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Ya but the article is about a conveyor belt, which arguably has even less flexibility than even a freight train.

by WJW 2y ago

ceejayoz 2y ago
We've had sorting conveyor belts for decades. Amazon warehouses are full of them. Way more potential flexibility than a railway. (With downsides, of course.)
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? I could see a conveyor if and only if it saves a bunch of complexity at source /destination, or if it can be built in places that would be much more expensive to make trainlines. After all trains are just concentrated cargo, and are therefore much heavier.
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Still have the loading from train to sorting container. But yes, if that could be automated efficiently, it would indeed be a good solution.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    > So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? Done right, a conveyor can fairly seamlessly branch off at arbitrary locations along the way. Individual items can fan out onto smaller sub-branches without any significant delays; a long train has to stop and start to accomplish the same. I think the main challenge here would be the maintenance of such a thing. Rail requires plenty; a conveyor has many, many more moving parts over hundreds of miles.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Have you seen the automated sorting and distribution in a amazon warehouse? And yes, those are complex machines, but this way to build a logistics hub is way superior to 1:1 cranes. There is a difference between squential arrival and non-blocking sorting to various hubs to process. And arrival and blockign sequential move to a truck.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  Sure and the mass of a package is what? 50lbs max? Long distance = High volume = weight/mass. The laws of physics aren't changing any time soon. redirecting a cargo container like a box shooting through a warehouse would not end well for some portion of the system (including the contents)
  - hattmall 2y ago
    The idea is to replace TEUs with smaller more manageable standard though. Even though the art shows containers that's not what they are trying to do. In similar systems the proposal is like one cubic meter boxes with max of 100kg. Something easily manageable and can be switched and routed on a conveyor system.
    - zer00eyz 2y ago
      > The idea is to replace TEUs with smaller more manageable standard though. SO a pallet? > proposal is like one cubic meter boxes with max of 100kg. A pallet, the normal shitty wooden ones are rated for 10x that much mass. A cheap pallet jack is rated for 2500kg. I get what they are proposing. But it is disconnected from the realities of distance and mass... If you need to move 10 pallets of water does it make sense to make 10 trips in your car or 1 trip in a truck? Breaking down goods into smaller units doesn't change the amount of cargo it just creates congestion... It's like a high speed network without jumbo frames.

Ya but the article is about a conveyor belt, which arguably has even less flexibility than even a freight train.

by WJW 2y ago

Ya but the article is about a conveyor belt, which arguably has even less flexibility than even a freight train.

We've had sorting conveyor belts for decades. Amazon warehouses are full of them. Way more potential flexibility than a railway. (With downsides, of course.)

jvanderbot 2y ago
So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? I could see a conveyor if and only if it saves a bunch of complexity at source /destination, or if it can be built in places that would be much more expensive to make trainlines. After all trains are just concentrated cargo, and are therefore much heavier.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  Still have the loading from train to sorting container. But yes, if that could be automated efficiently, it would indeed be a good solution.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  > So put a sorting conveyor belt at the end of a train line? Done right, a conveyor can fairly seamlessly branch off at arbitrary locations along the way. Individual items can fan out onto smaller sub-branches without any significant delays; a long train has to stop and start to accomplish the same. I think the main challenge here would be the maintenance of such a thing. Rail requires plenty; a conveyor has many, many more moving parts over hundreds of miles.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

Have you seen the automated sorting and distribution in a amazon warehouse? And yes, those are complex machines, but this way to build a logistics hub is way superior to 1:1 cranes. There is a difference between squential arrival and non-blocking sorting to various hubs to process. And arrival and blockign sequential move to a truck.

zer00eyz 2y ago
Sure and the mass of a package is what? 50lbs max? Long distance = High volume = weight/mass. The laws of physics aren't changing any time soon. redirecting a cargo container like a box shooting through a warehouse would not end well for some portion of the system (including the contents)
- hattmall 2y ago
  The idea is to replace TEUs with smaller more manageable standard though. Even though the art shows containers that's not what they are trying to do. In similar systems the proposal is like one cubic meter boxes with max of 100kg. Something easily manageable and can be switched and routed on a conveyor system.
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    > The idea is to replace TEUs with smaller more manageable standard though. SO a pallet? > proposal is like one cubic meter boxes with max of 100kg. A pallet, the normal shitty wooden ones are rated for 10x that much mass. A cheap pallet jack is rated for 2500kg. I get what they are proposing. But it is disconnected from the realities of distance and mass... If you need to move 10 pallets of water does it make sense to make 10 trips in your car or 1 trip in a truck? Breaking down goods into smaller units doesn't change the amount of cargo it just creates congestion... It's like a high speed network without jumbo frames.