Freight Trains and Higher Speed Limits

When investment is made in right-of-way to increase its speed limit to 79, 110, or 125 mph (or whatever), passenger trains benefit for obvious reasons. There are a great many routes in the United States that would benefit from increased speed limits for the sake of corridor trains, but if there were real benefits for freight railroads, wouldn't they have already done such improvements themselves? To what extent do freight trains benefit from such investments? Or do they benefit at all?

Dreezy wrote:When investment is made in right-of-way to increase its speed limit to 79, 110, or 125 mph (or whatever), passenger trains benefit for obvious reasons. To what extent do freight trains benefit from such investments? Or do they benefit at all?

Freight trains don't benefit with the changes made to increase the maximum speeds of passenger trains, grade separations and straighter tracks (wider curves). They will benefit by the changes made to increase the capacity of the corridor, more tracks and better signals. Most higher speed passenger trains proposals involve both kinds of changes.

I've often wondered the same thing.

Given the low, low average speeds of freight moved by rail (taking into account time in yards, etc.), wouldn't significant increases in speed allow railroads to capture higher-margin, time-sensitive freight and allow railroads to charge more for freight?

SouthernRailway wrote:Given the low, low average speeds of freight moved by rail (taking into account time in yards, etc.), wouldn't significant increases in speed allow railroads to capture higher-margin, time-sensitive freight and allow railroads to charge more for freight?

The railroads lost the time sensitive, higher margin freight decades ago to air cargo and highway semi-trailers.

The freight railroads bread and butter now-a-days are transported in hoppers and container rigs.

electricron wrote:

SouthernRailway wrote:Given the low, low average speeds of freight moved by rail (taking into account time in yards, etc.), wouldn't significant increases in speed allow railroads to capture higher-margin, time-sensitive freight and allow railroads to charge more for freight?

The railroads lost the time sensitive, higher margin freight decades ago to air cargo and highway semi-trailers.

The freight railroads bread and butter now-a-days are transported in hoppers and container rigs.

True...but now they're making big bucks by transporting highway semi-trailers on their trains.

Do freight railroads have zero interest in recapturing the lost business of time-sensitive freight?

electricron wrote:

SouthernRailway wrote:Given the low, low average speeds of freight moved by rail (taking into account time in yards, etc.), wouldn't significant increases in speed allow railroads to capture higher-margin, time-sensitive freight and allow railroads to charge more for freight?

The railroads lost the time sensitive, higher margin freight decades ago to air cargo and highway semi-trailers.

The freight railroads bread and butter now-a-days are transported in hoppers and container rigs.

True...but now they're making big bucks by transporting highway semi-trailers on their trains.

Do freight railroads have zero interest in recapturing the lost business of time-sensitive freight?

Passenger railroads had lost super-time-sensitive passenger traffic on a lot of routes to airlines, but now with the HSR revolution, they've won that traffic back. Wouldn't freight railroads love to expand their business in a similar way?

SouthernRailway wrote:True...but now they're making big bucks by transporting highway semi-trailers on their trains.
Do freight railroads have zero interest in recapturing the lost business of time-sensitive freight?

Those semi-trailers on trains aren't carrying time sensitive freight.
To actually be serious about recapturing time-sensitive freight, the freight railroad companies would have to reintroduce station managers and clerks in every town they wish to serve. That would require a facility (depot) where customers could drop off and pick up their time sensitive freight. I don't think the railroads would ever want to provide door to door delivery and pickup. To be effective, every railroad would have to participate to provide a national wide reach. I don't think we'll ever see that reimplemented.

I've seen UPS trailers on trains. Obviously UPS doesn't ship their most time sensitive packages by rail but at least some UPS Ground goes by rail. UPS handles the pick-up and delivery and has a network of UPS stores for retail customers.

electricron wrote:

SouthernRailway wrote:True...but now they're making big bucks by transporting highway semi-trailers on their trains.
Do freight railroads have zero interest in recapturing the lost business of time-sensitive freight?

Those semi-trailers on trains aren't carrying time sensitive freight.
To actually be serious about recapturing time-sensitive freight, the freight railroad companies would have to reintroduce station managers and clerks in every town they wish to serve. That would require a facility (depot) where customers could drop off and pick up their time sensitive freight. I don't think the railroads would ever want to provide door to door delivery and pickup. To be effective, every railroad would have to participate to provide a national wide reach. I don't think we'll ever see that reimplemented.

There is a big market that the railroads are missing: the gap between FedEx-style overnight service or the like and railroads' multi-day delivery times. Even if railroads could speed up delivery by a day or two on long routes, they'd probably be able to recapture a lot of higher-margin business. When I mean "time-sensitive freight", I don't mean FedEx overnight delivery; I mean things that are more time-sensitive than, say, shipping sand.

SouthernRailway wrote:There is a big market that the railroads are missing: the gap between FedEx-style overnight service or the like and railroads' multi-day delivery times. Even if railroads could speed up delivery by a day or two on long routes, they'd probably be able to recapture a lot of higher-margin business. When I mean "time-sensitive freight", I don't mean FedEx overnight delivery; I mean things that are more time-sensitive than, say, shipping sand.

But the railroads aren't setup to do that anymore. They don't have the infrastructure nor the manpower to handle fast freight. Additionally, 50 years ago most independent warehouses had rail access. That's not so today, I suggest less than 10% of the warehouses today have platforms leading to tracks. That means neither the railroads nor private enterprise have the facilities with rail access to handle the fast freight business.

electricron wrote:

SouthernRailway wrote:There is a big market that the railroads are missing: the gap between FedEx-style overnight service or the like and railroads' multi-day delivery times. Even if railroads could speed up delivery by a day or two on long routes, they'd probably be able to recapture a lot of higher-margin business. When I mean "time-sensitive freight", I don't mean FedEx overnight delivery; I mean things that are more time-sensitive than, say, shipping sand.

But the railroads aren't setup to do that anymore. They don't have the infrastructure nor the manpower to handle fast freight. Additionally, 50 years ago most independent warehouses had rail access. That's not so today, I suggest less than 10% of the warehouses today have platforms leading to tracks. That means neither the railroads nor private enterprise have the facilities with rail access to handle the fast freight business.

I'm not talking about door-to-door shipments.

Railroads ARE set up to move things such as UPS packages, TOFC shipments, shipping containers, autos, etc. It takes several days to move those things even a medium distance. If railroads cut delivery times, say, for UPS and any of the items listed above, then railroads could capture more higher-margin business.

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Railroads DO want to handle fast freight, at least for the items I list above. Why else would Norfolk Southern be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the Crescent Corridor? Why else would railroads be working to reduce shipping times for UPS? There are plenty of other examples.

SouthernRailway wrote:

electricron wrote: Railroads DO want to handle fast freight, at least for the items I list above. Why else would Norfolk Southern be investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the Crescent Corridor? Why else would railroads be working to reduce shipping times for UPS? There are plenty of other examples.

For practical purposes in your example, UPS is providing the warehousing and ultimate customer services, not the railroad. The railroad is just providing the carrier function over long distances.
Norfolk Southern might want increased speeds, from 40 to 60 mph. They certainly aren't upgrading tracks to 90, 110, or 125 mph for freight services. Why, the FRA regulations limit freight speeds to 60 mph. Few, if any, freight cars are designed for faster speeds. Baggage cars on passenger trains being the sole exception.

I think the UPS roadrailer trains run faster.

David Benton wrote:I think the UPS roadrailer trains run faster.

If freight railroads are running faster than 60 mph, they are violating the law in America.

electricron wrote:

David Benton wrote:I think the UPS roadrailer trains run faster.

If freight railroads are running faster than 60 mph, they are violating the law in America.

Eh? Freights are permitted to run at 80 mph on Class 5 track.

And it's clear that it's the government that has destroyed fast freight, via these arbitrary regulations. The FRA may brag this:

In 1978, there were 4,780 track-caused accidents compared to 669 in 2011—an 86 percent reduction …

Meanwhile, they've massively reduced the number of effective track miles, and certainly reduced the number of passenger trains running from city to city to a bare minimum. They also make no mention of the regulations of the day making it unfeasible for the greater number of Class 1 railroads of back then to get back on their feet in terms of being able to afford better maintenance of their permanent way, i.e. the federal government's culpability.