freight trains?
 

This topic is borderline OMNI, but since it is theoretically possible for us to jump on freight trains and I want everyone to get proper post credit, I'm placing it here.

I've always wondered where the freight trains I see every day go. My hunch is that their routes are relatively boring.

Secondly, about once every two weeks, I get held up at a particular intersection in SE Portland for ~20 minutes because an enormous train passes by at around 10:10a. Since the road in question is fairly busy, I always wonder why the train company doesn't reschedule it to run at a less inconvenient time, and who I could possibly complain to about its shear existence.

General comments about freight trains also much appreciated. i.e. what exactly are they carrying? aren't trucks more practical? does FedEx use them?

Although the trains do seem to be pretty uninteresting in terms of destination, sometimes the journey is pretty interesting even if it seems mundane. While I still don't have the photos yet, I got to tag along on a freight run on a short line back in December that more or less parallelled a road that I travelled frequently as a kid. And just like everyone said, it's amazing how when you get just off that road the whole landscape changes.

If anyone has the chance, I'd definitely recommend doing a freight trip, it's certainly a different world than airport lounges and the world on either side of the curtain...

Hop on this one and you might earn some miles. :D

For bulk cargo, nothing on land will beat trains for efficiency.

As far as scheduling, you could complain to whoever owns the tracks, but since for the most part the rail companies are in charge of maintaining their own tracks, they have a strong incentive to keep them as full as possible. And I would hardly think of 10:10am as an inconvenient time, considering that in Northern Virginia, with far worse traffic, road construction on my stretch of highway starts at 9:30am on the dot.

With large trains, they have to schedule around a number of different road crossings. My guess is that they aren't allowed to run at night due to noise regulations. Since rush hour usually ends around 9 am, they probably figure that 10:10 is less inconvenient.

If you can see the locomotive, you should be able to tell which line is running the train (I would guess BNSF or Union Pacific since you are in PDX). You can check their website for contact info to ask about the schedule.

As for what is on freight trains, they are a very efficient transport for bulk materials. I would guess that a lot of materials come into the marine port and get loaded onto trains. Cars, steel, lumber and other building materials, grain, ore, etc. come in on ships and get loaded and shipped out via rail.

The Port of Porland has a pretty neat slide show. You can see the front end loader filling up the freight cars in a few of the pictures. http://www.portofportland.com/T2_Home.aspx

Laughably, the RR probably "owned" the right of way (tracks) before the streets and roads even existed. I'd suggest you would have far more luck (but still less than little) by "demanding" that your city or the state build and overpass or underpass at your pet intersection. Some cities do by ordinance limit the length of trains, but be thnkful that you don't drive near yards and junctions, where trains end up "parked" blocking intersections for extended periods. Watching a cop or highway patrolman write a citation for a stopped train is fun, but I don't rthink the RR loses alot of sleep over an occasional trip to traffic court. Feel fortunate you have flashing lights, crossing gates, or even "Look Out for Trains!" signs.

Freight trains? They carry everything, far more than trucks, at far lower costs, and without them your life and what you consume would be vastly limited. A couple of times a day, I hear "unit trains", 100+ cars long, moving fast through downtown, carrying coal from Wyoming all the way to Central and South Texas to light the lights and run the ACs for a large percentage of my fellow Texans, even here in oil and gas country.

One freight train can take hundreds of trucks off the road. If you think traffic is bad now, try it without trains. The railroads maintain all of their own track with little to no government subsidies. Whereas trucking companies get a pretty good deal using then road network. Trains are still profitable in these circumstances because they are very efficient.

Maybe it is a road up or down the line that is considered more important than yours.

More likely, however, is that the train is scheduled based on when it can get on the tracks and when it can get between the places it needs to be in a timely manner with very little attention paid to the impact on road crossings at any point along the way.

Exactly. Some states have regulations as to how long a crossing can be blocked, but that's it. My state Arizona says
There's no restrictions on time of day, and I'd be surprised if the railroads took that into account.

In many areas, the freight shares the same rail as passenger rail, so they need to schedule around those. It could also have something to do with the dock workers schedule or whatever, bridge opening and closing times up the line, there's probably hundreds of things that go into it. Pretty sure once they get something that works, they don't want to change it.

Train use was way way off last year (down 20%) but things like lumber, chemicals, coal, etc are still carried mostly by train across the country.

According to the CSX commercials, one train can replace 280 trucks using one third of the fuel they use.

i think direct ships are the least expensive way to ship. barge freight is less expensive that train(down the Mississippi for example) from orient to baltimore, the "train bridge" was the least expensive way to ship. LA to BAlt by train.

long distance trains are frequently built in sections, depending upon where the cargo is going. so a train from LA may drop off the back 10 cars or so in chicago, on the way to boston or nyc.

most rail right-a-ways are owned by the railroads. they are property, and the taxing jurisdiction usually screws them, and charges some outrageous property tax. trucks are on subsidized right away, trains are on taxed right away.

some significant percentage of truck long haul freight is moved on train. in the past, the trailers themselves were put on the rail cars. i think now, most of the freight moved in that manner is moved by container.

most automobiles are moved for delivery to near destination by train.

since the freight companies own almost all the rail, a passenger train will usually be "sidetracked" to allow a freight to come through.

Heh, believe me, could be worse. I know there's a train that typically runs through the south side of campus here around 5:20-5:30 or so, so right when everybody is leaving. Thankfully, after probably at least 20 years of talking about it, we finally suffered through a year and a half of hell with that road shut down for them to build underpasses. I feel better about that year and a half every time I pass under a train.

Some trains, mainly carrying bulk materials such as coal in hoppers, will remain unchanged for their entire journey. These are called unit trains or block trains.

However, most carrying containers will be comprised of cars assembled at one classification yard for delivery to another classification yard, where the cars will be separated. They will then be assembled into other trains, and so on until each car reaches its final destination. If the trains you see are comprised of containers, chances are each train is going to many different locations.

Ships are definitely the cheapest shipping intercontinental. Barges aren't as versatile as ships - they can't carry the same bredth of cargo as ships can.

I work in logistics so I can tell you trains are used quite often on long haul routes. The most common useage to most is by UPS/FDX which ground packages going cross country use. Think CACH / Hodgkins.
Since rail is cheap compared to 53' trucks, containers are a big winner here, I know we get containers delviered from a rail yard every so often as it travels from Dallas to Chicago. Trains are a bit cheaper but the biggest problem is timing of shipments.