Article on the Issues Rail Faces in Chicago

[Gerald Henriksen]

http://business.financialpost.com/welcome-to-chokepoint-usa/

[HeavyDuty]

Progress is being made, but there is much to do.  An added complication is all the oil traffic moving now - many suburbs are agitating to prevent it from transiting their areas.

[Parthia27]

The best solution for block and intermodal traffic would be for the Class 1 railroads to bite the bullet and come up with a solution which cuts Chicago out of the equation altogether. I'm not that familiar with the geography of the area and would like to know if it would be possible to create a fast corridor through the city such as the Almeda corridor in LA for transitory block or intermodal traffic. Whatever the solution I think CSX and CN saw the writing on the wall with their investment in infrastructure away from Chicago (in the case of CSX) and by the clever acquisition of a carrier who allows Chicago to be bypassed (CN). Any solution may cost big bucks whatever happens.

[roundhouse]

I have always wanted to build a major yard.

 

We often get as much interest from viewers of the fiddle yard on Santa Barbara as the scenic bit.

 

Maybe the next N scale USA layout that I build should have the fiddle yard as the main scenic interest with just a few through tracks at the back and call it:

 

YARD

 

This will keep the brain in overload tonight thinking of ways to do this.

[roundhouse]

Don Rowlands had a revelation many years ago, and turned layout design on its head, by essentially making the fiddle yard the focus of the layout, i.e. a classification yard placed where a number of lines come together, with the rest of the layout serving the basic purpose of allowing the trains to leave and then bringing them back.

For those who like switching/shunting, this concept has a great deal going for it.

I do recall this concept some years ago but apart from modular type set ups it's rarely seen over here from what I can recall.

[dave1905]

You also have to put the issue in context.  I think the article quoted some terminal time of 33 hours.   If you look at the AAR statistics for terminal dwell for ALL terminals on the various railroads it is in the upper 20's,  27-29 hours.  Looking at the BNSF statistics, in Lincoln NE, the terminal dwell for Sept. 2014 was 46.4 hours.   Lincoln is a hump yard with minimal interchange and all the routes controlled by the BNSF in and out.

[Glorious NSE]

The best solution for block and intermodal traffic would be for the Class 1 railroads to bite the bullet and come up with a solution which cuts Chicago out of the equation altogether. I'm not that familiar with the geography of the area and would like to know if it would be possible to create a fast corridor through the city such as the Almeda corridor in LA for transitory block or intermodal traffic. Whatever the solution I think CSX and CN saw the writing on the wall with their investment in infrastructure away from Chicago (in the case of CSX) and by the clever acquisition of a carrier who allows Chicago to be bypassed (CN). Any solution may cost big bucks whatever happens.

Where there are options to do that it seems to be happening already, for example NS have moved their interchange with IAIS to Peoria.

[Parthia27]

You also have to put the issue in context.  I think the article quoted some terminal time of 33 hours.   If you look at the AAR statistics for terminal dwell for ALL terminals on the various railroads it is in the upper 20's,  27-29 hours.  Looking at the BNSF statistics, in Lincoln NE, the terminal dwell for Sept. 2014 was 46.4 hours.   Lincoln is a hump yard with minimal interchange and all the routes controlled by the BNSF in and out.

That is good information for comparison Dave and puts the problem into perspective. From what I read there seems to have been congestion all over the BNSF Northern Transcon since the bad winter of the last 12 months and the surge in traffic. BNSF always seem to have tried increase their network capacity by undertaking major civil and rolling stock investment programs, but as with all such programs you get to a point where the law of diminishing returns sets in, the quick fixes are done and it becomes necessary to tackle severe points of conjestion which are much more complex and costly. Perhaps that is where we are now?

[dave1905]

That's what the CREATE project is doing, streamlining the traffic flows through Chicago.  The alternate routes have less capacity, less infrastructure and are often more circuitous.  If you circumvent the yards then any switching that has to be done to block for the connections on the other railroad have to be done someplace else.  Run through trains make sense when you can make an entire train of cars going to a single location.  If I have 270 boxes going to 115 locations, the train has to be sorted/switched someplace.  Chicago is key because you have so many more outbound connections.  You literally have hundreds of outbound connections in a wide spectrum of destinations.  Exploding the train at Chicago allows efficiencies other places.  If you only have one train that runs one the bypass route between two points, then you have to hold the boxes at origin to make that one train a day or you have to run more smaller trains which gives up on the railroad's advantage in efficiency.  If you run multiple trains to Chicago you can "shotgun" the destinations out of origin and sort it out at Chicago.

 

Just depends on what the volumes will support.  If you have enough to run a run through train, cool.  If not even with the delays, putting it through Chicago might be more efficient when you look at the entire supply chain.

[Andy Reichert]

I have always wanted to build a major yard.

 

We often get as much interest from viewers of the fiddle yard on Santa Barbara as the scenic bit.

 

Maybe the next N scale USA layout that I build should have the fiddle yard as the main scenic interest with just a few through tracks at the back and call it:

 

YARD

 

This will keep the brain in overload tonight thinking of ways to do this.

 

I'm still working on box cars having decent rolling inertia in HO.

 

I dread to think what it would take to do that in "N".

 

Andy

[Parthia27]

That's what the CREATE project is doing, streamlining the traffic flows through Chicago.  The alternate routes have less capacity, less infrastructure and are often more circuitous.  If you circumvent the yards then any switching that has to be done to block for the connections on the other railroad have to be done someplace else.  Run through trains make sense when you can make an entire train of cars going to a single location.  If I have 270 boxes going to 115 locations, the train has to be sorted/switched someplace.  Chicago is key because you have so many more outbound connections.  You literally have hundreds of outbound connections in a wide spectrum of destinations.  Exploding the train at Chicago allows efficiencies other places.  If you only have one train that runs one the bypass route between two points, then you have to hold the boxes at origin to make that one train a day or you have to run more smaller trains which gives up on the railroad's advantage in efficiency.  If you run multiple trains to Chicago you can "shotgun" the destinations out of origin and sort it out at Chicago.

 

Just depends on what the volumes will support.  If you have enough to run a run through train, cool.  If not even with the delays, putting it through Chicago might be more efficient when you look at the entire supply chain.

 

Thanks Dave, I've seen bits and pieces about the CREATE project in Trains but not studied it in great depth. I've just had a look at the CREATE project website here which is very enlightening and is obviously a major multi agency project. Good reading if that sort of thing interests you.

[roundhouse]

I'm still working on box cars having decent rolling inertia in HO.

 

I dread to think what it would take to do that in "N".

 

Andy

We haul 12 foot trains on Banbury with just 2 locos so its not so bad.

 

Ian

[Andy Reichert]

We haul 12 foot trains on Banbury with just 2 locos so its not so bad.

 

Ian

 

I'm working to create inertia.  So the box cars will keep on slow rolling, long after the loco fly uncouples.

[pH]

I'm working to create inertia.  So the box cars will keep on slow rolling, long after the loco fly uncouples.

 

A powered, DCC-controlled boxcar in the rake? See Greenock MRC's "Inverboyndie" for the concept - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_vl_y9vvgA

[shortliner]

This is going to sound silly, but could you fit one of the gyro/flywheel units that were used to power model/toy cars a while back, where you revved it up by pushing it along the floor, and then let it go- basically just a flywheel drive

[switcher 1]

....or fit a flywheel onto an axle, maybe. (Gyroscopic effect.)

[Glorious NSE]

Blog post about what currently connects in Peoria - small beer for sure, but every train connecting there is a train that isn't queuing to get through Chicago:

http://peoriastation.com/?p=272

 

NS also connect to BNSF (ex Santa Fe) via the Kankakee Belt, which ducks round the bottom of Chicago and joins the old Santa Fe main line at Streator, there's suggestions that 8-10 trains a day use this route - these trains don't have to stay on the old Santa Fe as they can now switch to the old CB&Q routes at Galesburg. Further south NS has a direct line across Illinois all the way to Kansas City, which probably limits the usefulness of the Kankakee belt route, as stuff moving over a really long distance would be missing the whole Chicago area anyhow!

 

 

[Adrian Wintle]

The basic problem is that there are these big, inconvenient lakes in the way, so that any eastbound traffic from the northern plains and the Pacific North West (which encompasses a lot of resource traffic) has to go through Chicago (or points further south) regardless of its final destination, making the Chicago area a natural choke point.

 

The only other options are around the top of Superior (two single track main lines) or through Duluth, across the UP (Upper Penninsula, nor Union Pacific), and then join the CN or CP at Sault Ste. Marie and join the traffic that has come around the top of Superior.

 

That is why all the major railroads made sure they had a connection to Chicago - it was the gateway to the North Eastern States (i.e. the big markets).

 

Adrian

[dave1905]

Blog post about what currently connects in Peoria - small beer for sure, but every train connecting there is a train that isn't queuing to get through Chicago:

http://peoriastation.com/?p=272

 

 

 

The problem with Peoria is that there aren't good routes out of there.    If you get to Peoria how do you go west?  You have to go on some other N-S route to get to an E-W route. If you are a grain train going to the Eastern Gulf Coast, great, if you are going anyplace else not so great.

 

If the business has to be switched at Elkhart, there pretty much is no way to get there without going through the Chicago area.

 

Shifting the IAIS interchange with the NS affects 2-4 trains a day.  The UP alone runs 60-80 freight trains a day on its E-W main route in and out of Chicago (plus their other 3 routes).

[Andy Reichert]

This is going to sound silly, but could you fit one of the gyro/flywheel units that were used to power model/toy cars a while back, where you revved it up by pushing it along the floor, and then let it go- basically just a flywheel drive

 

 

....or fit a flywheel onto an axle, maybe. (Gyroscopic effect.)

 

(Old) North West Short Line actually made and sold flywheel equipped box car systems. But they were not popular (and I'm not sure how well they worked) .  But I didn't meant to cause a veer OT. I'll start a new thread if I make any new progress.

 

Andy

 

 

 

Andy

[Glorious NSE]

The problem with Peoria is that there aren't good routes out of there.    If you get to Peoria how do you go west?  You have to go on some other N-S route to get to an E-W route. If you are a grain train going to the Eastern Gulf Coast, great, if you are going anyplace else not so great.

 

Like anywhere, how good the connections are depends on the direction you're going (going North East from Chicago is problematical!) - It's got good connections West to BNSF at Galesburg for instance if you're headed West or South West, though that's not going to be that much use in terms of NS-BNSF as the two railroads have other, better non-Chicago connections...

 

 

 

Shifting the IAIS interchange with the NS affects 2-4 trains a day.  The UP alone runs 60-80 freight trains a day on its E-W main route in and out of Chicago (plus their other 3 routes).

 

Like I said, small beer, but still trains not queued up in Chicago, big customers (the traffic is largely for ADM) happy(ish) that their traffic is still moving, and a slightly less congested network overall...

 

Given what NS's recent issues have looked like in Chicago any train avoiding the area has to be A Good Thing.

[dave1905]

 

Like anywhere, how good the connections are depends on the direction you're going (going North East from Chicago is problematical!) - It's got good connections West to BNSF at Galesburg for instance if you're headed West or South West, though that's not going to be that much use in terms of NS-BNSF as the two railroads have other, better non-Chicago connections...

 

 

 

 

Like I said, small beer, but still trains not queued up in Chicago, big customers (the traffic is largely for ADM) happy(ish) that their traffic is still moving, and a slightly less congested network overall...

 

Given what NS's recent issues have looked like in Chicago any train avoiding the area has to be A Good Thing.

 

 

Maybe, maybe not.  One has to look at the whole overall trip to decide.  On one occaision there was a derailment in Texas on a major railroad and the railroad detoured a train over a shortline around the incident.  About a week after the derailment opened, the detoured train finally made it to the other side over the shortline. 

If you have to detour something over a different gateway, it can take longer to handle it at off plan yards and get it back in the right flow than it would be to bite the bullet and taking an extra day or two to go through the Chicago gateway.  Detouring trains through other gateways only is beneficial if both roads are backed up.  If for example the east side is backed up and the west side is fluid, then it really doesn't benefit the west side that much to detour trains, they absorb a whole bunch of expense they don't need to.  Railroads will and are doing some of that, one just has to remember its not a free lunch, its less efficient, and more costly to drive stuff through other gateways.  Railroads will cooperate to do limited reroutes for capacity issues and will for short times incur higher costs to improve the regular routes.