North America’s modern rail network began with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. Click image for larger version.

Soon after major ocean transportation carriers began the lengthy process of integrating containers into their operations in the 1950s, America’s railroads were loading these “boxes” onto flatcars to deliver goods more quickly and easily to the U.S. interior. However, time-sensitive freight moving from point to point within the U.S. was usually transported via truck because the transfer of containers from ship to rail lacked the precise coordination that exists today.

For almost 30 years, the container remained an international transportation vehicle — until APL effectively bridged the gap between land and sea with the invention of stacktrain technology in 1984. Before the stacktrain, ocean transportation carriers had never been able to go beyond owning or leasing containers, chassis, and ships, and operating them between ports.

APL introduced a concept that made it possible to transport containers beyond ports — and the marine environment in general — with greater ease and reliability. With this innovation, the company changed its own destiny, as well as that of the entire intermodal industry.

The First Tracks Are Layed

The railway age in the United States began in the early 1800s, when most of the country’s population was concentrated along the eastern seaboard. The first railroad was the Baltimore & Ohio. The B&O initially used horses to pull cars along its tracks in 1829. In 1831, the company’s first steam engine, Tom Thumb, provided mechanical horsepower.

Rail timetable from 1902. Click image for larger version.

Other railroads soon followed, and tracks began to crisscross what was a largely agrarian country, transforming it by making more settlement, development, and expansion possible. In an often intensely competitive environment, new routes seemed to spring up overnight. This frenzy of activity fueled westward migration and quickly provided the transportation infrastructure essential for the Industrial Revolution. By the time the Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869, the concept of moving goods and people by rail was ingrained in the American psyche.

Innovations in railcar design appeared surprisingly quickly as railroads began to carry more specialized cargo. From 1830 to 1835, open, four-wheel, wooden gondola cars were used. In the mid-1830s, covered hoppers, boxcars, and flatcars appeared. In the early 1840s, the first refrigerator cars were used.

By 1910, approximately 2.1 million freight cars were in service, and the idea of reliable, scheduled transportation had taken hold. In fact, the impact of published rail schedules was so great by the turn of the century that some cite the schedules as being the primary influence on the concept of punctuality in America. Perhaps the last vestiges of the country’s agrarian past — using the sun to tell time and arriving at appointments within an hour of the scheduled time — quickly gave way to a modern age when timeliness was of the essence, and pocket watches made adherence to schedules the norm.

The 1891 Flatcar

Whatever could withstand the weather or would not fit inside a boxcar generally went on a flatcar. By the end of the 19th century, flatcars had evolved from small vehicles suitable for local traffic into large, rugged carriages that carried commodities like hay, lumber, pipe, or other heavy durable goods. The Virginia & Truckee’s platform car no. 338 was built at the Carson City shops in 1891. This car is now in the Nevada State Museum collection.

Piggyback

Carrying road vehicles by railcar, known as piggybacking or trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC), was first introduced in 1822 in Germany, when farm wagons were loaded onto flatcars. In 1884, the Long Island Rail Road followed suit by hauling farm wagons from Long Island to New York City. The wagons were loaded onto flatcars; the passengers and horses traveled on other cars.

TOFC, or piggyback transport, involves loading containers and chassis onto flatcars. Click image for larger version.

Much of the practical inspiration for TOFC can be attributed to the circus, which used an efficient loading technique involving a special ramp to roll its wagons into place on flatcars. At one point, as many as 2,100 such ramps existed in the United States.

As TOFC caught on in the 1950s, the use of boxcars gradually declined for the same reason that the use of containers in ocean transportation brought an end to break-bulk cargo-handling. Using boxcars to move goods other than bulk commodities via rail was almost as labor-intensive and inefficient as using break-bulk cargo-handling methods to move goods by sea. In 1957, there were 750,000 boxcars; in 1992, there were less than 200,000.

Containers being loaded onto stackcars.

The Stacktrain

Imagine if the farm wagons transported via rail from Long Island to New York City in the 19th century were still on the road today. In fact, until the advent of stacktrain technology in 1984, moving both the container in which goods were loaded (the top of the wagon) as well the means by which it rolled (the wagon wheels and frame) on a flatcar had not changed in nearly 100 years.

Certainly, some recent advances have made the transportation of products easier and safer. For example, containerized transportation providers used a chassis — a wheeled frame onto which the container is seated after being discharged from a vessel — so truckers could haul a container to and from a customer’s warehouse.

But loading both container and chassis onto a flat car was redundant, especially since a pool of chassis could be kept at some inland point where they were needed in order to facilitate pick up and delivery. Furthermore, traditional flatcars don’t allow for one of the most important efficiencies afforded by containers — the ability to stack them on top of each other like building blocks.

Today, a vast stacktrain network spans North America.

When APL developed the technology that made the stacktrain possible, such factors as eliminating the redundancies of TOFC, streamlining the transfer of containers from one mode to the next (from ship to train or train to truck), and maximizing the efficiency of containerized transportation were paramount. The answer came in the form of an articulated stackcar, made up of five individual platforms joined by fixed rigid connectors.

The stackcars developed by APL in the mid-1980s nearly doubled train capacity because containers could be stacked two high. Each stackcar could carry 10 containers on the same length of train that normally accommodated only 6 trailers.

In addition, removing the trailer frame and wheels (or chassis) from the containers substantially reduced weight. The decrease in weight made it possible to move more freight using fewer locomotives and crews.

And stackcars dramatically reduced the motion that had always resulted in damage to freight. This benefit impressed many shippers who had always associated rail transportation with costly claims. Stackcars virtually eliminated these specific types of movements:

• Slack action — produced by railcar connectors that extend and contract during train movement.
• Sway — resulting from high centers of gravity and the suspension systems of trailers.
• Vibration — created by the long distance between wheels on traditional flatcars.

Speeding goods to consumers throughout North America.

Fast Forward

Since the successful introduction of the stackcar, containerization has spread across North America. Containers, which had been used almost exclusively for international transportation, were suddenly everywhere.

APL soon introduced the first 45-foot container, and 48-foot and 53-foot containers followed. Increased equipment flexibility, along with the many other benefits of stacktrain transportation, meant that new customers with products ranging from automobiles to grain could rely on the stacktrain as a viable alternative to long-distance trucking in North America.

Just as APL’s stacktrain technology made possible seamless land-sea transfer, the company continues to strive for even more precise integration between modes. New technologies and processes are being tested today, and will result in even better levels of service and shipment visibility tomorrow.