Solidly

There’s lots of delay causes. The trains have to be organized in a certain way for safety and stability, so it’s rare to be able to have a perfect first in, last out arrangement. Heavy cars at the back and light cars at the front can cause a strongline derailment on curves. Heavy cars with little coupler dampening at the back and light cars with excessive damping at the front can cause a column buckling derailment on hard braking. Then there’s weird slinky physics if dealing with slopes. And then from there, even after all that, it’s not just an A to B trip. They stop, add cars, leave cars, send groups on other routes, etc. There’s 30 cars going A to B, 40 cars going A to C, cars going B to D, C to A, F to J…

I don’t really see much new concern with crossings. Trains already cross roads frequently at high speeds with no effective means of braking in time to avoid a collision. Urban/suburban crossings should already have gates. Rural crossings are hilariously unguarded. I’m not even sure if they all have lights, let alone gates. I’d actually see a benefit to the increased crossing frequency coupled with decreased crossing times. Many collisions are the result of people fearing having to wait at the gate for 5+ minutes as a huge train crosses, so they race across to beat the train. Obviously, people will still try to beat the drone in the same way they accelerate through yellow lights, but maybe they’d be a little less inclined to do so. So, regrettably, the network already gets disrupted frequently. Railroads are very efficient at clearing incidents to reopen the track once all evidence is collected. Trains drive by while wrecked cars and spills are still there.

For one of my local crossings, there’s a weekly 10 minute crossing event. The train pulls through a road crossing, stops, reverses down a siding to pick up/drop off 2 cars, then forwards away, all while blocking the crossing of a major road. Seems like a good cooperative way to still service one of those few remaining sidings without making car drivers irate at trains.

I’m not saying this is a valid business plan, but I’m failing to see how this is an “obvious” failure. They of course want to advertise as completely independent drones, but it’d be neat to be able to join a regular consist and get released to only drive itself the last mile.

Then I don’t know what point you’re making since I replied to points you brought up.

Only the major yards are gravity-“powered” hump yards (the gravity does the sorting part, but a locomotive still has to push the consist up from the other side as they’re decoupled). Most yards, the smaller yards trying to serve the last mile, are flat and require manual sorting with a locomotive, and often while blocking the rail line to all other traffic. Plus, they often can’t sort the cars into the ideal shipping order because of dynamics in the train. One of the worst ways to order the cars is with autoracks (automobile carriers) up front and tank or steel coil cars at the back. Autoracks are very light in comparison and have long-stroke draft gear (coupler cushioning). Just slamming the brakes can cause a derailment with that arrangement with column buckling of the train. Or worse, lots of cars only ever get loaded in one direction, such as autoracks and tanks, so they’re empty and even lighter on their return trip. They have to sort heavier cars towards the front or else they risk stringline derailment on curves while pulling.

Yes, we’re aware they need to do the first 99 miles to get to the last mile problem. The problem with rail, as defined by the market, is that trucks do the whole 100. And while yes, the majority of consumer goods rail traffic spent 2 months on the water, the majority of containers were not ordered for the end user or final sales point. They’re warehoused at distribution centers, waiting to refill other DC’s needs. Even Amazon is running full intermodal container trains across the country. It also completely ignores the vast amount of domestic/continental raw goods such as oil, lumber, vehicles, metals, trash, scrap, grain, plastic pellets, lethal chemicals, coal, and, apparently, orange juice.

And I say this as someone that votes for trains. PSR does not solve much. It’s a buzzword for hostile takeovers by investment companies that have no intent on improving infrastructure. It brought some improved shipping status decades later than every other mode of carrier.

I just bought some things on ebay to avoid Amazon. They dropshipped Amazon to me, individual packages and all, for nearly 100% markup. I don’t know how to avoid that and find “real” sellers dropshipping non-branded warehoused Chinese goods like the good old days.