US Freight Train Operations

Andres_Nunez

Buffalonian
So how do railroads operate? As in Locals, drags, intermodals etc... I have a slight idea but not the whole thing. Are there any good websites that explain railroad operations or can someone explain to me how it works. I'd like to model a railroad mainline set in the US for Trainz, but i dont know what industries to place and how they would get serviced and all that technical stuff. Any help is greatly appreciated
 
The US railroads do a bit of all of the above. Where I live we have Pan Am Railways, which has a number of long haul freights, drag freights I suppose, that run from one end of the system to specific yards at the other. The NOED, or POSE, runs from North Main Junction to East Deerfield, and Portland to Selkirk, NY, respectively. They then have some switcher operations at various yards, although these have been consolidated over the years, that handle the local operations. These runs are given numbers like LA-1, LA-2, SA-1, SA-2, for Lawrence Switcher 1 and 2, and Salem 1 and 2. LA-1 will run from Lawrence up north to Haverhill and above, servicing whatever local industries are on the line as well as the South Lawrence industrial park. This switcher also used to work the now abandoned M&L branch to Salem New Hampshire. In the B&M days, SA-1 and SA-2 handled the switching in Peabody, Salem, Lynn, and even some down in Melrose and Malden. At one time they used to go up to Danvers, but that operation has closed by PAR. The old B&M also had LASA, or Lawrence to Salem runs which would transfer the freights between the two yards. This was an interline freight and less of an actual local that did the switching. Today, this is gone, and the complete operation, both the switching and transfer is done by LA-2.

There are also intermodal freights on this line. At one time they ran the East Wind in conjunction with Conrail and Connecticut Southern, and another operation with the old Central Vermont. Today it's not uncommon to see stack trains running, in cooperation with Norfolk Southern and their joint operation, Pan Am Southern (PAS), running between Mechanicsville and Ayer, MA. The containers are then shipped via PAR to Portland and beyond, or are interchanged with CSX in Ayer.

Now this is only a tiny operation compared to what CSX, NS, BNSF, or UPRR runs.

As far as websites, you might want to check out railroad.net www.railroad.net where they discuss various train operations, perhaps also do a search on Google or Bing and see what you get. There is also the opsig group at the NMRA, which is an operations interests group. In addition to direct websites such as this, I also recommend looking at satellite views of areas of interest. This too can give you a view of trains on the mainlines and branches, as well as cars on sidings at various industries.

The various industries of course vary between the regions. In the far west in northern Wyoming, you're going to see long coal trains coming out of the Powder River destined to various power plants in the country. These in many cases are run as unit trains from the mine to the power plant without any interchange, and keep the same engines for the run. Other areas will have automobile manufacturing, which will require various goods and raw materials. There is steel, plastic, cloth, engine parts, etc. all of which travel more efficiently via rail. The plastic industry requires petroleum products to produce the raw plastic pellets. The raw oil comes in to the chemical plants from refineries in tank cars, and the plastic is shipped in covered hoppers to the various plastic companies. The parts are then shipped via local truck, or even rail to other industries. Staying with our automobile industry, we're also going to need glass. For glass manufacturing, there is sand (silica), and other materials used to create the safety glass. The glass raw materials are then shipped to the glass manufacturers to create the windows, and these are then shipped to the car factories.

In forested areas, you are going to see lumber and paper, with lumber going to various industries including pulp plants to make paper, as well as to furniture and building materials industries. The paper industry also requires various chemicals, including clay, Kaolin to be exact, bleach, and acids, so your trains servicing the paper industry will have log trains, bulk hoppers, tanks, and boxcars heading up to the industries.

There are many, many other industries such as this. For a rail operation, you could have large, long manifest freights carrying raw materials, or finished goods from a portal, which represents the outside world. With our ability to control AI drivers directly in Trainz, you can take control of the through freight when he reaches a specific yard where you disconnect the engines, send them off to the engine house for service while you then have an AI switcher add and remove freight cars for the local industries. When the switcher is done, send the original AI-controlled endings back on the head of the new freight, which was made up by the switcher, and send him on his merry way. I've done this more than once and it's a great challenge getting a freight ready and prepping it to leave between a passenger train which is scheduled to pass through. Once this through freight leaves, you can send him to another portal or even another yard, you can take the switcher, or another one, and have that AI driver visit various industries and branch lines.

Anyway, I hope this helps or perhaps sparks some ideas and questions.

John
 
As JCitron explained above, the US has a great variety of freight operations. Many of which are almost exclusive to certain parts of the country.
The first thing you should ask yourself is what part of the country do you plan to base your route on?
 
Well, I live near two styles of operation. I live with the Class 1 giant Union Pacific Railroad and the small Webb Asset Management owned Boise Valley Railroad. BVRR is a class 3 also known as a short-line. In other words, this particular railroad operates a small chunk of track and makes less than 20 million dollars a year. BVRR interchanges with UP here to haul cars from our small yard to the local industries here. Also, UP runs 3 local trains out of here (Mountain Home Local, Gooding Local, and Hunnington Local) However, my location is in between three major yards. There is the Hinkle yard near Hermiston, OR where we get most of our Eastbound manifest trains from, and then there is the Pocatello yard in Pocatello, ID that is really the only yard in Idaho that has a good locomotive facility and refueling pads. And in Salt Lake City (SLC for short) there is the Roper Yard. Basically, what happens, is railcars from industries in those areas head to the Classification yards (Pocatello, Hinkle, and Roper respectively) and get put into the tracks. When there is a group of cars going to a similar destination ready to roll, then the yard locals (Usually SW1500's, SD40-2's, GP40's, GP38's, and even an MP15) pull the cars together and puts them into the departure tracks in the yard. Then the main-long haul power comes and fetches those cars and rolls away to where ever its destination is. Now things from here get interesting. If railcars need to reach Chicago, well, UP does not run trains directly from the Portland Service Unit (Unless it is Auto service, Intermodal service, and expedited shipping services) to Chicago. This is where the MHKNP train, probably carrying cars bound for Chicago reaches North Platte. From here, the railcars are reclassified, and then reassembled. UP does run trains from North Platte to Chicago, so this means that those cars bound for Chicago, get put in the MNPPR (Manifest North Platte, NE- Provisio, IL (Chicago, IL)) Just as such UP doesn't run manifest trains from the PSU to Chicago, they don't run manifest trains from the Chicago Service unit to PSU either. So the same operation occurs here. When railcars from Chicago are loaded and unloaded and ready to come back west, then they come back on the MNPPR's opposite, the MPRNP where from North Platte they are reclassified and then reassembled for runs back this way.
Now it's time to discuss Auto-Service, Intermodal serivce, and Expedited shipping.
Auto trains (Carrying cars) are always given the symbol A before the origin-destnation code in the UP system. These are higher priority than Manifest and Q-trains. They also run from longer distance areas because Auto-yards are much farther and fewer between than Classification yards.
Intermodal trains are always given the I-symbol. These get priority over most trains. This carries specialty goods that are higher in value and and need to move quickly. Usually these trains are carrying Imports and export goods though they can carry specialty goods in between on ground Intermodal terminals as well. They run very long distances in shorter periods of time than do Manifest trains.
Now its time to look at Expedited trains. These are the super-hot trains that almost nothing stops. When speaking in this catergory, the only thing that stops these bad boys is another one of higher-vaule. Since these trains have the priority over all other trains, they are classified based on value (As are all trains, but are all classified in their individual catergory (E.G Manifest, Q-train, Auto-train, Intermodal train)) What this means, is if the ZG1BR train is more valuable than lets say the ZPDG2 train, then the ZPDG2 train is pulling into the siding and waiting for the ZG1BR train to pass. Oh and an FYI, Expedites are giving the symbol Z in the UP system. These trains generally run longer distances in short amounts of time, (EG ZG1BR runs from Global 1 intermodal terminal in Chicago to Brooklyn, OR in less than 50 hours.) UP and I believe BNSF as well, dubs these trains as Hot-trains. This means that they take the cake and they're only stopping from Amtrak trains and crew changes. That's it. While most of the time, these trains are generally Intermodal stuff (Containers and Trailers), they carry racks, and there is a special train known as the Fruit Express that carries produce from the West coast to markets on the East coast.
P.S, if you want to know more about unit trains, local trains, and the Fruit Express, along with interchange action between UP and BVRR, and of course, my favorite shortline in Eastern Idaho known as the Eastern Idaho Railroad, just say so, I can explain even more, but this should get you started with the long haul boys work.
I learned this stuff from some research, reading Trains Magazine, watching the guys actually doing it, talking to the people who actually do it, and my favorite, watching youtube videos. It's amazing what you can learn from simply watching the real things at work.
 
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If you really want to get the big picture of the way freight moves around, why, and when ... Look at Christmas day, when crews get Quadruple time pay ... Why would an empty CSX trash train be headed NB back to NYC at that great cost ?

Probably they were screaming in NYC, for a trash train to fill, in order to get rid of all the NYC garbage, on Dec 24th, and most probably a yard was gridlocked with extra trains clogging the yard down South near the landfill ... so they hired a crew to clean out all the extra unneeded trains, and get them out of town, to make empty tracks in the yard.

Many other trains were flowing on Christmas day, and those crews were making primo paychecks !

Its like those sliding puzzle games, with the letters and numbers ... move the stuff around, and shift it to its destination, as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

The Tropicana OJ train, and the CA to NY produce trains, get one of the highest priority, as they contain perishables, and have a guaranteed, on time, delivery schedule.
 
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The era that you model is also a big factor, stock car use to run all over up to 1970, passengers trains to 1968, steam 1960.
 
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