Intermodal Service involves the transportation of freight in
a container or vehicles, using several modes of transportation
such as rail, ship and trucks, without any
handling of the freight itself when changing modes. The method
reduces cargo handling, and so improves safety, may reduce costs
and loss, and also allow freight to be transported faster. Reduced
cost Vs over the road trucking is the key benefit for
both intra-continental and inter-continental
use.
This section of the Intermodal is developed to
help you see the communication that has been provided to the customers
related to the project. Other valuable information on the project
can be found on this page.
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transportation solutions that effect in cost effective
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the World.
The Automover transports goods such as general
merchandise, automotive parts, chemicals,
building materials, food and beverages, forest and
paper products.
The containers are regularly transported by rail in container
well cars. These cars are similar to flatcars but the newer ones
have a container-sized depression, or well, in the center of the
car. This depression allows for sufficient clearance to allow
two containers to be loaded in the car in a "double stack"
arrangement. The newer container cars also are specifically built
as a small articulated "unit", most commonly in components
of three or five, whereby two components are connected by a single
bogie as opposed to two bogies, one on each car. Double stacking
is also used in some countries. On some older railways, the use
of well cars is necessary to carry single stacked large containers
within the loading gauge.
It is also common to transport semi-trailers on railway flatcars
or spine cars, an arrangement called piggyback or TOFC and its
expansion is trailer on flatcar to differentiate it from container
on flatcar or COFC. Few flatcars are intended with collapsable
trailer hitches which are used for trailer or container service.
These flatcars allow trailers to be moved on from one end, though
lifting trailers on and off flatcars by specific loaders is more
common. TOFC terminals usually have huge place for storing trailers
pending loading or pickup.
A newer method of transporting trailers is the RoadRailer which
has been developed by Wabash National. When the trailers are transported
on rail, railway wheel assemblies are positioned between the trailers
to turn the trailers into one big articulated railway car. This
method is quicker than loading trailers on flatcars and needs
no extra railway cars, but it is specially designed to withstand
the forces of being carried in a train of up to 150 trailers.
One of the most well known operators of RoadRailers is Triple
Crown Services in US a subsidiary of Norfolk Southern Railway.
Triple Crown runs a fleet of more than 6500 Roadrailers and serves
14 terminals in the eastern half of the country. A similar technology
has been developed by RailRunner.
Container ships are used to move the containers by ocean. These
ships are specially made to grasp containers. The ships can grasp
thousands of containers. The capacity of ship is calculated in
TEU or FEU. TEU means Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit and FEU means
Forty-foot Equivalent Unit. A ship that can carry 1,000 FEU containers
or 2,000 TEU containers can be said to have a capacity of 2,000
TEU. In the year 2005, the largest container ships in regular
operation are registered to carry in excess of 8,000 TEU.
The size of ships is larger and surpasses the capacity of important
sea routes such as the Panama and Suez canals. The largest size
of container ship able to navigate the Panama Canal is called
as Panamax, which is currently about 5,000 TEU. A third set of
locks is intended as part of the Panama Canal development project
to hold container ships up to 12,000 TEU in future.
Trucks is commonly used to connect the ocean and rail divisions
of a global intermodal freight movement. This dedicated trucking
runs between ocean harbors, rail stations, and inland shipping
harbors, is called as drayage, and is usually offered by committed
drayage companies or by the railroads.
