How to Kill a Rail Renaissance - and Maybe the Whole Industry

 Once upon a time, there was a Railroad Renaissance.  Traffic grew.  Revenue grew.  Railroads started making real money.  Stock prices went up. Flowers bloomed in the desert.  Wait.  Not that last one.  But, things were good.

And they looked like they were going to continue to go that way.

And then things got cloudy.  I wrote about it.

https://blerfblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/railroad-renaissance-or-dead-man-walking.html?m=0

It was just about then that E. Harrison Hunter went on his march to make all North American railroads in his image.  His brand was PSR which stood for Precision Scheduled Railroading.  It was a "bottom line" strategy that smoothed out operations so that resources could be trimmed precisely to fit, reducing costs to a very low level.

It worked. Railroads that adopted PSR netted trainloads of cash.

But, it looks like it killed the Railroad Renaissance.

The chart above show car loads of traffic - containers and trailers for intermodal.  It's adjusted for GDP.  A flat line would mean traffic is growing with the economy.  

You can see the Rail Renaissance really only applied to Intermodal.  There was real and steady growth until 2006 when some capacity issues impacted growth and the 2008 recession hit.  After that, the growth took off again topping out in 2018 before declining.

Coal was declining a bit and then nosed down with the advent of fracking about 2010, when natural gas started replacing coal in earnest.  

Merchandise traffic has just been on a steady decline the whole period. This is just the nature of business in the US. Supply chains aren't very well supported by fairly slow, large lot shipments.  What will remain of it is boutique business.  Specific commodities in fairly large quantities from specific shippers to specific consignees, like beer and sand.  Also, freight that can't economically go another way, like chemicals and ethanol for blending with gasoline.

So, what's revenue look like?

Better.  Again, data is normalized so that a flat line means revenue is keeping up with inflation and GDP growth.  There is some real revenue growth in Merchandise up until 2013 and intermodal revenue growth is more or less steady.  Coal declining after fracking boom, as expected.

The Merchandise story is one of raising rates on traffic that doesn't have real alternatives.  Here's the Revenue per unit in constant 2017 dollars.

Rates increasing on Merchandise much faster than inflation.  Rates for Intermodal relatively flat.  Coal is just trying to squeeze out the most money from a dying franchise.

So, what does this have to do with PSR?  Look at the units chart after 2018.  That is when NS started all in on PSR.

Merchandise keeps up it's steady decline.  Coal keeps dying in fits and starts.  But, intermodal starts a steady downturn.

Why?

It's because of how PSR is designed.  PSR optimizes the railroad for "what is", not "what will be".  Smooth and steady flow tends to blend traffic and eliminate day of the week variability.  It also tends to want all types of traffic to move at similar speeds and often, on the same train.  Extra track for trains to pass each other is reduced.  Once everything is "right sized", extra locomotives and engineers and conductors are eliminated.  Costs are very low, but there is little surplus for handling anything out of the ordinary or getting things back on track due to extraordinary circumstance, like snow storms or floods.

To be fair, the advent of Distributed Power, where you can run very long trains with locomotives dispersed throughout the train, also had an effect.  Railroads built for 100 car trains often have trouble finding places to stop and start 200 car trains.  They don't fit in passing sidings or yard tracks.

The combination of these two things meant railroads were optimized for:

THE EXISTING TRAFFIC OPERATING UNDER IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

This is not a growth strategy, and it is showing.  New business means you have to have capacity available AHEAD of the time you take it on.  Adding track, personnel and locomotives takes quite a bit of time.

Optimizing your plan around dying merchandise traffic makes it difficult to accommodate new intermodal traffic and trains.  Part of this is inertia.  Railroads have long believed they were born to handle box cars and would just fit those "new" intermodal and unit coal trains in around the flow.  What's become clear in the past 20 or 30 years, is they are becoming primarily intermodal carriers and will have to tailor the railroad to that reality and figure out how to fit the boutique box car traffic into that flow.  

 Railroads need to pivot and go "all in" on intermodal growth.  This means investing the huge sums of cash currently being generated on building routes and equipment designed for future logistic flow.

Anything less, they are just having a glorified "going out of business sale"

Rail Trail - Florida style

Florida has quite a bit of abandoned railroad right of way.  Some of it has been turned into some really nice rail-trails.  I've ridden the St. Augustine to Palatka trail a good bit in the last year.  

It's a nice one.  Here's an overview.  

Let's start at the beginning.  The very beginning.  The 20th century development of the east coast of Florida was caused by the building of the Florida East Coast Railway by Henry Flagler.  The original mainline of the railroad from St. Augustine south ran inland, southwest to Palatka and then SSE back toward the coast.  In 1925, the Florida East Coast built the Moultrie Cut-off - a direct line from St. Augustine to Bunnell and points south.  This effectively make the old mainline to Palatka a little-used secondary line.  It was gradually abandoned starting in the1960s.  The rail trail was started in 2004 and completed in 2018. https://www.floridastateparks.org/parks-and-trails/palatka-st-augustine-state-trail/history

There is a stub of the old mainline that is still in use from St. Augustine to just west of I-95.  Where this stub ends, the trail begins.

Trail beginning.  I-95 overpass just to the east.

This is a stub portion of the trail.  There is no way to start or end your ride at this spot.  The nearest access is at Vermont Blvd in Vermont Heights.  A small dirt lot and trail information kiosk are there.  A much better access point is the Vermont Heights trailhead where the trail comes out to meet SR 207.  Here, there is ample paved parking, restrooms, bottle filling station and picnic tables. The facilities are clean and well maintained.  It is a popular starting point for riders.  From here, it's about a mile to the Vermont Blvd. trail access point and another mile and half beyond that to the east end of the trail.

Vermont Trailhead pavilion with restrooms

bottle filling station

My ride

A trail kiosk

To the west, the trail follows SR 207 on the north side.  It is worth noting that in the places the trail follows SR 207, it is it's own path, separated by 30 feet or more from the highway.  This makes biking pleasant and easy.  After a mile, it crosses to the south side.

Bike crossing with signals

The highway curves away from the trail after another mile or so and heads into some shaded woods.  Then over a creek and to a short stub to the Armstrong trailhead. 

Stub to Armstrong trailhead

facilities at Armstrong

There are signs along the trail in Armstrong telling the history and importance of the railroad to the town.

From Armstrong, the trail goes through a pine forest and along a fancy horse farm before coming to the hamlet of Spuds.  The trail crosses SR 207 back to the north side.

Signaled crossing at Spuds

The trail heads off into the woods again, crossing Deep Creek on a long bridge. It is not rare to see paddlers on the creek as there's a put-in point along SR207.

The trail then goes right through the town of Hastings.  Hastings is the center of the potato growing area in Florida.  There are still plenty of fields along the trail planted in potatoes, but the Hastings' best days seem behind it.  Even the Potato Grower Association building is for sale.  

Anyone need a Potato Growers Building?

At the west end of  Hastings is the Cora C. Harrison Preserve trailhead.  This is 9 miles from Vermont Trailhead and about 10 miles from Palatka.  This is a good point to start a round trip in either direction.

Stub to Cora C Harrison Preserve Trailhead

There is excellent parking here as well as a well maintained, clean restroom and bottle filling station.  There is also a small pavilion with a picnic table here.

Hastings used to be the source of farm goods for the Flagler Resorts.

Heading west from here, you cross a short bridge over a creek and come out to SR207 again.

On your right is potato farm with a few interesting things to take see.  One is the pun-ily named "Bulls-Hit Ranch and Farms.  They have a couple of long horn steer you can see from the trail surrounded by a fence made from old concrete railroad ties. 

There is also what was once trying to be a transportation museum, complete with old freight station (moved from Hastings?), a caboose, small locomotive, fire truck, airplane and old farm machinery

Hastings Freighthouse

locomotive

once fledgling museum?

The trail runs along the north side of SR 207 for a while, both surrounded by farm fields before the highway veers off to the south and the trail continues along the back side of some rural housing in the shade.  The trail then goes through East Palatka to US17.  Here you can get some snacks at a Raceway and a Burger King.  There is also some trail parking adjacent to the Burger King. 

The trail heads towards Palatka proper along the side of US17, going over the St. Johns River.  The trail is essentially a wide sideway on the east side of the bridge and is well protected from the highway lanes.  This is the only real hill on the trail.  You can then follow the Palatka Urban trail through town if you wish to connect to the Palatka - Lake Butler rail trail on the other side of town (there is a couple mile gap between these trails that requires on-the-road riding)

I usually go as far a the Amtrak station in Palatka.  There are restrooms and a small railroad museum inside. 

Along the Palatka Urban Trail

Palatka Amtrak Station.  Two trains a day between New York to Miami stop here. 

Old planter.  ACL stands for Atlantic Coast Line Railroad - now part of CSX.

The trail is pretty well used by a variety of people.  There are recreational riders like me, road bikers getting in some miles, casual bikers doing a few miles on beach cruisers and e-bikes, walkers, dog walkers, joggers, runners and even the occasional roller bladers.

However, this trail has a few drawbacks and could use some improvement to reach it's potential.

The most obvious is the trail doesn't connect to St. Augustine.  The "on road" bike lane along SR 207 between Vermont trailhead and St. Augustine is not very inviting.  I'm not going to try it.  If the state, county and Florida East Coast RR could get together and figure out a way to put a path along the railroad into St. Augustine proper - even with a fence to keep trail users off the tracks, the trail would be a great tourist attraction and perhaps an economic boom to towns on the route.  

For example, it would be fairly easy to rent e-bikes and do a 36 mile round trip from St. Augustine to Hastings and back with a stop for lunch along the way.  It might help open up the trail to touring with trips from St Augustine to Lake Butler (once that trail is complete) with multi-day trips supported by B&Bs along the route.  

This is one of the few places you can stop along the trail to get a snack and/or a beverage - and it's on the other side of SR 207.

The trail could also use a bit of maintenance.  It's asphalt the whole way, and for the most part it is very smooth riding.  However, there are some places along the way were tree roots are pushing up making for a bit of a punishing ride in spots. The roots are from trees that have sprouted up on the old rail right of way after the railroad was abandoned.  Apparently, only those where the pavement went were removed, leaving others very close by with offending roots.  The spots need to be flattened and the offending trees removed.

The trail often gets a patina of fallen leaves and pine needles making riding a bit tricky.  The trail needs to be blown off regularly by the county.  

Overall, this trail is fun and interesting to ride.  I ride it pretty often when we are visiting the St. Augustine area.  If you see and old guy in a yellow helmet on an old blue Schwinn Continental, that's me!

 

Rocky Mountain Trains

Here's the "what did I see" and "what did I think about it" train part of  my recent vacation.

Non train people can doze off now....

I saw some CP action from Calgary over Kicking Horse Pass - Spiral Tunnels to Fields.  

Some CN action through Jasper.

The Canadian and Rocky Mountaineer at Jasper

Some BNSF action on the old GN at East Glacier.

And Amtrak's Empire Builder at East Glacier.

Let's start with CP.  They are the epitome of Hunter Harrison's conveyor belt, PSR operation - at least through here.

Here's a crew change at Lake Louise on what I think is a potash train.

7:39 PM train rolls to a stop

Outbound crew is waiting.  Inbound crew gets off.  7:40 PM

A chat.  

Second unit is clean CN - maybe that was the chat?

On the move.  7:46 PM

Midtrain DPU rolls by 7:53 PM

Rear DPU by at 7:56 PM

The crew change took 8 minutes!  Including some time for the inbound and outbound crews to chat and gripe (?), the outbound crew to stow their stuff, get situated and get underway.  This is efficient!

Thing to note.  Running standard consist unit trains means operations are uniform and repeatable.  It's much easier for the crew to know how to handle the train.  Not long car/short car, unevenly distributed tonnage.  

The signal for this switch is where the railroad goes to double track for a while up to Kicking Horse.

A soon as he cleared, and empty potash train started moving.

With a nice shiny UP DPUon the rear

20 minutes later, a stack train was being pushed up the hill

Some things to note.  Although this is a 2.2% ruling grade, there is no helper operation.  Just DPUs mid and on the rear.  Usually 2x1x1 regardless of train type.  

I only saw intermodal, potash and grain trains.  If there is loose-car merchandise moving, I didn't see any.  Although this is predominantly a single track railroad, there was quite a few trains, Averaged a train an hour or a bit more.  There didn't seem to be attempts at fleeting.  Trains moved east and west at all times of day.

Here's the other side of the grade at Fields.  CP seemed to always move multilevel blocks on the rear end of stack trains.  Smart.  Light tonnage with those often-too-springy end of car cushion devices on the rear make train handling easier.

and a little bit of video

Finally, I spent a few hours at Morant's Curve.  Morant was a CP photographer who used this spot for publicity shots.  Pretty famous spot.  This was intentional railfanning.  So, far, it's been incidental.  This was my one "have to do it" train thing on the trip.  It didn't disappoint.

First, and eastbound stack.

Next, eastbound empty grain, I think.

A bit later, a west bound stack.

No rear end DPU?

All of these trains followed the formula for the route.  

Next, was Jasper and the CN.  The CN was Hunter Harrison-ized before CP, but the traffic mix was different.  The yard in Jasper was across the street from our hotel.  I saw more than I took pictures.

There is still some coal on this route.  DPU unit trains.

A major function of the yard in Jasper was intermodal block swapping.  Trains would come by and set off and pick up.  This is from the PSR playbook, but a pretty common thing for most roads pre-PSR.

Canada has grain for export.  Lots of it.  CN and CP both move mountains of it.

What is now an "oldie but goodie"  C40-8 from the early 1990s

I also saw a fair amount of loose-car merchandise traffic.  Other than using DPUs, there was nothing to note.  Trains were not crazy long.  

Some commentary.  DPUs and PSR kind of showed up at the same time and railfans often conflate the two.  PSR actually is operating to a plan that makes the railroad function as a steady conveyor belt and focuses on steady, predictable, high productivity utilization of people and assets. It would exist with or without DPUs.  DPUs allow really long trains which improve the productivity of train crews, so it fits in with PSR.  But, railroads were going to use DPUs to run longer trains regardless of how tightly they latched onto PSR principles.

Jasper also hosts two passenger operators.  Via Rail, of course, and Rocky Mountaineer.  RM also operated into Banff and Lake Louise on CP, but I did not witness any.

Adjacent to the VIA station.

Accidently ran into the westbound Canadian one day.  It was actually on time.  Three hour scheduled dwell at Jasper helps.  Nice to see F40s again!  It runs twice weekly.  Is this transportation?

VIA also runs the Skeena between Jasper and Prince Rupert with and overnight stop in Prince George.  This train is a really interesting trains.  

First, it's a "pocket streamliner". A three car train, baggage, coach, dome-obs.  All vintage Budd stainless steel converted to HEP.  

Next, it's both a daylight train and an overnight train.  It stops overnight and people are find their own lodging.  No station stops at 3 AM! No need to have sleeper attendants or linen service or any of the expense of maintaining a sleeping car.   It runs where people are, when they are awake.  No missing out on scenery at night.  Might be fun to ride someday.

VIA keeps a spare F40 at Jasper for protection.

Here's another train that stops overnight on it's run.  The Rocky Mountaineer.  Pure sightseeing.  Just fits in with and runs along with the freight traffic. Leaves on time.  Gets where it's going when it gets there.  Some very fancy equipment on this train.  Cars with sightseer glass roofs.  Outdoor viewing platforms - most of the trip is at reasonably slow speeds. Premium meals.

These trains aren't really transportation, and they make no excuses.  These are luxury sightseeing trains that charge a great deal for a first class experience.  A cruise on rails.  That they may take you to places you may want to continue your trip is incidental.

Western Amtrak trains and the Canadian need to be more of this and less trying to be transportation.

I caught it just after it arrived Jasper one evening.

Just after arrival.  Two GP40s and a HEP generator car on the head end.

Not sure I'm a fan of the swoopy paint scheme.  Looks like glorified RV paint job. Worse that the swoops aren't all the same direction.

Viewing platform, glass roof.  Yes, please!

Older freight locomotives repurposed.  This is perfect for this train.

Some single level cars have glass in roof, too.

While I was shooting these, I got bounced from the station platform by the VIA agent there.  I had missed a no trespassing sign up by the storage siding for the Skeena and was on the wrong side of the fencing and gate along the platform by the station.  She was pretty nice about it.

After Jasper, we travelled down to Glacier National Park and stayed at the old lodge Great Northern built in East Glacier Park.  It was right across the front lawn from the old GN station.

Glacier Park Lodge view from Station

Display in hotel explained the lodge's history

Station as seen from hotel lawn

Path to station from lodge.  Turnstiles are cattle guards.

I spent some time at the station and caught a few trains. First, an eastbound empty ethanol train.

BNSF seems to have installed wind screens on every exposed bridge and trestle.  Quite elaborate structures.  

Rear DPU going away shot

Next a westbound merchandise train.

Amtrak is lengthening the platform at East Glacier.  It should eliminate double stopping.  But, orange cones are an eyesore for railfans.

...with Ferromex trailing unit.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the line.  I could see and hear it from our room at the lodge.  Other than DPUs making trains longer, it was hard to see any signs of PSR on the old GN.

The westbound Empire Builder stopped right on time this day.  Most days it was 4-12 hours late.

New Seimens Charger locomotives were typical power.  

301 is dressed in heritage scheme representing Amtrak's first try at a paint scheme.

The hotel will shuttle you over to the train, no matter how late (7 hours, here).

The connection between the train and the lodge and the park remains in tact.  There were a dozen or two guests going to and from the train each day.  The train does more park tourist business in Whitefish - at the west side of the park, as well. That's hardly enough to keep the train or the lodge going, but is a help.  The train's time schedule and time keeping are certainly not optimized for Glacier NP tourist travel.  A Rocky Mountaineer style train from Seattle and/or Portland could work on this route. Daylight down Columbia River or through the Cascades.  Overnight at Spokane.  Then daylight to Glacier, arriving in the late afternoon.  Perhaps Amtrak should try it.

There are lots of fun railroad things to see and do in the Rockies.  Next up for me, I need a ride on the Canadian or Skeena or Rocky Mountaineer - or maybe all three!