Freight rail thru Baltimore

[Gerald Neily]

In light of the recent freight train derailment, today's Sun column by Michael Dresser reminds us of something that had previously been discussed ad nauseum on EnvBalt - the critical need to replace the Howard Street CSX tunnel.

The blame for this lies squarely with MDOT, which has treated rail issues for intracity mass transit, intercity Amtrak and MARC and freight in their own separate pigeon holes, when they are really parts of the same interrelated system.

Gauging by their rhetoric, they want to spend many billions, first on the Red Line, then on a new Amtrak tunnel, then still more billions on various other things like MARC stations, and then finally someday they would get around to solving the freight problem, even though it has far more to do with economic development and public safety than any of their other solutions.

What they really need to do is plan all this stuff together. But if they end up building a new Amtrak tunnel without a separate but concurrent freight solution, the only prudent thing to do would be to build it to have freight run through the new tunnel along with the passenger trains. That would probably negate much of the benefit for Amtrak and MARC, but at least it would give freight a safe efficient route through the city in place of the dangerous Howard Street tunnel. 

To build a new tunnel, yet still force freight to continue on its present dangerous route would be even more irresponsible.

--
Gerald Neily
www.BaltimoreInnerSpace.blogspot.com

[Youssef Mahmoud]

I'm no train expert, so maybe someone can tell me why freight trains go so much more slowly than even conventional passenger trains.  I know they have a much heavier payload, but can't they put more engines on the train to compensate?  Wouldn't they be able to charge more if their service was faster?  I know one of the main reasons we have so much truck traffic on our interstates is that train freight, while cheap, is excruciatingly slow.

I bring this up because if freight moved faster, it could share tracks with passenger rail without causing the types of delays that it does now.  I'm sure there would be cost savings associated with that.

[Gerald Neily]

Youssef, I'm no train expert either, but I think slow freight is inherent in the whole rail process. You've surely seen how freight cars just stand around the railroad yards. The whole process of assembling and disassembling freight trains and transferring the freight onto and off of trucks and ships is extremely slow. And freight trains keep getting longer. Long gone are the days when most freight users had their own rail sidings and got door to door delivery.

So freight trains are just slow by nature, and make up for it by being cheap - and very energy and labor efficient. Speeding up freight trains would appear to make little difference in anyone's bottom line. Rail and trucks each have their own market segment, with less overlap than we're often led to believe.

In contrast, passenger rail is a whole different thing. But even with a new "great circle" tunnel, Amtrak and MARC trains aren't going to go all that fast (+/-50 mph?), so mixing in freight trains through the city would seem to be a fairly decent compromise compared with how awful it is right now.

PS - Sorry about the spam from Andy yesterday. He has been zapped from the group. I suppose the only foolproof anti-spam option Google has is to "moderate" first-time posters for spam. I hate to do that and create a time-lag for them, but maybe we should try it. Does anyone have any experience with that?

--
Gerald Neily
www.BaltimoreInnerSpace.blogspot.com

[Nate]

I think along very flat straightaways, freight can go about 60 or 70
mph. Obviously, breaking distances with all that weight would likely
preclude anything approaching bullet trains.

We need a new freight tunnel under the harbor, however. All the
combined CSX/Norfolk Southern traffic would make running Amtrak
untenable, esp. with future projections of increases. Speed is a side-
benefit of the Great Circle tunnel (2 minute savings, I think?).
Capacity and the need to replace the B&P are the main reasons for a
new tunnel. Plus, way back in 1868, they didn't have tunnel boring
machines that now make designing a practical rail tunnel much less
problematic for Baltimore. IIRC, the grades don't allow freight to
operate at the deep bore of the passenger tunnel, so a freight or
combined passenger/freight would have to be about 15 to 30 ft below
the surface, rip out a block of Reservoir Hill and have a bridge over
the JFX! So, needless to say, getting toxic freight away from highly
populated areas and dangerous situations isn't solved by the Great
Circle freight option.

N

On Aug 10, 1:02 pm, Gerald Neily <geraldne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Youssef, I'm no train expert either, but I think slow freight is inherent in
> the whole rail process. You've surely seen how freight cars just stand
> around the railroad yards. The whole process of assembling and disassembling
> freight trains and transferring the freight onto and off of trucks and ships
> is extremely slow. And freight trains keep getting longer. Long gone are the
> days when most freight users had their own rail sidings and got door to door
> delivery.
>
> So freight trains are just slow by nature, and make up for it by being cheap
> - and very energy and labor efficient. Speeding up freight trains would
> appear to make little difference in anyone's bottom line. Rail and trucks
> each have their own market segment, with less overlap than we're often led
> to believe.
>
> In contrast, passenger rail is a whole different thing. But even with a new
> "great circle" tunnel, Amtrak and MARC trains aren't going to go all that
> fast (+/-50 mph?), so mixing in freight trains through the city would seem
> to be a fairly decent compromise compared with how awful it is right now.
>
> PS - Sorry about the spam from Andy yesterday. He has been zapped from the
> group. I suppose the only foolproof anti-spam option Google has is to
> "moderate" first-time posters for spam. I hate to do that and create a
> time-lag for them, but maybe we should try it. Does anyone have any
> experience with that?
>