Replies

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  ChuckChuckMcManis@chaos.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 6:29 PM

  @karlauerbach A big contributor to that is that there is a shortage of stations. Stations however also need truck drivers near the stations who can "take over" and move the cargo to its next step and a transfer means. (you can use containers but that isn't always practical). I worked briefly on a proposal for a rail car that could carry an 18 wheel truck and a station where the truck could be driven off the rail car on to the street. But ...

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  ChuckChuckMcManis@chaos.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 6:31 PM

  @karlauerbach a rail car carrying a truck is taller than the tunnel height on rails with tunnels. The limits where you can use this solution. Also the rail people are not confident in their ability to ensure no truck cars are in the consist so that a train going through a tunnel won't have an accident. (seems fixable but alas)

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  Karl Auerbachkarlauerbach@sfba.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 6:44 PM

  @ChuckMcManis I still see an occassional "piggyback" car in a train with a truck's trailer on board. It used to be more popular.

  Yes, loading guages have to be honored (loading guage is the entire envelope used by a train, not just track width - the "skunk" route in California was closed after an over-large freight car collapsed a tunnel.

  The 20' (and multiple) shipping container was a revolution - a lot of trucks carry those.

  I understand the savings of using one end-to-end truck to save the cost of reload stages in multi-mode. But that argument has limits.

  One just has to go to Barstow, Calif or Kingman, Az to observe masses of trucks running parallel to trains that are far more efficiently carrying masses of containers (albeit often more slowly due to congestion on the rails and freight yards in the midwest.)

  I blame the railroad companies for skimming the high-profit traffic and pushing the lower value stuff onto the highways.

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  Karl Auerbachkarlauerbach@sfba.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 6:52 PM

  @ChuckMcManis There is a counter example: The Chunnel - trucks (and drivers) go onto the Chunnel trains, take the ride, and then exit.

  https://www.leshuttlefreight.com/

  The 20' container unit is too large for small businesses. But when we start looking at ideas like PODS we are seeing the evolution of smaller units that could work in a multi-mode environment. (But we would still need a change in the way we do parcels, such as we seen in Amazon deliveries.)

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  ChuckChuckMcManis@chaos.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 9:05 PM

  @karlauerbach Yes. It is absolutely doable, we lack the will currently. There are liability with drive on/drive off trains as well that have been addressed in Europe but not in the US.

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  Steve BellovinSteveBellovin@infosec.exchange

  Oct 11, 2026, 6:39 PM

  @karlauerbach Mmm—it's far more complex. Mind you, I've been a railfan since adolescence, and would love to see more trains, but trucks have been taking over for decades, long before the hedge fund era. The big problem with trains is the last mile problem: getting cargo to the trains and (worse yet) getting it off. Even in the glory days of railroads, you had team tracks for loading and unloading. Today, intermodal works—but that involves semi-trucks, cranes for loading and unloading, and a large yard—it's no longer "pull your wagon up next to a box car or two". And even then, you needed local roads, which trucks can traverse in a way that trains cannot. In addition, you get the best economy from long (150 car and up) unit trains, with little or no switching en route, which means that you need a lot of cargo.
  All this means that trains are superb at hauling high-volume, medium speed (airplanes do high speed), latency-insensitive freight. If you want to haul containers or new automobiles from the Port of LA to the Midwest or the East Coast, trains work exceedingly well.
  (Good reference: John Armstrong's "The Railroad: What it is, What it Does".)

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  Karl Auerbachkarlauerbach@sfba.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 7:04 PM

  @SteveBellovin The transfer (mode change) of shipping has always been a problem. That's why containers were such a revolution.

  And the problems remind me of the problem of passenger boarding on aircraft.

  I don't have much faith in "smart" rail yards - those rail cars are heavy beats (I had an uncle who got his head between two approach couplers - somehow he survived.)

  I pushed for the Calif High Speed Rail to add fast/light freight/parcels to its offering. But so far, no luck.

  The reason that I mention hedge funds is that RR mergers created redundant routes. Those were sold off and the rails ripped up leading to the US having little alternative capacity when things go awry on the remaining path (e.g. Mississippi flooding.)

  There are routes in the US well suited to driverless trucking - e.g. I80 Salt Lake to Reno, west Texas. But that still occupies space on already overloaded (and damaged) highways and creates a dangerous mix of vehicle types. (I-5 in Calif central valley is downright scary at times.)

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  Karl Auerbachkarlauerbach@sfba.social

  Oct 11, 2026, 7:17 PM

  @SteveBellovin By-the-way, on my various trips out to the Mojave, especially between Barstow and Needles, I encounter BNSF's multi-mile long trains. Those things can certainly take a long time - long enough to sit back and eat lunch and read a book while waiting - to clear off of a highway crossing.

  I once chatted with an elderly fireman about running multi steam locomotive trains over the Donner Summit and how they would cordinate via whistles (no radios) and could sometimes break the train.

  I've kinda wondered about the communications systems on these new multi-mile trains with several locomotives scattered through the consist.

  And the discordian in me aways things how vulnerable the US is to attacks on certain places, like this one:

  https://maps.app.goo.gl/TAu9mkYVQd5ewBg87

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  Steve BellovinSteveBellovin@infosec.exchange

  Oct 11, 2026, 7:24 PM

  @karlauerbach Today's trains use wired remote control (the MU cables) for contiguous strings of locomotives at the head and radio to (generally unstaffed) mid-train engines. The major reason for a crew on mid-train engines if if they're going to cut them out of the train, either to send the second half somewhere else or because they're done with the heavy uphill stretch.
  Slack control is a major control that freight train engineers have to master, for precisely the reason you outline.

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