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Process Locomotives |
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CLCX-02111 135 Ton Process Locomotive with remote HMI computer and CCTV display. |
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As the 21st Century dawns the nations railroads continue to be primary source for most heavy hauling. Demands from shippers and regulators have required the Class I railroads to spend billions of dollars to upgrade their fleets to be more efficient in fuel usage, asset utilization, pollution controls, labor, and safety. While the large railroads made upgrades most small railroads and end users did not. A major result of the upgrades by the Class I railroads has been an emphasis on unit trains of 65 to 150 car strings. Unit trains (or shuttle trains as some people in the industry refer to them) is a major portion of business for the Class I and Class II railroads. The major railroads have offered steep rate reductions in freight charges to their customers that expand their facilities to handle unit trains and/or to handle them with shorter turn-around times. Unit trains of up to 150 cars are being loaded and unloaded in as little as three hours at each end of the route. Most unit trains running today are in the 75 to 110 car range. In some cases the serving railroad is supplying motive power and a crew to do the switching. This is most common where there is a loop track system. If a serving railroad does not provide the motive power then it is up to the end user to supply their own motive power and crew to switch the railcars on their facility. Most shippers and receivers (end users) are not equipped to operate and maintain standard locomotives. To get around this many have gone to mobile railcar movers. This worked well until the 1990's when the unit trains pushed up the number of cars to be handled in one string to tax or exceed the capacities of mobile railcar movers. The largest mobile mover on the market is limited to about 39,000 lbs. of starting tractive effort. What is needed today, in many cases, is 80,000 to 100,000 lbs. of starting tractive effort using four axle locomotives. Unlike the railroads with fixed crew sizes controlled by union contracts, many end users are able to operate with a crew of one or two people. The mass acceptance of the unit train has been occurring at the same time as "just in time manufacturing". In effect the railroads and truck lines have become part of the end user's useable warehouse and storage facilities. A typical customer may have 200 cars of material in storage silos and another 200 cars of material in railcars either in transit or parked in the yard waiting for unloading. The railroad cars have become part of the end user's material handling system. The material handling system is a very important part of the manufacturing process. Thus the railcars are also a part of that process. The machine needed to handle those cars is a Process Locomotive.
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