The year of 1964  was close to the apogee of the New York Central’s intermodal network. Under the leadership of the legendary Al Perlman, the railroad was among the most sophisticated and aggressive of any in the United States. The ill-fated merger with rival Pennsylvania Railroad still lay years in the future. The Central had put together an extensive intermodal operation throughout its territory in the US northeast called the “Super Van” Network. The trains utilized a container-based intermodal technology called “Flexi-Van” that didn’t require terminal cranes and reduced terminal investment. The railroad also offered door-to-door service via its subsidiary, New York Central Trucklines and retailed its intermodal offering direct to shippers.

What was routine operation in 1964 almost boggles the mind today. Let’s take a look at Train SV-1 (SV for Super Van), the flagship solid Flexi-Van train that ran daily from New York to Chicago. Each night, the train was assembled in High Bridge Yard, a compact facility located in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Departure was slated for 12:20 a.m. Remarkably, the train was scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 11 p.m. the same day! Twenty-three hours and 40 minutes start to stop, including intermediate stops. The cut-off in High Bridge was at 10:30 p.m. and equipment availability in Chicago was two hours after arrival, a total of 27 hours and 40 minutes. This can be compared with schedules today which require 41 hours for trailers and 49 hours for containers to accomplish the same goal.

The beautiful thing about the SV-1 schedule was that it not only provided second morning delivery for truckload customers, but the timing also accommodated less-than-truckload (LTL), postal, and parcel shippers as well, as it allowed time for required late evening sorting at origin and the equivalent early morning work on arrival. So LTL, postal, and parcel also could also be provided with second morning service.

But as remarkable as the fast schedule appears to today’s eyes, that was indeed less than half the story. SV-1 was also a key link that knitted together an ncredibly intricate network of connecting trains. Let’s take a quick look.

As the train left High Bridge at 12:20 a.m., it carried six blocks of cars, destined for Detroit, Indianapolis, and beyond (including Cincinnati, Dayton, and St. Louis); Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo; Chicago; west of Chicago; and Albany and New England.

Upon arrival in Selkirk yard near Albany a little less than three hours later, the train set off all the cars except those bound for Chicago and beyond. Each block that was set off was placed on a different connecting outbound train for movement beyond to destination. Some of these were solid intermodal trains, while others were mixed fast freights carrying both intermodal and other conventional freight cars.

During the stop in Selkirk, SV-1 also added cars destined for Chicago and beyond, including those off two connecting trains, one from North Bergen, New Jersey, on the west side of the Hudson River, and the other from Boston, which had also picked up cars in Worcester and Springfield.

All this work was accomplished in just one hour and 50 minutes, and by 5 a.m. the train was once again on the move. Additional stops were made in Syracuse and Rochester to pick up more cars for Chicago. Each of these stops was scheduled to take just 15 minutes.

Arriving in Cleveland at 2:35 p.m., more Chicago-bound cars that had arrived on two fast mixed freights, one from Buffalo and the other from Cincinnati, were added to SV-1 .This took just a half-hour and the train was back in motion westbound at 3:05 p.m. Another stop was made in Elkhart, Indiana, where cars bound for the Santa Fe railroad and points west were dropped, to be forwarded on a connecting train via a steel-wheel interchange. From there it was off again on the final lap to Chicago.

From this description one can conclude that the New York Central’s intermodal network offered two important qualities: truck-like speed and a high degree of connectivity. Obviously, it wasn’t easy, but it was successful. According to the March 1966 New York Central Headlight, Flexi-Van traffic in 1965 generated 15 percent of New York Central’s net income, or $6.2 million, from less than one-half of one percent of the railroad’s freight equipment.  The Super Van network was dense. Every major city on the New York Central system had an intermodal terminal which boasted at least daily service to just about every other terminal on the NYC system as well as connecting railroads.

Could such a network be replicated today? Much has changed to make things more difficult. What was once a two-track main line with some four-track stretches has been reduced to a maximum of two tracks with one track for some stretches. The number of workers on the train has shrunk from five to two. The people available on the ground have also been correspondingly reduced. Maximum train speeds have also been reduced from the 70-mph limit for SV-1. The trains have gotten much, much larger. On the other hand, some complexities have been eliminated, including the need to keep a caboose on the back end of the train. PSR has theoretically made the operation of carload trains more reliable (it is “precision scheduled” railroading, after all) and they remain an under-utilized potential intermodal resource.

Perhaps it’s a pipedream to imagine anything similar to the Super Van network in today’s PSR world. The success of intermodal has demonstrated that it’s not necessary that intermodal be as fast as truck. But reliability and connectivity are still paramount, and the importance of reaching more locations will only increase in the post-pandemic world. While it may not be necessary to completely recreate the Super Van network in the 21st century, the intermodal sector may need to move toward something closer to it in order to meet the challenges of the future and keep growing.