Seems to me there are a couple of methods that railroads use to transport intermodal containers. 1. The container only, stacked in a double stack well car. 2. The container with chassis and wheels on a flat car, ready to be hitched to a cab for driving on the roads. Now I've seen the cranes they use to pick the type 2 (container plus chassis) off the railroad flat cars. I've got a couple photos in my gallery. And I've seen the huge cranes that they use in shipping ports like Long Beach where they stack the containers (without chassis) on cargo ships. So my question is this: are stacked containers (without chassis) in railroad well cars ever offloaded using these cranes onto a waiting chassis for travel on the roads, or are they only used for stacking in cargo ships? I'm trying to decide if and how to model the terminal facilities for my intermodal layout. If I have to model a big shipping port, it ain't gonna happen. But if all I need is some lifting cranes and some truck chassis, then that's pretty easy. Thanks.
Hobart yard in LA receives & sends out cans on chassis' as do alot of other intermodal yards. This is the most common way cans are handled, especially bigger domestic 48' & 53' cans. So a big port facility is not an absolute must for modeling. These usually handle 20', 40' & 45' cans. The smaller cans are handled in the regular intermodal yards also. Do a little railfanning in your area & you'll probably find one if you're near any large city. If not, check out books & magazines. There's also the modelintermodal news site on Yahoo groups. All you really need to model a small yard is 2-3 tracks & a couple of straddlebuggies.
The 2 intermodal sites in Detroit where I work use big packers to unload the inbound containers; they try to load it up on a chassis right off the bat but many times the containers are just put on the ground until later when they can either be loaded upon a chassis or stacked up in the appropriate area.
Funny you should mention it given your recent railfanning, but the San BErnadino Yard has been converted almost exclusivly to Intermodal service. If you have chance find the Sept 06 issue of Trains mag. It covers LA/Longbeach along with Hobart, San Berdo, Barstow and UP's LA yard. Because of congestion, often containers are shipped via surface roads to one of these other facilities for loading onto trains. So, you should be able to make a viable intermodal yard that doesn't have a port. Also, just for your knowledge, typically (though not always) shipments of trailers with the wheels on are actually normal trailers, not containers on the undercarraige, So A trailer train/TOFC service would have slightly different shipping names. Intermodal covers both.
No, many double stack containers aren't heading to ships. In fact, any containers that are longer than 40 feet (that is, 45' 48' and 53') are unlikely ever to go on a ship, because 40 feet is an international standard but the longer containers are not. The longer containers are known as "domestic" containers, and aren't normally used outside North America. If you look carefully, you'll notice that some trains only have 40' containers. These "land bridge" trains are probably heading from one ocean to the other, with their containers coming and going to various ships. However, even these containers may spend up to a few miles on a chassis for the journey between the train and ship. Hardly any ports actually have tracks on the docks these days. On trains with longer containers, probably most of the containers aren't headed to ships at all, and will travel many miles on a chassis at one end or another of the train journey. First of all, model whatever you want, it's your hobby. But as I said, most trains don't end next to a ship, so don't worry. Cranes and trucks would be realistic for any part of the country, especially if you have a good mix of domestic containers on your trains.
PS: Here's some pictures of intermodal yards with no ships in view... http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=86602 http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=127291 http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=140036
Yeah, that trip this weekend was what raised the question. Unfortunately I was there on a quiet Saturday, with not much going on. All I could see is the cranes straddling flatcars which had containers on chassis (ie, trailers), so it looked like all the yard handled was that. However, I saw what looked like a long line of just chassis stacked almost vertically, so it occurred to me that maybe they grab a chassis, tow it up to the RR car with a small tractor-looking vehicle (I did see some of them scooting around), and offload the container onto the chassis, hitch on a cab and drive off. That was a whole new concept for me. COOL !!! Thanks. Good point. That was another question I had. I didn't pay good enough attention at San Berdo, but looking back thru the photos it looks like the trailers on chassis don't have the typical Hanjin/China/Evergreen/K Line shipping names associated with overseas shipping lines you'd see at major ports like Long Beach. Looks like I might need to sleep thru my Metrolink stop on the way home from work this week and take another trip to San Berdo mg: Anyway, based on all of this, I suppose one might expect to see big rigs on the freeway hauling trailers marked Hanjin/China/Evergreen/K Line and the like. Can't recall if I've ever noticed that....
Okay, I found a photo that shows *I think* the storage of trailer chassis at the San Berdo intermodal yard (file attached)
Many EB & WB intermodal BNSF trains stop at San Berdoo to make pickups & setouts. Trains to/from Hobart do that all the time. The combination of shippers & final destinations are endless. You can have any cans & pigs available as models on your layout if San Berdoo is something like you want to model. So it's your RR do what you can do whatever you want.
Quick correction - 45' is also a 'deep sea' size in international use, but you're quite right to make the distinction between domestic north American (48' and 53') and 'deep sea' traffic. Europe and Australia both also have 'domestic' containers larger than the 'standard' 40', but as far as I can tell like the North American 48' and 53' boxes they all stay in their 'local' parts of the globe. In terms of ops on a layout, have a think about what function your yard is meant to be providing. Is it dealing with mostly domestic traffic in boxes and trailers (which could include boxes on chassis) - if it's 'inland' does it get cuts of cars delivered from ports which would likely be 'deep sea' sized boxes of import goods? I would suspect that a fair few real yards do a mixture of these functions. Ref the chassis storage, if you're an HO modeller then American Limited does a kit for chassis racks, not sure on wether it's available in N or not?
