Eric Joiner's Freightdawg.com - The Logistics and Supply Chain Blog!

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I've been in a rail fan kind of mood lately and reloaded Microsoft Train Simulator on my PC.  This is an old sim from almost 10 years ago, but being a transportation geek, I enjoy virtually moving trains around, especially Double Stack Trains and the old F and E unit car body locomotives... However, this is a French Duplex high speed train.  Speed to BURN baby.

That looks pretty cool...but this is a game. Check this video out. This is the real deal absolutely screaming across France.

Here's another video that compares the French TGV against the Japanese Shinkansen.  I've had the pleasure several times of riding the Japanese bullet trains.  They are fabulous.

And yes, I have a fairly current gaming computer.  I get over 50 frames per second in this old sim.

RailTrends 2010: NYC Sept 28-29, 2010

The top railroad conference in North America returns for its 6th year in New York on September 28th and 29th, 2010.   Matt Rose, Chairman, President and CEO of BNSF Railway Co. will be the honored guest, receiving the Railroad Innovator Award, presented by Progressive Railroading Magazine.   Details of the conference are below.

Make plans to be a part of it September 28-29, 2010, in New York City. RailTrends is the rail profession’s reliable source for:

• Industry insights, innovations and advancements
• Executive elbow-rubbing
• Intelligent investment information

Brought to you by two rail-industry authorities, Progressive Railroading magazine and Senior Transportation Analyst Tony Hatch, this two-day summit was carefully crafted to address the issues that matter most to rail professionals. Facilitated by some of the rail industry's most-respected authorities, RailTrends presentations will address all facets of the industry, including:

• Wall Street’s take on the rail industry
• Freight railroad executives’ views on rail in the post-recession economy
• What lenders look for in a railroad
• The Obama Administration’s position on rail policy and high-speed rail

RailTrends provides you with an amazing opportunity to connect with the best of the best from all areas of the rail industry: Shippers, Suppliers, Banks and Financial Organizations, Lessors, Short-Lines and Class Is.

Past heavy-hitter attendees include:
• Vice President, Corporate for Walmart Transportation
• Vice President and Managing Director for GATX Corporation
• Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Gannett Fleming Transit & Rail Systems
• Senior Vice President and General Manager for Siemens Financial Services Inc.
• Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Kansas City Southern

You can register for the conference at this link.

BNSF Updates Web Site

 Steve Manning, who is the Manager of web content and social media at BNSF, wrote me the other day to inform me that the railroad is updating its web site with easier navigation, improved content and much improved user tools.   check it out at www.bnsf.com.   

Make a point of checking out the really cool virtual train tour.   This flash application tells you about the parts of a rail engine, rail consist and the roles of the rail personnel involved with the operation of the train.   Really good stuff.   As a rail fan, I loved it.   

Jetwhine's Great Train Article

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year everybody.  I'm on vacation this week, but after reading a great article by Scott Spangler over at Jetwhine.com,  I thought I'd post a link to it.

Scott's article details the pleasure of train travel where available in the US as an alternative to air travel hell.   I wish it were more available here in Atlanta where we only have the Amtrak Crescent, which goes between New Orleans and Washington DC.  It passes through Birmingham, Atlanta and Charlotte on the way.  

When I was a kid,  my girlfriend, (and later my wife) lived in Birmingham.  I recall with fondness taking the train to visit her.   It was only a 4 hour trip, but pleasant nonetheless.

With air travel becoming increasingly painful due to security, cost and schedule contraction, perhaps one day America will reinvest in passenger rail.   Scott Spangler lives in Chicago, where railroad travel both east and west, is still somewhat of an option, just as it is in the Northeastern US, Japan and all over Europe.

Eric

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Berkshire Hathaway buys BNSF

Warren E. Buffett is officially a railroad tycoon, joining folks like Cornelius Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller.    For $34 billion dollars his investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, now will assume 100 percent control of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad (BNSF).  

Buffett has been investing in railroads and railroad rolling stock for a couple of years now.   First with minority investments in BNSF as well as Norfolk Southern Railroad.   Now, he has declared himself "all in" regarding investment in what he considers Americas economic future.

Buffett is quoted as follows regarding what is now Berkshire Hathaway's largest investment ever.

“Our country’s future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system,” said Warren E. Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway chairman and chief executive officer. “Conversely, America must grow and prosper for railroads to do well. Berkshire’s $34 billion investment in BNSF is a huge bet on that company, CEO Matt Rose and his team, and the railroad industry.  “Most important of all, however, it’s an all-in wager on the economic future of the United States,” said Mr. Buffett. “I love these bets.”

BNSF is the largest railroad in the western US.   They move the largest amount of coal, corn and wheat from the region.   These are strategic energy commodities.   Coal is used for fueling electrical generation plants as well as for export for the same use overseas.   Corn is a multi use product, providing both feedstock for animals as well as food for people.   Further, corn is used as a raw product in the US for the production of ethanol. 

Buffett gets the concept that raw energy must move by rail. Even potential energy sources like coal shale originate mostly from within the western footprint of the BNSF, so if major fields are developed and mined, the shale oil products will eventually hit the BNSF to move to market.   Berkshire Hathaway bought control of a tank car manufacturing firm a year or so ago, so not only is Berkshire Hathaway involved in the locomotion of ethanol products, its also involved in providing leased movement capacity in the specialized equipment required.

BNSF is also a major player in the operation of doublestack trains for the movement of intermodal containers.   This makes BNSF critical to the movement of international cargoes from the US West Coast to the heartland of America. 

Eric

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BNSF introduces Carbon Footprint Estimator

CSX has made a big deal about the greenness of rail transportation for awhile now, advertising the economic value of rail vs truck transportation.  BNSF has gotten into the act now with a new tool for estimating carbon savings on specific routes and rail consists.   The tool they developed is a bit more sophisticated than a similar tool that CSX put out several months ago.    Check the BNSF tool out here.

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Railroad Security: CSX Leads with SecureNOW

One hundred years ago, railroad police were mostly focused on the security of railyards, preventing robberies of trains en route and keeping "non paying" passengers off their trains.  Today,  while many of those responsibilities remain,  the job of keeping the rails secure has multiplied many fold, especially since 9/11.   

Today,  rail operations and security teams must not only protect rail assets and the public, they must defend against unknown and unseen threats from terrorists.     After 9/11, the rail industry established industry standards for rail security and the sharing and reporting of threats.   The key mantra of that initiative was "Recognize, Record and Report". CSX has taken that industry standard and built upon it.

As a class 1 railroad, CSX operates 1000 trains a day over 21000 miles of track.   If it moves from Chicago eastward in the United States, there's a good chance its moving on a CSX train.  To protect the rail  network, CSX has developed a web based workstation application called SecureNOW.  SecureNOW stands for Secure Network Operations Workstation. 

Using SecureNOW, rail operations teams can see, in real time, the location of every train and every rail shipment on the CSX network.   Further, they can isolate hazmat shipments within the train consist to determine geographic location, shipment details, rail car type and class as well as hazmat emergency information.   

SecureNOW also uses GoogleMaps type technology to allow zoom in geographic mapping to allow operations teams to see exactly where a rail car is relative to cities, towns, shipper plants and  facilities etc.     Suppose there is a fire at a shipper rail facility.  Also suppose that there is a tank car of hazardous toluene on the rail siding.    CSX can immediately see where that car is located and report the threat to local fire and police authorities.

  The beauty of SecureNOW is that this system is designed to share information.   CSX has made it available to state and federal authorities in many states with intent to share with all agencies across its network.  For law enforcement authorities this is great technology for understanding both potential and actual risk in their communities.   The railroad has SecureNOW active in 5 states within the CSX network

Future versions of SecureNOW will allow display of information on intermodal and ocean containers.  With the TSA focused on 10+2 and other information transparency initiatives, the railroads will have to develop this capability in order to show hazardous or high risk shipments within ocean containers.  For doublestack train consists, the ocean carrier is the shipper of record as far as the railroad is concerned, but the manifest for the container and shipping information will need to be available to systems like SecureNOW in due course.

 Eric

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BNSF Runs the Ethanol Express

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad moves a lot of ethanol. With major track ownership in the US midwest, BNSF is a prime mover of corn and corn related products. Unit trains of ethanol move to market regularly with BNSF operating a key unit train to Dallas called the Ethanol Express.

Warren Buffet has invested a lot of money in BNSF as well as other railroad assets such as Union Tank Car. (UTLX).

BNSF Expands Ethanol Express to Dallas/Fort Worth FORT WORTH, Texas and OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla., Oct. 9, 2008: BNSF Railway Co. today announced that it will begin delivering unit trains to Musket Corporation's newest ethanol storage terminal on Nov. 1. With storage capacity of 10 million gallons, the Dallas/Fort Worth Musket Ethanol Terminal is one of the area's largest ethanol storage facilities and is designed to meet the daily needs of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Located in the Mark IV industrial area in North Fort Worth, the facility maintains its own rail spur and is designed to completely unload a unit train of 95 cars every 24 hours. Tank cars are drained via an underground piping system and ethanol is pumped directly into the four storage tanks. The ethanol can then be pumped directly into trucks for local distribution. The new facility will receive shipments exclusively from BNSF Railway's Ethanol Express a 95-car unit train service specifically created to move ethanol from a single origin or gathering place to a single destination. The Ethanol Express will save ethanol producers and end-users time and money through increased fleet utilization, lower inventory carrying costs, and logistics coordination and support each and every day around the clock. BNSF moves more than 370 million gallons of ethanol per year through the Ethanol Express program.

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CSX Trip: Windy City Follow Up!

On October 7th, I and a number of other bloggers had a unique chance to visit with CSX Railroad management in Chicago. CSX invited a number of social media folks to come to Chicago to see their newest genset locomotive technology, as well as to provide access to CSX's communications and operations staffs.   About 15 people from sites such as Ars Technica, mattgoesgreen.com, ecollo.com, travel, trains and other things and others visited the CSXT intermodal railyard and got schooled on both Chicago local operations and how railroads work. I was the only logistics geek there, but that's good for freightdawg.com!

CSX is spending considerable money on establishing their brand and their mode of transportation as an efficient and eco-friendly way to transport goods.   That's not a touchy-feely thing as much as a solid approach to new media as part of a multi-media advertising campaign.  CSX advertisements directly claim that rail transportation is an efficient and environmentally friendly way to move goods.

By inviting professional and industry related bloggers to come see for themselves, CSX is underscoring their branding while providing legitimacy to their environmental investments.    Bloggers are usually good at unvarnished opinion. CSX has provided key bloggers with direct access to their communications teams for information when needed, as well as taking influential bloggers on site to see how the business operates.   This a very sophisticated approach for an old school transport mode and shows tremendous understanding of how Internet social media works.

Check out this link to mattgoesgreen.com and the pics and video Matt Trachtenberg took.    Personally, I got to meet some new and very smart people who are covering the Green side of business today. A very nice way to spend 2 days of vacation time!

Eric

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Green Communication: CSX Gets it.

I'm amazed. A Class 1 freight railroad is actively advertising in the United States on radio, the internet and in print media. When I first saw this it drew my immediate curiosity. My initial thought was "Who will read this stuff then act on it in a way that generates revenue for the railroad?"

How many housewives buy rail traffic?  Who is the target audience? Whatever the reason, I paid attention because something unusual was happening in the executive suite of an old school transportation business. I just didn't know what it was.

Then I got an email. 

CSX was inviting ME to come to Chicago to attend a conference as well as to see their latest ecological and energy efficient equipment and operations.

The conference is the EPA Climate Leaders Conference in Chicago next week. CSX Railroad is investing heavily in communicating it's biggest value proposition. Railroads are both clean technology and the most efficient way to move product to market.

Railroads compete mainly against trucks. The bigger the load and the longer the haul, the more railroads present value to shippers. CSX has produced an on-line carbon calculator to allow shippers to compare distance and load vs. mode of transportation to determine transport efficiency.

CSX gets both its value proposition to freight shippers, but also to environmental groups.   I got invited to join a group of bloggers from a broad spectrum of interests.  These include transportation, technology, the environment and current events/news. Blogger attendees will tour the Chicago rail yard, see CSX's latest GenSet Locomotive, and attend a dinner meeting with senior CSX executives.  Other on-line attendees include Ars Technica, Trains For America and Green Living.

CSX's communications and marketing teams are carving a new branding niche.  Not only are they investing in traditional media to send their message, they are investing in both traditional and new on-line media. Lets face it, anybody with an audience can influence stock prices. Bloggers have a role in this.

CSX has really gone cutting edge in addressing this market by educating bloggers on what they are doing.  If bloggers from a wide range of interests consider railroads an efficient transport medium, then the public perception of railroads will change.  BNSF, NS and others owe CSX a debt here I think!

For an old school transportation medium, I congratulate CSX on how well it understands the branding opportunity that the net and industry bloggers offer. I've spent 25 years in the transportation business working with heavy iron in modes ranging from containerships to B747's.

I'm looking forward to some steel wheel love.

Eric

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