In freight railroading terms, what does "merchandise" mean?
As in "merchandise trains?" Does that mean any trains other than bulk commodity unit trains?
Still in training.
Pretty much. Any mixed freight, or "manifest." Unit trains, intermodal, etc are not merchandise trains.
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...
A 'merchandiser' is loaded with relatively high-value goods for marketing or sale, presumably of high value with quick delivery a plus. Manifest means all the valuable items are written down and being tracked.
An example of course was the Blue Streak Merchandise on SSW/SP. You may remember that a sizable part of this train's business was auto parts -- a commodity, but a high-value-per-unit one with a premium on expeditious delivery.
Thanks so much, Tree and Overmod. I had wondered about "manifest" also.
Manifest and merchandise are currently used interchangeably to refer to trains made of individual carloads.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmannd Manifest and merchandise are currently used interchangeably to refer to trains made of individual carloads.
Or has I tell my wife, a box car train. Even though some have few box cars but many covered hoppers and tank cars.
Jeff
junk train / everything else loose car train
mudchickenjunk train
I've used the term before. The only problem is that whilst train watching along the Chicago Line, one does actually see trains of junk/garbage...
Junk train around here refers to a train that moves all the cars that have to go from one place to another but generate little or no active revenue, or specialized cars that are present in too small numbers for full moves. Old Southern-gives-a-green-light-to-innovation boxcars (ironically enough!), battered old N&W gons, a few aluminum hoppers or bethgons with damage needing fixing, rakes of intermodal cars being shuttled empty for reloading...
On NS here you occasionally see one of these that sits idling for several days (!) or loses its power and sits until something can be assigned to tow it further. Doubt you'd see a merchandise train treated that way!
A through train crew's title for a train that works multiple loacations picking up and setting off cars is frequently - A Junk Train!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Slop Freight.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
BaltACD A through train crew's title for a train that works multiple locations picking up and setting off cars is frequently - A Junk Train!
A through train crew's title for a train that works multiple locations picking up and setting off cars is frequently - A Junk Train!
On EL in my youth that was referred to a 'peddler freight'. We have them on the same NS ex-Southern line out to a fair distance from Memphis, sometimes with surprising power, but I don't know what NS now calls them here.
zugmann Slop Freight.
That's how you make a junk train. You slop it together.
Well in der ole days "Merchandise" traffic was high revenue LCL, which was different from your regular carloads of grain, coal, etc. "Merchandise" fetched a premium rate and was handled in premium service, kind of like UPS today.
Then the US Government set about diverting the high revenue LCL to trucks (along with the perishables) and basically allocated that revenue away from the railroads. May the bureaucrats in DC forever pay for what they wrongly did.
Today, a merchandise train is just a regular old low priority freight train hauling whatever doesn't get premium service.
"Don't Stand Me Still" not practiced by some ? A lonely revenue car never leaving the backtracks used to cause alarm bells, top to bottom / all departments, where I was.
From a personal railfan point of view I enjoy watching those "boxcar" trains. There seems to be a certain ebb and flow to certain trains and the cars carried. The priorities assigned to these trains often reflect their importance.
Watching the NS on the Chesterton web cam, you have the hot intermodal TOFC trains, often handling the UPS/FedEx/LTL/Refer trailers and containers. The domestic intermodal container trains (JBH, EMP, Hub) follow closely in the pecking order.
The boxcar trains, unless on short time, seldom gather much priority but are fun to watch. Certain trains have regular interesting cars or blocks of cars. There are regular movements of John Deere or Case tractors on flat beds moving on specific trains. NS train 34G has a daily block of huge auto parts box cars (those 90 foot monsters)...wonder where those move to and from? Other trains regularly will have 25 car blocks of CP or BNSF grain hoppers...some bakery out east is buying quite a bit of wheat more than likely.
A great "junk train" comes out of Burns Harbor every night for Elkhart (34E) and it will have gons of scrap, flatcars of plate steel, coil cars, tank cars, etc. My guess is the revenue on that train is pretty high with all those cars of steel.
I could go on and on with the descriptions of these "boxcar" trains but my point is these trains serve a purpose and typically have very regular movements, perhaps not daily but regularly.
There is an interesting movement, nearly daily of BNSF 60 ft boxcars heading east and probably the empties moving back west. After wondering what could be moving in regular and large (10 cars plus) blocks, I settled on those boxcars possibly handling wine from California to the east coast. No way to know for sure, but to me it makes sense.
The economics of this industry are just as interesting as the paint schemes of the locomotives, at least to me.
Ed
The years I spent trackside working Operators positions at numerous locations on multiple divisions of the B&O allowed one to know which train was passing just by the makeup of train - car reporting marks, types of cars, visible lading. Trains are not jus a hodge podge of cars being thrown together to move them from one terminal to the next terminal.
Each train operated performs a specific business purpose for the carrier that operates it. That purpose is to move the shipments tendered from orign to destination with the least handling (switching) and hopefully the least mileage consistant with main line handling. How effectively the carriers do this results in a black bottom line and a minimum of customer complaints. As we have seen recently management changes can affect both of these and many other reported metrics.
My career was spent on the operating side of railroading, I have no idea of the operation of the marketing and pricing aspects of the industry, as I never worked in those areas.
"..,.From a personal railfan point of view I enjoy watching those "boxcar" trains. There seems to be a certain ebb and flow to certain trains and the cars carried. The priorities assigned to these trains often reflect their importance..."
Times like this I wish I access to a 'scanner' ! It would sort of help me follow the traffic through here.
After living here for almost three years; the 'ebb and flow' on 'our' BNSF line [Main 3 of the Eldorado sub (notation:written on the rails)] is becoming more apparent, as time goes by. Our line sees traffic in both directions, and it is a fairly eclectic mix. Early mornings there is an auto carrier train; or a 'sand' train (can be in either direction). and several times a week there is one of those 'junk' trains ( or what used to me, to be a 'merchandise train'.
Those 'junk trains' seem to be an interesint mix...large over-height boxcars, they seem to be heavy ( wheels really thump! possibly, paper(?). They can be a mix of BNSF cars, and some Wisc Central boxes, many CNR boxes,'RBoxes',. Also, generally, a couple of BNSF 'flats' with wheels/axle sets. and then we'll see coil cars. many BNSF and the blocks of NS and occasionally CSX.
Then there are blocks of tank cars, mixed within the trains, sometimes in large groups, some times, singles (Chemicals(?), and smaller groups with two or three tank cars together, ( edible oils(?). Mostly, the power is all BNSF, EMD's, and GE's grouped together, CITI rentals, and if there is CSX or NS, FeroMex, (occasionally) they'll run behind BNSF leading units.. many of the CSX units will be on the Auto carrier trains. Then, there is are run-throughs with all UPR power, wind turbine equipment loads(empty and loaded).
Then there are the container stackers, several each day, (east and westbounds) a day pretty much solid UPS cans, a smattering of Schneider, and Swift ( east bound.aybe a destination of N Baltimore(?). West bound traffic is headed onto the T-con; eastbounds, possibly, to the big container yard at Gardner, Ks. or KC (Argentine(?), and points east(?).
Mostly the traffic has a pretty 'stately fow and speeds through here, but every PM there is one of those stacks that comes through, at speed; I know they are probably 'trying' out that high-speed turnout down at the jct. One of the RF(?) recently told my wife down at Casey's(C-Store) in town, their train count between here and Wellington is over 60 a day. Makes for some interesting train watching!
I, too, make my "living" off manifest trains (in fact, that's what my job had consisted of completely). They are probably the only trains that are consistent in their interest to me because of what they might bring past. Stack trains, auto trains, and other unit trains aren't ignored, but usually have nothing to offer. You know that coal is "dying" because there haven't been any new coal gons in years. You can often tell a lot about a train just by looking at its cars, especially around Chicago. If a NS train has a lot of BNSF cars in its consist, it is most likely a run-through directly to BNSF, for example. There is, however, never a dull moment on these trains--often I'll get some unusual equipment with a rare reporting mark, and new equipment always makes its way through, eventually. It's been a while, though, since I've seen a train comprised entirely of brand-new cars being delivered. This is why I want to get out to different places--the trains are different no matter where you go. I want to see what I can find on trains in Texas and Louisiana, for example...what might be commonplace down there might be unheard-of to me.Jeff, I'm not sure when it happened, but officially the most common type of freight car now is the covered hopper...box cars have really fallen from grace!
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
CShaveRRJeff, I'm not sure when it happened, but officially the most common type of freight car now is the covered hopper...box cars have really fallen from grace!
Box cars, for the most part have been replaced by trailers and containers. In many cases the railroads retain the business in trailers that they once handled in box cars.
Considering that a lot of grain used to be carried in boxcars, I sometimes think of covered hoppers as just boxcars with holes in their tops and bottoms.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
CShaveRR. You know that coal is "dying" because there haven't been any new coal gons in years.
Carl we have had a few new gons stored in mid georgia the last few months.
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