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<ol><li>[quote user="cbqjohn"]</li></ol>Does anyone have information on the percentage of foreign gondolas the CB&Q and BN ran?   Thanks,John [/quote]Railroads absolutely do not want to load foreign-road cars unless they have a shortage of their own of the same type, and will send foreign-road cars to interchange as quickly as possible after they're made empty.  Thus loads originating on the home road will almost always be in home-road cars, whereas loads terminating on the home road but originating on a foreign road will generally arrive in the foreign road's car.  Gondolas in local service ("local" in railroad traffic-speak means originating and terminating on the home line) will be 100% home-road cars or lease cars (which means the home road gets the per diem) unless there is a serious car shortage.  Coal, for instance, will almost 100% originate in home road cars or lease cars, or the shipper's own cars.  Other commodities introduce some wrinkles.  Scrap is a low-value commodity and thus usually the railroad will not make empties available unless they're home-road empties, because the per diem on a foreign-road car will eat up the meager profit from the move.  If there are not enough home-road cars available to meet the scrap dealer's needs, tough for him; he's not paying enough of a rate to command better service than "when cars are available."  So to answer your question, it depends on where you're standing.  If you're on a part of the railroad dominated by inbound moves from foreign roads, you'd see a very high percentage of foreign-road cars.  If you're standing someplace dominated by originating shippers, you'd see almost 100% home-road cars.  You'll see foreign empties heading out and home-road empties coming in, wherever you're standing.There are also pooling agreements between railroads that treat all participating roads cars that are in the pool as home-road cars.  This is very common with equipped cars, but less so with plain cars.  Specialized mill gondolas such as used for originating long steel from steel mills are often participants in pools.  Gons used for shippers that cannot tolerate contaminants in the load, such as zinc, lead, or copper concentrate, are often assigned, but are usually home-road cars only because they're contaminated with the commodity itself. S. Hadid
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