(erielack) RE: 18 hours, Advance 100

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

Jim and Group,

I think you're correct about the limited market for really fast service. On the EL a 29 hour NY-Chicago schedule was fine for most TOFC. The 9 pm cutoff was late enough to accomodate all trailers coming in during the evening "rush", and the arrival at about 4am (at least when on time) permitted grounding in time for delivery by the start of the business day for the customers that wanted it. Expend a lot of effort (and fuel) in a faster schedule so you can ground trailers in the wee hours and most of them are just going to sit there, unless it's mail, UPS or perishables. Fuel consumption, a major expense is exponentially related to speed. That's one of the ways Conrail maintained profitablity in this often marginal business: TV trains generally operated no faster than 50 mph (same as they did on EL); the goal was to ground the trailers by 10am. The Flexivan had a big advantage in fuel efficiency (at least 25%) due to lower tare and lower profile; the TOFC configuration creates a lot of air drag at higher speeds.

Paul B

The Santa Fe's Super C operation showed that a short, over-powered TOFC 
train could occasionally beat passenger schedules.  I would guess that a 20 
car TOFC train with 5 Geeps or F Units, the wind behind its caboose, 
extraordinary mechanical luck, and absolute dispatching priority over the 
single track stretches could occasionally make an 18 hour schedule across 
the EL (back when the track was kept up for passenger service).  But there 
were two good reasons why a sustainable super-premium schedule, say 21 
hours, was never attempted: one, the NYC could do it cheaper over the Water 
Level Route; two, there probably wasn't a market demand that would bear the 
extra costs of such an operation, even on the NYC (which offered 24 hour 
schedules with its FlexiVan equipment). The marginal costs of cutting 
additional hours from a 24 hour schedule on the NYC, or a 27 hour schedule 
on the EL, probably went up steeply, beyond the value to any particular 
shipper. 

Jim G.

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