Re: (erielack) Intermodal Trains (was Automotive Traffic)

["Todd Stearns" <toddsyr_@_twcny.rr.com>]

Conrail. The road I'm most familiar with. I grew up and still live not far
from the Water Level Route. I remember "C-Day" fairly well, though I was
only 9 years old. I went from seeing all black PC engines to a rainbow of
fallen flag locos who had been moved around the system almost immediately
after April 1st. The greatest part was seeing big SD-45's and such still in
their EL livery. No EL power that big had ever been seen by me before. It
just never came to the Syracuse area for obvious reasons. Most of all, it
just wasn't needed. I too remember extremely long stack trains Paul. Nothing
beats seeing trains in access of 2 and 1/2 miles in length! Even as a kid I
wondered how much force was being applied to the couplers at the front of
the train. ALOT. Thanks for refreshing some memories! Todd

- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>
To: "EL Mailing List" <erielack_@_lists.elhts.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:38 AM
Subject: (erielack) Intermodal Trains (was Automotive Traffic)


> Phil and Group,
>
> Conrail had a different approach to intermodal than some other roads. It
focused on controlling costs in this marginal business where it was
disadvantaged by a short haul compared with western roads. They did this by
running long trains (to minimize the no. of crews) at modest speed (to
minimize fuel consumption). Typical CR intermodals were powered at 1.5-2 hpt
(horsepower per ton) vs 3 or more at most other RR's. For most trains, the
goal was to ground the trailers by 10:00 second morning; for some of the
Boston traffic (on E St Louis trains TV-5 TV-6 and the late cutoff TV-10B,
the Boston section of TV-10) with afternoon arrivals the object was to turn
the equipment for departure that evening. The 30 hour NY-Chicago schedules
were slow compared with the 20 1/2 hr timing of NYC's inaugural SV-1/SV-2
Flexivans, or even the 26 hrs of EL's NY-100 of the late-60's, and was the
subject of much comment and complaint from shippers. Meeting these relaxed
schedules was easy once th!
>  e track was rehabbed, and the TV's were certainly reliable, and in fact
often ran hours AOT. CR actually had a two-tier intermodal structure, with
faster late-cutoff Mail trains carrying UPS and bulk mail that had deadlines
at the sorting centers. In addition, TV-53 (later TVLA) had a tight
connection with ATSF at Chicago. Mail-8 and TV-53 were the CR versions of EL
trains 2/NY-100 and CX-99, carrying the UPS traffic it inherited from EL in
1976.
>
> I recall CR issuing a press release that they were pleased with the fact
that their TV trains were departing Chicago with an average of 75 cars. I
saw TV-2 coming through Cresson with 92 cars, TV-11 rounding Horseshoe with
100 cars, and a combined Saturday edition of TV-5/TV-79 with 105 cars west
of Buffalo (these are all 89' cars remember). In the double-stack era CR
assembled trains of biblical proportions on the Water Level Route. In July
1993 I photographed a WB stack (TV-201 I think) coming through Rochester
that was in excess of 13,000' in length.
>
> Paul B


	The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List
	Sponsored by the ELH&TS
	http://www.elhts.org

------------------------------