Posted on 05/10/2022 4:03:57 PM PDT by Intar
Just curious but why do it this way? Why not just run 3 separate trains at ~5,270 feet each?
Fully automated shorter trains.
Kinda like packet switching.
TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY PETE is home breast feeding his baby, shortage of Enfamil.
Unmanned engines.
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Mookbark
“Just curious but why do it this way? Why not just run 3 separate trains at ~5,270 feet each?”
Apparently it is less costly. Linked below is a 2019 article in Trains magazine about Warren Buffett studying Precision Railroad Scheduling (PSF), at rival Union Pacific, for his Burlington Northern Railroad.
Here is another article about PSF and other cost reduction programs at US railroads.
https://www.breakthroughfuel.com/blog/precision-scheduled-railroading/
The railroad business model is built on enormous economies of scale. You can move 5+ truckloads of a typical commodity in a single railcar. Now multiply that railcar by 150 cars in a train, and you have the equivalent of more than 750 truckloads of freight handled by a single crew.
BNSF refused to adopt PSR - Warren Buffet still knows how to run a business.
We need the rent is too damn high guy to say....the trains are too damn long
Interesting article. Thanks for posting. Imagine a three mile train coming down a hill and trying to stop. Crazy.
I'm not going to accuse him of misrepresenting anything, but I fail to see how the practice of "precision scheduled railroading" (PSR) has anything to do with the length of the trains these railroads are running. If anything, the whole system has gotten more efficient and the railroad supply chain has become more streamlined by eliminating classification moves in intermediate rail yards between ends of a haul.
In a nutshell ... the trains can be longer because the locomotives at the front of it don't pull or brake the entire train. They are supplemented by additional locomotives in the middle of the train that help pull and brake the train. This kind of arrangement used to be seen only in mountainous areas where trains needed to climb steep grades. Now it's being used all over the place.
When your business model is entirely based on hiring as few people as possible . . .
there aren’t many trains on hills here in the east. (out west i don’t know) They are usually built along river banks.
PSR actually stands for Precision Scheduled Railroad. HOS is a very real problem with these longer trains. Fatigue causes the operators to make mistakes, and mistakes can be very costly. Particularly when hauling something like anhydrous ammonia or chlorine, both of which were mentioned by the author.
BNSF refused to adopt PSR. They’re still running trains that the crews can handle without exceeding HOS. I realize this is the sort of thing a Democrat says all the time, but community interests have to be balanced against private interests.
Ah, that actually makes sense. So the controls for the other engines are located in a single locomotive.
Works fine until there is a communications failure.
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