Futurology

By pods are you talking about the cargo containers? That's already the standard. They get moved from a cargo ship, to a train car, to a truck. It's an efficient system.

The drawback to this thing is that they're replacing the train engine with a series of conveyor belt engines. Which means that there's no downtime for maintenance and repairs unless there are redundant engines on each belt section. They will almost certainly need multiple engines on each section so that they can shut one down and service it while another powers the belts. Another drawback is that if you live behind one of these things it'll be a never-ending engine drone, rather than an occasional train passing by. Another is that they'd be wasting fuel running the belts if there is not much cargo during a given hour. If they're only going to run it when demand is high, then there's literally no point to it. A train already does that.

The benefits are immediately apparent though. There would no longer be a need for elaborate train schedules. Whenever a cargo container is ready to go, you just plop it down on the belt and off it goes. The logistics become much simpler for running the thing. But then how do they know which containers to pull off at given depots? I guess the train schedule logistics get replaced with individual container tracking logistics. Hmm... maybe this thing is pointless. LOL