CR on the Southern Secondary

Entering the Coast Line 2:15 PM

Clear of the Coast Line all switches Lined and Locked normal 3:10 PM

Arrival at Browns 4:10 PM

Edit: SA-22 is gonna take the two engines once PR-19 finishes up. No SA31 today by the looks of it. Guess SA-3 is in Dayton with 6228.

@CJPat Apologies for the late response, it’s been a busy few days for me.

Do they really only ship out during a 1-2 month period? That’s not much at all. It seems more active with all the trailers parked there at any given time. There isn’t much else you can do in Chatsworth either. Maybe transloading, but who knows if anyone in the area would use it.

So if loading it directly into boxcars isn’t the way to go, perhaps they could use this technology? (Provided it brings down the shipping costs)

https://railrunner.com

As for the bridge, it indeed would need to be repaired/maintained in a manner that allows for safe passage of road and rail traffic. Not cheap at all to do that, and there’s been times where the lack of available funds to repair bridges has forced short line railroads to close permanently. If no one south of Route 72 wants/needs service then it’s probably best not to bother.

I still think railcar storage from Clayton to Route 72 is possible. That’s 2 miles of track that would need repairs, and no bridge to worry about. That section actually isn’t too bad (Aside from some missing rails in a few places and of course the ties) I definitely wouldn’t run anything on it immediately after cutting the trees, but a rebuild to excepted track or Class 1 can’t be too terribly expensive.

I think worst case, Clayton becomes the only customer once all is said and done. Most of the potential for rail freight in Ocean County is along the Toms River Industrial Track anyways lol.

The other challenge for storing cars is you need a second track to use. The cars are not necessarily pulled out of storage in the same order they were put into storage. You have to shuffle cars as required. I doubt you will pull the relative whole string of cars back to the next siding (or even back to Lakehurst) just to get a string of 7 cars out of the middle (and they may not even be stacked next to each other). So is $22/day/car gonna pay for clearing and repairing a couple of miles of track and constructing another track as the shuffle track/siding?

In my perspective, It is still going to take a long, long time before you reach the cost breakeven point and that means continuing to pay interest on construction loans. To me, that appears to be a very unattractive business plan. Now, if someone who is actually in the know wants to correct my thought, I am more than willing to learn if i am overlooking anything that makes car storage appealing in this kind of scenario.

@CJPat Forgot about the siding. That would need to be built too, and it could be argued that it would cost more to build that than to rebuild Clayton to Rt 72 since it’s a brand new siding and not just new pieces added to existing track...

We might see a new siding because of Clayton but that remains to be seen.

Also forgot to mention that Hanson Concrete/Aggregate or whatever they are called is behind Clayton but I don’t know if they are still active or move enough material to make use of the adjacent Southern Secondary.

We know Clayton owns all the track between Lakehurst and Woodmansie. Depending on his operation, I would think he would need I would think he would need a siding with 2 tracks to allow loading and storage. In the end, it would depend on his use and his good will whether he allows shuffling to temporarily block up his tracks.

Basically using rail to haul sand is dependent on your customers and their quality/quantity needs. We have been waiting since 2006 for Clayton to find an appropriate customer. Since Clayton does not benefit by allowing another sand quarry to use his tracks (competition), I doubt Hansen would have a shot at negotiated use. It's all the same geologic tye sand. Clayton would rather sell to whatever customer Hansen would find. It would have to be a customer desiring quantities of the product and would be more useful in paying for his cost directly. Clayton has 40 years of property taxes and track rebuild costs to pay off. I doubt Ford would let Chevy use their tracks.

As far as the aforementioned RailRunner technology goes, it was used by Conrail and later Norfolk Southern under the Road Railer name (Triple Crown Service on NS). NS has greatly cut back the Triple Crown service (no more 262 into River Yard in Bethlehem, Pa for example) to primarily serve the auto parts industry in the mid-west. It seems that NS finds it more cost effective to load freight into containers at the present time.

http://njtwom.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=2798928

RailsEast wrote: ↑Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:05 am As far as the aforementioned RailRunner technology goes, it was used by Conrail and later Norfolk Southern under the Road Railer name (Triple Crown Service on NS). NS has greatly cut back the Triple Crown service (no more 262 into River Yard in Bethlehem, Pa for example) to primarily serve the auto parts industry in the mid-west. It seems that NS finds it more cost effective to load freight into containers at the present time.

http://njtwom.rrpicturearchives.net/sho ... id=2798928

Most trailers used for freight-related stuff are usually containers anyway. I'm sure that if a company on the Southern after the Farmingdale-Freehold connection is done wants them, they could get them, and it would be FAR easier to get a crane or forklift to move containers around; requires way less space too

@RailsEast Triple Crown and Railrunner are separate companies that more or less use the same idea of putting trucks on trains. Only difference is the way the tech works and the fact that Railrunner is based on container chassis while TCS is based on the common 53 foot trailer.

Most intermodal container traffic in this region of NJ is trucked in from either E-Rail in Newark or the CSX container terminal in Philadelphia. (Lakewood intermodal traffic seems to mostly originate in Philly)

Ive wondered if it’s possible for a Railrunner terminal to go up along the TRIT somewhere, or use the technology elsewhere in NJ. There’s a whole lot of distribution centers in Cranbury and Dayton, and they generate some MAJOR truck traffic. Maybe a terminal could go near there somewhere...

How long would it even take a reefer of cranberries to get to Massachusets? A week, maybe more? There is no way the RR could be competitive, its only a 5-6 hour drive.

I know the railroad, when handling pre-planned large quantity shipments, can move things fairly effectively (think "The Orange Juice Train" or the long UPS trailer trains), but sporadic small quantity loads of perishables don't seem to do well (how long does the fuel supply on the chillers last between refills?). That's why using rail, especially within State, doesn't do well in the hands of a Class I although a small Regional Road would handle things well if they were point of origin and destination.

Now the projected sand trains may fair better in state but that would be because they would be a large quantity of cars (unt train?). When the CNJ was hauling sand to Perth Amboy or down to the glass plants in South Jersey , I would gather it wasn't a long duration delivery to the factories, but then again that's more the case of the small regional handling.

But in the end, things have changed and CR9617 is right. Not effective to ship anything by rail less than 250 miles.

I watched the video someone posted of the switching moves at Lakewood several times. Interesting, for sure. My question is . . . I saw how the tank car for Bel Ray was placed in the middle of the train of empties. Is that so the empty cars are used as idlers on the siding to Brick Recycling, or doesn't it matter where the car is placed in the consist?

IIRC, a loaded Dangerous car must be at least 6 cars back from the locomotives or at the hind end of a train shorter than 6 cars.

Sitting across from Free way warehouse. On the South East side of Southward Ave. It appears about 30 or more sections of rail has been dropped off different lengths. This is used track that was removed from some where. It has holes in the ends for lifting/pulling.