[The camera guy does well to zoom in to several parts.]
[From the comments I learned that the special brake lines of the trailers are connected with the train's air brake piping on the dollies so that when the trailers are connected the piping forms a continuous brake line the entire length of the train so each dolly is supplied with air for braking.]
[The comments also mentioned that each trailer has a reinforced floor to take the strain of it's load without the wheels being on the ground so that extra unsupported load needs the extra support of a stronger floor.]
[Apparently these type of trailers are only used on a regular run between Detroit and the west coast carrying only automobile parts.]
Interesting. I've never seen a lash-up like that, but it looks like a money saving way to go.
All train car brake air supplies are connected with all other cars. There is also a surge/booster/accumulator tank attached to each car, but I didn't see that here.
Box cars can go up to 110 tons, but these are probably closer to the 40 ton limit of over-the-road semi trailers, plus the trucks.
PWSlack is a railroad buff, maybe he has more.
I watch these railroad videos sometimes. The snowplows are spectacular.
The weight of the loaded trailer is about 45,000 pounds. That assumes a standard tractor weighing in at 35,000 #. I suppose they use dedicated tractors for short haul to assembly plant. Then the tractor can be less weight and loaded trailer more to stay under 80,000 pounds gross allowed.
I wonder if the increased investment of capital is worth it. It seems to me that the labor assembling the dollies and trailers is more that standard. That is offset by less fuel for engines due to less train weight. Someone really had to do their homework to convince NS and the shippers to venture into this. NS has a presence here in the southern Detroit area. But overall, this is CSX territory.
This arrangement was tried during the early 1960s in the UK, with vehicles that were a single axle under a body that could convert from road wheels to rail wheels and back. The front of trailer no.2 went piggy-back onto the back of trailer no.1 and so-on down the train. A special adapter vehicle was used under the front of trailer no.1 to couple to the locomotive.
Strength of the vehicles was an issue, as in theory, trailer no.1 was experiencing the drag load of all the rest of the train as well as its axle supporting the front of trailer no.2. This lead to over-engineering the trailer chassis compared to that needed for road vehicle haulage of a single trailer. Further, the train could only be operated one way round; whereas the "turning wye" was commonplace on the north American continent the space to do likewise in Europe was usually at a premium and adapter wagons facing the wrong way were, to operating people, a pain in the posterior.
By 1967 the concept had been superseded in the UK by the intermodal container concept, where ISO standard containers in unit lengths of integer tens of feet were mounted on a regular rail vehicle chassis and demounted onto either road vehicle or ship at the end of rail haulage; the rail vehicles were then ready for a return working with a fresh set of containers. The method is widely used across the globe today.
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Never seen this before, but it does make a lot of sense if you have a lot of trucks going to the same area on a regular basis, they must save a fortune in transportation costs....
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Interesting Train Video
Re: Interesting train video
