Let's talk RPOs

[dtrainBNSF1]

Hey all!

Over the last few months I've been thinking about mail traffic in the U.S. Amtrak's previous involvement in mail & express has been discussed before and the reason why it was eventually abandoned has also been discussed. To put it simply Amtrak always moved mail and express since its creation in 1971 as there was a precedent of moving high-priority shipments cross-country by rail. Long distance passenger trains with the additional costs of providing food, bedding, and lounge areas are almost guaranteed to be unprofitable unless you jack up ticket prices so much that no one would be able to ride. Mail & express shipments helped to offset these expenses and as was the case for many trains before Amtrak actually made some passenger trains profitable. It was common to see long sets of MHCs at the head end of Amtrak's long distance passenger trains back in the early years (Material Handling Boxcars - specially-built boxcars for high-priority shipments with HEP connections between the cars to allow locos like the F40PH to be able to provide power to the coaches). Notable examples from that period are trains such as the Southwest Chief and the California Zephyr throughout the 80s, both of which would have at least 2-5 MHCs up front along with the baggage car, and maybe even a few more if demand required it.

Eventually Amtrak got into the perishables and trailer business with reefers and roadrailers. The freight railroads (who host Amtrak on their tracks for a fee) complained, claiming that Amtrak was taking business away from them because of their mail and express program.

Let's pause for a minute here and consider this: Huge freight railroads which run multiple intermodal and reefer trains a day and which can commonly be from a mile to 16-18,000 feet long claimed that a daily passenger train with a 30-car limit (at least 9 of which is taken by regular passenger equipment) is going to take away from their business. How much business can a single 30-car train possibly detract from multiple daily 16,000-foot trains? That's one instance I'll call "Bull" on the freight railroads.

Anyway, the courts ruled in favor of Amtrak because of the already-established precedent of high-priority shipments being shipped on passenger trains. Now Amtrak needed to set out and pick up cars of express shipments at various stations along its routes, and it depended on the freight railraods to do the switching. The freight railroads wound up delaying Amtrak's trains by several hours with these switching maneuvers (you can make a conspiracy theory out of that if you want but I'm not here to talk about that) and this affected Amtrak's ability to keep time all across the country. It got so bad that Amtrak's President at the time (I think that was back with David Gunn?) eventually gave up on mail & express and stopped it altogether, claiming that it was interfering with Amtrak's purpose first and foremost to transport passengers with timely and reliable service. This decision to cut mail and express resulted in some trains getting cutbacks and a few others being all out scrapped.

Now I've seen conversations at various locales and forums as to why Amtrak doesn't revive mail and express or the logistics of doing that and the cons have usually been in the form of the cost to invest in the infrastructure such as sorting and storage facilities to handle the traffic and the fact that Amtrak is a skeletal system at best and just doesn't go to enough places and run enough trains to make the service profitable.

Here's my thinking: if scheduling, infrastructure, and a lack of station stops is the problem, why not reinvest in some old tech? Like say RPOs and mail cranes along the right of way? Workers can sort the mail en route and drop off presorted mail deliveries at multiple locations where Amtrak doesn't stop with the train in motion because of the cranes along the line. Local mail workers from the towns would be on hand when the train passes through to load waiting mail onto the cranes and to pick up the mail from the passing train to take back to the local post office to be further sorted for delivery. Additional mail could also be transferred at the stations where the train does stop where sorting could begin immediately. This way more customers along the line can be served at more locations than what was done previously. There would be no switching at any of the stations so timekeeping would not be an issue any more and any mail from Chicago to the end destination like Los Angeles on the Southwest Chief could be sealed up in a boxcar at the end of the train only to be opened upon arrival at the terminus. Anything like perishable shipments and roadrailers would be end-to-end service only to further eliminate the issues of switching cars mid-trip.

What do you guys think? Could that actually work?

[PapaXpress]

Shipping by plane is much more efficient.

[GERUNIMO625]

Hello,

HLet's pause for a minute here and consider this: Huge freight railroads which run multiple intermodal and reefer trains a day and which can commonly be from a mile to 16-18,000 feet long claimed that a daily passenger train with a 30-car limit (at least 9 of which is taken by regular passenger equipment) is going to take away from their business. How much business can a single 30-car train possibly detract from multiple daily 16,000-foot trains? That's one instance I'll call "Bull" on the freight railroads.

As a railroader myself I can tell you that is not "bull" as you put it. I can tell you that Metra fines the UP every time one of their trains is late, I'm sure the same applies for Amtrak. So the practice is to hold freight trains out of the city during peak rush hour periods. Infact there is a rumor amongst us railroaders that our dispatchers keep a list of certain engineers that run slow and should not be allowed to take Z-Trains (express trains) or given the opprotunity to try and sneak a freight train in during rush hour, or as we call it "fleet time".

Anyway, back on topic. If you hold trains out of the city there is only a handful of places they can stop without blocking crossings. Those large monsters (the 15,000+ foot ones), on my subdivision can only be stopped at a few spots outside of the city before they must be taken in, or potentially block all kinds of stuff. One is about 20 miles outside of the city, the other is 100 miles out! So you can see how freight trains can pile up very quickly. Then crews start to expire under the hours of service and must be recrewed. This all adds up to financial loss.

As for mail, when you start talking about PEOPLE sorting mail it starts to sound expensive. Or you could sort it by machine in a building somewhere, put it in a truck and send it off to a post office to be further sorted and a disturbed. Not only is that method probably faster its also ALOT cheaper. Top that off you then have to reinvest in dead technology, like RPO cars and the facilities to handle them and their cargo. Its just not going to happen, in this cut throat pinch penny world.

Also your quote from Mr. Letterman doesn't make sense. If you did something stupid and it worked, it just means you got away with something stupid.

Take care.

[JOHNtheREDNECK]

The team effort between truck drivers and air freight is too good for demand to be placed on the railroads. Freight can be taken directly off of planes into automated sorting centers that can sort letters by the hundreds of thousands and package them in nice boxes ready to head out to truck drivers for either long distance or local delivery.

Large aircraft are also getting better at landing in shorter distances at smaller regional airports. The more airports an airline can land its fleet at, the more passengers and freight they can carry. The military has been researching this for years and the civilian side is getting a hold of some technology.

I don't think the railroads stand a chance anymore when it comes to mail and express services. Especially considering the rise of drones is on the horizon...

[dtrainBNSF1]

Well it was worth a shot.

[_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha]

However, the damage to the environment isn't factored in

[ex-railwayman]

Now I've seen conversations at various locales and forums as to why Amtrak doesn't revive mail and express or the logistics of doing that and the cons have usually been in the form of the cost to invest in the infrastructure such as sorting and storage facilities to handle the traffic and the fact that Amtrak is a skeletal system at best and just doesn't go to enough places and run enough trains to make the service profitable.

And there is your ending argument, EVERYONE in the US has mail delivered to their own front doors, offices and trailer park caravans, from major cities to small conurbations miles out in the middle of absolutely nowhere, do Amtrak serve all of these places, NO, can they serve all of these places, NO, will they spend millions of dollars in infrastructure utilising a skeletal system already in place, NO, will they make any profit from doing so, NO!!!

Cheerz. Steve.

[GSkid]

Both the postal service and Amtrak were SUPPOSED TO take in enough money to eventually get off the government teet. Neither of them will ever do that. They are money pits. It's amazing to see an agency that is the operator of the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world, goes just about anywhere in the United States, has a monopoly on first class delivery and also delivers small to medium packages to compete with the other parcel companies..... and yet gets their clocks cleaned by the likes of FedEx and UPS constantly.

Now just imagine two differently subsidized entities, with bureaucratic big government involved in one fashion or another..... either working together or even competing against each other for the same customers. It would be a complete trainwreck! And outside of the NEC, Amtrak will never recover their costs. Cuz if they made a ticket price that simply covered the cost with no profit, it would still be so high that almost nobody would ride it.