How much up and down elevation change could the grain gathering branch lines of the upper plains deal with a century ago? We just purchased a lake cabin on Lake Hendricks, on the SD/MN border. A CNW branch line used to run through the property parallel to the highway. I can't believe that a lot of dirtwork was done after the rail line was pulled up, probably in the mid-60's. It sure looks like the line would have been a roller coaster. Were the trains so light 100 years ago that a little hill climbing wouldn't be an issue?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
How much the elevation changed was not critical, although the actual gradient did matter. Branch lines often could be a bit of a rollercoaster to keep the grading costs down. And you could even cheat a bit on the grades if there was going to be some momentum from a dip
The amount of dirt work done after the line was pulled might surprise you.
When the wye was pulled at Big Moose, NY (NYC), a fellow bought the land from the railroad for the sole purpose of mining the fill (there was a fair amount of it involved), after which I understand he simply abandoned the land.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Murphy Siding How much up and down elevation change could the grain gathering branch lines of the upper plains deal with a century ago? It sure looks like the line would have been a roller coaster. Were the trains so light 100 years ago that a little hill climbing wouldn't be an issue?
How much up and down elevation change could the grain gathering branch lines of the upper plains deal with a century ago?
It sure looks like the line would have been a roller coaster. Were the trains so light 100 years ago that a little hill climbing wouldn't be an issue?
Murphy,
I suspect that most such lines had a ruling grade of about 1%. Dealing with the ruling grade is ALWAYS THE issue. When that line was built in 1880 +/- 20 years, the usual engine was a 4-4-0 American Standard that would generate about 10-13,000 pounds of tractive effort. The limit of train that could be handled by one engine without doubling the hill was roughly TE/J+G where TE is tractive effort in pounds, J is journal and flange resistance in #/ton and G is grade resistance of 20#/ton times grade in percent. The result is in tons. This is a simplified version of the Davis formula. With 30 ton cars, J is about 5# and for a 1% grade G = 20#, which gives a tonnage limit of 520 tons, or 17 loaded grain cars of the day plus a caboose, in warm weather.
The undulations, so long as they are not more than the ruling grade, are irrelevant. Given the cost of earth moving in the day and the irrelevance of the undulations, it is not surprising that the only profile grading was to keep the undulations down to no more than the ruling grade.
If, like James J. Hill, you wanted to be the low cost carrier, ruling grade reduction/limitation was required. When Hill's Manitoba took over the St. Paul and Pacific he began to systematically reduce main line ruling grades (all in Minnesota) from 1% to .4%. Now resistance became 5+8 pounds per ton, virtually half af the previous condition, and train size can be doubled, reducing most operating costs by 50%. In this program the undualtions over .4% and longer than a new train length (35 cars * 33 feet = 1155 feet, say 1200 for engine and caboose) also had to be flattened to the new standard.
In the 20th century larger locomotives reduced the incentive to reduce grades, but a lot of such work was done on many railroads until the capital starvation starting even before WW I made such projects harder to finance.
The physics have not changed. TE, ruling grade, and tonnage limits still control train size on any given line. The financial issue of capital cost vs. operating cost has not changed either. Constant principals, variable numbers. Yes, as someone else mentioned, momentum does minimize the operating impact of short grades but the tonnage limiting operation is starting the train from a stop.
Short answer; the line was built cheap and traffic never developed sufficiently to demand major improvements.
Mac
Tyler to Astoria was never more than 1.25% (all 1,2 and 3 degree curves)...very easy for a branchline. The worst was between Hendricks and Ivanhoe (really just the 3 miles west of Ivanhoe), no big deal)...it just was a collector line that filled in a gap between two other CNW lines..Everything funnelled east, so there was no point in building on to Watertown with this line or the branch to the north.
Abandoned May 1969 under ICC FD-25690...nothing more than 60# rail in the dirt and cinders from its 1883 beginninings. You are somewhere MP 25-26.
tree68When the wye was pulled at Big Moose, NY (NYC), a fellow bought the land from the railroad for the sole purpose of mining the fill (there was a fair amount of it involved)...
That was a stated reason for buying the Lackawanna Cutoff and promptly dividing it up into subunits by county. In a state with lots of building going on, "there's gold in them thar fills". Fixing that fiasco cost the New Jersey government plenty o' Benjamins...
mudchicken Tyler to Astoria was never more than 1.25% (all 1,2 and 3 degree curves)...very easy for a branchline. The worst was between Hendricks and Ivanhoe (really just the 3 miles west of Ivanhoe), no big deal)...it just was a collector line that filled in a gap between two other CNW lines..Everything funnelled east, so there was no point in building on to Watertown with this line or the branch to the north. Abandoned May 1969 under ICC FD-25690...nothing more than 60# rail in the dirt and cinders from its 1883 beginninings. You are somewhere MP 25-26.
PNWRMNM Short answer; the line was built cheap and traffic never developed sufficiently to demand major improvements. Mac
Murphy Siding PNWRMNM Short answer; the line was built cheap and traffic never developed sufficiently to demand major improvements. Mac Thanks. That was interesting to read and to ponder. Do/did railroads ever do any kind of post-mortem studies on a rail line? Kind of a "figure out if that line made money over the years, and how much, then use that type info for future" planning?
Thanks. That was interesting to read and to ponder. Do/did railroads ever do any kind of post-mortem studies on a rail line? Kind of a "figure out if that line made money over the years, and how much, then use that type info for future" planning?
Yes - thus all the 'plant rationalization' that was done post Staggers. If a line could not earn it's maintenance costs, it was abandoned or spun off to a Short Line operator.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Murphy SidingDo/did railroads ever do any kind of post-mortem studies on a rail line? Kind of a "figure out if that line made money over the years, and how much, then use that type info for future" planning?
One of my first tasks at the ICG was working on branch line abandonments.
It's hard to demonstrate that a branch makes or looses money. The costs of operation is fairly easy to determine. The revenues are another story. How much of the revenue of a through movement is to be allocated to the branch.
My example is an ICG branch from Bloomington, IL to Mason City, IL. If we received a carload of lumber off the UP at Council Bluffs and moved it to a lumber yard in Mason City we knew how much total we got for moving the car.
But how much of that went to the branch? It had to be an arbitrary allocation. The government set it at an arbitrary 50%. They needed a number so they picked one out of the air.
Murphy Siding Do/did railroads ever do any kind of post-mortem studies on a rail line? Kind of a "figure out if that line made money over the years, and how much, then use that type info for future" planning?
I do not have acess to the facts to answer your question, but I doubt that anyone did so for three reasons.
First is the question of relevance. Given that we know cumulative contribution margin of a line built 20 years ago, what does that tell us about today? In other words how would knowing the answer to the question change my behavior (affect my decision) today which should be made on the expectation of future earnings.
Second, the regulatory system constrained revenues from ca 1910 to the Staggers Act of 1980, so a line with a history of unregulated earnings is not comparable to likely earnings in a rate regulated future. In fact, real rates fell substantially between 1865 and 1901 so past rates tell nothing about the future.
Third, what predictive value does past traffic have? Industrial scale mining and smelting needs transportation. Traffic before the fisrt line is built into the area was zero, so predictive value of past traffic is zero. Mining is particularly subject to nasty surprises of decreasing ore values and increased cost with depth. Knowing what the traffic was 10 years ago tells me nothing about traffic ten years in the future. Grain growing seems more predictable in that land can be evaluated for suitablity ahead of construction. There may be some hardy pioneers out there to provide yield information, but the point is future traffic, not the past. For the future can we predict weather and climate other than to assume that the future will be like the past? One of James J. Hill's blunders was to encourage wheat culture in central and eastern Montana. His promotion began during a series of wet years and all was well. Then came a series of dry years that drove most of the farmers off the land and saw much of eastern Montana return to a state of nature.
Third is the issue of revenue allocation. How much of the through rate is attributable to the branch? This is a major can of snakes! The most recent abandonment rules I read do not even try to answer this. They use on branch costs, which are reasonably accurate, add to that a formula derived off branch cost, and subtract both from the revenue. If net earnings are negative then abandonment can be considered. This calculation clearly favors retention of the branch line. This is a regulatory threshold, not an economic analysis.
Balt mentions modern shortlining. Traffic is easily calculated. On branch future costs can be reasonably estimated. Divide costs by cars to get a $/car payment to the short line operator. Note that all of the "profit" goes to the Class I seller. The shortline can make serious money if they grow traffic since marginal cost is close to zero. Likewise down side risk is serious, since if traffic falls, costs are virtually fixed given the operating plan on which the transaction was done.
The other risk that shortline operators tend to underestimate is bridge and tunnel costs. The most famous recent case being the operator of a part of the former MILW main line in central Montana. The segment has a few long tall steel viaducts. A storm came along and eroded the footings, throwing the bridges out of line. The State has not come up with the funds to fix them and much of the line is out of service. In the MILW days the bridges would have been repaired as a matter of course. Even as a marginal Class I branch the ICC generally forced repairs. Think tunnel fires on the Northwestern Pacific. The class I carriers have shifted the risk of these expensive and unpredictable events to undercapitalized short line operators or to the states. The relevance to your original question is that these events may not show in the history of a specific line, but the risk is there.
The question actually asked before building a branch line was "Will we make money on it?" Current costs could be calculated reasonably accurately. Revenue could be estimated based on the current economy and reasonably likely growth, but always subject to reduction by invasion of the territory by someone else. In fact, many branches were built with the knowledge that they would not contribute to earnings for some years until the territory 'built up'.
PNWRMNMThe question actually asked before building a branch line was "Will we make money on it?"
And those lines were usually among the first to go when it came time to shed mileage.
One prime example was the West Shore...
Murphy Siding mudchicken Tyler to Astoria was never more than 1.25% (all 1,2 and 3 degree curves)...very easy for a branchline. The worst was between Hendricks and Ivanhoe (really just the 3 miles west of Ivanhoe), no big deal)...it just was a collector line that filled in a gap between two other CNW lines..Everything funnelled east, so there was no point in building on to Watertown with this line or the branch to the north. Abandoned May 1969 under ICC FD-25690...nothing more than 60# rail in the dirt and cinders from its 1883 beginninings. You are somewhere MP 25-26. Mudchicken- is there a place where you find this type information, or is it a lot of places, and you simply know where to look?
Mudchicken- is there a place where you find this type information, or is it a lot of places, and you simply know where to look?
DC, PDN and I all have some common overlapping skills, but we all have some unique skillsets that sent us off in different directions professionally. (Hopefully, BNSF in their current downsizing exercise doesn't make the same dumbsizing mistakes they did in the 1996 merger. You just do not find some of those skills available just anyplace at any time.)
mudchickenSurveyors and railroad civil engineers have got to have a good grasp on what has happened beforehand before figuring out the next move.
It isn't limited to those specialties. I spent a lot of time truing up "reinvented wheels" that the youngsters designed and then couldn't figure out why they didn't work. As one program chief engineer put it, "Having bright engineers on a program is certainly a good thing; I just wish we had some more engineers with actual knowledge."
It's not a new concept; Henry Petroski quotes a Roman engineer from around 200 BC to that effect in one of his fine books.
mudchicken Murphy Siding mudchicken Tyler to Astoria was never more than 1.25% (all 1,2 and 3 degree curves)...very easy for a branchline. The worst was between Hendricks and Ivanhoe (really just the 3 miles west of Ivanhoe), no big deal)...it just was a collector line that filled in a gap between two other CNW lines..Everything funnelled east, so there was no point in building on to Watertown with this line or the branch to the north. Abandoned May 1969 under ICC FD-25690...nothing more than 60# rail in the dirt and cinders from its 1883 beginninings. You are somewhere MP 25-26. Mudchicken- is there a place where you find this type information, or is it a lot of places, and you simply know where to look? Murph: Being that this stuff is a small part of what I do for a living, I've developed a collection of stuff plus multiple websites and other sources to go to. Surveyors and railroad civil engineers have got to have a good grasp on what has happened beforehand before figuring out the next move. If you want a trackchart snapshot of the "hood" in 1959, go here: http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/C&NW/C&NW%20Track%20Charts/C&NW%20System%20Track%20Chart%203-1-1959.pdf and go to Dakota Division, Pages 84-87 DC, PDN and I all have some common overlapping skills, but we all have some unique skillsets that sent us off in different directions professionally. (Hopefully, BNSF in their current downsizing exercise doesn't make the same dumbsizing mistakes they did in the 1996 merger. You just do not find some of those skills available just anyplace at any time.)
Murph: Being that this stuff is a small part of what I do for a living, I've developed a collection of stuff plus multiple websites and other sources to go to. Surveyors and railroad civil engineers have got to have a good grasp on what has happened beforehand before figuring out the next move. If you want a trackchart snapshot of the "hood" in 1959, go here: http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/C&NW/C&NW%20Track%20Charts/C&NW%20System%20Track%20Chart%203-1-1959.pdf and go to Dakota Division, Pages 84-87
Mudchicken, your Multimodalways.org is incredible! Thank you for causing me to find their CV timetable, which I sent to my brothers. Our grandfather and 2 great-uncles were CV engineers, the youngest born in 1889 and still working in the 1950s.
http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/CV/CV%20ETTs/CV%20Northern%20&%20Southern%20Divs%20ETT%20%2341%209-27-1953.pdf
http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/
#3880 = Bridge Inventory/ Bridge #...Just like the highway bubbas, the bridge does not have to match the milepost location (but it makes it harder on the LCD's in the company)
24" is the diameter of the concrete pipe ("cp") bridge/pipe opening (remember, anything that carries drainage water is a bridge in the railroad world)
The breakline that you see betwen MP 25 and MP 26 was put there at the draftman's discretion. He needed the room below the grade line to put in more relevant data about the bridges.
Remember these track charts are a schematic tool and every railroad approaches things a little differently, so no two railroad drafting standards look the same. (ps - Condensed profile is something much different to me) Don't try to read too much into these, too many amateurs continually try to make more out of a track chart than is really there. If you need more info, it's time to start digging into the railroad cadastre for what you need. These rascals have been around for over 100 years, long before GIS, PDA's, CAD and computers. I spend lotsa time reconstructing long gone railroads for survey and engineering purposes. I'll go looking for Employee TT's first, then track charts and then the various types of mapping. (got a chunk of railroad in SE KS that is becoming a struggle to deal with with 3 former Cls. 1's having ownership claims originally, but nobody claims 2.2 miles of that chuck out in the weeds, including a shortline and two Cls. 1's...)
IM or e-mail me on the GN/BNSF location. Have a great time in Section 15, T12N, R47W of the 5th PM. (looks like the original GLO Surveyors (Hudson W. Bishop & Co.) got themselves in trouble with convergence back in 1872 (Section 14 vanished!)
Methinks we jumped the gun on the start of the railroad.
Hendricks to Astoria happened about 1900, Tyler to Hendricks about 1898 (according to the ICC GO-20 & GO-26 reports) with surveys of the Dakota Central going back to 1883. looks like the line was "second-hand" from the start.
mudchicken Murphy Siding Mudchicken- is there a place where you find this type information, or is it a lot of places, and you simply know where to look? Murph: Being that this stuff is a small part of what I do for a living, I've developed a collection of stuff plus multiple websites and other sources to go to. Surveyors and railroad civil engineers have got to have a good grasp on what has happened beforehand before figuring out the next move. If you want a trackchart snapshot of the "hood" in 1959, go here: http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/C&NW/C&NW%20Track%20Charts/C&NW%20System%20Track%20Chart%203-1-1959.pdf and go to Dakota Division, Pages 84-87
Murphy Siding
For example, I owe mudchicken a big thank-you for sharing with me a copy of the "1984 ATSF Turnout Manual" by Leo Rekush - more info in about 100 pages than I've ever seen elsewhere.
- Paul North.
greyhoundsOne of my first tasks at the ICG was working on branch line abandonments.
As an NYC Operating Management Trainee, I got involved in several projects like this and I know whereof you speak. Even after you plugged in the "knowns" and the estimated allocations, there was always that nagging question of whether you would have the traffic at all if the branch were abandoned. In other words, would you have continued to receive the line-haul if the branch line to the consignee were abandoned. My thought was always "No" but I was usually overridden.
The same basic question always came up concerning local vs through passenger service. Without the locals feeding the through trains at connecting stations, how much traffic will the through train handle? It always seemed silly to think that customers would be willing to use their private automobiles or other local conveyance to get to the (former) connecting station but not to just continue to their ultimate destination without the through train.
ChuckAllen, TX
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.