UTU News Digest - Tuesday, November 16, 1999

UTU Daily News Digest

Information of interest to operating railroad and transportation employees

Tuesday, November 16, 1999

Amtrak plans to carry produce

NEW YORK -- Amtrak plans to start carrying fresh fruit and vegetables on its long-distance passenger trains, tapping a big cargo market largely lost by railroads to trucks decades ago, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The move by the national passenger railroad, expected to be announced Monday, could restore some portion of the country's produce shipments valued at more than $100 billion a year to rail.

Freight railroads once handled a large share of fresh fruits and vegetables. But after the building of the interstate highway system in the 1950s and 1960s, trucks took the vast majority of the business by offering faster, specialized service so that produce arrived fresher at destinations.

"Railroads just couldn't deliver it fast enough," said Ron Rittenmeyer, chief executive officer of RailTex Inc., a San Antonio, Texas, owner of short-line railroads. "But Amtrak could open the door for the rails to compete in this area once again."

The Amtrak move involves an agreement to lease up to 350 refrigerated express cars from ExpressTrak LLC, a closely held Detroit-based freight-marketing company. Under the 15-year agreement, ExpressTrak will purchase and rebuild the specialized rail cars for use on Amtrak passenger trains. The program will target produce shipments from California to the Midwest and Northeast, as well as California to Florida, potentially generating tens of millions of dollars a year of additional revenue for Amtrak from hauling oranges, lemons, tomatoes, carrots, broccoli and lettuce.

Amtrak, which is partly subsidized by Congress, has been struggling for years with losses and has been seeking ways to generate revenue. Last year, Amtrak won -- over the objections of freight railroads -- approval from the federal Surface Transportation Board to carry express freight instead of just people.

Since then, Amtrak has expanded its express-freight operation by buying or leasing hundreds of freight cars and express vehicles to carry beer, paper, auto parts, fruit juices and other goods. Now, Amtrak is betting that it can compete with trucks to move produce. Amtrak trains travel more quickly than freight trains, avoid freight yards and operate on more precise schedules.

Amtrak service takes nearly 70 hours from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, comparable to trucks using driver teams. Freight railroads typically take at least six days to move produce coast to coast. Amtrak and its partner ExpressTrak plan to price their produce deliveries higher than rail but below truck.

Under the plan, produce will be trucked from producing areas and warehouses to Amtrak cars in Los Angeles and other California points. It will be unloaded into trucks in the East to reach warehouses and grocery stores. Sunkist Growers, an agricultural cooperative in Sherman Oaks, Calif., said it plans to use the new Amtrak service to move citrus fruit when it is scheduled to become available in the spring.

Some truck companies question how successful Amtrak will be. "Transporting produce requires frequent monitoring and attention to detail that's easier done with trucks," said Mark Haley, marketing director of KLLM Transport Services Inc., a temperature-controlled truck carrier based in Jackson, Miss.

Vancouver port lockout settled

OTTAWA -- The weeklong lockout that paralyzed container traffic at Vancouver and seven other western Canadian ports ended at 7:30 p.m. EDT as management and labor accepted a government proposal for arbitration.

Federal Labor Minister Claudette Bradshaw announced in Parliament here that 'both parties have accepted our proposals for settlement.' Bradshaw did not disclose details of the proposals, but it is known that they involved an arbitrated settlement.

The British Colonial Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) said it was lifting the lockout that had idled 2,000 workers beginning on Nov. 7. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) had already agreed to return to work and remain on job until a settlement was reached.

Canada's federal government had given both parties until just after 5 p.m. EDT to reach an agreement before it introduced legislation ordering the port of Vancouver and smaller British Columbia ports back to work.

Shipments in and out of those ports were stopped after the employers locked out members of the ILWU, who have been without a contract for almost a year.

The lockout was spurred by a disagreement over one port employer's contract with six non-union inspectors of sulfur shipments. The employers said they could not force the company to hire union or non-union people.

Eastern Coal Crisis; expected decline in demand could alter coal logistics patterns, force rail rate cuts

WASHINGTON: There is a crisis for Eastern railroads percolating in Appalachian coal fields from sharply reduced coal production and demand, but lower rail rates and coal prices could lessen the turmoil, Traffic World reported.

There's a different difficulty brewing in the West where a 30 percent bump up in demand for Wyoming Powder River Basin coal is expected within five years.

The predicted Eastern coal crisis will not materialize fully next month or even next year, but within five years demand for Eastern coal could wane by 15 percent as Western coal and natural gas capture some existing and most future markets.

This could dramatically alter coal logistics patterns and create another Western-railroad service nightmare. In the East, CSX and NS could be forced to slash coal rates to maintain market share. "The last bastion of railroad stability - coal - is under attack," said Morgan Stanley rail analyst Jim Valentine.

Out West, some coal and utility experts fret that the Surface Transportation Board blundered in the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger by not requiring divestiture of the SP's Central Corridor route, which reaches coal mines in Colorado and Utah. Another carrier could help reduce Burlington Northern Santa Fe and UP congestion.

For the full story, see the November 15th print edition of Traffic World.

Union Pacific reports on tunnel fires

OMAHA -- Cascade tunnel fires in October sparked heroic efforts from Engineering Department employees from Oregon, California and Idaho, UP reported on its website.

Just after midnight on October 22, Tunnel Nos. 6 and 7 caught fire on the Cascade Subdivision, between Klamath Falls, Oregon and Oakridge, California. The route is UP's heavily traveled I-5 Corridor main line, linking the Pacific Northwest with Southern California.

Nos. 6 and 7 are among 24 tunnels built around the turn of the century through the Cascade Mountains. The fires, particularly in No. 6, were difficult to extinguish because of the tunnels' construction. Old-time railroaders had dynamited their way through the mountainous rock, causing irregularly shaped walls. To keep them from collapsing, wooden "tunnel sets" were constructed.

The sets were composed of wooden posts set back on either side of the track, crowned with wooden, horizontal top caps. Wooden lagging was constructed behind the posts, and cedar planks were packed behind the lagging, to fill the void between the tunnel sets and rock walls. The planking in the tunnels can be anywhere from one to 15 feet deep, depending on the rock walls' irregularities.

The fires ignited both tunnels' wooden top caps, but No. 7 was quickly brought under control because flames occurred near the "barrel" which is the concrete poured around the tunnel's portals. In the case of No. 6, however, the fire worked its way through the timber sets into the cedar packing.

Reinforced concrete walls poured between the wooden sets, to improve the original tunnels, complicated matters. The packing and lagging still remains behind the concrete walls and crews had to break through the concrete to get to the fire.

A giant fan was placed at one end of the 566-foot-long tunnel to draw off smoke. Then, work trains hauling water-filled tank cars were backed in. Wearing full firefighting gear and air tanks, employees worked four at a time in 1-hour shifts atop the tank cars and platforms, using pumps, fire hoses and a foam machine. Local fire departments helped refill their air tanks.

Using the big fan put the crews in a "Catch 22" - it drew smoke out so employees could see to fight the fire, but the fresh air it drew in fueled the fire.

Trains initially were rerouted, but toward the end of the 7-day battle, they were fleeted through the tunnel between 4-hour work windows.

The fires' cause is still under investigation.

Y2K might shutter Italian airports

ROME -- The half-million visitors expected in Rome to kick off the Vatican's Holy Year could be flying out again on a wing and a prayer, according to technical and aviation officials, the Wall Street Journal Europe reported.

Main airports in Rome and Milan have fallen significantly behind in upgrading computers for the year-2000 date change and the systems haven't been fully installed or tested, according to documents filed with the International Civil Aviation Organization and made available through the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The DOT report notes that completion dates for the upgrades "are not available" and doesn't offer estimated dates of completion.

Taskforce 2000, a U.K.-based Y2K watchdog group, says Italy's airports are at serious risk of disruption for the entire month of January, along with airports in Germany, Switzerland, and Spain. DOT documents suggest, however, that Italy has the farthest to go in readying its computers for the year 2000, when machines unable to distinguish between 1900 and 2000 could cause problems.

At Rome's Fiumicino airport, systems for public safety and emergency services, weather information, fuel services, and ground transportation had not been renovated, implemented or tested by Oct. 15, according to the DOT documents. Navigation aids remain to be tested or put in place.

Milan's Malpensa airport, open just over a year, also is in need of substantial work to get it ready for the change in century. Systems at the airport's air-traffic control center, which also houses flight and radar data processing, had to be completely renovated, as they were not Y2K-compliant when installed, according to a report by the Italian airport authority ENAV.

Although Malpensa's report to ICAO has indicated that preparations were due to be completed by Sept. 30, the DOT notes that it has "no confirmation that actions have been completed." The airport authority and airport's management group didn't respond to requests for comment.

Technical and aviation experts are expressing concern that neither airport will be fully operational in time for the new year.

"You get to the point where no matter how many people or how much money you throw at a project, you just can't work any faster. A couple of weeks doesn't make much of a difference," says Nick Gogerty, a senior analyst at International Monitoring, a London consultancy that monitors worldwide Y2K preparations.

The firm has been predicting transportation delays of up to 25 days in Italy after Jan. 1, and is considering raising that after reviewing the airport data.

The lack of a complete end-to-end test at either airport is especially troublesome. Such testing can add up to half of the development time on large projects, as it uncovers bugs that hadn't cropped up before, Mr. Gogerty says.

"These types of large, complicated systems have to be up and running for some time, with all of their components, in order to detect all of the problems," he said. "You can't just plug them in and expect them to work right away." Many subsystems, he points out, aren't used every day, and problems with them might not show up for a month or more.

Luca Danese, undersecretary of Italy's Ministry of Transportation, insists that the airports will be ready on time and will be open at midnight on New Year's Eve. "We conducted simulation tests at both airports last week, and they passed beautifully," Mr. Danese said.

But analysts note that a simulation testing isn't always sufficient to find problems. They point to chaos caused last month after a systems upgrade at Rome's Termini train station left many people stranded and snarled trains between Rome and southern Italy for a week. Much of the testing of the system, which made the computers Y2K compliant and allows the station to handle more trains, was done by simulation, a spokesperson for the station said.

Technical experts say these kinds of problems are normal in implementing a system of this size. Sometimes they can be minimized by running the old and new systems together. If the new system fails at rush hour, the operators can switch over to the old one. However, this won't be possible at the airports, since the old systems won't be functioning due to the Y2K bug.

The risk of an accident at the airports is remote. Air traffic on New Year's Eve is typically low, a phenomenon airlines attribute to people being on the ground to celebrate, and everybody else to a fear of flying. However, traffic is unusually high just before and after New Year's Day throughout Europe.

But the failures, if they occur, could shut the airports. European skies are so congested that flying without air traffic control is not allowed. "There's absolutely no free flying anywhere in Europe," says Shane Enright of the International Transport Workers' Federation. "A loss of air-traffic control closes the airport."