Wat r d advantages of rail transport?

Question

Wat r d advantages of rail transport?

Answer 1

save fuel when you consider a car can move over 100 people vs an auto with one peson

Answer 2

Cost.  When it makes sense, in terms of cost per ton per mile you won't find a better way to ship certain kinds of freight.

How many tractor trailor rigs would it take to move the equivaliant of 80 gondolas full of coal, curshed rock  or sand?  How many tanker trucks would it take to move 400 tons of anhydorous amonia ?  Right now our branch RR is operating the way RRs used to do 30 years ago.

Lots of local busineses are placing orders for cars to be set out and picked...and new spurs are being built.

In a lot of cases it makes more sense to go by rail.

Answer 3

The above answers are great.  In addition, also look at the land use.  A single-track railroad right-of-way is only 10 or 15 feet wide.  It'll handle more freight than the interstate does, and most of the interstates are hundreds of feet wide, with many acres of interchanges and urban sprawl around them.

Answer 4

Rail Transport has had the luxury of being one of the most efficient transportation mediums since it's inception.  There are a number of things that give it this distinction:

1.  Power to weight ratio.  With trains, the amount of power needed for a given train can be matched more closely with adding or removing a locomotive.  With trucks, there's a one tractor to one trailer limit (with triples allowed in certain locations).

2. Manpower.  While this may or may not be a good thing depending on how one looks at it.  Typical trains have a crew of two.  That's for a train that's 900' long local or a 5900' coal train.  This means there's less people to move the commodity.

With this comes the added benefit of concentrated service and repair.  With trucks, rescue/repair crews may have to travel all over to repair and rescue vehicles with issues.  With trains, you know where they are and where they are going.  This means you can concentrate your rescue vehicles and crews in strategic locations and keep your trains moving.

3. Highway congestion.  It's no surprise that highway congestion is becoming a major issue in major US city's.  Trucks take up the space of two, sometimes four passenger vehicles.  Granted, trucks are a vital part of our economy but it seems the are everywhere.  An average inter-modal freight train will remove around 200 tractor-trailers from US highways and intestates.  Trucks are great at moving inter-modal containers from transfer stations to customers where runs are short.

4.  Safety.  There's a lot of nasty stuff out there that unfortunately has to be transported and it can't be made non-hazardous.  With the "inattentiveness" of most drivers out on the road, truck drivers face a challenge of getting their cargo from point A to point B.  Sometimes a driver will cut a truck off or hit a truck due to various reasons and it can end up with the truck crashing and causing all sorts of carnage.  These crashes are bad news if there is something hazardous on board.  A year and a half ago there was a truck driving on highway US 6 in Central Utah.  Reports state that excess speed was a factor in the truck crashing and catching fire.  This truck was carrying about 28,000 pounds of explosives.  The explosives detonated and created a 15' deep, 75' round hole in the road.  surpassingly, no one was killed and the driver suffered burns.  Ironically, the blast blew out the road bed and severely damaged 25-50 yards in length of a pair of UP railroad tracks.

Along the same lines, the mass of the trains ensures a excellent chance that the commodity will arrive undamaged.  Highway collisions as mentioned above can cause damage to goods.  With more goods being shipped by rail the amount of trucks on the road goes down and with it the chances for crashes.

This isn't a comprehensive list but just a few thoughts.  Do some research and you'll find that rail transport has many advantages.

Answer 5

All the guys above are right. To add to that, I'm an engineer. Today I operated a train of 101 cars of wheat. Each car contained 2.5 truck loads. That translates in to 252 fewer trucks on the road. I don't know what the fuel savings was for sure, but it was a lot less than what a 252 truck fleet would use. Good question.