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  • Could "triple" stacking containters be feasible?

  • General discussion about locomotives, rolling stock, and equipment
General discussion about locomotives, rolling stock, and equipment

Moderator: John_Perkowski

 #970415  by DutchRailnut
 
Why would one ship empty containers when on arrival the full once get emptied ???
makes no sense.
3 high would be getting pretty unstable too
 #970529  by Cowford
 
Double stacks are not possible on narrow gauge railways, I'd doubt physics would allow triple on standard gauge, even with an mty on top.

Shipping empties on top of loads is not unusual. A surprising amount of empties are repositioned using stack trains.
 #970531  by Sir Ray
 
Dutch is right, why ship empty containers that way?
3 full containers, your center of gravity is now somewhere in the middle of the second level container, instead of being in the first level container (COG = containers + intermodal car), so it would be above the IBCs (interbox connectors) - that would be pretty unstable, leaving aside the use of 2 levels of IBCs in each verticle stack (yay, 30ton Tinkertoys!)
You could possibly stablize it with bulkheads like they had in the original double stacks of the 1970s, but do they even use those anymore?
The new plate clearance (current double stacks in North America are Plate H = 20ft 2in) would bump up to around 29ft, maybe 30ft - that is some seriously clearance issues. Remember, the railroads had experience with Autoracks, which had the same height clearance issues since the 1960s as double stacks would have in the 1970s; going to near 30ft would be a big challenge as railroads really haven't deal with such clearances before.

I'm going to vote no on triple stacks, it will require significant advances in design and technology which would be nowhere near cost-beneficial nowadays
 #970770  by Allen Hazen
 
The latest issue of "Trains" has an article about Norfolk Southern's efforts to upgrade its Midwest-to-Norfolk line to allow double-stack trains: close to $200 million to increase clearances on this line (which has lots of tunnels...) from 19.5 yo 21 feet. So, for clearance reasons alone, we're unlikely to see triple-stacks on the general network. Perhaps there would be a possibility of an all-new railroad on some key route: maybe something across Mexico to compete with the Panama Canal? But if you are thinking of an all new railroad, you might want to build it to some super-broad gauge (minimum: the seven foot gauge of the old Great Western Railway in England) to address the stability issue.

At which point another possibility suggests itself. U.S. rail vehicles are typically over twice the width of the track gauge (a bit over ten feet, versus 56.5 inches), and single-stack trains of standard containers can operate on narrow gauge lines (e.g. the 3.5 foot gauge of Queensland Railways in Australia). So on a super-wide gauge railway you could run cars capable of carrying two shipping containers side-by-side! Giving, with two-deep mounting, the effect of quadruple-stack:

[][]
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I think this might be feasible, IF you had a BUNDLE of money to invest: we're talking about national-debt style sums. But, if you really, really want to be nasty to Panamanians, you might consider buying Union Pacific's ex-SP line from Los Angeles to, say, an "inland port" in Texas, rebuilding to carry super-broad trains (you could run an extra rail down the middle of the track to accommodate a bit of old-fashioned 56.5 inch gauge local traffic), electrifying, and putting the Canal out of business.

(O.k., o.k., I'll start taking my pills again.)
 #970847  by mtuandrew
 
Allen Hazen wrote:...

At which point another possibility suggests itself. U.S. rail vehicles are typically over twice the width of the track gauge (a bit over ten feet, versus 56.5 inches), and single-stack trains of standard containers can operate on narrow gauge lines (e.g. the 3.5 foot gauge of Queensland Railways in Australia). So on a super-wide gauge railway you could run cars capable of carrying two shipping containers side-by-side! Giving, with two-deep mounting, the effect of quadruple-stack:

[][]
[][]

...
Try this on for size, Mr. Hazen - a four-truck, 16 container (32 TEU) well car running on two sets of rails :-):

End view:
[_][_][_][_]
[_][_][_][_]
[_][_][_][_]
[_][_][_][_]
""H====H""

Side view:
[__|__] [__|__]
[__|______|__]
[__|__] [__|__]
[__|______|__]
"o-o"""""""""o-o"
New Panamax container ships already carry more than 15,000 TEUs per voyage. Trains could match that capacity with 32 TEUs per car and 500 cars, meaning 16,000 TEUs per train. It would have a higher average speed, shorter distance and quicker travel time than any current container ship, though much higher fuel costs. Finally, it would have considerably lower personnel costs, since even with 10+ locomotives MUed together you'd only (in theory) need an operating crew of 2-4 people to control it all. Even if you used eight- or twelve-packs to reduce height restrictions, we're still talking about 8-12,000 TEUs per train.

I don't even see why it couldn't be done with off-the-shelf technology and routes. Seriously. Take a two-track grade-separated railroad, upgrade it to 315k loading standard, remove all the center and overhead obstructions (again, eight- or twelve-packs can reduce the immediate height issues), and redo the sidings and interlockings with four evenly-placed tracks. For the new cars, mount the trucks on sliding bolster pads to allow a couple feet of leeway between railheads, and don't fret about slight elevation differences because the truck springs can handle that. Finally, put adapter cars between the well cars and each pair of conventional locomotives. Several hundred million dollars later, you've made the Sunset Route into the new Panama Canal. And, you can still run regular 4' 8 1/2" trains on each track when the land-bridge trains aren't coming through - or 3' 6", or meter-gauge, or 1520mm, or whatever system you have.

I must be off my meds too :grin:
 #970947  by Sir Ray
 
Cowford wrote:"Dutch is right, why ship empty containers that way?"

What way?
That a-way!

Actually, I thought Dutch was questioning why the top container of the triple stack always needed to be empty, and that the railroads would want to be flexible enough in this proposed scheme to ship all loaded, all empty, or some mix. If that is not what Dutch meant, then I withdraw my statement.

Remember guys, as you propose these monster loading schemes, that railroads more or less had some experience with the heights required by double stacks (due to tri-level Autoracks needing similar clearances), but have had no experience with the clearance needed for triple stack. And for those proposing double track broad gauge schemes, sorry but Hitler (yes, that guy) has got you beat by many decades.
 #971299  by Passenger
 
CN Sparky wrote:They already run triple-stack trains in India.. but the containers are only 6"6" high, so the overall height is the same.
Were the shorter containers introduced for the purpose of triple stacking, or do they just happen to have a shorter standard container?
 #971309  by toolmaker
 
CN Sparky wrote:They already run triple-stack trains in India.. but the containers are only 6"6" high, so the overall height is the same.
didn't they pioneer tripple stack passenger seating; "Inside, outside and roof top". 8^)
 #971356  by Allen Hazen
 
Sir Ray--
Hitler was EVIL. He built Autobahns and left the railway improvements as a fantasy for the future, and allowed steel that could have gone into new railways to be diverted for things like U-boats and the Bismark. (O.k., there were other things he did that come to most people's minds when you ask if he was evil, but this is a railroad discussion board, so they are off topic.)
;-)

Actually, proposals for super-size railways to move super-size loads go even further back: I think in the late 19th C there was a proposal for a wide railway (I think with more than two rails to the track) across some isthmus to ferry ships overland: possibly inspired by the many "marine railways" that have actually been built for hauling boats out of the water.

Super-width railway proposals can be divided (among other ways) into those which are just broad gauge (Hitler's fantasy seems to have been of this sort) but otherwise conventional, and those that have more than two rails per track. Among the latter, one variant with possibilities has the track consist of two standard (or whatever) gauge tracks built to a constant distance between track centers and, where curves are superelevated, with the outer track raised so the four railheads are in a common plane: MTUandrew's idea a few posts back was like this. "Trains" published an article on this idea in the 1970s (I think) by a model railroader who had found it feasible at least at HO scale: there were photos of pairs of locomotives on his layout hauling cars that spanned the two tracks, and also "mixed trains" that combined super-wide and conventional cars. (Hey, model testing is an accepted part of engineering practice!)

Something like this has actually been used, in a limited way. NASA moved rocket launchers around Cape Canaveral on two parallel standard-gauge tracks: the "car" would be pulled by two diesel switchers in m.u., with the m.u. cables going sideways, from the engine on one track to the engine on the other. I suspect the economics of building a new railway to be operated in this manner over the kind of distances container trains typically run are ... um ... not encouraging, but it is possible in principle.
 #971403  by Sir Ray
 
Passenger wrote:Were the shorter containers introduced for the purpose of triple stacking, or do they just happen to have a shorter standard container?
Apparently the shorter containers were introduced for this service:
A large number of commodities don’t need a 8.5-feet high container. We are attempting to reduce the height of the container to 6.5 feet so we can stack three containers instead of two. If a double-stack container train doubled our carrying capacity, a triple-stack container train would treble it,” said RC Dubey, MD, Pipavav Railway Corporation (PRCL), a 50:50 JV between Indian Railways and Gujarat Pipavav Port (GPPL) which ran the first double-stack container train in India
Article
 #971412  by John_Perkowski
 
MODERATOR'S NOTE:

Folks, it takes humongous amounts of capital to do what Tracer proposed. Not only do we have to talk track and clearance issues, we also have to talk terminal hardware everywhere from seaport to line-haul railroad/local-haul truck transfer ramp.

Please, let's come back down to what's operationally/economically feasible, and let's not talk any more about the good ideas of the Dritte Deutsches Reich. Whatever good ideas they had are all trumped by one bad idea, and with Godwin's Law invoked, I'm watching with care.

John