the passengers are just happy to have train service again after 34/35 years.

[steveiez]

To put a train on from Roanoke is a waste of money! There are many other so called corridors that could use a passenger train other than Roanoke. This is the problem with Amtrak...it is a government run railroad, and will always act like a government agency. However, since the railroads have no interest in running passenger...we are stuck with Amtrak.

Don't get me wrong...we need passenger trains. Amtrak employee's really give it their best shot. It will be however a bland, homogenized version of rail service.

[Khartoum]

So are we going to burn coal or build nuke plants to power all of these new electric trains?

[steveiez]

So are we going to burn coal or build nuke plants to power all of these new electric trains?

The enviro weenies have not figured that part out yet!

[Conrail Tweety]

Anybody else notice the pigs have the truck on there too? If they were going to take some liberties like that why couldn't they have come up with a color other than black for an NS locomotive lol.

Not an artistic liberty at all. Truck and trailer and driver on flatcar is the plan for the future.

There are fixed costs of truck and trailer ownership that must be paid regardless of how many miles the truck moves cargo per year. Loan payments, insurance, apportioned plates, cargo permits, property taxes, company support infrastructure, employee benefits etc. The more cargo miles per year a truck can haul, the lower the cost per mile for these fixed costs. The truck only generates revenue when cargo is moving. Time parked and deadhead miles generate no revenue, yet fixed costs of ownership continue during those non-revenue phases of operation.

Under the visionary plans, the truck, trailer, driver, and freight all continue to move while the driver is off duty between workdays. The driver sleeps while on the train. In theory, this will increase the productivity of the equipment and driver, and reduce long-haul transit times. Kind of like the extended miles a team can cover, but with one less driver to compensate.

The consumable costs per mile of driving, such as fuel, oil, tires, driver pay, depletion of equipment, highway operational risks, etc. will cease during the phase where the truck rides the train, yet the truck still generates revenue because the cargo is still in motion.

Nice theory, but I don't see it being practical as far as scheduling goes, especially for JIT loads. Drivers (other than team drivers) may not get adequate rest if they are unaccustomed to sleeping while in motion.

DOT Hours of Service Rules require a ten-hour break between workdays for drivers, and eight of those hours must be continuously logged as either "off duty not driving" or "sleeper berth". So the train leg of the trip would need to be almost exactly eight hours between transloading points.

A driver is allowed to drive 11 hours as "on duty driving", but must stop driving 14 hours after going "on duty" regardless of how much driving was actually done. Any time spent with the parking brake is released must be logged as "on duty driving" (except safety inspections). The Qualcomm records when the engine is started/stopped, and when the parking brake is released/applied, and this must match the driver log during an audit.

A driver must stop driving when his combined "on duty not driving" and "on duty driving" time reaches sixty hours in seven days or seventy hours in eight days.

The time spent driving onto the train, and driving off the train would technically need to be logged as "on duty driving". If a driver outlaws on his 14, 60, or 70-hour clock while waiting to transload, the driver couldn't go "on duty driving" to transload until after completing a legal rest period. Most companies don't allow anyone other than their employees to operate their equipment while under dispatch, so nobody else could transload the truck while the driver is outlawed. If a driver needs to change his duty status during his 8-hour break, then the 8-hour break must be started all over again and be completed before he can drive again.

Most OTR drivers are paid per mile driven based on the distance between their pickup and delivery, and they don't get any pay while the parking brake is set. So any time spent waiting to transload would be unpaid.

In order for this new scheme of hauling trucks to work, there would need to be revisions to DOT Hours of Service Rules, and customary company practices would need to be changed. The time spent waiting to get on the train would need to be a small percentage of the driver's workday to be practical. The driver's pay structure would need to be revised to prevent a reduction in driver earnings caused by down time waiting to transload.

I apologize for the length of this post, but it is a full load and I can sleep while it makes its way to your screen.

Dennis

[JCagle]

It would seem like the loading and unloading of trucks would take longer than it would to simply run the containers. It would seem to me that the companies could maximize profits by doing away with the over the road long distance fleet where it was possible and have fewer drivers making more trips over shorter distances where they could deliver several containers in a day than hauling one container 500 miles.

Since a lot of drivers are paid by the mile wouldn't that also mean they would have a reduced "train transport rate" while on the train and then the company is still paying to have the truck shipped as well as paying a driver to sit there.

I wouldn't think the railroads would like having passengers in trucks on their trains since they would have to carry more insurance. After all how many containers have ever filed a lawsuit after a grade crossing accident or derailment bumped them around while on a train?

[Conrail Tweety]

It would seem like the loading and unloading of trucks would take longer than it would to simply run the containers.

The trucks being ferried by rail would be non-containerized loads such as dry vans, flatbeds, curtain-sides, autohauls, tankers, etc.

Highway weight exceptions only apply to import/export container shipments. There are no highway weight exceptions for domestic containers, and their empty weight with a chassis is more than an equivalent dry van trailer. A dry van trailer can haul more weight than a domestic container. There are many domestic shipments that are in no way practical to be containerized, and there are many trailer types that can't be lifted for TOFC runs.

Since a lot of drivers are paid by the mile wouldn't that also mean they would have a reduced "train transport rate" while on the train and then the company is still paying to have the truck shipped as well as paying a driver to sit there.

The concept of ferrying trucks is to keep the freight moving while the driver is off-duty resting. This is unpaid time already. At the point when the rest period is over but the truck is still on the train, then driver compensation should start again.

I wouldn't think the railroads would like having passengers in trucks on their trains since they would have to carry more insurance. After all how many containers have ever filed a lawsuit after a grade crossing accident or derailment bumped them around while on a train?

It is still being discussed as to whether a sleeper car will be used or to allow the drivers to sleep in their trucks.

A sleeper car at the rear of the train would probably be the safest and quietest place, but the slack action back there could give a rough ride.

I would expect trains dedicated to truck ferry duty would be designed with couplers and brakes similar to passenger trains, to limit slack action and allow partial brake releases. Also I expect the securement methods would be the same or similar to what is currently used on TTUX Uni-Levels as shown in the last video here:
http://www.ttx.com/Equipment/listingtype/automotive/uni-level/unilevel-videos-eng.aspx

It would be essential that all trucks face the direction of high-speed travel. If they faced backward, then the wind could destroy the aerodynamic devices on the trucks and trailers.

Dennis

[Conrail Tweety]

It would seem to me that the companies could maximize profits by doing away with the over the road long distance fleet where it was possible and have fewer drivers making more trips over shorter distances where they could deliver several containers in a day than hauling one container 500 miles.

JBHunt owns 43,000 intermodal containers. In 2010, JBHunt had over one million intermodal shipments, or about two new intermodal loads every minute 24/7/365.
http://www.truckinginfo.com/news/news-detail.asp?news_id=72399

Dennis

[Michael Knight]

It would seem like the loading and unloading of trucks would take longer than it would to simply run the containers. It would seem to me that the companies could maximize profits by doing away with the over the road long distance fleet where it was possible and have fewer drivers making more trips over shorter distances where they could deliver several containers in a day than hauling one container 500 miles.

You hit the nail on the head, J. Cagle. That's exactly where trucking of the future is headed, and it's where truck/rail intermodal transportation is heading too. Domestic truck traffic is being shifted to domestic container service, where 53' containers are the standard. Driver shortages, combined with the 2004 and the currently proposed, potentially more restrictive, hours-of-service (HOS) regulations, fuel price volatility, and emissions restrictions are making it not only economical but also practical for the long-haul movement to be handled by rail. As the players in trucking have become larger, they are able to maintain local or regional drivers throughout their networks that handle the "final mile" of the journey, picking up and dropping off containers at the rail facility at minimum expense as these drivers are often able to handle multiple loads per week--or in the case of drayage to and from the rail yard, many loads/trips per shift. From a driver retention standpoint, this practice is more lucrative given that drivers are home more often. Even in cases where truck freight never leaves the highway, it is becoming increasingly common for the load to be handed off to another driver at some mid-point terminal in the country where transcontinental truck freight is concerned.

That said, the railroads are all about maximizing efficiency, capacity, and equipment utilization themselves, which is why loads shifted from the highways will be increasingly double-stacked and nothing more.