Light rail freight

Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (KMHT) has flights from UPS and FedEx coming in. The airport itself cut the abandoned right-of-way that went from downtown Manchester through Salem and on to Methuen and the rest of the old Boston & Maine. I can't imagine what it would cost to rebuild the spur (which I think has been converted to a trail somewhere north of Salem NH) to the south, though the part to the north going into Manchester is intact (with grade crossings).

I don't know if it would be "worth it" to build the infrastructure to support freight trains to a processing facility.

I was under the impression that the FRA didn't get involved in subway systems, would they get involved in standard subway cars hauling freight? The idea with the airport containers is more along the lines of say a new freight company wants to set up at an airport that simply doesn't have the space for an extra cargo terminal.

Packages that are destined for the area immediately surrounding the airport could be loaded into it's own containers to be transfered to a truck, but the majority of the cargo could go on to a sorting center the same way it already does by trailer truck except that this would move it faster and in higher volumes. This could also be useful in areas where the airport is a significant distance from the urban area.

djlong wrote:Manchester-Boston Regional Airport (KMHT) has flights from UPS and FedEx coming in. The airport itself cut the abandoned right-of-way that went from downtown Manchester through Salem and on to Methuen and the rest of the old Boston & Maine. I can't imagine what it would cost to rebuild the spur (which I think has been converted to a trail somewhere north of Salem NH) to the south, though the part to the north going into Manchester is intact (with grade crossings).

I don't know if it would be "worth it" to build the infrastructure to support freight trains to a processing facility.

Manchester's probably not got the freight growth potential to make that worthwhile. It's got much higher upside on the passenger end ramping itself up as more of a Logan alternative with passenger rail access from Boston on the NH Main. Much like T.F. Green is doing about equidistant south of Logan. Worcester Airport is the one in the region that's got a lot of untapped upside for air freight given proximity to the CSX and P&W yards, PAR interchanging there, and the Worcester Branch and P&W mains providing excellent radial access to both NH and RI. The Mass. State Freight Plan pinpoints that location as the big air freight growth potential in the region. It doesn't have direct rail access itself, but it has very good trucking routes from the yards about 1-1/2 miles away thanks to Route 9 and 4-lane/divided Goddard Memorial Dr. to the airport And I suppose it it ever became key enough to give direct rail access, it's accessible if they spurred off the B&A near the Auburn/Worcester line or the P&W to the north near the Worcester/Holden line. On each end there's power line ROW's crossing under 1/2 mile of the airport. Although I think the trucking access to the yards is good enoguh that they'd never need to spur right onto the property.

RedLantern wrote:Packages that are destined for the area immediately surrounding the airport could be loaded into it's own containers to be transfered to a truck,

That is where the idea fails the most. You're forcing a presort at the various source airports. Without the presort, you are back to having a regular sort facility at the airport. No savings.

Did the South Shore do mail at one time?

gearhead wrote:Did the South Shore do mail at one time?

They did express package service, like many other interurbans. The South Shore also has a long history of heavy freight service.
The South Shore is not a "light rail" line.

justalurker66 wrote:

gearhead wrote:Did the South Shore do mail at one time?

They did express package service, like many other interurbans. The South Shore also has a long history of heavy freight service.
The South Shore is not a "light rail" line.

The North Shore Line wasn't a "light rail" line either (the term didn't exist back then; one might call them a "light rail" operator since they operated streetcars in Waukegan and Milwaukee in addition to the interurban); it hauled online freight and interchange, using steeplecab electrics for the heavy stuff and dispatch cars for LCL. The CNSM was the pioneering road for "piggyback" freight service as well, starting in 1926 and ending in 1947.

Where I could see this work is where the Light Rail goes thru a industrial area or ran alongside a former Railroad. The Rochester Subway had freight service and as a matter of fact ran paper cars for the newspaper in the subway long after the tunnel was closed to passengers. Before the Northside was filled in the B&O ran trains to the autoparts plant in Greece. If there is a industry and it creates jobs and the switch can be done at night after the LR has stopped running maybe the transit agency could make the terminal or originating rate (which is higher then the long haul). But knowing goverments it would create a whole new bureaucracy with payroll and benifits just to deal with 5 car loads a week .

amtrakowitz wrote:The North Shore Line wasn't a "light rail" line either (the term didn't exist back then; one might call them a "light rail" operator since they operated streetcars in Waukegan and Milwaukee in addition to the interurban);

The street car lines may have been considered "light rail" had the term been used at the time, but that doesn't make the main North Shore or South Shore lines any lighter.

I own a truck and a car ... also owning a car does not make my truck a car - it is still a truck. It meets the definition on its own.

Anyone who met a "Little Joe" mixed with the passenger traffic on the South Shore wouldn't think that was a light rail line, regardless of era.

gearhead wrote:If there is a industry and it creates jobs and the switch can be done at night after the LR has stopped running maybe the transit agency could make the terminal or originating rate (which is higher then the long haul). But knowing goverments it would create a whole new bureaucracy with payroll and benifits just to deal with 5 car loads a week .

I can see where in certain select cases light rail track could be used under a trackage rights agreement. A lot of it depends on where the rail.

When I think of light rail I think on the level of buses on rail ... vehicles similar to the large articulated buses found running on rubber in many cities - but longer since the track keeps the vehicles where they should be and provides a defined ROW. The design of the rails these run on varies ... and where a separate protected ROW exists I could see it used for regular freight trains. But where light rail shares the road with cars you're basically creating a street running railroad - and in areas where getting public approval of the LRT system is hard opening it up for freight trains is near impossible.

There are also design issues to allow for the freight trains to safely pass passenger platforms - which means gauntlet track or low level platforms or special narrow freight cars. In a system designed for trains that pull to a stop at most stations (if not all) adding to the design to allow for passing trains adds expense. The "LRF" concept of using converted LRT car bodies or even building specialized cars that meet the plate size can still fail if you have to slow to a near stop to pass stations.

The only way I can see LRF working is if there was no other way ... and there always seems to be another way.

justalurker66 wrote:The only way I can see LRF working is if there was no other way ... and there always seems to be another way.

I think this quote sums up the argument.

Moderator's Note: I don't mind leaving this thread open, but we've sort of exhausted the examples. I'll be watching this thread to make sure it doesn't go off-topic.

mtuandrew wrote:

justalurker66 wrote:The only way I can see LRF working is if there was no other way ... and there always seems to be another way.

I think this quote sums up the argument

Does it? It's very rhetorical. What factors go towards the provision of the "other way", as it were, and what factors impede the choice of using "light rail" for freight transportation?

I think a big 'other way' factor must be the 500 pound gorilla none of us railfans ever want to acknowledge, rubber tires on asphalt. Lots of freight can go on our nation's highways, most places with light rail access also have decent highway access, so anyplace that could use light rail freight is probably already very happy with truck freight.

Mr trollyfoamer has hit the nail squarely on the head. The relatively fast evolution of highway vehicles in the years 1905-1915 quickly doomed what I;ll classify as "small-scale" railroading. The large industrial operations no longer had need of as instensive a rail system wiithin the confines of onr plant, for example.

When Samuel Vaulclain laid plans for the relocation of the original Baldwin Locomotive Wokrks from its original location in near-Northside Philadelphia to Eddystone, he made plans to produce 3000 locomotives per year. The actual result never got anywhere near that, due mostly to the concentration of traffic into larger and heavier, but longer and less-frequent moves. The "topping out: of the number of manned interlocking plants in North America at about 6000 c.1919 is another example of the loss of the short-haul in favor of a more-concentrated, but less-labor-intensive system.

amtrakowitz wrote:Does it? It's very rhetorical.

Read the rest of the post and other posts on the topic ... it helps explain how one arrives at such a nice one line summary.

amtrakowitz wrote:What factors go towards the provision of the "other way", as it were, and what factors impede the choice of using "light rail" for freight transportation?

Start with a need --- not a need to satisfy some railfan's dream or desire to have LRF but a transportation need. "I need to get stuff from here to here." Then, for the moment, eliminate LRF as a solution. How would you get the stuff from here to here without LRF? Congratulations - you have found the other way. And there is a good chance that other way is already provisioned or could be more easily provisioned than LRF.

If you cannot find another way then perhaps LRF is a solution ... which is where my statement would be proven true. "The only way I can see LRF working is if there was no other way." But where does LRT go that nothing else goes? There are very few properties that could be served by LRF compared to the number of properties that are served by trucks.

Start with a problem ... not a solution. It seems LRF is a solution looking for a problem where all the problems are more easily solved by trucks.

trollyFoamer wrote:I think a big 'other way' factor must be the 500 pound gorilla none of us railfans ever want to acknowledge, rubber tires on asphalt. Lots of freight can go on our nation's highways, most places with light rail access also have decent highway access, so anyplace that could use light rail freight is probably already very happy with truck freight.

You can thank government interference for that.

Perhaps if the private sector had to handle all transportation infrastructure, different patterns would emerge.

The other 500-lb gorilla would be oil scarcity. It's not feasible to make rubber tires or asphalt concrete from natural gas or coal tar; neither can be made from ionizing radiation either. FTR, it takes about half a barrel of oil to make a single truck tire.