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.
- Douglas
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?