freight - which country does it better ?

i know a part of the NZR railway system , once held the distinction of been the busiest peice of single track railway in the world , but that was with suburban trains , and less than 1000 tonne freight trains .

Question- was it upgraded to double track, or did traffic decline later?

David Benton wrote:
i know a part of the NZR railway system , once held the distinction of been the busiest peice of single track railway in the world , but that was with suburban trains , and less than 1000 tonne freight trains .

Dave,

That's one you have to cautious about - have you any figures?

I once saw a Queenslander quote the number of coal trains on one Queensland line and describe it as the busiest single track railway in Australai and had to point out to him that the Cronulla branch on the Sydney suburban network had about twice the number.

Tony Bailey

David Benton wrote:ok , i got curious and googled the answer . That is a truly phemonenal amount .

Alright David, let's go public - what answer did Google give?


Tony

Cowford wrote:David, possibly you could suggest some objective metrics to measure one network against the other, e.g., market share based on total tons basis, market share on a ton-mile or tonne-km basis, ton-miles per employee, employees per route-mile, etc. US, Australia, and S Africa all come to mind with regard to having highly efficient bulk haul routes. To my knowledge, no other country comes close to the US/Canada with regard to intermodal operations.

Cowford , ( i prefer to deal with first names in this forum , i think it helps to keep things civil , so it would be good to know yours ) , i think market share has got to be the biggie . i note it is the first 2 you list . ton / mile - tonne / k.m , has got to be the ultimate measure . Though it tends to favour rail / shipping , because the longer the haul , the more competivitive they are . then theres natural monopoly traffics , noone in the right mind would suggest trucking powder basin coal to eastern power plants .on the other hand in America , noone would suggest sending a container of general goods form Boston to Washington by rail , yet in Europe and Nz , that is considered a meduim distance haul .( as i mentioned , go further than 1000 miles in NZ and you run out of population ) . so again , i think we'd have to break it down into distance catergories as well .

Sheer tonnage , well its impressive , but again , who would truck millions of tons of coal any further than a few miles ??? can you really say rail worked hard to beat the pants off road in this respect ? that would be abit like saying air done well to beat ocean liners on the America to Europe run . definetly , American rail has done well in moving millions of tonnes of coal long distances , but was it really that hard to do ??? and as we will see in the next topic , China has blown that tonnage for a six .

There is no quick answer , and in the end , possibly no point , in deciding who has done best ( apples to oranges ) , but still , i dont see why we should just accept that "american freight railroads are the envy of the world "

David, I appreciate your desire for first names, but I'd prefer to stick with my username for professional reasons. Hope you understand.

no-one would suggest sending a container of general goods form Boston to Washington by rail

Containers actually move by rail between MA and NY/NJ. With regard to intercity transportation, intermodal traffic holds about a 5% market share. That, of course, does not include carload traffic.

no problem , Cowford , it is good to hear some containers move between MA and NY , but 5 % is a bit low . However i'm not denying that Us railroads have shown some inititavive in some markets . for e.g , i read in Trains , whereby they remove containers from the top of a double stack train mid journey ( i think in the Albany area , for a train heading to Boston ) , so that the now single level stack cars can fit through the restricted clearance tunnels on the line .
that is the kind of service i envision could be successful , the train stays whole , whilst the containers are added / removed throughout the journey .

Market share, of course, varies region by region. West Coast - Dallas/KC/Chicago has a much higher rail market share... in those lanes, some would argue that much of what can be converted to rail, has been. Considering that a large segment of intercity trucking is 100-300 miles, trucking costs would have to increase dramatically for the rails to take a significantly larger piece of the pie.

The following link from RGI on China makes interesting reading-

http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/sing ... -line.html

At the bottom of the article are links to some other China stories that may answere a question raised earlier in this thread.

Tony Bailey

Mr. Matthews wrote:

Policy in the US seems to have assumed that rail would fade away, much as policy in Britain assumed the same in the 1960s. In Britain we are having to restore some lines because of road congestion. The US may have to reverse decades of dismantling routes that should never have been abandoned, and invest in re-doubling and electrification.

That's somewhat of an oversimplification; Total American freight tonnage began to grow steadily after the work-rules reform of the early 1980's, and while bulk commodities like coal and chemicals in large lots are dominant, there has been steady progress elsewhere. The NS freights that passed my place 2006-09 had a growing component pf perishable traffic, but it moved almost exclusively in refrigerated trailers, most of them bearing the logo of freight forwarders (companies which consolidate small shipments into larger ones, cover their expenses and profit on the price differential, and deliver them locally by highway). And as I've previously pointed out, rail carriers have also made a bid to recapure a lot of produce traffic by distributing it from a single cold-storage warehouse utilizing traditional refrigeraor cars for the line haul.

The overwhelmong importance of energy efficiency (as expressed primarily in the focus of ruling grades on long-distance main lines) means that serious service competition is unlikely to develop while a choice between only two carriers remains the rule in most of North America, and and most of the alternatives have been downgraded or abandoned for obvious reasons. Some form of "open access" would have to evolve here, but it's likely to be a while before a reform along the lines of the AT&T breakup, rather than outright nationalization, would allow it to happen. Wariness toward the new Administration's desire to sink its claws into more and more of the American economy continues to grow.

Those of us past the age of 50 can remember a time when every decent-sized community had a number of industrial spurs, usually augmented by a "team" or "public delivery" track; but the high cost of individual pick-up and set-out of cars rendered that operation uneconomical. Most freight today, unless it moves in unit trains, originates and terminates in large-volume terminal facilities near the major cities. Even lumber traffic, once a mainstay of the separable-car technology, moves via center-sill flatcars carring at least twice as much, and is handled in a imited number of terminals listed, just as passenger stations once were, in the pages of the re-tooled Official Guide.

Admittedly, American rail-oriented publications, whether focused on professional or hobby interests, devote very little attention to non-American rail freight. I can remember only two Trains articles, one on British Rail's Freightliner service way back in the late 1960's, and a general overview of European freight operations about ten years ago.

And while my only source of information on current operations is Google Earth, I note with tongue in cheek that the Russian federation, where motor freight traffic once "stopped at the ring road", appears to be trying to develop some sort of highway system which would accomodate the more time-sensitive, high-value, low-bulk traffic. ---- in other words, supply and demand at work.

Over the long term, whether in the Old or New World, most freight going any distance in heavy volume should find its way back onto the rails. (The close proximity of well-developed water-borne commerce in Wesern Europe should be more of a factor in that market.) As Mr. Matthews himself pointed out in a recent post, the greater attention to timelieness and consistency in mature economies like Switzeland and Japan, coupled with a stable attitude toward heavy industry, makes this possible. But on this side of the Atlantic, millions of us remain wary about turning this over to a form of organization which, while it can afford greater foresight, operates on a bureucratic model toward which many of us retain a strong, and healthy suspicion.

But on this side of the Atlantic, millions of us remain wary about turning this over to a form of organization which, while it can afford greater foresight, operates on a bureucratic model toward which many of us retain a strong, and healthy suspicion.

I think planning and operating transport is a legitimate function of government. There is a European Commission Transport department, and national ministries. Private operations do not extend beyond franchising. I think it is unthinkable that a corporation should take decisions proper to government.

Mr Matthews, the United States has just concluded well over a year of intense rancor over the subject of health care "reform", and it might suprise you to learn that while I still view the majority of the issue as an excuse for income redistribution and bureaucratic interference, I also recognize that the stridency and unrealistic expectations at both poles of the argument leave it likely that some reforms addressing the most basic inequalities of the previous system will remain in place ..... once the prgram is further refomed into something less partisan .... along the lines of the Canadian system, perhaps.

So let it be with all forms of transportation, which, as the air and trucking sectors have clearly demonstrated, is a very risky game. We are now down to seven major rail systems on this side of the North Atlantic, two Canadian-based and one already within the public sector. And all but the most strident of those of us you categorize as "Friedmanites" possess an understanding that the rail industry cannot divorce itself completely from public-sector participation.

But the emergence of a road-haulage system within the former Soviet Union, dedicated to the needs of, and largely guided by the "ruble-votes" of those who directly saw a need for it (and I'll harbor no illusions about the use, and abuse, of state power by many of those "pseudo-capitalists"), should demonstrate that while a central authority may apporach high-level planning concerns with greater foresight, just about everything below that can be left to the individual, hopefully restrained by even-handed application of the rule of law.

At most, some form of mitigation of the economic forces which tend to over-concentrate capital within the hands of a few players might be addressed by reforms encouraging more "open access" but even that feature would be prone to political tinkering and other malfeasance. It's all just one more step in the evolution of a system neither fully-public, nor fully-private, but hopefully, more adaptable than ever.

Sweden is doing rather well regarding rail freight, we have the highest percentage of transports in the EU by rail.
In fact the system currently is overloaded. Sweden has a few things working for it though the norm is 1% inclines and the major routes are or will have 25ton axle load and Stax-D the widest clearance in the EU save Finland.
The railroad market is deregulated with a number of large and small companies.

The tonnage numbers are a bit skewed though as a large part are LKAB Iron ore trains on Malmbanan serving the mines in Kiruna and Gällivare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malmbanan

Open access isn't always a good thing, when you have fools like we do in charge. Finnish Government is spending tons of money on dead end branch lines and secondary routes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but now the most important rail corridor Helsinki-Oulu is extremely congested and there's no money to double track it all the way. North of Tampere it's still single track and it's a nightmare every night with 200km/h passenger trains and slow 60-car drag freights thrown in the mess trying to work through it. Talk about a dispatchers nightmare. I'm all for saving as much rail infrastructure as possible, but let's be realistic: If a line hosts 8-10 road switchers per month consisting of a few loads of logs, does it really need to be CWR and 100km/h standards.

And a bit off topic: If a passenger route hosts 4 trains a day, with volumes equalling 6 buses, is there really any point maintaining it as a passenger route when you could accomplish the same task with the buses and save tons of money from track maintenance, fuel, and there would be no need for "railbuses" anymore. Most of these secondary routes are feeder routes traveling through dying rural areas that have very little if none potential for any significant growth.