Rail...freight?

[Nick_Burman]

Question...when new rail being delivered to its user moves by train is it classified as freight or is it MOW? Most of the modern Japanese steel mills are disconnected from the rail system (they don't need it, everything comes in or out by ship...), however some still have track connections and one (Yawata) still uses its connection to deliver new rail to JR. If the rail is for JR Kyushu then one could say that collecting it would be a MOW move, but what about rail for the other JRs (or for the private railways and metros for that matter), is it freight or not?

 

 

Cheers NB

[miyakoji]

Does Yawata roll all the rail for the whole country?  I thought I'd seen some 5 minute info-spot about Hitachi or Sumitomo making rail, but I'm not really sure anymore.

[KenS]

JR East gets some rail in by ship.  There's a small yard in southern Koto ward at the end of a now-disused non-electrified freight branch, sandwiched between a subway line maintenance facility and an electrified passenger line. They load the rails on flatcars behind DE10s.

 

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m996YCOe4MY

 

 

 

I think the facility is operated by JRE rather than JRF, as some of the yard diesels (a pair of interestingly-painted "convex C" models) have the green JR logo.  That suggests it's handled as an MOW activity, at least here.

[miyakoji]

a pair of interestingly-painted "convex C" models

 

:confused2: Gotta wonder about the conversation that led to that.

[bikkuri bahn]

Nick, it appears that rail trains are classified something like MOW, rather than freight, mainly because they are not regularly scheduled operations.  The term for these types of trains are tokushu ressha (特殊列車), and specifically kouji ressha (工事列車) or kourin (工臨).

[Nick_Burman]

Does Yawata roll all the rail for the whole country?  I thought I'd seen some 5 minute info-spot about Hitachi or Sumitomo making rail, but I'm not really sure anymore.

 

 

I thought about Yawata because I saw their connection in Google Earth and also because I saw a video in You Tube of a CWR train moving out of the mill behind one of their locos. There might be other mills which supply rail via rail (!) but I'm unaware of them.