LETTERS

Railway Age, Oct, 1999

Optimum car size

Belmont Calif

To the Editor:

The July 1999 article, "Improved car design can increase route capacity" (p. 44) makes the case that a design that maximizes the potential cross-section dimensions of a car, increases the amount of product that can be loaded into a standard length train, thus reducing the number of trains to deliver a given tonnage. On selected routes with bridges that can handle the increased weight, this seems to make sense for cars of 286,000 pounds, gross rail load, but based on data supplied in the article, not for the 39 ton axle load/315,000 pound gross rail load. A 1% saving in direct cost, again without considering the bridge problem, speaks for itself.

Information on heavy axle loading developed in the last 20 years, and once again supported by data in the article, indicates that there is a point where the accelerating unit cost of track wear offsets the savings of other operating costs. That point is the optimum size car, and the industry should know what that is, even if it is assumed that car would never be built.

To make this calculation it would be necessary to have the maintenance-of-way unit cost as a function of axle load, in increments from a 266,000 pound to 315,000 pound gross rail load car and estimates of car capital costs for the same increments plus the usual operating costs. This might be done twice, once with track costs for the highest quality heavy rail and again using standard main line and secondary main line rail.

One other point is that while the TTCI team mentioned in the article included economists, there was no rate of return analysis. Regardless of the need for increased route capacity which better-designed cars would produce, the industry needs to increase net profit, and if these proposals do not have the required rate of return, other solutions to route capacity are needed.

G. R. (Dick) Green

Service sets prices?

Lenexa, Kans.

To the Editor:

Association of American Railroads President Ed Hamberger was quoted in July's issue of Railway Age (p. 29) ... that setting prices according to services performed is an activity engaged in every day "by every other industry across the country...."

Editor Luther Miller considered this pronouncement a "wry" observation!

I can only assume neither individual, as competent and astute as they are in their own chosen professions, comes from a farm background.

John A. Wade

For the record

Malmo, Sweden

To the Editor:

Your May issue, page 20, contains an incorrect description of the company WABCO's relationship to SAB WABCO and to the European freight market. SAB WABCO is the common name for a group of companies which are all. subsidiaries of the German/Swedish company Cardo BSI Rail AB. These companies have no relationship to WABCO--quite the contrary, WABCO is a major global competitor to SAB WABCO.

Lars Blecko

Senior Vice President Marketing

Why maglev?

Cardo BSI Rail AB

Laguna Hills, Calif

To the Editor:

Germany and Japan have spent decades and untold amounts of money designing, testing, and promoting maglev with no practical application. Levitated vehicles have been and are in worldwide every-hour use within a very extensive infrastructure that is useful, safe, and economical. These vehicles commonly travel between 150 and 650 mph and are called airplanes.

Along with our highway and railroad systems, where is the practical use for maglev? The politicians continue to starve Amtrak and then waste tax money on maglev.

John C. Miller, P. E.