Bill and List, Bill said, "In the alternative, time spent gathering loaded traffic at origin for movement in block to destination will cause bunching to occur" There is plenty of bunching in the current system. In the Trains examples, 48 to 88 hours elapsed between the time the car was released by the shipper, and the time the car departed the regional class yard at Spring TX, 23 miles north of Houston. In other words, an average of 3 days of production was "bunched" on about 45 route-miles of track, with presumably an equivalent inventory of returning empties. "From a facility standpoint, most hump yards are not designed to efficiently pass blocks of cars." The idea is to get rid of hump yards altogether. Portions of some hump yards will need to be retained to consolidate and seperate groups of "minitrains", but the humps themselves will be gone. The marketplace has already decided the hump yard is obsolete. When was the last one built? How many are being planned? The last flurry of hump yard construction occurred in the 1970's. Northtown and Spokane on BN, Barstow on ATSF, Sheffield and Linwood on SR. I think Queensgate in Cincinnati was early 80's, and UP built a "mini-hump" in Louisiana in the early 90's. The last hump in the Northeast was Buckeye near Columbus, opened by PC in 1969, 38 years ago. Getting back to EL, I believe Steve has a file that concerns a solicitation for a steel move in Ohio, proposing EL as an alternative to truck. It was the kind of short-haul move the RR's no longer seek, but was instructive nonetheless. Steve, can you share that with us? Paul B The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org To Unsubscribe: http://lists.elhts.org/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------
This HTML page is © 2000-2009 Blue Moon Online System and The Railfan Network
This page and the data contained therein may not be reproduced
for any form of commercial use without the explicit permission
of J. Henry Priebe Jr. or his duly authorized agent.