How freight trafic by rail is more effecient than road transport?

I think that the question needs to be clarified if you are talking about:

(1) heavy duty ore

(2) bulk cargo

(3) containerized freight

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Usually containerized freight is "inter-modal" and can be loaded onto a ship, or a train, or a truck for road transport.

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It depends on the situation. I know that the rail track from Los Angeles to San Diego is mostly single track. Efforts to "double track" are complicated by two one mile stretches where tunnels would have to be built. One stretch is under the ultra expensive city of Del Mar, and the other is under a hill in a northern suburb of San Diego.

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With the single track there are limited numbers of freight trains per day that can transport between the cities. Most freight goes by truck and the roads are severely overcrowded already.

It really depends on what you are moving and in what quantity.

Here in the UK, the majority of freight movements fall into one of two categories. Firstly there is the "train load". This is mostly for bulk freight movements of commodities like coal, aggregates, cars, steel and suchlike. When moving large quantities of commodities such as these, especially from the point of manufacture/import to local or regional distribution centres, rail makes much more sense. This is also the case for the second most common rail freight movement; that of containerised freight arriving and departing through the UK's ports.

The reason for this is because rail vehicles have a much lower rolling resistance than road vehicles, so a train of wagons can be used to move hundreds or even thousands of tons of goods quickly and easily. A single diesel-electric locomotive can be used to haul 2000 ton trains. Try to achieve the same feat using road vehicles would require many more vehicles and drivers.

On the flipside, rail freight is not very good at managing small to medium loads that need to be transported quickly. For most companies in the UK it is quicker, easier and cheaper just to fill up a single lorry and send it direct to it's destination than to involve a rail transfer. I believe there is scope to expand on the international containerised freight traffic to meet a domestic market by adding more regional centres and feeder services, but even then a rail transfer is going to incur time delays on deliveries and may actually not work out to be any cheaper than sending a single truck load directly by road.

There is no clear-cut answer to your question. It all really depends on what sort of business you run and how big your loads are going to be.

I had this weekend off, but I had a 101 car wheat train last Friday. I'll use that as an example. Each car carried about 100 tons of wheat (it could have been corn, coal, liquids, what ever). Each car holds close to 3 1/2 semi truck loads. So that 101 cars took 353 trucks off the highways.

Now this is a loose guess here because I'm not sure of actual mileage, but I'm going to say that it cost about one gallon of fuel to haul each ton 290 miles. That's a conservative guess because I don't know for sure.

A steel wheel on a steel rail creates very little resistance and railroads will always be more fuel efficient than trucks. Not as versatile, but more efficient.

Like Fast Reg said, you can haul a lot more feight with a single train, and only one or two employees than you can with a truck. On a single train, you can fit the equivalent load of hundreds of trucks. This cuts down on the number of employees required, the amount of gas used, and the time, especially in remote areas where the roads are poor or inexistant.

If you get 3 diesel engines pulling a train a mile long,load double decker with trailers,think of all the fuel that will not be burned by trucks traveling on the highway.No traffic jams,with trucks idling long periods of time.but more importantly,less pollution.