Speeding Freight Train

The slumbering town at the edge of this godforsaken desert seems to only exist these days to witness the passing of the train, reminding the old souls buried in the graveyard behind the tracks of when the train actually stopped here. When tons of gold and gorgeous passengers would be arriving and departing. When the afternoon was full of dancing and drinking instead of dust and depression as it is now. Oh the good old days. A freight train is a group of freight cars hauled by one or more locomotives on a railway, ultimately transporting cargo between two points as part of the logistics chain. Trains may haul bulk material, intermodal containers, general freight or specialized freight in purpose-designed cars. When considered in terms of ton-miles hauled per unit of consumed energy, rail transport is more efficient than other means of transportation. However, rail freight is often subject to transshipment costs, which may exceed that of operating the train itself. The main disadvantage of rail freight is its lack of flexibility. For this reason, rail has lost much of the freight business to road transport. Many governments are now trying to encourage more freight onto trains, because of the environmental benefits that it would bring; rail transport is very energy efficient. Traditional transport of manufactured goods was with boxcars, where the goods were manually loaded and unloaded off the wagon. During the 1960s containerization has made this extra level of labour-intense work unnecessary; while the containers must be moved onto or off the wagons with cranes, the content in the container remains constant from sender to receiver.