BNSF Transportation of Containers from LA/LB Ports

[orange choo choo]

In another thread it was mentioned that BNSF is making a new terminal at the port so that containers don't need to be trucked to a rail facility to be loaded on a train. I thought they can be loaded dirctly on to trains already?

So how do BNSF port operations work? At the port do they organize containers by destination and then load them on the appropriate train or are they just loaded on a train and brought to another rail facility to be sorted by destination and loaded on the appropriate train?

How does UP do it?

[MrMRL]

More boxes move in and out of the ports overall than BNSF can handle utilizing the various on-dock terminals alone. So, a percentage of lower priority boxes take the short trip up the 710 to Hobart to be loaded east. If/when BNSF's SCIG facility is completed, they will be able to eliminate the 710 leg.

The UP already has a dedicated facility near the ports, ICTF.

Mr. MRL

[orange choo choo]

When the SCIG is done what would be Hobarts main functions?

[n6nvr]

Containers are taken off the ship and placed on trailers or taken from trailers by the crane and placed on the ship.

Once a ship is appropriately moored to the dock, it doesn't move and the crane then doesn't have to be moved for any given row of containers on the ship. Plus then you can place the trailer quickly within inches of where you want to place or lift the container without moving crane or ship. You can't place a train car in a long train within inches accurately quickly. (Imagine placing a car under the crane, place a container, move the train 20 ft to lace the next 20 footer behind it , then move it the other way 10 feet to put the 40 or 45 foot container on the top. Then advance the train so the next well, appropriately sized for the next container, is aligned with the crane. and so on for the whole train or offload.) So you put it on a trailer which zips it over to staging area or directly to a straddle crane located accurately over the train car which has been located in the train in accordance with it's destination, which then lifts and places the container and as the trailer is hostled off the crane can then line up with the next spot as the next container arrives. Plus putting it on a trailer allows containers destined for local delivery to be off-loaded in any order without having to worry about a train in the way.

This also allow the ships to be loaded by destination port and off-loaded en masse quickly. If you wanted to directly load to a train car then the receiving train and cars would have to be classified in accordance with the order the containers are to be unloaded. or try to load the containers in in a manner that they can then be offloaded sequentially to a predetermined place on the train.

Not gonna happen, takes way too long even if it was possible.

[MrMRL]

(01-22-2012 08:48 PM)orange choo choo Wrote:  When the SCIG is done what would be Hobarts main functions?

Hobart yard would operate as it does today. As BNSF's premier west coast domestic intermodal origin/departure terminal. The only change would encompass fewer international boxes on "LAC" symboled trains.

Mr. MRL

[orange choo choo]

How long does it normally take for a container to be offloaded from a ship and placed on the appropriate train? Also, what are the time-frames for priority vs standard delivery assuming they are both going to the same destination?

[n6nvr]

If everything was optimum you could have a box off the ship onto a trailer and then on to a waiting railcar in 15-20 minutes. But things don't work that way. To do it for all boxes coming off a ship, you would need to have almost one straddle crane per rail car, enough room for several complete trains to be waiting and staged, etc. The ships can discharge more containers faster that it is reasonably cost effective to handle immediately. It's a queuing theory and cost issue. Think of the Pirates ride at Disneyland. Say each boat takes 12 people and 30 seconds to off-load, load and dispatch and bring up another boat. People come up in groups of 10 about 40 seconds apart. The first group is boarded and gone before the second arrives, it gets boarded and gone before the third group and so on. Say there is a break in the flow and 2 boats leave empty and then 15 people come up. No matter what you do 3 are going to wait. You can't get them on a boat that has already left. So the best you can do is 12 every 30 seconds, and that is not averaged over time. So to speed things up what can you do? Mkae the boast bigger? well you can't make them wider without rebuilding the whole ride. hmm, get people in and out faster to move boats in and out faster, not really gonna happen, you can only push them in and pull them out so fast without breaking kids or old folks. Make the boats longer? no that's gonna require making curves wider on the ride. How about two boats at a time? yeah that works without too much cost, in expanding the loading and off loading area, and if you don't need the extra capacity, run one or two boats as necessary. So if too many people get there at once, people are still going to have to wait. But while waiting, you sort or classify them to best fit the next boat. Party of 2 , ok Row 1, party of 4 row 3, party of 6 row 3, row 4 and 5 and then grab a party of 2 to fill row 5. After things get rolling and the ride has been open for a while it appears that you are running at an average speed over any given time, but that's because the lines are taking up the slack between groups. Now take that and expand it exponentially. Instead of groups of 4,5 and 6 people arriving in clumps, you have a ship arriving and discharging up to a few thousand containers, they then go to staging. Party of 100 containers for OK City, party of 20 containers for Kansas City, etc. and instead of boats you have trains.

The last of the classic break-bulk ships (think booms, slings, hatches, cargo nets, etc), the C5s carried around 10,000 to 12,000 tons of cargo and probably took up to 2 days if not more to off load, and that to the pier, moved into the pier warehouse for transfer to truck or box car totally discharge. Say maxing 250 boxcars. In actuality it was likely closer to 100-150 per ship. Now container ships arrive and discharge up to 2,000 containers at about 30 tons max in say 12 hours. 4-8 times the cargo in around a quarter of the time, and no need to mess with cargo handling on the pier. We now have ro-ro ships bringing in cars by the thousands, etc . So port facilities have been drastically changed, rail facilities have drastically changed.

It's been a bunch of years now since I was on the edges of the ocean cargo world, IIRC the goal then was on the train and moving in around 6 hours for priority. I expect it is similar now, but the numbers have grown

[chris_wlkr]

Arrh!! .. nice reply.

[n6nvr]

You wanna see things get really complicated, load plan a large container ship. Makes a classification yard look simple. A train is one dimensional, think of it as a line. Comes into a two-dimensional yard and is broken into line segments over line 1, line 2, etc across the yard. Those segments are then re-ordered and re-assembled into another line based on where they are going. There are rules on what can be placed in adjacent cars, near cars, front and back of train due to contents, hazardous materials,usually. over and above grouping segments by immediate or final destination. Hopefully it doesn't happen, but you can break a train all the way up into single cars relatively quickly and re-assemble fairly quickly.

A container ship is 3 dimensional. It is theoretically possible to off-load every container, put them in a staging yard, dispatch some out, receive some for loading and then re-load. But practically in terms of time, space and related costs, it's totally impractical at all but the originating port. By the time it returns it should be full of empties and loads destinating there or for transfer. Example only, leaves Shanghai, steams directly to Long Beach, then maybe to the Bay Area, then maybe to Puget Sound, then Vancouver, possibly Anchorage, possibly Kobe-Osaka and back to Shanghai, where you should only have empties to return to shippers, loads for Chinese ports and loads for ships making a loop to Manila, Singapore, Mumbai, Dubai, etc. You don't want loads going back to the US, those should have been taken care of by a ship going the other direction around the loop. Usually circle routes.

Arrives in port A, starts off-loading and if done right, the first few rows are out and back filling empties, and final destination loads can be started while off-loading is in progress. If you have just the number of containers to empty a slice ie say you have 100 for Long Beach, and the ship takes a slice of 10 across and 10 deep then you can do it with one crane and not have to move the crane. But you have to take almost all out before you can start reloading and can only use one crane. Inefficient, why not use all 4 cranes at the pier? Well you can get them off a lot quicker, but then you can easily end up with empties on top of loads. Then at Port B or C you have to move the empties to get at the loads. Say it's 105 loads, well that's one slice and a bit of another. You can't put them in adjacent slices, because that would limit you to one crane and moving it. IIRC cranes have to be about 3 or 4 rows apart. Ideally you want to use as many cranes as possible as much as possible without moving them more than absolutely necessary. That assumes that they are all plain jane boxes, no special handling or placement. Some chemicals are required to be on the bottom, so if they leak they don't damage anything beneath them. Usually these are corrosives. Some need to be on top, IIRC historically electrical connection for refrigerated containers are only available for deck loads or above, not in the holds. Used to be that some ships could only take 40 footers or 20 footers or both in the hatches. 45s, 48s and 53s if loadable needed to be above deck (those sizes are usually restricted to US domestic use as most ports and/or roads overseas can't take them. Although a few overseas ports can take them in limited applications). You can't have oxidizers like hydrogen peroxide over or near certain hydrocarbons or fertilizers. Hydrogen Peroxide and ammonium nitrate makes stuff that goes boom or launches adjacent containers into near earth orbit. Oxidizers and POL can make flash fires. And you don't want liquid sulfer dripping into the fine fresh fruit below it. heavy containers should be low and toward the middle. You don't want them on the top edge. And these considerations apply at each and every port call.

That's how the golden age of shipping turns the port managers hair silver.

[orange choo choo]

Great posts guys! My head is spinning just thinking about all the different things that have to be taken into account. I can't imagine how much harder this would be without computers.