[crs1026]

Propane has made a comeback in Southern Ontario on rail. The primary use is agricultural, to dry crops after harvest. Demand varies a lot from year to year depending on weather and how dry the crop is before harvesting. Tank cars make good short term storage, and the product is transloaded as orders come in.

- Paul

 

[lenaitch]

In the case of the shortline, the call for that extra switch happens between two people who know each other (at least by name and voice) and who have the authority to make the necessary decisions and arrangements themselves on the spot. Try asking for an extra switch on US Thanksgiving with a call centre in Jacksonville or Fort Worth. And just wait until AI invades those call centres......

Those extra switch moves are billed by the shortline at a pretty good rate, too. The economic decision is sometimes whether a plant (especially one running a chemical process or production line) has to be shut down for the rest of the weekend, and then restart.... or can the production continue unabated. Customers don't mind paying a premium to keep things running. That's the underlying cost comparison, not the locomotive fuel and labour bill versus the cost of hiring a trucker.

- Paul

Ya, I've seen it enough times that I don't think these 'after hours' moves are extras; I think they are timed to satisfy the production or shipping cycle of their sole customer.

 

[micheal_can]

Vegetable Oil: 29,300 gallons. One tank car

8,000-11,600+ one tanker truck

About 2.6 truck loads depending on the size. Smaller trucks might be 5. So a 5 car consist could replace 25 truck loads. I guess it's cheaper to carry 5 rail car loads than 25 truck loads.

It is also the footprint. So, lets say you get a weekly shipment. So, lets say 35 cars come in and out. Now imagine the space needed to guarantee those 1 truck an hour can show up. And those tank cars could be stored a few km away in a yard. Not as easy with chemicals in a transport truck. Like passenger rail, it is not just about the volume, but the logistics of the movement of the goods that are the challenge.

 

[Mind_the_gap]

Interesting to see British Railways being brought back to public operators via this Great British Railways rebranding:

 

[JasonParis]

The branding is decent on the first carriage. I'm just not sure it carries through well on the adjoining. Hopefully, it'll be tinkered with a bit still.

 

[CMQSD402F9011]

I gotta question on why the Canadian Transport Ministry hasn’t done anything to curb down on PSR or Precision Scheduled Railroading in Canada on both of the railways being CN and CPKC. In the U.S. I recall one RR employee who wrote a letter explaining that if “the SEC can go after Bernie Madoff, then the STB and the FRA should go after PSR or Precision Scheduled Railroading” which has been labeled as Profits over safety and making trains longer sometimes exceeding over 200 cars. Unfortunately the STB or the Surface Transportation Board has been very toothless these days and it should note that John Baird who was a Conservative MP who served in the Harper government even as transport minister is now on the CPKC board of directors and he was responsible for giving both CN and CPKC the power to Self Regulate themselves unfortunately.

 

[Urban Sky]

I gotta question on why the Canadian Transport Ministry hasn’t done anything to curb down on PSR or Precision Scheduled Railroading in Canada on both of the railways being CN and CPKC. In the U.S. I recall one RR employee who wrote a letter explaining that if “the SEC can go after Bernie Madoff, then the STB and the FRA should go after PSR or Precision Scheduled Railroading” which has been labeled as Profits over safety and making trains longer sometimes exceeding over 200 cars. Unfortunately the STB or the Surface Transportation Board has been very toothless these days and it should note that John Baird who was a Conservative MP who served in the Harper government even as transport minister is now on the CPKC board of directors and he was responsible for giving both CN and CPKC the power to Self Regulate themselves unfortunately.

The problem clearly isn‘t PSR, but the self-regulation, as we‘ve already seen in Lac-Megantic…

 

[CMQSD402F9011]

The problem clearly isn‘t PSR, but the self-regulation, as we‘ve already seen in Lac-Megantic…

Perhaps we need to reinstitute a ban on stock buybacks and have control on dividends paid so that businesses can put the capital toward reinvesting in the business itself so it can grow volume and retain/attract business. I mean you don’t see this happening in Europe on their railways like in Germany, Poland, Italy, Russia and Ukraine.

 

[Urban Sky]

Perhaps we need to reinstitute a ban on stock buybacks and have control on dividends paid so that businesses can put the capital toward reinvesting in the business itself so it can grow volume and retain/attract business. I mean you don’t see this happening in Europe on their railways like in Germany, Poland, Italy, Russia and Ukraine.

Why so convoluted? You just need to prescribe certain track maintenance levels and impose serious fines for repeated violations…! You know, all these things which would be done by a regulator in any other developed country…

 

[CMQSD402F9011]

Why so convoluted? You just need to prescribe certain track maintenance levels and impose serious fines for repeated violations…! You know, all these things which would be done by a regulator in any other developed country…

What I do mean is that in Europe, you don’t see PSR happening there like you see what you see in America. And I don’t think they do stock buybacks on their railways in Europe.

 

[Urban Sky]

What I do mean is that in Europe, you don’t see PSR happening there like you see what you see in America. And I don’t think they do stock buybacks on their railways in Europe.

When I compare the freight rail modal share in Europe with that of us in North America, I don’t feel too tempted to swap:

As I keep repeating myself: this is not a question of operating philosophies, but of “self-regulation” vs. actual regulation…

 

[lenaitch]

Why so convoluted? You just need to prescribe certain track maintenance levels and impose serious fines for repeated violations…! You know, all these things which would be done by a regulator in any other developed country…

Trying to regulate industry performance by financial rules rather than industry rules. I doubt privately-held railways in other countries are treated any differently than other traded companies in terms of practices such as dividend payments, stock buy-backs, etc.

 

[CMQSD402F9011]

When Hunter Harrison came to CP Rail in 2012. He cut everything including 75% of mechanics/shop workers in the mechanical department.

 

[Urban Sky]

When Hunter Harrison came to CP Rail in 2012. He cut everything including 75% of mechanics/shop workers in the mechanical department.

Again: the problem was not what ideas HH had, but that the regulators continue to sit on the same hands they had already been sitting on for decades rather than growing some guts and teeth and making sure that he couldn’t cut into safety-relevant redundances. Also, if you believe that CN‘s safety culture wasn‘t already on life support prior to the merger with Hunter Harrison's Illinois Central in 1998 (or even CN's privatization in 1995), I invite you to read about the Hinton derailment (1986), where CN's open and institutionalized contempt (by its management and unions, so truly from the top to the bottom!) for even the most basic safety rules killed 18 VIA passengers and 5 crew members):

The inquiry concluded that no one individual was to blame; instead it condemned what Foisy described as a "railroader culture" that prized loyalty and productivity at the expense of safety. As an example of lax attitudes to safety, Foisy noted that engine crews that took over trains at Edson did so "on the fly". While the locomotive was moving slowly through the yard, the new crew would jump on and the previous crew would jump off. While this method saved time and fuel, it was a flagrant violation of safety regulations which required stationary brake tests after a crew change. Management claimed to be unaware of this practice, even though it was quite common. In regards to engineer John Hudson, the Foisy Commission concluded it was a possibility that the collision happened because he had either fallen asleep at the controls or had suffered a heart attack or stroke due to his extremely poor health.

No evidence could be found to explain why the freight train failed to stop at the absolute signal at the Dalehurst control point. After a wrong-side signal problem was eliminated, human error was considered the only possible cause. Tests on the crews' remains ruled out drugs or alcohol as a cause, though it was revealed that the engineer of the freight train, Jack Hudson, was an alcoholic and heavy smoker who suffered from pancreatitis and type 2 diabetes, thus placing him at risk for a heart attack or stroke.[2] The commission further criticized CN's ineffective monitoring of Hudson's health condition:

The serious nature of Hudson's medical condition...raises a strong possibility that it was a factor contributing to the collision of February 8...The Commission therefore concludes that engineer Hudson's medical condition possibly contributed to his failure to control Train 413. The Commission also concludes that there are serious deficiencies in the manner in which CN monitored and reacted to that condition. The Commission finds that both the policies and procedures that permitted a man in Hudson's medical state to be responsible for the operation of a freight train on the CN main line to be unacceptable.[2]

Another frequently ignored safety regulation mentioned in the report was the "deadman's pedal", which a locomotive engineer had to keep depressed for the train to remain underway. Were he to fall asleep or pass out, his foot would slip from the pedal, triggering an alarm and engaging the train's brakes automatically a few seconds later. However, many engineers found this tiresome and bypassed the pedal by placing a heavy weight (often a worn out brake shoe) on it. It was uncertain whether the pedal had been bypassed in this case because the lead locomotive of the train had been destroyed. A more advanced safety device was available, the reset safety control (RSC), which required crew members to take an action such as pushing a button at regular intervals, or else automatic braking would occur, but neither lead locomotive was equipped with this safety feature. While the second locomotive in the freight train was equipped with RSC, it was not assigned as the lead locomotive because it lacked a "comfort cab". Management and union practice was to place more comfortable locomotives at the front of trains, even at the expense of safety.

Hinton train collision - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Hunter Harrison was still a railroad operator at Burlington Northern railroad when all of the above happened at CN and a safety culture within the Canadian railroad industry which wasn't completely non-existent and unsupervised by any regulator would have mostly survived his tenure...

 

[micheal_can]

When Hunter Harrison came to CP Rail in 2012. He cut everything including 75% of mechanics/shop workers in the mechanical department.

There are many 'issues' with the railways. The problem is whether the government wants to waste political capital on changing those regulations. Most of those regulations in place are dealing with preventing another death, so unless it kills someone, the government is not likely to make sweeping changes, even if it is needed.