Weird wrote:
"Maybe they need to invest in some security?"
How are you going to "secure" 1,500 miles of railroad track, in some very remote places?
You'd need a small army of men to do that.
It's not difficult to force a train to stop out in the boonies somewhere. All that is needed is to break the hose connection (brake pipe) that connects one car to another. Once parted, the train goes into emergency (puts the maximum pressure possible into the brake cylinders on each car).
Train stops and it's not going anywhere until the hoses are repaired, reconnected, and the brake pipe is recharged so the brakes release. In the meantime, the robbers do their work.
It's safe to say that the overwhelming majority of these thefts are against standard shipping containers. It's been a while since I was around any of them (on trains), but I'll take A GUESS that a shipping container (40' or 45') has a set of doors on one end, with but limited means by which to secure them (like you'd find on any semi trailer). A good sized, high-security lock will fit the latch, but organized gangs are going to have equipment to get right through them, I'll reckon.
That's not going to be enough.
What's needed is a new, "passive" system that will deny entry into a shipping container once it's loaded and stacked onto the rail car.
These trains are "stacked" -- there are usually two containers, one sitting atop another, both sitting in "a well" in the car.
The car builders need to come up with a system that ensures that when loaded, a container cannot be opened. In other words, once it's "dropped into the well", there should be large barriers that "close in" and prevent movement of the doors until the container is removed from the car. Lock or no locks, it should be impossible to open the doors once the container is loaded.
The upper container will present more of a challenge, because it's "sitting up there" in the air. But again, some kind of restraning structure could be used to physically block the end with the doors, to prevent them from being opened.
The downside is that it would probably take a little longer to load and secure each well car at the on/off loading yard. Also, this is going to add weight to the train.
The railroads probably wouldn't be interesting in trying this, so long as their insurance covers the damage claims.
But if the costs got too high and the incidents got too frequent, they might have a change of heart...
