Has anyone heard about supposed new Modern Shipping Containers??
Reason being, there is a railway bridge near me being replaced
" Network Rail is installing a higher replacement as part of a £71m line upgrade to allow modern shipping containers to travel between Southampton and Nuneaton"
I’ve never heard of any new containers and current ISO’s already travel that line anyway so was wondering if anyone working out of Southampton had heard owt about them and whether they will be on the road as well.
it will be high cubes, freightliner has a lot of trouble getting them up from the ports at times if the train dos’ent have enough low carridges. i know they struggle mostly from felixstowe.
Seems the most likely reason, the containers are the same size, just the rail network is leaping forward into the 20th century
are you talking about a bridge over a railway line or a rail bridge over a road?
shipping containers are either 8’6" or 9’6" and when riding on a normal skeletal trailer, they sit at 13’6" and 14’6" respectively
High Cubes do struggle on trains and cannot get under some bridges unless they are on a low rider carriage, of which tere are not many in use compared to normal carriages
I don’t think we have as many bridges over here, Lol.
shuttlespanker:
are you talking about a bridge over a railway line or a rail bridge over a road?
Sorry, a bridge over the GW mainline near Didcot
Did think it strange as ISO’s already use the line but high cubes would explain it.
wire:
I don’t think we have as many bridges over here, Lol.
And not as many trucks because that thing is probably a mile long which means less work for road transport to do.Until that is it all gets to the end of the line when they’ll expect some mug with a wagon to pick all those boxes up and take them to where they’re going in town and then handball the load off for half the money which that train driver earns?.
I was quite impressed when I saw those double decker container trains in the US, except they had to keep stopping to let me past on the Amtrak 
The other alternative for the bridge engineering was to buy some Hupac wheels for the trains 
nickyboy:
shuttlespanker:
are you talking about a bridge over a railway line or a rail bridge over a road?
Sorry, a bridge over the GW mainline near Didcot
Did think it strange as ISO’s already use the line but high cubes would explain it.
that’ll be for frightliner to bring them up from Soton then, oh well, give them something to do I suppose…
Carryfast:
wire:
I don’t think we have as many bridges over here, Lol.
And not as many trucks because that thing is probably a mile long which means less work for road transport to do.Until that is it all gets to the end of the line when they’ll expect some mug with a wagon to pick all those boxes up and take them to where they’re going in town and then handball the load off for half the money which that train driver earns?.
Carry, I dont know if you’ve ever been to the US or Canada, but the place is HUGE, I know I’d rather be on a train through Nevada/Arizona/New Mexico than driving a truck. I have a mate that does that run in a truck and it takes him 2 weeks each way, and he says it gets a bit boring after a while with nothing to see but rocks and scrub bushes for miles on end.
Yea, 2 weeks with nothing to see but dessert, you’d go nuts.
SWraith:
nickyboy:
shuttlespanker:
are you talking about a bridge over a railway line or a rail bridge over a road?
Sorry, a bridge over the GW mainline near Didcot
Did think it strange as ISO’s already use the line but high cubes would explain it.
that’ll be for frightliner to bring them up from Soton then, oh well, give them something to do I suppose…
Carryfast:
wire:
I don’t think we have as many bridges over here, Lol.
And not as many trucks because that thing is probably a mile long which means less work for road transport to do.Until that is it all gets to the end of the line when they’ll expect some mug with a wagon to pick all those boxes up and take them to where they’re going in town and then handball the load off for half the money which that train driver earns?.
Carry, I dont know if you’ve ever been to the US or Canada, but the place is HUGE, I know I’d rather be on a train through Nevada/Arizona/New Mexico than driving a truck. I have a mate that does that run in a truck and it takes him 2 weeks each way, and he says it gets a bit boring after a while with nothing to see but rocks and scrub bushes for miles on end.
I went by road from NYC to LA in less than a week and a lot of that was in states with,at that time,a 55 mph limit but there’s no difference over there between car or truck speed limits and the trucks there can run at much higher speeds than that again now.It’s a much less boring route coast to coast if you go through Colorado and Utah.It’s not much further or different in regards to time,distance,or scenery than running a return trip down to Southern Italy or Southern Spain from here.But in this context it’s not a case of rather being on a train it’s a case of being able to make a living as a long distance truck driver or not.If I’d rather have been a train driver that’s what I would have tried to do.But anyone who finds it boring running long distance work with a truck is probably in the wrong job but there are some who are happy doing local multi drop etc…That’s not me though.
shuttlespanker:
are you talking about a bridge over a railway line or a rail bridge over a road?
shipping containers are either 8’6" or 9’6" and when riding on a normal skeletal trailer, they sit at 13’6" and 14’6" respectively
High Cubes do struggle on trains and cannot get under some bridges unless they are on a low rider carriage, of which tere are not many in use compared to normal carriages
Yes, it’s all about upgrading gauge clearance for high cubes on standard rail wagons. Felixstowe to Manchester and Birmingham have already been done, for instance, and BIFT at Tamworth has been finished. The tunnel underneath Southampton city centre is scheduled for track lowering, I think over Christmas 2010.
I went by road from NYC to LA in less than a week and a lot of that was in states with,at that time,a 55 mph limit but there’s no difference over there between car or truck speed limits and the trucks there can run at much higher speeds than that again now.It’s a much less boring route coast to coast if you go through Colorado and Utah.It’s not much further or different in regards to time,distance,or scenery than running a return trip down to Southern Italy or Southern Spain from here.But in this context it’s not a case of rather being on a train it’s a case of being able to make a living as a long distance truck driver or not.If I’d rather have been a train driver that’s what I would have tried to do.But anyone who finds it boring running long distance work with a truck is probably in the wrong job but there are some who are happy doing local multi drop etc…That’s not me though
I am not doubting your experience but you are seriously underestimating the distances that you travelled. I live near Winnipeg in Canada which is roughly on the same parrallel as southern England and when i reach the Mexico ports of entry such as Laredo in southern Texas i am at the 25th Parrallel which is equivalent to the African border of Western Sahara and Mauritania. Much further south than southern Italy. It is true that you can drive from New York to LA in a week but it is over 5,000kms so it is a big week by european standards.
Canada incidently is even further across. The Transcanada highway runs east- west right across and is 8,000kms and spans 5 time zones! (7 if you include both Alaska and Newfounland).
By the way, i am on my way back from a trip now which has been 16,000kms and has taken me nearly 3 weeks.
wire:
I went by road from NYC to LA in less than a week and a lot of that was in states with,at that time,a 55 mph limit but there’s no difference over there between car or truck speed limits and the trucks there can run at much higher speeds than that again now.It’s a much less boring route coast to coast if you go through Colorado and Utah.It’s not much further or different in regards to time,distance,or scenery than running a return trip down to Southern Italy or Southern Spain from here.But in this context it’s not a case of rather being on a train it’s a case of being able to make a living as a long distance truck driver or not.If I’d rather have been a train driver that’s what I would have tried to do.But anyone who finds it boring running long distance work with a truck is probably in the wrong job but there are some who are happy doing local multi drop etc…That’s not me though
I am not doubting your experience but you are seriously underestimating the distances that you travelled. I live near Winnipeg in Canada which is roughly on the same parrallel as southern England and when i reach the Mexico ports of entry such as Laredo in southern Texas i am at the 25th Parrallel which is equivalent to the African border of Western Sahara and Mauritania. Much further south than southern Italy. It is true that you can drive from New York to LA in a week but it is over 5,000kms so it is a big week by european standards.
Canada incidently is even further across. The Transcanada highway runs east- west right across and is 8,000kms and spans 5 time zones! (7 if you include both Alaska and Newfounland).
By the way, i am on my way back from a trip now which has been 16,000kms and has taken me nearly 3 weeks.
I was only comparing the relative distances East West in the states with North South in Europe and that 5,000k’s is no big deal when comparing say the distance from Glasgow or Manchester to Sicily and back for instance and don’t forget that Italy is’nt just a direct north south run it also go’s a long way east too as it go’s down which makes just using that line of latitude measurement a bit erroneous there’s a 13+ degree difference in longitude which outweighs that 11 degree difference in the latitude.Canadian distances are in a different league to both US and European ones though and I’ve always wanted to drive the Trans Canada highway but having said that what I regret most is just being born too late to do the Middle East and Asian runs from here in the 1970’s and early 1980’s that makes trans Canada look nothing out of the ordinary but I think I’d prefer the Asian heat in the Summer to the Canadian cold in the winter check out the posts on the old trucks and firms section on here.I did drive from NY down to Key West then up to Toronto and back to New York though which was interesting especially getting pulled up for speeding on the I 95 in North Carolina with New York plates on the rental car.When he got his gun out I thought the civil war was still on.
i know that 9’6 containers cannot go on the train from Grangemouth to Aberdeen due to low bridges over the line
as Sir Jimmy Saville said many years ago “THIS IS THE AGE…OF THE TRAIN”
I suppose this is the penalty of being first with an invention, a lower standard (Smaller loading gauge) . The funny thing is that the only line built to the Berne Gauge was shut down in the 1960s, the Great Central’s London Extension.
saucyboar5:
Silver_Surfer:
Yea, 2 weeks with nothing to see but dessert, you’d go nuts.
its gotta be better than staring at the cats eyes on the m25,send some hato’s out here, they will soon get some cones out,and give ya something to look at
He would’nt need to worry about going nuts looking at the desert because if he spent 2 weeks in each direction to get across the states he’d be out of a job wether he was driving a truck or a train.It’s definitely better driving a truck across the states at 65mph + than plodding down to Italy or running around over here on local multi drop or night trunking at 53 mph.
Two weeks to go through Nevada, Arizona & New Mexico! What was he driving? A horse & cart 
There’s only 1 state that you can’t do from end to end in 1 day & that’s Texas, Montana is a bit tight running east to west & vice versa, but it can be done, I think the 2 weeks thing has been taken out of context.
The longest journey possible with a starting & finishing point in the USA would be Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to the Florida Keys, that’s around 5000miles, at average speed of 50mph (easy) you could do that in 9 days, 10 with a 36hr reset.
A round trip from Denio, Nevada to Hobbs, New Mexico (the furthest points away from each other in those states) is only 2700 miles, at a 50mph average speed you could do that in 5 legal days.
watch out for the low bridge mate…!!!
took this at the docks in Singapore…
