Re: [DL] Passenger Train Economics

[Marguerite Frey <natasha_corey@yahoo.com>]

--- Bryce <SandChigg@rocketmail.com> wrote:
> I could be wrong, but I think they would just charge
> higher prices for
> cargo and freight.  

Response from the Marshal...

And now, a brief note in response to the guy who says
I was underestimating freight.

On a steamboat (whose passenger costs are the same as
a trains) deck space costs 1 cent a mile because you
are basically cargo. Lets say that for a railroad it
costs 2 cents a mile for cargo, doubling the cost and
making it a lot more efficient to ship something down
the mississipi then by black river.

Now lets assume they can pack 6 times as much cargo in
a cargo car as passengers in a regular car. So we go
to some quick math again...  100$/ .02$ per person
weight in frieght = 5000 units 5000 units / (6 x 30
units per car) = 28 cars.

But since they migh be really crowding it (and at this
point I am not sure if this is even physically
possible because it means that for every 200 pound
person you could fit in a vehicle you can replace him
with 2400 pounds worth of cargo) we'll use the doubled
passenger figures.  5000 units / (6 X 60 units per
car) = 14 cars

Even with that minimum number of cars now generated
that is still 7 less frieght/passenger cars then is
needed to make a profit then on the longest train I
have seen to date. That also makes freight cars the
biggest money producer for a rail line, capable of
generating 7.20$ per car per mile as opposed to a
passenger cars mear 3.00$ per mile when filled with 60
people. This also assumes that they are constantly
full and do not go even a single trip with less then
capacity.

As you can see, this still doesn't seem to explain the
missing revenue. Now if there are a bunch of services
that make up for this that I am unaware of and don't
take up a whole lot of space my estimates could be
drastically off. That's why I am asking the question
in the first place. I may be mistaken in some of my
base assumptions (for example ghost rock in bulk might
costs 25$ a pound instead of 100$) in which case I
would like to know which ones. But so far I have tried
to estimate in the railroads favor and they still keep
coming up short on breaking even, much less turning a
profit.

Anyway I hope this helps to illustrate the reasons for
my curiosity about how much it costs to make a train
go.

Marshal Black

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