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RoadRailers were a trailer or semi-trailer that could be hauled on roads by a tractor unit and then by way of a fifth wheel coupling, operate in a unit train on railway lines. The RoadRailer system allowed trailers to be pulled by locomotives without the use of flatcars, instead attaching trailers directly to bogies.
The advantage of using roadrailers was their ability to be used directly behind other freight (or even passenger) equipment without the use of trailer flatcars.
Roadrailers first appeared on American railroads in the 1950s. The trailers were built with integrated railroad wheelsets that could be lowered into position when the trailer was pulled behind a train. More modern roadrailers did not include integrated railroad wheels, but rode on regular trucks that do double-duty, having served as articulation points between multiple trailers in a train. Each regular truck is equipped with one fifth wheel at one end and a connector plate at the other end. The connector plate slid into a female receptacle on the rear of the trailer in front and was secured with a steel pin. At the head of a Road Railer train there was an adaptor truck equipped with one fifth wheel and one regular AAR Type "E" or Type "F" automatic coupler. Each semi-trailer had one king pin at each end. Because the truck (bogie) was significantly lighter than a rail flatcar or well-car, roadrailer freight trains were much lighter and therefore were more energy efficient than traditional intermodal trains.
RoadRailers were built by the Bi-Modal Corporations in the early 1980s located in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The trailers were built by the Budd Company locally with the integration of the wheelsets and railroad braking system done at the nearby Bi-Modal factory. This was a modern up-date of Chesapeake & Ohio Railway's RoadRailers introduced in 1955. [1] [2] The railroad wheelsets attached to the aft portion of the trailer were lowered pneumatically by activating a control valve on the left rear of the trailer. To transfer from highway mode to rail mode, the trailer driver would position the trailer over tracks laid into a paved rail yard. First the operator would activate the valve to exhaust air from the airbags that supported the trailer in the highway mode. In the fully lowered or squat position, hooks holding the railwheel set above the road surface released. Then the operator would move the valve to inflate the two airbags used for rail mode. These air bags were similar to those used in passenger rail cars at the time. After being fully transferred, the trailer would be fully level and ready for connection to the next trailer in the train. A similar system was trialed in the UK, though the concept proved unsuccessful, partly due to the reduction in load volume required to fit inside the UK's smaller loading gauge, and also due to objections by the powerful rail and road transport unions. [3] [4]
Throughout the early 1980s various railroads experimented with the RoadRailer concept to determine if the equipment would be sufficiently durable to endure railroad use. The positive attributes of the RoadRailer were its exceptionally smooth ride, light weight and low capital costs to establish a rail yard. Since no flatcars were involved, no crane systems were needed to transfer the trailers between modes. During one demonstration test a train of RoadRailers was broken down in the middle of an industrial street in Portland, Oregon which happened to have track in the street, demonstrating the flexibility of the system. Another note was that a RoadRailer train did not have a caboose, which at the time was still required for freight trains. A box was designed with a yellow strobe light, and equipment for monitoring air pressure through the brake line was designed to be installed in the unused coupler of the last car. Later, as cabooses were phased out, railroads moved to their current use of an end-of-train device to mark the end of the train.
In 1982, Conrail operated a route between Buffalo, Rochester and Highbridge in New York State, called the Empire State Xpress, operated by Bi-Modal subsidiary Road-Rail Transportation Company. The concept was to offer customers rapid freight service that would be competitive with traditional over-the-road service. Dedicated trains left Buffalo and Highbridge each evening, arriving early the next morning. The line was eventually shut down after never establishing enough key customers to utilize the service. In 1992, Amtrak began a trial of RailRoaders to carry mail attached to passenger trains. [5] It was deemed unsuccessful. [6]
In 1991, the RoadRailer concept was purchased by Wabash National Corporation. [7] [8]
The primary reason that the original RoadRailer concept was not viable was the weight penalty imposed on the trailers because of the attached railroad wheelset. This was resolved in later designs which removed the integrated wheelset by having a dedicated rail bogie assembly that stayed in the rail yard, as seen today.[ citation needed ] [9]
Triple Crown, a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern Railway, remained a user of RoadRailer until August 25, 2024. The RoadRailer trains have been replaced temporarily with Trailer on Flat Car (TOFC) service, before transitioning fully to a standard double-stack container trains. [10]
Roadrailers have been used in:
A bogie is a chassis or framework that carries a wheelset, attached to a vehicle—a modular subassembly of wheels and axles. Bogies take various forms in various modes of transport. A bogie may remain normally attached or be quickly detachable. It may include a suspension component within it, or be solid and in turn be suspended ; it may be mounted on a swivel, as traditionally on a railway carriage or locomotive, additionally jointed and sprung, or held in place by other means.
A train is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives, though some are self-propelled, such as multiple units or railcars. Passengers and cargo are carried in railroad cars, also known as wagons or carriages. Trains are designed to a certain gauge, or distance between rails. Most trains operate on steel tracks with steel wheels, the low friction of which makes them more efficient than other forms of transport.
A railroad car, railcar, railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck, also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or passengers on a rail transport network. Such cars, when coupled together and hauled by one or more locomotives, form a train. Alternatively, some passenger cars are self-propelled in which case they may be either single railcars or make up multiple units.
Intermodal freight transport involves the transportation of freight in an intermodal container or vehicle, using multiple modes of transportation, without any handling of the freight itself when changing modes. The method reduces cargo handling, and so improves security, reduces damage and loss, and allows freight to be transported faster. Reduced costs over road trucking is the key benefit for inter-continental use. This may be offset by reduced timings for road transport over shorter distances.
Rail transport terms are a form of technical terminology applied to railways. Although many terms are uniform across different nations and companies, they are by no means universal, with differences often originating from parallel development of rail transport systems in different parts of the world, and in the national origins of the engineers and managers who built the inaugural rail infrastructure. An example is the term railroad, used in North America, and railway, generally used in English-speaking countries outside North America and by the International Union of Railways. In English-speaking countries outside the United Kingdom, a mixture of US and UK terms may exist.
A railbus is a lightweight passenger railcar with an automotive engine. It shares many aspects of its construction with a bus, typically having a bus body and four wheels on a fixed base instead of on bogies. Originally designed and developed during the 1930s, railbuses have evolved into larger dimensions with characteristics similar in appearance to a light railcar, with the terms railcar and railbus often used interchangeably. Railbuses designed for use specifically on little-used railway lines were commonly employed in countries such as Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.
An autorack, also known as an auto carrier, is a specialized piece of railroad rolling stock used to transport automobiles and light trucks. Autoracks are used to transport new vehicles from factories to automotive distributors, and to transport passengers' vehicles in car shuttles and motorail services, such as Amtrak's Auto Train route.
Terra Transport (TT) was the name for the Newfoundland Transportation Division, a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian National Railway (CN), created in 1979 as a means to organize the company's operations on Newfoundland.
A flatcar (US) is a piece of rolling stock that consists of an open, flat deck mounted on trucks (US) or bogies (UK) at each end. Occasionally, flat cars designed to carry extra heavy or extra large loads are mounted on a pair of bogies under each end. The deck of the car can be wood or steel, and the sides of the deck can include pockets for stakes or tie-down points to secure loads. Flatcars designed for carrying machinery have sliding chain assemblies recessed in the deck.
Rail transportation in the United States consists primarily of freight shipments along a well integrated network of standard gauge private freight railroads that also extend into Canada and Mexico. The United States has the largest rail transport network of any country in the world, about 160,000 miles (260,000 km).
Rail freight transport is the use of railways and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers.
This article contains a list of terms, jargon, and slang used to varying degrees by railfans and railroad employees in the United States and Canada. Although not exhaustive, many of the entries in this list appear from time to time in specialist, rail-related publications. Inclusion of a term in this list does not necessarily imply its universal adoption by all railfans and railroad employees, and there may be significant regional variation in usage.
A variable gauge system allows railway vehicles in a train to travel across a break of gauge between two railway networks with different track gauges. For through operation, a train must be equipped with special bogies holding variable gauge wheelsets which contain a variable gauge axle (VGA).
A wheelset is a pair of railroad vehicle wheels mounted rigidly on an axle allowing both wheels to rotate together. Wheelsets are often mounted in a bogie – a pivoted frame assembly holding at least two wheelsets – at each end of the vehicle. Most modern freight cars and passenger cars have bogies each with two wheelsets, but three wheelsets are used in bogies of freight cars that carry heavy loads, and three-wheelset bogies are under some passenger cars. Four-wheeled goods wagons that were once near-universal in Europe and Great Britain and their colonies have only two wheelsets; in recent decades such vehicles have become less common as trainloads have become heavier.
Bogie exchange is a system for operating railway wagons on two or more gauges to overcome difference in the track gauge. To perform a bogie exchange, a car is converted from one gauge to another by removing the bogies or trucks, and installing a new bogie with differently spaced wheels. It is generally limited to wagons and carriages, though the bogies on diesel locomotives can be exchanged if enough time is available.
Oregon Pacific Railroad is a short-line railroad operating two disconnected routes: one in southeast Portland, Oregon, and another incorporating portions of the former Southern Pacific Molalla Branch between Canby and Liberal, Oregon.
Trailer on flatcar, also known as TOFC or piggyback, is the practice of carrying semi-trailers on railroad flatcars. TOFC allows for shippers to move truckloads long distances more cheaply than can be done by having each trailer towed by a truck, since one train can carry more than 100 trailers at once. The trailers will be moved by truck from their origin to an intermodal facility, where they will then be loaded onto a train, typically by a rubber tired gantry crane, for the bulk of their journey. Alternatively, trailers may be driven onto the flatcars via ramps by a terminal tractor. Near the destination, the trailers are unloaded at another facility and brought to their final destination by a tractor unit.
The Highbridge Facility, also simply known as Highbridge or High Bridge, is a maintenance facility for the Metro-North Railroad in the Highbridge section of the Bronx, New York City, United States. It is the third stop along the Hudson Line north of Grand Central Terminal, and is for Metro-North employees only, though this stop also formerly served commuter rail passengers and was called High Bridge station.
