Bullet Trains

Having traveled both The Lake Shore Limited between Boston and Chicago along the Great Lakes and The California Zephyr between Chicago and Emeryville, California  about three decades ago, I became a fan of Amtrak as a passenger rail service immediately. Since then, I have wanted to ride the rails again. I love riding the TRE and DART but not to the extent a high-speed trip would be like. Given the choice of going by plane or by train, the choice will always be rail over plane today.

Recently, it was announced that the TRE, or Trinity Railways Express, would be busy putting a TRE-type train into Terminal A or B at DFW International. The switch off the Dart light rail line is already in place on the way into terminal A. It will connect Ft. Worth to DFW via the TRE directly as DART has done already with Terminal A in connecting Dallas with DFW with light rail.

In the meantime, The FEC or Florida East Coast Industries, the parent of Florida East Coast Railroads announced that with state and private money, they would begin building a high-speed train between Miami and Orlando, running between 79 and 125 MPH over upgraded tracks the FEC already owns, operates and manages. It must be pointed out here, as well, that Florida Power and Light already owns and runs the largest windmill farm in the US here in Texas. In short, the energy derived from Texas wind is controlled by Florida Power and/or the biforcated-biforcated businesses that fall under that umbrella. Soon, they will top us as a high-speed rail route in their state while Texans are still discussing the ins and outs of why not to go ahead with the project.

That brings me to the crux of this post. Texas has been planning and talking about the Bullet Train between Houston and Dallas that would truly be a bullet train--the same as the Japanese shinkansen that runs between Tokyo and Kyoto currently at about 215 MPH.  No more than 24 hours after the media aired the story, fellow Texans against the train were stirring the pot with all kinds of negative instruments laid out ready to cut the threads the Train planners were holding up to be another economic boom for Texas.

First and foremost, these Texans, as loyal as they are, need to put the state as a whole above their self-centered interest and get this train built. Already Texas is looking to be number three behind Florida and California instead of being the leader of high speed rail for the next generation of Texans.Which ironically would be the grandchildren of those that want to stop the progress.

Florida, on the All aboard Florida website have already posted that  their service begins in 2017. And least we forget that the original high speed is the east coast route of Amtrak's Acela, which FEC plans to equal in their Miami to Orlando run.

And, as Vice-President Biden just stated on his trip to Dallas, that you can do all you can do to get new business growth brought to Texas but once they are here, if you don't have the things like a high-speed rail, you are not going to keep those businesses here in the state of Texas.  He is soooooo right!

The TRE inbound to Irving Station

TRE on its way to Ft. Worth. Seeing this at DFW Terminal A or B will absolutely get the word out to the rest of the world that Dallas means business in a First Class Way

You want to see an economic engine at work, just imagine a 215 MPH bullet train from Houston pulling into South Side on Lamar Station by 2018 tops!

2015 Is Underway--Roll it!

In the course of traveling a little circuit looking for editorial-type images, I come across a lots. Some are downloaded to my Lexar where they stay for 90-days. If I have not re-uploaded for use in this blog by then, they become deleted files. Some good shots have gone away like that because there just wasn't any good use for them. That includes not even selling them as basic stock images. Well, such is life in the big city. Otherwise, I would be paying mega bucks for terabyte storage.

A little sidetrack (pardon this pun as you will see later) here. When I was in college the thing called "new math" was just being taught in schools at most levels through college. No one really got it except people like my brothers and my sister-in-law. She is a cum lade math major. but terabytes--well, the whole Mega, Giga,Tera thing-- is all based on that early "new math". Had some one said to me then, take a 1000 bucks and grow it by another 1000 and you have a million, math would have been so much easier for me instead of talking in terms of powers (i.e. terabyte 4 10 a large allocation of data storage capacity or 2 40 is really 1,099,511,627,776 bytes) gees, a professional star gazer uses those things daily. Any who, ever six months I check to see how many of those things I can get rid of on my computer. 

Back to the travel circuit. In the course of those travels, I have noticed on the BNSF (Burlington Northern Santa Fe) tracks over the Carpenter Freeway just south of Las Colinas, there are always tons of rail road tank cars sitting on the rail road across the Carpenter (we call it the 114). I also know that those tracks go into Carrollton to the rail yard just north of Beltline and Main.  That is also the home of the local short line railroad that is the workhorse of the rail traffic in, through and around Dallas. That would be the DGNO, or Dallas Garland and Northeastern Rail Road, a property of Genesee & Wyoming, the G&W.Those tracks spur off and come back south along Denton Road to Lombardi where a 5 or 6 siding track is always filled with tank cars bearing the ADM logo (Archer Daniels Midland). In the photo, the DGNO is switching out rail cars north of the Denton Road Siding several blocks. In trying to get a better light shot on a gloomy day, I made a turn to the right so that I could make the block and come back around to where I had seen the DGNO engine. In doing so, I came across the ADM building on the corner of the second right turn. There was a truck tanker backed up into the building. Beyond that was a double row of tracks with rows of tank cars and a hopper car. All along side the back walls of two neighboring buildings but most were  bulk tankers.  Know, that solved the mystery of where all those tank cars were going. The rail cars were bulk storage and the truck tankers were either loading a blended mixture or taking their cargo direct from the rail cars. Either way, the operation was all connected to the string of tankers both on the BNSF tracks over the Carpenter and the siding tracks along Denton drive.

The truck tanker was later spotted at a Raceway gas station. Ethanol? Was that a corn cob incorporated into their logo on some of those rail cars? 

Here's the thing: ADM is looking to move its headquarters out of Chicago. The company is listed on the NYSE (New York Stock Exchange). They operate on 6 of the 7 continents. They progressively grow in the right direction and work for a good environment, not a bad one.

In a past reported 10-K filing, they list as either owned or leased:

2,500 Barges

27,400 Rail cars

600 Trucks

52 Oceangoing vessels

So, when George A. Archer, John W. Daniels acquired the Midland Linseed Products Company and founded the company in 1902, later incorporating in 1923, moving to Texas was not in their immediate plans. I hope the board members are beginning to have dreams of moving to Texas!

Tank cars with the ADM logo are a beautiful sight.

DG&NO 146

Short lines have long been the workhorse for Class 1 railroads. Without them, life as we know it on the rail would be one big mess. They are the interurban lines that move by switching out full and empty rail cars to the end user, bringing them to a central yard and separating cars to and from the Class 1 railroads. It's like a big wagon wheel hub with the Class 1 railroads on the outer rim and the short line(s) at the hub. In transportation, the railroads use it. The trucking industry uses it. The airlines use it (both passengers and cargo). Fed Ex and UPS and the USPS and DHL use it. Ocean-going and Great Lakes ships use it. The military use it.

Years ago, one of the large paper companies, as it applies to shipping and routing, would load a rail car on the west coast and simply route it to the east coast with no other destination. Their logic was that one, they didn't have to pay warehouse charges; two, it saved tons of time; three, before the rail car got to the east coast, one of their locations nation wide would need the material on that car. If they did not, then the dispatcher would simply route the car again to west coast. The transportation cost via rail was still lower than paying warehouse charges and in and out fees.  This, of course, fell under the general definition of logistics, or the management of the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption in order to meet some requirements. The above example is about as classic  of an example as it gets.

 

One of the new generation diesel-electric RP20BD that is being used by Dallas short line DG&NO. It is also being ordered by BNSF, Kansas City Southern Railway and Union Pacific. The engines are controlled by computers and are capable of remote operations. Let's just say it is more environmental friendly and cost efficient.

Careless Whisper

George Michael's, "Careless Whisper," might be the "at bat" song for a major league baseball hero, but I can also tell ya that it was played a lot selling hot roll coils like these, long before it was the "at bat" favorite.

Hot Rolled Coil Steel in Texas

A train load of steel coils. That's a lot of slitting and leveling and stamping.

The destination of this load is uncertain, although there are large truck plants and other industry that uses this material in the area. It's a bit unusual for me in as much as this is a structural area, not a manufacturing and stamping operation area. Still, it's something that thrills me.

The tags on the coils show that it is .241-.256 gauge hot rolled which would make it fit the quarter inch gauge range  and that is great for leveling into plate or fabrication for containers and dumpster bins.

Each coil is approximately 48,000 lbs. loaded three to a flat bed rail car. There is  as many flatbeds behind this photographer than there is in front.Just think, Andrew Carnegie made this all possible.

Selling these make me so happy. This is prime material. The secondary market is just as good.