Back in the day, meaning about 1960 through 1970, how common would it have been to see a foreign road named car being switched at an industry served by the home railroad?
Taking a cue from present day, my (limited) railfanning says that its not very common to see, say, a string of NS hopper cars being switched by a CSX local on tracks served by the CSX. Nearly all of the cars would be CSX owned (or an old faded name of a fallen flag now owned by CSX)
I think back in the day it was more common, but how much so?
- Douglas
A big difference is now what you're seeing are often "unit trains" - trains of cars kept together as a unit - like carrying oil or coal from one place to another over and over. That didn't become 'a thing' until the late 1960s.
As far as regular industries / businesses, you would see a lot of different railroad cars being picked up and dropped off regardless of what railroad the business was located on. I lived for many years (starting in 1958) on a branch line of the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern Ry. I saw cars on that line from Union Pacific, Pennsylvania, Norfolk & Western, New York Central, Southern, and many many others.
Yeah, unit trains, but even the locals around here keep the equipment on their own rails. Mixes of cars, but an NS train is an NS train, and CSX, CSX for the most part....or lots of generic leasing like GATX or UTLX.
It would make sense that with so many different railroads serving smaller footprints, it would be nearly impossible to keep cars captive on your own rails and still serve customers.
Just trying to justify having a string of SOUTHERN cars being spotted in what otherwise would be a ATLANTIC COAST LINE train. Predecessors to NS and CSX, IOW, pure competitors, never related.
My copy of the Official Railway Equipment Register from 1954 (maybe 1953) has rules for spotting cars to be loaded.
I can't access it right now, but basically, the home road needs to give preference to using foreign freight cars to get loaded and send them back home.
Of course, cars being spotted for unloading could be from anywhere.
I believe it must have been very common to see foreign cars being spotted, at least in my era.
I don't know if this would have changed in the 1960-1980 era.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
If the industry on the ACL consumed a commodity from an industry located on the SOU, why would the shipping of it in SOU cars be an issue? Car service rules require the use of suitable ACL equipment-if REASONABLY available. In otherwords, if there are no suitable ACL cars in town, ready to head back to ACL, SOU is free to use its own cars. If no ACL or SOU cars are REASONABLY available, any suitable foreign road empty may be used.
In the latter half of the 1960s (1967-1970) I was fortunate enough to observe three industries on the C&O in Hampton VA. Located on the north side of the tracks, between N. King St., and N. Armistead Ave, east to west were Southern Plant Food, Lee & Coston Plant Food, and Chisman Ready Mixed Concrete. Southern Plant Food being the busiest, received scrap leather from the shoe industry in boxcars from roads such as IC, GM&O, NYC, and others as well as gondolas of the EL, NYC, PRR and B&O. Lee & Coston, the only one to ship products by rail used homeroad (C&O) covered hoppers. Chisman received cement in Lehigh and New England and, CNJ covered hoppers and sand and aggregates in SAL, ACL, SOU and CG gondolas. These were not the only road names seen, just the more constant ones. Note that only the outbound shipments traveled in home road cars. That's why in the loose-car railroading of the era, train watching was a lot more interesting! Most industries of today, using rail, ship and receive blocks of cars or, unit trains. You cannot in any way equate what you see today, to what was common then.
As someone from the U.K. this is a very interesting thread to follow.
Without wishing to deviate from the thread we had/have the same challenges here.
Any 'foreign' boxcars etc were sent back as soon as possible from where they came. A 'No foreign stuff on our lines' policy.
Even before Privatisaton of the Railways when everything was owned by British Rail, a locomotive was very often quickly sent back to its home depot. I say very often, because sometimes some were deliberately 'borrowed' by other depots.
Class 47 47404 'Hadrian'. was a well known one that was 'borrowed'. Although it was a Gateshead locomotive, they hardly saw it as it spent its time around the Birmingham area.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
DoughlessBack in the day, meaning about 1960 through 1970, how common would it have been to see a foreign road named car being switched at an industry served by the home railroad?
That would be the norm.
DoughlessTaking a cue from present day, my (limited) railfanning says that its not very common to see, say, a string of NS hopper cars being switched by a CSX local on tracks served by the CSX.
In the modern era you not likely to see a cut of NS hopper cars being switched by anybody since most of coal business is in unit trains wheich aren't switched, they stay together as a unit. Open top hopper cars have alsways been somewhat of an exception, as coal, ore and rock tended to be hauled in home road cars in bigger blocks. Back before the 1970's there was a lot more small shipments of coal and there would be a lot more interchange of open top hoppers, but not to the extent of boxcars and gons.
Look at pictures of trains or yards. There will be a rainbow of cars from other roads.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
The other phenomenon that was starting in the 1970's was the rise of the private owner cars in general service. Prior to the 1970's most private owner cars (initials ending in "X") would have been tank cars, chemical cars or specialized commodity cars. With the rise of unit grain and coal trains, and the rise of intermodal, the number of private owner hoppers, gons, covered hoppers and flat cars skyrocketed. If you are modeling the current era, generally about half the cars on the railroads are private owner cars.
dehusmanOpen top hopper cars have alsways been somewhat of an exception, as coal, ore and rock tended to be hauled in home road cars in bigger blocks.
Yes, if you live along an isolated iron ore line, all you're going to see are that railroad's ore cars going back and forth. That doesn't hold true for 'regular' freight trains, particularly the locals dropping off a couple cars here and picking up a couple there. Yes you might see more BNSF cars in a BNSF train in Wisconsin than you'd see on a UP train in southern California, but wherever you go you'd see a mix of railroads - now and in the past.
Remember that everything starts with a customer requesting an empty car of a particular type -- and that gets down to specifics such as what types of load restraints it comes equipped with and that sort of thing. The ORER has the "rules" for how foreign road cars are to be handled, and yes, as I understand the directive a railroad is to first do its best to find a foreign road empty provided the ultimate routing takes it to, or close to, the home road of that empty. Only if there are no such cars is the originating railroad OK'd to use its own car for the load. It is a priority thing, not a firm rule that would leave the railroad powerless to serve the customer. Years ago Andy Sperandeo wrote a great article on this topic and he included details on what was meant by "close to the home road" -- the US was divided into numbered regions and if you as originating railroad got the region right (even if no part of the routing touched the home road of the car) you were following the rule.
Moreover, if the only types of the requested empty are foreign road but the routing takes it nowhere near the home road of that car, the shipping railroad can confiscate that car and use it. I have read that sometimes it took years for a foreign road car to get back to home rails due to repeated confiscation.
If a railroad is holding a foreign road empty and there is no call for using that type of car, then it is to be routed back to the home road using the routing it took to get there, even if more direct contacts between the two railroads exist. The intent is to make it "fair" -- that if an intermediate railroad made a little money on the bridge traffic for that car, it had to share in the "pain" of hauling the empty to its final destination.
As pointed out above the rise in per diem cars in the 1970s (where the last thing the "home road" wanted as all those cars to return to home rails - often there was no room!) as well as RailBox and RailGon with their "Next Load/Any Road" slogan on them, changed what we saw serving local customers. And then loose car railroading in general seemed to dwindle.
For those that enjoy realistic operations on a layout, at least a semblance of following the routing of empties can make it more challenging and interesting to be a yardmaster, and some layouts go so far as to replicate the idea that everythign starts with a customer requesting a particular type of car. That means you do not send a general service flatcar empty to a shipping customer that needs load restraints intended for farm or construction machinery or military vehicles.
Dave Nelson
dehusmanIn the modern era you not likely to see a cut of NS hopper cars being switched by anybody since most of coal business is in unit trains wheich aren't switched, they stay together as a unit.
Well, hoppers was a bad word to use. What I see down my street are long freight drags of various types of cars. 60 to 100 cars long. I hardly see any unit trains here in Central GA, I suppose since traffic here isn't single commodity based- in terms of shipper or user. No big grain producers , no coal, no ore.
The closest thing is long strings of woodchip hoppers, and I think they tend to head to the paper plants a few hundred miles away, so that's captive traffic probably.
I see mainly CSX on CSX, with plenty of cars that are not CSX too. But those are not a competitors car, they are private named companies like DOW or PROCOR leasing pools too; but never, and I mean as close to never as absolute, do I see an NS car.
That observation is what led me to ask the question about the 60s and 70s. Many more railroads back then.
NHTX Note that only the outbound shipments traveled in home road cars.
See, that tidbit of information is useful when planning model OPS.
It would eliminate spotting foreign cars that are empties onto a shipper's spur...at least that would be pretty common if what you are saying is true.
So would it be generally accurate to look at it this way?
Local freights obviously have a mix of outbound goods and inbound goods. The cars with outbound goods, the shippers, would be switched with predominately home road cars. And the inbound goods would be switched very frequently with foreign road cars.
So when planning ops, it does matter what road name is on the outbound (and inbound empty) shippers car more than it does on the consumer's car.
Assuming that the whole train can be handled by the terminal. I know of at least one facility in Pittsburgh that does break up unit trains because of the length of the spur.
There are other factors in returning cars empty, to be considered. First, is the car in captive service? Is it marked "When empty return to...." If it is, you must comply with those instructions. The car may be specially equipped to serve the needs of a particular customer, and is assigned to ithem. Another factor and one that was in evidence in Hampton was, the car was unsuitable for anything other than what it hauled in--cement. No way C&O was going to use a car that had just dumped 70 tons of cement for a load of fishmeal. No one was going to accept a C&O car that had hauled a couple of loads of fish meal for loading with anything else. Tankcars are usually single commodity cars as are covered hoppers. The cars that brought in the leather scrap may require sweeping out but, were ready for a return load to their home district. The big "if" in returning a car recently emptied under a load is suitablity. IF it is suitable for its intended load. Otherwise, it is foreign empties before home road cars. You don't have to pay per diem on home road cars, which led to the popularity of Railbox whose cars were at home on "any road."
A word or two about these districts. As mentioned by an earlier poster, the Association of American Railroads divided the U.S. and Canada into 23 "districts" to ease the requirements of return routing of freight cars. A map of these districts appears in the car routing rules section of the Official Railway Equipment Registers and also an old but very valuable book for anyone interested in freight car routing, entitled "Freight Cars Rolling" by Lawrence W. Sagle, of the B&O traffic department. It was copyrighted in 1960 by Simmons-Boardman Publishing Corp. with a Library of Congress Number of: 60-53409. I've actually worn out one copy and had to get a second one on Amazon.
These "districts" consist of states or groups of states. Because you mention Georgia in your posts, I'll use it as an example. Georgia, along with Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi comprised District 21. Within District 21 are the, ACL, A&WP, Birmingham Southern, CG, Columbus & Greenville, FEC, Georgia, Georgia & Florida, GM&O, IC, L&N, Mississippi Central, NC&StL, Savannah & Atlanta, SAL, SOU, Frisco, and WofA. I am on the Rock Island and have just released a Central of Georgia boxcar that carried a load of textiles from the mills of Thomaston. RI picks it up but, has no need for it, and returns it toward home by the way it was routed to the RI but, it need not return to Thomaston. It will be considered "home" at the first place it hits CofG rails in Alabama. Actually, it is considered home anywhere in District 21, even if not on CofG proper! And CofG did not go into Florida or Mississippi. If there was a suitable load that would have taken the car to Miami on the FEC it would still be at "home" in its district although not on home rails.
When you think of your industries, think of where they receive shipments FROM as much as where they ship to. Your wood chip and, back in the day, pulpwood racks were regional cars that, usually didn't venture more than 100 miles from where they were loaded. When almost every town of any size had at least one retail coal yard, hopper cars were regular occupants of interchange tracks nationwide, especially in the snowbelts. I remember Pennsy, Nickel Plate, Reading, Pittsburg & Shawmut, Western Maryland, B&O, C&O, D&H, N&W and Virginian hoppers regularly appearing on the New Haven in Massachusetts. As a matter of fact, Canadian National steamers must have had an appetite for that good bituminous from mines along the IC and the L&N. There are videos showng long strings--30 or more IC or L&N cars at least, in freight trains and engine terminals, north of the border. Even in the '80s, Conrail and predecessors, L&N, IC and BN hoppers showed up in general manifest trains on the SP here in Texas so, hoppers were not necessarily home bodies even then. You get cars from everywhere and attempt to return them close to where they came from.
DoughlessSo would it be generally accurate to look at it this way? Local freights obviously have a mix of outbound goods and inbound goods. The cars with outbound goods, the shippers, would be switched with predominately home road cars.
No, not necessarily. Actually if the railroad is complying with the car service rules 100%, the shippers would be spotted with foreign road cars, since the car service rules say they should be given preference for loading.
In reality its way more complicated than that.
For example we had a a paper mill. All the inbound wood chips were in home road wood chip hoppers. All the inbound chemical tank cars were private owner. All the inbound scrap paper was in foreign road boxcars. Outbound paper was either in 50 ft IPD boxcars, Railbox cars or a series of home road cars that were built to roughly the same specs as Railbox cars. Outbound bag paper was exclusively loaded in home road 60 ft hi-cube cars.
We had a cotton seed mill that loaded cotton seed hulls and meal in 50 ft IPD or equivalent home road boxcars, except if they had a shipment of product going to Oregon via the SP, then they loaded "Golden West" 50 ft boxcars.
When I worked in car control there were certain series of covered hoppers that we couldn't load to Mexico. We only loaded system cars to Mexico as a last resort (except for 40 ft grain boxcars) and never loaded a home road mill gon to points on Conrail. The reason for the covered hoppers was they had aluminum hatch covers and they had a habit of "disappearing" in Mexico (being sold as scrap aluminum). Boxcars tended to go on magical mystery tours in Mexico so If it was a choice of a home road car spending 6 months in Mexico or somebody else's car, we used the other car. Conrail was critically short of mill gons at that time, so if we sent a mill gon to Conrail it could be months before it returned.
And the inbound goods would be switched very frequently with foreign road cars. So when planning ops, it does matter what road name is on the outbound (and inbound empty) shippers car more than it does on the consumer's car.
Basically what you want is that inbound cars should reflect either the originating road, a road in the route of the car or a road closer to the destination than the origin. Similarly outbound shipments should be provided with a home road car, a car of road in the route or a road in the direction the shipment is going.
For example if there is an inbound load of product from LA on the SP to a customer on the PRR in Pittsburgh, routed SP-Texarkana-SSW-St Louis-PRR, an appropriate car would be an SP (origin road), SSW or PRR (roads in the route) or any road in the northeast (closer to home). A western road car (ATSF, GN, UP, MP, MILW, CNW, IC) would not be appropriate.
The plant in Pittsburgh is going to ship a load to a customer in Nebraska, routing the the car PRR-Erie-NYC-Chicago-CNW-Co Bluffs-UP. If you are modeling the originating move, appropriate cars would be PRR (home road), NYC-CNW-UP (roads in the route) or pretty much any road in the western US (closer to home). A eastern road car (RDG, DH, SOU, COG, FEC, CNJ, ) would not be appropriate.
On the other hand, if the only car you have is a CNJ boxcar, you are probably going to load it to serve the customer.
On my railroad set in eastern PA, northern DE, I try to have cotton arrive at the textile mill in home road, southern road or adjacent road cars. The textile mill sees a lot of MP, SP, SSW and southern road cars. I try to have inbound grain in home road or upper midwest road cars.
Dave,
Thank you for the above.
So much useful information, so clearly and concisely presented. That includes both the directly stated, and implied.
Very nice,
Ed
Mr Husman triggered another pair of memories concerning freight car utilization. First, some roads had periods of intense activity such as the granger roads at harvest time. Before the switch to covered hoppers for grain movement, any 40 foot boxcar in good condition routed to one of those railroads did not come home until after it was all over. Sidetracks and yards were full of boxcars and a good number were not homeroad. During harvest time railroads did their best to keep their best cars on their rails as much as possible. If you were a smaller railroad it could be very difficult because you didn't have a long enough haul to be profitable. Which leads me to the second memory.
In the early 1970s, I was engaged in conversation with a fellow who was working for the Boston & Maine. We were looking at a gleaming, freshly shopped 50 foot PS-1 boxcar in the 77000 series, in a passing train. The running board had been removed, ladders cut down and brakewheel lowered. Now, these were plain-jane boxcars with no cushion underframe or load restraints-nothing special at all. He gestured toward the slow moving train and said "We got 1000 of them, brand new from Pullman-Standard and sent them off line loaded, on their first trips and didn't see the majority until four or five years later. Once the other roads got their hands on them--that was it!"
The B&M's longest haul is from Portland, Maine, to Mechanicsville, New York, or about 300 miles. At that time, New England still had an industrial base and B&M was heavily involved in the forest products sector, especially paper which meant off-line movement. When these cars began returning home they were badly in need of a trip to the shops. It was very plain to see why they were coming home worn out. The 50 foot car was supplanting the trusty old forty footer. Piggybacking was in its infancy and the fledgling interstate highway system was a gleam in Eisenhower's eye. America still made stuff and, the railroads hauled it. In boxcars.
On the other side of the coin, there were times when competing roads would help each other out. One of our western roads was faced with a pending shipment of a large number of cattle, requiring a considerable number of cars. After scouring the system, they were still short of the required number. As a last resort, they were able to "borrow" cars from their competing neighbor, who had cars sitting idle. This way, even though the neighbor didn't get the haul, at least they would be making per diem on cars that would be otherwise sitting idle. Even when railroads compete, they also trade favors when the need arises.
Northern Pacific and New York Central needed a lot of reefers during certain times of the year, but each needed them at different times of the year. They worked out an agreement to so during the time one railroad needed cars, they could use the other's reefers. So it wasn't impossible to see a set of NYC reefers in Washington state, or some NP cars in New York.
Keep in mind too that in the steam/transition eras, most manufacturing in the US was done in the northeast, so freight cars with appliances, autos, hardware, etc. would be loaded in the northeast and then sent throughout the country. There was enough traffic that New York Central and the CB&Q set up a run-through agreement c.1960 so a NYC train from the east could run from Chicago to St.Paul on the Burlington. From St.Paul, cars continuing west could be transferred to GN or NP or other railroads.
This has been very helpful. I appreciate the detailed explanations.
I never would have thought that the Foreign Road car would be the priority car to load.
Although I had a loose idea of what the car composition would be on a 1970 based ACL layout, this discussion helped.
Since the locale would likely be Central FL, I'll acquire equipment that will be about 50% ACL/SCL (they were officially merged by then), 20% SOUTHERN, and 30% everything else with smaller railroads in the "district" being a big part of that.
The part we haven't really discussed is the customers and what's being hauled. Depending on where you are, what customers you are serving and what they are shipping, you might not see a single home road car or you might see 90-95% home road cars. For example if you modeled the MP branch from Angleton to Freeport you would almost never see a home road car (or foreign road car for that matter). Virtually all the cars would be private owner tanks and covered hoppers. On the other hand if you modeled the Crystal City Branch of the MP, you might never see any other car than a home road car because they would all be hoppers and gons loading sand and aggregates out of the mine.
If you are modeling central Florida and aare modeling a phosphate mine then you would most likely see a large number of home road cars because the home road would have cars specifically designed to haul phosphate. The ACL/SCL would have hundreds or thousands of those cars, the PRR, none.
The general car mix is a good starting point, and might be great for overhead traffic that just runs on through trains, but the local business is way more dependent on what the local customers need. For example if you have a brewery you will need CNW covered hoppers because they grow hops in the CNW territory and that's what the CNW wil ship the hops in. If you have a newspaper or printing plant that uses newspaper, you will see CN or CP boxcars because papermills on the CN or CP made a lot of the newsprint and shipped it all over the US.
Stix makes a very good point about the reciprocal agreement between the Northern Pacific and Merchants Despatch Transit, the refrigerated and specialized transportation arm of the New York Central System. Similar collaboration between the Missouri Pacific and the Wabash resulted in the formation of American Refrigerator Transit. A modern day version of ART is visible in those large, white, reefers bearing Union Pacific shields and ARMN reporting marks, we occasionaly see.
Due to the fact that harvest times for various crops were dictated by the growing seasons of their regions, reefers often sat idle for extended periods. Their reduced cubic capacity and narrow doorways made them unsuitable for other cargo. Railroads were not excited about putting money into equipment that would sit idle most of the year which is why you saw such refrigerator car operators as the above mentioned MDT, whose majority player was the NYC. Not only did MDT cars bear the heralds of the NYC, but also those of the IC, GM&O, and Lackawanna, as well as cars with no herald at all.
Two more notable collaborations took place between Pacific Fruit Express and the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad and also between Western Fruit Express and Fruit Growers Express. BAR needed cars for the potato rush which took place in the winter months. PFE needed cars during the summer and fall harvests in th west. An agreement between the two entities saw BAR cars working for PFE until it was time for the potato harvest, at which time, they would be joined by surplus PFE cars in Maine. The degree to which this was an ideal arrangement for both parties and Pacific Car and Foundry can be seen in the 857 reefers PC&F built for BAR with PFE assisting with the financing. They were built to the same blueprints as PFE's R40-26, the only difference being the graphics on their sides.
The other major reefer pairing was that of Western Fruit Express of the Great Northern Railway and Fruit Growers Express. GN needed reefers for the Washington apple harvests and Idaho's potatoes as well as other cool climate crops. Fruit Growers Express had the luxury of longer growing seasons and often found itself needing cars for its many member railroads. The solution was to link up with WFE whose cars like those of the BAR, were idle much of the time. The ties between FGE and WFE were tight enough that FGE built cars for WFE in using FGE designs, in FGE's shops.
ART reefers did travel as far as Crystal City on the Crystal City Branch you mentioned, Mr. Husman. MoPac actually called it the Crystal City Subdivision of the Palestine Division, and it is no more. It had deteriorated to the point that the 49.8 miles from Crystal City to the rock asphalt mine at Dabney was restricted to 20 mph with stretches of 15 mph. Those 45-60 car trains of rock asphalt were rapidly destroying it. Fortunately for MoPac, the mine was also served by the SP from its Sunset Route main. Besides, Mopac's route from San Antonio had to go 75.2 miles south, to Gardendale, on the main to Laredo, then west 41.0 miles to Crystal City. After blistering the rails from Gardendale at 25 mph, at Crystal City, the train now began its 44.8 mile trek back north, to the mine at 20mph or less.
Knowing SP's route from San Antonio to Cline was only 108.8 miles of 65-70 mph for freight, CTC controlled, first rate railroad, Mopac sought a better route. The crews could do the less than ten miles up to the mine standing on their heads, compared to their own 166 mile route. MoPac negotiated trackage rights over the SP and, everything between Blewett and Crystal City was abandoned in the early 80s.
Because Crystal City touts itself as the "Spinach Capital of the World", the segment linking it to the main at Gardendale remained. MoPac wanted out completely and petitioned to abandon this remnant as well. A group was formed and, established the Crystal City Railroad but, the spinach-and everything else now travels by truck. The whole thing no longer exists, except for bare stretches of the old roadbed. The CCRR also figured in the dealings of a former congressman who resided for a while in the iron-bar hotel.
It should be noted both railroads served the same mine but, MoPac used 45-50 foot gons while SP used 100 ton twin hoppers. Depends on the consignee's unloading method. In one MoPac train of approximately 45 cars, I photographed cars of the Green Bay Western, D&RGW, MKT, Copper Basin, and Georgetown, as well as MP and, SP. How in h--- did a GBW gon, wind up on top of an asphalt mountain in "nowhere" Texas?
DoughlessI never would have thought that the Foreign Road car would be the priority car to load.
This gets into the area of the "per diem" system. Basically, if railroad A's freight car is on railroad B, railroad B has to pay railroad A for the use of their car while on railroad B's property.
http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/p/192765/2110205.aspx
However, I believe it's also to a railroad's economic advantage to haul a loaded car as opposed to an empty. So let's say UP has an empty Pennsy boxcar on their property, and a customer who wants to ship something to Pittsburgh. They can let the customer load the Pennsy car and then send it east towards the PRR, rather than just send the empty car back - unless the car is stenciled that it's in some type of captive service, and must be returned empty.
dehusman The part we haven't really discussed is the customers and what's being hauled. Depending on where you are, what customers you are serving and what they are shipping, you might not see a single home road car or you might see 90-95% home road cars. For example if you modeled the MP branch from Angleton to Freeport you would almost never see a home road car (or foreign road car for that matter). Virtually all the cars would be private owner tanks and covered hoppers. On the other hand if you modeled the Crystal City Branch of the MP, you might never see any other car than a home road car because they would all be hoppers and gons loading sand and aggregates out of the mine. If you are modeling central Florida and aare modeling a phosphate mine then you would most likely see a large number of home road cars because the home road would have cars specifically designed to haul phosphate. The ACL/SCL would have hundreds or thousands of those cars, the PRR, none. The general car mix is a good starting point, and might be great for overhead traffic that just runs on through trains, but the local business is way more dependent on what the local customers need. For example if you have a brewery you will need CNW covered hoppers because they grow hops in the CNW territory and that's what the CNW wil ship the hops in. If you have a newspaper or printing plant that uses newspaper, you will see CN or CP boxcars because papermills on the CN or CP made a lot of the newsprint and shipped it all over the US.
Thanks for the volume of good information. Yes, it had never really occurred to me that foreign road named cars would come from where products or commodities are generated. Being a modern era modeler, its either home road equipment or generic leasing company owned, so that thinking was never prompted.
But the concept is easy to follow. Loaded coal hoppers in central Florida could just as easily have SOUTHERN or L&N markings as much as ACL and SCL (which were not AS active in the coal fields) Maybe even N&W markings.
Building the roster and op plan "properly" would involve better understanding of the industries the railroads serve. Its something I find interesting anyway.
Interesting though, Bowser and Accurail produce ACL double door boxcars for Automobiles. Perhaps they get sent north empty for shipping cars back down south. Not sure there were many auto plants in the south back in 1970.
Bowser makes nice ACL Phosphate boxcars. I'm not really interested in that industry at the moment though.
wjstixThis gets into the area of the "per diem" system. Basically, if railroad A's freight car is on railroad B, railroad B has to pay railroad A for the use of their car while on railroad B's property.
Makes sense. I've heard of the per diem rule before but never thought too seriously about it.
Really, the bottom line is the US railroad system is designed to allow cars from one railroad to go pretty much anywhere in the country, so businesses can ship their products and receive the raw materials they need from anywhere. Cars of newprint rolls from northern Minnesota might be sent to New York, as might reefers with fruit from California or Florida. Construction equipment built in Illinois might go to Washington state or Washington DC.
Yes, the majority of cars you'd see in a particular city or state would be from railroads serving that area. Next most common would be railroads those railroads connect to. But beyond that, cars from any railroad might show up on occassion.
Most likely, you can find a number of books (like Golden Sun's "Trackside Around..." series) or DVDs about the place and time you're interested in modelling, that will show what cars were in use there.
wjstixReally, the bottom line is the US railroad system is designed to allow cars from one railroad to go pretty much anywhere in the country, so businesses can ship their products and receive the raw materials they need from anywhere...
Actually the system covers pretty-well all of Noth America. That's why it's not unusual to see Mexican cars here in Canada.
At the steel plant where I worked, there was always a string of Union Pacific plugdoor boxcars (can't recall if they were 50'-or 60'-ers) at one of the sheet-coil mills. They were used to move the coils of coated steel (not galvanised) to what I assume was an automobile plant somewhere in the U.S. It was always U.P. boxcars, never CN or CP, even though both of those roads switched the plant and would have had comparable cars available.
Wayne
Canadian road cars presented some interesting circumstances as far as interchange, at least up to the late 1980s. Due to Canadian customs regulations, cars built in the U.S. were restricted to international service between Canada and the U.S. and were not to be used in domestic Canadian service. There were other Canadian customs regulations that restricted cars to international service only, but the ORER does not go into detail as to what they are. The British Columbia Railway, whose domestic reporting mark was BCOL, used BCIT for its international service cars. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific used CNIS and CPI respectively, for their international cars under Canadian customs rules. Canadian cars used in the automobile industry were marked CNA on the CN, and CPAA on the Canadian Pacific. They traveled to all parts of the U.S., and possibly Mexico, seemingly without restrictions, except those of the supply chains they were equipped to serve.
Cars in auto industry service were some of the most restricted cars in railroading. They were fitted with equipment to handle highly speciallized components for individual makes and models such as Chevy Impala rear axles or Dodge hoods. During model year change over, these cars would be reconfigured if necessary, to accomodate these changes. One of the factors reputed to have played a part in tamping down the wild and radical model year changes of the 1950s, in the 1960s is, the car manufacturers had to eat part of the cost of re-configuring the cars each year. Cars bearing original Erie Railroad or, New York Central "Early Bird" markings could regularly be seen on SP's hot "APLAA" auto parts train, in the early 1980s. Remember the Erie and Lackawanna merged around 1960 and the Early Bird harkens back to the mid 1950s. Auto parts service seemed to age equipment gently.
Of course, there were thousands of cars marked simply BCOL, CN, or CP that crossed the northern border every day in general service, for that type of car. Just as the cars in international service are listed, the Official Railway Equipment Register also lists cars restricted to domestic Canadian service as well. Interchange is what made railroading interesting for me.
NHTXCanadian road cars presented some interesting circumstances as far as interchange, at least up to the late 1980s. Due to Canadian customs regulations, cars built in the U.S. were restricted to international service between Canada and the U.S. and were not to be used in domestic Canadian service.
Not just Canadian cars, and this cuts both ways.
Canadian (or Mexican) railways' cars weren't supposed to be used domestically in the US, and US cars weren't supposed to be used domestically in Canada since customs duties weren't paid to import the cars (in either direction).
Additionally various import tarriffs made it attractive to purchase equipment within the country where it would be used, hence EMD, Alco, and Fairbanks-Morse all had Canadian subsidiaries that built locomotives for the Canadian market, and Canada (and Mexico) had their own car-building companies. 95% of all Canadian railway equipment was built and purchased within Canada, and 95% of the business of the Canadian equipment manufacturers was for railways operating in Canada.
After the free trade agreements it became more attractive to buy across the border, and Canadian railroads began acquiring more US-built equipment, and the remaining Canadian builders sold to more US railways.
NHTXCanadian cars used in the automobile industry were marked CNA on the CN, and CPAA on the Canadian Pacific. They traveled to all parts of the U.S., and possibly Mexico, seemingly without restrictions
Not just automotive cars, but the CNA and CPAA marked cars were cars that were built/acquired in the US, and considered the same as US railway's cars (i.e. not exported from US to Canada and no customs duties paid) for the purposes of both international and US domestic service. The majority of automotive related equipment was purchased in the US in this manner since a lot of automotive (especially auto parts) cars are "pooled", with multiple railroads providing identical cars to a pool of cars serving a particular plant, and these cars could spend long periods of time shipping between the plant and its customers without ever hitting "home" rails.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
doctorwaynedoctorwayne wrote the following post yesterday: wjstixReally, the bottom line is the US railroad system is designed to allow cars from one railroad to go pretty much anywhere in the country, so businesses can ship their products and receive the raw materials they need from anywhere... Actually the system covers pretty-well all of Noth America. That's why it's not unusual to see Mexican cars here in Canada.
Except the OP's question was regarding a layout set in the 1960s, not today.