It would appear that he’s more or less correct. From the wikipedia page;
“The abundance and relative cheapness during the last decade comes from the deficit in manufactured goods coming from North America in the last two decades. These manufactured goods come to North America from Asia and, to a lesser extent, Europe, in containers that often have to be shipped back empty (“deadhead”), at considerable expense. It is often cheaper to buy new containers in China and elsewhere in Asia, and to try to find new applications for the used containers that have reached their North American cargo destination.”
Although this article states that the situation is turning around.
I can substantiate that. I live/work near Port Elizabeth and Newark in NJ. All my life I’ve seen mini mountains of stacked empty containers that are just part of the landscape riding past on the Turnpike or 1&9 up here. Maybe some get used and others added, but they are rather permanent fixtures.
Yup, with big signs on the piles offering shipping containers cheap.
I have to wonder if it might be worth it for someone to invent a collapsible or nestable cargo ship container, like the smaller ones that are used for other types of goods.
For a start, figure the consumption for a long train of coal, rolling at not too high a speed. 100 cars, each one carrying 110 tons of coal.
As long as they’re on dead level track, two 4400 hp diesels can pull that train at 30 mph or more. 35 likely as not, maybe even 40. Some years ago, they would have been burning a total of around 430 gallons per hour – with today’s emissions rules, they may be less efficient now. But if they can get 1/15 of a mile per gallon, then 700 ton-miles per gallon.
That’s best case, sort of – actual best case is they’re rolling downhill, but we don’t count that. But the ton-mile efficiency is best for a train like that, with all cars heavily loaded. Especially if we don’t include the fuel needed to roll the empty cars back to the mine.
But an actual train has to climb hills, and gravity is the great equalizer. Most actual trains aren’t fully loaded, so the train vs truck comparison has to take total weight into account, which reduces the train’s advantage.
There is also the basic efficiency of an IC engine. A large percentage of the fuel energy is wasted as heat not converted to motive force. So one large engine will be more efficient than a hundred smaller ones required to move the same mass. Also the one large engine is contained in a lighter unit than a hundred smaller ones would require in total ignoring the load. Air resistance of a hundred units would be greater than the one.
Here’s a dumb, silly question. If you have a long freight train carrying multiple fuel tankcars that could refuel from the tankcars, how many miles can it go without stopping?
Probably about 2000 miles, because real railroads aren’t model railroads that go round and round. You have to stop at the terminus and swap locomotives around.
Which happens to be about the range of a modern diesel, which have like 5000 gallon tanks.
Just to note that you’ve revived a “zombie thread” here – the last post in it, prior to yours, was made 17 years ago. (It looks like many of your posts since you’ve joined have been replies to long-dormant topics about trains and planes.)
At least in this thread, the original poster – @CookingWithGas – is still active here; a lot of times, when new posters revive ancient threads, they’re replying to people who have long departed the board, and sometimes are actually deceased.
If you’re adding relevant new or additional information which was missed in the original discussion (or which didn’t even exist back then), it’s not “frowned upon,” per se, but bear in mind that the original discussions had petered out years (in some cases, decades) ago, and many of the original participants in those conversations are no longer active on the board.
Also, for what it’s worth, it’s common to see that brand-new posters’ first post on the SDMB is often to a long-dead thread, which they stumbled on via a Google search, and which they often don’t seem to realize (or don’t care) that it’s a very old conversation. And that’s part of why such threads are often referred to here as “zombies.”
Actually, I’m not surprised because the overall weight pulled by an average sized freight train is absolutely huge. Think of each individual car as being a semi driving down the road, so one 100 car freight train is equivalent to 100 semis accelerating, breaking, stopping, and accelerating from a dead stop over and over again. As Chronos mentioned, trains are far more efficient because they accelerate to speed and pretty much maintain that speed until they approach a destination.
Whereas I am a moderator. While many forums on the Internet frown on bringing up old threads, here, the rule is that it’s allowed, so long as you’re adding substantive new information. So far as I can tell, for all of the old threads you’ve been bumping, you’ve been doing that, so there’s no problem.
If I might ask, what’s your expertise? You’re mostly bumping rail threads, but there are some on other modes of freight transportation. Are you in logistics? Some form of engineering?
I know little about trains, but a fair amount about trucks, both driving and managing them.
To the operator of a truck fleet, fuel is the largest cost, followed by the driver. A typical truck here will do better than 10 miles to the gallon, making an average cost of around 65p ($1.14) per mile. This will be about one-third of the operating cost
Drivers are relatively well paid these days with £40k a year frequently offered (although some hauliers might pay less). This means that a typical cost for a driver is around £58,700 with taxes, pension, training, etc added. Train drivers are better paid, but they can haul thousands of tonnes rather than the 26 tonnes that can be loaded onto a trailer.
An electric semi (say, the Tesla Semi) uses under 2 kWh/mi and can haul around 20 tons. A gallon of diesel is equivalent to about 38 kWh. Therefore the semi is getting, in energy terms, nearly 400 ton-mi/gal equivalent. Pretty close to the train equivalent (and the truck is going faster).
This isn’t entirely fair because if you had to burn the diesel to generate electricity, even from a fixed plant, it would cut efficiency at least in half. But you can use emissions-free sources of electricity. And the comparison is actually conservative if you were considering using the electricity to synthesize fuels.
You have to stop at the terminus and swap locomotives around.