RailRoadFan.com

good luck

https://boomtownusa.us/a-michigan-first ... onrKs9bUL4

I didn't know the "Port of Monroe" was really a thing. According to googlemaps, there are a bunch of tank cars next to the Michigan Paving and Materials place and tracks into the Ford warehouse. I don't see where a container facility will be built but according to the article, it appears one will be built. Good news for CN and NS I assume.

No way? Is this saying freight lines in Michigan may see some more train counts now?

There's a few big reasons why container ships aren't seen on the lakes so I wouldn't put too much stock in this project. Will probably be on a similar level to to Port of Duluth/Spliethoff's container operation, which is served by CP and adds only a few extra cars, nothing worthy of a full train.

And yes, Port of Monroe is a thing. Apart from asphalt brought in from Cleveland (?) and the DTE plant, Monroe mainly handles transloading through their own dock (seen in the video linked below), moving wind mill parts, steel coils, aggregates, etc.

https://www.facebook.com/10006445466140 ... =permalink

those international containers aren't going to be moving during the welland canal winter shut-downs.

My god, the hype for these containers is so forced, absurd, and unrealistically high.

Just miserable people.

Well aren't you all just rays of sunshine. What have you done to increase commerce in the state?

is it not more than a minor detail to overlook if you plan to do international containers when the the welland canal shuts down for several months during the winter?

DaveO wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2024 10:49 am

is it not more than a minor detail to overlook if you plan to do international containers when the the welland canal shuts down for several months during the winter?

The idea is to be cheaper and bypass the east coast ports. I'm sure all of these containers would be drayed direct to the customer. In the offseason, they'd just take the higher price via the East Coast.

Saturnalia wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2024 6:13 pm

DaveO wrote: ↑

Thu Mar 14, 2024 10:49 am

is it not more than a minor detail to overlook if you plan to do international containers when the the welland canal shuts down for several months during the winter?

The idea is to be cheaper and bypass the east coast ports. I'm sure all of these containers would be drayed direct to the customer. In the offseason, they'd just take the higher price via the East Coast.

I question whether the rate will be good enough as Great Lakes container capacity is limited and the ships that do have the capability are small. The company I mentioned above, Spliethoff, operates a small amount of scheduled container service on the Great Lakes and their boats max out at around 1,000 TEU (which might not even be possible at Seaway draft) compared to the 15,000-20,000 TEU vessels entering ports such as Halifax and New York. As such, the economies of scale are not on their side...

That being said the Port of Monroe is a very ambitious operation and has had great success in exploiting these kinds of opportunities. I wish them the best!

Container shipping by water, even at low volume, is still usually cheaper than overland options.

There’s just so many steps, people and infrastructure needed for overland transportation that water doesn’t require. So it can be surprisingly competitive.

I have no idea on the actual economics of this particular project. It may not actually be that good. But dismissing it out of hand is probably way off from the actual reality.

Saturnalia wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 15, 2024 3:14 am

Container shipping by water, even at low volume, is still usually cheaper than overland options.

There’s just so many steps, people and infrastructure needed for overland transportation that water doesn’t require. So it can be surprisingly competitive.

I have no idea on the actual economics of this particular project. It may not actually be that good. But dismissing it out of hand is probably way off from the actual reality.

I did not mean to sound as if I was dismissing it out right, just very skeptical.

What is the likelihood that any of these containers will be shipped by rail?

Erroneous Monk wrote: ↑

Wed Mar 13, 2024 10:23 pm

…which is served by CP…

While the entire Duluth Port Terminal is served by CPKC, the container operation is actually a CN service. Their intermodal unit trains drop the cut at Pokegama, which the interchange/shover job takes to Stinson with any other traffic they have and delivers it to the CPKC. From there, JS12 takes it to Rice’s Point and eventually spots at the port and vice versa.

As far as the feasibility of this project, don’t count it out. There have been projects in the works at a few different Great Lakes ports to start lower volume international container service as both the East and West Coast ports have seen numerous service interruptions and significant congestion and it would result in lower overland shipping costs if the cargo only has to run from Duluth to Winnipeg instead of New York or Philadelphia to Winnipeg. One of those projects includes a 2nd container terminal in the Twin Ports, this one in Superior presumably served by BNSF (paywall): https://www.superiortelegram.com/busine ... -expansion

Proponents of container service on the Great Lakes think there is a market for a cheaper though slower service to bring containers to the Midwest via water. Several years ago they proposed increasing the width and depth of the channel through the Weland Canal so ocean going container ships being obsoleted by the Panamax ships could be repurposed onto the great Lakes. The agency that manages the water levels in Ontario and environmentalists squashed that idea. What they propose now is an integral barge configuration. The integral barge moves the space and displacement required for the propulsion equipment into a second hull maximizing the draft capacity of the barge portion. This would require a transload at Montreal.

Barge service to and from Montreal makes the project realistic. The hard part is developing the inbound traffic that then supplies empties for the outbound traffic. Export traffic is generally controlled in the US. Import traffic is generally controlled somewhere overseas.