Short line cars

[Anonymous]

This may be a stupid question but how would a class 2 short line say box car end up half way across the country? I'm going to have several short line cars on my layout and would like to have a reason for them were they are at. thanks J

[Anonymous]

Very simple Wiley Coyotee ordered "widgets" to destroy the Road Runner from Acme Mfg located far far away and these were shipped via boxcar from the originating short line to be delivered to Wiley by your railroad. Once delivery was complete that off line box would eiter be loaded with items to be shipped back in the direction of the originating RR or returned empty. Of course the car could be misdirected because the RR personnel might not recognise a Pennslvaia RR name and send the car to Alabama by mistake. It is your railroad and your destinations both on and off line. In addition the delivering RR might load the car for another destination on your line, but in the direction of the "home" road. Have fun making up the senarios, any excuse in a wind storm in "our world"!!
Will

[IRONROOSTER]

Any boxcar could show up on your railroad, based on origin and destination. The key to keeping it realistic is that most cars are going to be from the home road and then those nearby. Thus on the B&O you would likely see more PRR than Union Pacific and more B&O than both.. Also small lines didn't have many cars so you would not see too many of these - an important exception is during the 70's and 80's when due to favorable tax rules shortlines produced many boxcars that freely roamed the system. In that era you would see many shortline boxcars.

OTOH part of the fun for some of us is having different road names and paint schemes on our layouts so we have a higher proportion of foreign roads than would otherwise be correct.

Enjoy
Paul

[ericsp]

Some cars with shortline reporting marks are in lease or pool service and might only occasionally even go on the shortline's rails, usually these are actually owned by leasing companies. There are several boxcars with McCloud Railroad (it is in northern California) reporting marks that bring paper to a magazine printing facility in the area from a mill in BC. They never go on the McCloud Railroad. Similarly, there are boxcars with reporting marks for EEC, NSHR, SRN, and other shortlines that haul processed tomatos from around here to back east. Usually these cars only go on SJVR, UP, and CSXT rails.

[jimrice4449]

In the 70's there were a number of LLCs formed (investment co-ops) to take advantage of incentive per diem rates to generate interest in outside investment to aleviate a box car shortage. Some short lines loaned out their reporting marks (in some cases probably their main revenue source). There was one short line here in Idaho whose only connection was the Camas Prarie (itself a short line) that, when the per diem rates were changed, the bubble burst, and all the cars came home, had, litterally, more cars than track to put them on.