The service, which launched today, uses the FEC terminal in Titusville, Fla., about 40 miles east of Orlando, Fla.
UP handles both private and EMP containers between its terminals in Los Angeles and Lathrop, Calif., and Titusville. KCS is moving EMP boxes between Titusville and its terminal in Wylie, Texas, near Dallas. NS also is handling private and EMP containers between Titusville and Chicago.
The new service comes a week after UP expanded its service linking Denver, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles.
UP has been trimming its intermodal network as part of its shift to Precision Scheduled Railroading.
UP has pruned hundreds of low-volume intermodal lanes on its system and between destinations on UP and points on CSX Transportation and NS. The goal of those changes has been to simplify the network and concentrate on steel wheel interchange in Chicago and Memphis.
Thank you John Rice, that makes sense.
Any chance of future flows in the other direction? Assuming the Pot of Miami takes off as a container port of course!
Ironically neither Chicago nor Memphis come into play for the UP two California-Titusville lanes. This traffic likely moves as a block on the existing LA-originating train to NS/Austell in Atlanta which is interchanged at Shreveport and runs over the Meridian Speedway east of there, where the block gets swapped onto a Jacksonville train thence FEC to Titusville.
Jf Turcotte, it probably comes down to where St. Louis is located in relation to Chicago and Memphis for expedition of intermodal traffic to compete with trucks in the major lanes.
(Of course, there is probably a lot more to the story than this.)
“The goal of those changes has been to simplify the network and concentrate on steel wheel interchange in Chicago and Memphis.”
Question: could anyone shed a light on why railroads no longer want to interchange IM traffic in St.Louis? IIRC, there used to be some interchange there, some while back. (Or New Orleans for that matter.)
@Jf Turcotte asks “could anyone shed a light on why railroads no longer want to interchange IM traffic in St.Louis?”
UP takes and delivers IM via the TRRA MacArthur Bridge in St Louis. The MacArthur is getting shut down for 2 years to complete a major overhaul of its approaches which are over 100 years old. Also most of the approach spans were no longer able to support the weight and width of current loads.
So knowing this, the PSR planning of the carriers at the moment don’t involve StL.
In fact UP will be redirecting traffic via NS at Kansas City over the former Wabash and cross the Mississippi at Hannibal to reach Springfield IL and eventually Chicago.
When the MacArthur reopens (2021), you will probably see a large reordering of traffic in the St Louis area.
This has been in the works for awhile.
BNSF had the West Alton bridge updated in 2013, the Merchants Bridge in 2015 also in St Louis. Now its the MacArthur’s turn to update these 100+ year old spans. These approaches were all built with steel lattice style supports at the turn of the last century and are being replaced by concrete pylons and girder plates.
So UP and KCS are making “Titusville FL” blocks for their service over Shreveport/Meridian for Atlanta. Also, NS is building Titusvilles at Landers, I guess. Then, they get blockswapped at Inman Yard, Atlanta for the Jacksonville train.