Block train

A whole train , also called complete train or sometimes block train , is a Goods train which is directly conveyed its starting point at its place of destination, without intermediate rehandling. It generally circulates of a connected up final installation with another installation of the same type serving either a Usine, or a port, or a intermodal Chantier. Often, all the Wagon S of a whole train transport the same loading but it is not always the case. This type of routing has advantages: speed and reliability of the routing which avoids the risks of the passage by the sortings, optimization of the conditions of traction by the use of the full power with (or of) locomotive, but it requires certain conditions: adaptation of the Logistic of the final installations which must be dimensioned consequently to allow the unloading or the loading of the train under the best conditions, existence of a flow of sufficient transport to allow the startup massive transport. Although on the commercial plan the routing is direct, it can however be prone to technical stops: change of engine or driver, controls customs or medical, Priorité S of circulation (the passenger trains generally take precedence over the goods trains), etc

Generally the whole train corresponds to an commercial offer, which interests the customers having a potential of sufficient transport. It can also correspond to a technical organization in which the customer does not commit himself charging the unit with the train, in this case there exists an intermediate operator who undertakes the regrouping of the sendings. It is for example often the case of combined transport (transport of containers).

The load of a whole train depends mainly on technical considerations, related on the power of the engines, the resistance of the attachment S, to the organization of the exploitation (length of the side tracks on line for example), like with the profile of the lines on the route being traversed. It also depends on the Densité of the transported goods. Thus for a transport of motor vehicles, the limiting factor is the distance and not the mass from the loading. In France, for example, the whole trains often have a length limited to 750 meters and a load of 1800 tons (grossload) /1200 tons (payload). Over the mining lines which are specialized, the size and the length of the block trains can reach records. In this case, the constraints related to the resistance of the attachments obliges in certain cases to intercalate engines remote-controlled in the medium or in tail of the train. The payload also depends as for it on volume on the coaches, of their tare as well as allowed load with the axle on the line.

The principal goods transported by whole train are:

is weighty matters of the industrial sector and mining: Steel, Scrap S, produced metallurgical, Ore S, Coal, Phosphate S, Potash, Manure, construction materials, etc
is agricultural sector: Cereal S, Protéagineux, etc
is elaborate industrial products: Automobile S, chemicals, ammonia liquefied…
is fuels: Oil, gasoline, Kerosene, etc
is various goods conditioned in UTI (containers, trailers rail-road…),
is conditioned products, in particular food: Drink S (beers, mineral water…), fresh produce under controlled temperature, spare parts…

The whole train corresponds well to the railway technique by its character of massive sending. It applies especially to regular and massive industrial transport, for example of the interusines exchanges. He has suffered from this fact of the evolution of the economy for one half-century, which was translated in many countries by some Désindustrialisation, in particular in Western Europe. He is in Concurrence with other massive transport systems: River transport, Cabotage, Oléoduc S which is generally less expensive, but whose networks are less diffuse. He is also in competition with the Road transport, especially in the areas where the highway network, and highway, is very developed.

The whole train is opposed to the isolated coach. This last, also called transport of the allotment, consists in conveying individual coaches or groups of coaches, which are assembled to form trains in the marshalling yards. This system which is relatively expensive and sometimes less reliable because of the operations of sorting and of the relays in sortings, which are moreover in frontal competition, by the size of the sendings, with road transport, saw its share strongly decreasing. It completely was even removed in certain countries, like the United Kingdom for example.

At the time of the opening to the competition of the transport of railway freight in Europe, the new entrants, which do not have the potential nor of the hardware requirement to offer isolated coach, concentrate on the offer in the whole train, thus causing a creaming of the market dreaded by the companies in place.

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