Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF single stack question

I notice on BNSF southern transcon intermodals there are sometimes substantial amounts of 53' containers on spine cars on trains that also have double stacks. Why are some single-stacked - weight? I just saw a train past Flagstaff, AZ, that had over 30 single stacked, mostly JB Hunt contaners.

Yes, weight could definitely be the reason.  Also possible that they just didn't have enough containers to fill all the cars (I am assuming these were all well cars designed to hold double stacks).

Could also be the number of 53 foot wells available when they loaded this train too.

I'm not sure why there is suddenly a lot more 53' containers riding spine cars on BNSF.   It's a relatively new phenomenon for that railroad (to have large blocks of such loads), but has been very commonplace on other railroads like CSX and NS for a long time.  

It could possibly be the increase in trailers being hauled and the need to have spine cars around, and the fact that they were what was available at that intermodal yard when the train was built (as mentioned in the reply above).    It's quite rare to see spine cars mixed in to  trains going to/from the LA/LB ports where no trailers are handled.  

-Tom

Thanks for the answers, that is interesting.

It could also be a clearance issue depending on the route those containers are taken. Like a West coast BNSF trains handed off to CSX or NS may have clearance issues east of Chicago. Some double stack trains are leveled off when they get to Chicago because of East coast clearance issues.

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zchcsse Wrote:
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> I'm not sure why there is suddenly a lot more 53'
> containers riding spine cars on BNSF.   It's a
> relatively new phenomenon for that railroad (to
> have large blocks of such loads), but has been
> very commonplace on other railroads like CSX and
> NS for a long time.  
>
> It could possibly be the increase in trailers
> being hauled and the need to have spine cars
> around, and the fact that they were what was
> available at that intermodal yard when the train
> was built (as mentioned in the reply above).   
> It's quite rare to see spine cars mixed in to
>  trains going to/from the LA/LB ports where no
> trailers are handled.  
>
> -Tom

Yes, for the most part, this is the reason (what cars are available to load at the ramp, repositioning of cars (ie, we need to move more spine cars to Chicago for loading), etc).  You won't usually see spine cars where marine containers are the primary traffic sources (ie the ports) as they are a poor choice to load with smaller containers, and more importantly, you don't get standard TOFC trailers at the ports.  Standard TOFC (ie actual truck trailers as opposed to domestic containers put on chassi) has been increasing rapidly as this is what most truckers use (except for the big boys like JB Hunt who do much of their business with the railroads).  Since TOFC is often mixed in with domestic containers (ie the big 53' footers) in trains, you get the mix of spine cars with double stack cars.  Essentially, the intermodal ramps will load whatever cars are available there to load.

Often, there is an imbalance of railcar assets on one end of the network or the other.  The railroads will single stack double stack cars to move as many platforms out of the surplus area to the demand area.  Goal is to always be balanced, but that doesn't happen very often in the reality of intermodal operations.

Zephyr Wrote:
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> Often, there is an imbalance of railcar assets on
> one end of the network or the other.  The
> railroads will single stack double stack cars to
> move as many platforms out of the surplus area to
> the demand area.  Goal is to always be balanced,
> but that doesn't happen very often in the reality
> of intermodal operations.

Which is the reason for "Bare Table" trains. To balance the pool.