Rail freight service design is particularly different from passenger service design, because freight does not move itself. In a passenger service design, two trains may connect at a station, and the passengers will transport themselves from one train to another, but in freight, some transfer mechanism must be provided. Rail freight is also different from road freight, because it is collective, and, excepting unit trains, depends on consolidation or intermodal connections. The efficient management of rail freight depends on the blending of different loads and destinations into economical combined flows, and at each transition point, these loads must be handled with some transaction expense. In rail freight, there is a fundamental trade-off between the handling cost at consolidation and the economy gained by consolidation.
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