Box car questions..

[nittyp]

Hi there. I have a couple questions that I'm sure a lot of you can answer easily.

 I live in Napa, CA, so I see a lot of local action. 1) why are there so many different railroad box cars that have all sorts of different reporting marks? Locally here, there are tons of GVSR, MP and UP cars that are super old, but still in service. Who owns these cars? The local short line, CA Northern (Rail America)? Thy still have MP, UP and various other reporting marks on them.

2) why would for example HS, YARR, and so on have cars here in Northern CA? Some stay here, and I see them every couple weeks in various locations, and some are here one day, to never be seen again.

3) Why do short lines such as AGR, HS, YARR, CHTT, etc., have a fleet of box cars, but have them all over the country? Is there a simple explaination or somewhat simple as to how the logistics of box cars on shortlines are handled/moved from location to location?

 Hopefully these questions make sense. I am just trying to understand this a little more than I do know, which isnt much!

Thanks in advance for any wisdom! nittyp, napa, ca

[Anonymous]

It's fairly common to see a shortline's cars very far from home.  I've seen Iowa Traction (IATR) covered hoppers in northern Minnesota and far east as Milwaukee!

[tree68]

More than a few shortlines have owned more cars than would fit on their home rails.  I don't think the market is as lucrative today as it once once, but they are/were making money renting the cars to other railroads/customers. 

A car that shows up somewhere may have originally loaded on the home road (ie, the car owner) and was delivered where you see it for unloading.

Unless a car has specific loading criteria or is under instructions to return directly to a certain place when empty, it's possible that an industry might call for car and the railroad serving it will see that a car from the XYZ Railroad meeting the requirements is sitting in a nearby yard.  The load may be headed in the general direction of the XYZ, so they send it over for loading.

I'm sure there are per diem and other monetary considerations as well.

[CShaveRR]

nittyp

 1) why are there so many different railroad box cars that have all sorts of different reporting marks? Locally here, there are tons of GVSR, MP and UP cars that are super old, but still in service. Who owns these cars? The local short line, CA Northern (Rail America)? Thy still have MP, UP and various other reporting marks on them.

Those box cars are owned by the UP (at least the UP and MP cars--the GVSR cars are probably leased to UP by Greenbrier Leasing; they're more than likely former Southern Pacific cars).  And although they're pretty rusty-looking, they aren't all that old, as far as the type of equipment you're likely to see in Napa is concerned.  Probably they were built in the 1970s.  (Some of us are older than any of the freight cars you're likely to see in service!)

nittyp

2) why would for example HS, YARR, and so on have cars here in Northern CA? Some stay here, and I see them every couple weeks in various locations, and some are here one day, to never be seen again.

HS is a pretty special case--those cars are actually owned by the General Electric Rail Services Corporation and leased to various major railroads (most likely the Union Pacific, in your case).  As Larry said, the railroad line to whom HS is assigned (now the Chattahoochee Bay Road, Inc.) couldn't possibly hold all of their cars if they were returned home.  But that's unlikely--they're either out there earning money for the parent company (GE) or sitting in storage on some other railroad, earning that railroad a few bucks.

YARR is the reporting mark of the Youngstown & Austintown Railroad.  A lot of their equipment is secondhand, and more than a little came from the UP.  It might still be leased to UP--but let's assume that it isn't.  There may be a company that YARR serves back in Ohio that is either sending loads to, or reveiving a lot of loads from, a company in Napa.  It would make sense for YARR to buy or lease cars to serve this industry and earn the car hire that its cars would get in making the shipments.  This money would be offset by the costs of owning and maintaining the car.  The truth may lie somewhere in the middle--YARR probably leases the cars from somebody, gets the car hire money, but pays the lessor to maintain the cars, handle the record-keeping, and all the rest.

nittyp

3) Why do short lines such as AGR, HS, YARR, CHTT, etc., have a fleet of box cars, but have them all over the country? Is there a simple explaination or somewhat simple as to how the logistics of box cars on shortlines are handled/moved from location to location?

There are so many car-hire arrangements around that it would be hard to be specific.  As someone said, some cars may be in specific pools.  Other cars are free-running, and can be reloaded at any point, preferably one close to where they were emptied.  As for CHTT, that's another reporting mark owned by UP.  It indicates cars with a particular leasing arrangement (again, that's not my area of expertise).

[nittyp]

you guys are awesome.. Thank you. Carl, great info. Thanks.

The info helps a lot. I was somewhat correct in what my thoughts on it were. Now makes a little more sense.

There are a ton of old SP and UP cars around here, as well as Golden West and Rail Box (TTX versions). But you see every reporting mark under the sun come through the region. And some that  are so graffiti'd that you cant tell what the heck they are.

There sure is so much interesting history in railroading, that its easy to stay interested in the hobby.

Thanks again. nittyp.

[trainfan1221]

Shortline boxcars were always easy to identify, they were usually the same light blue with a similar logo and writing.  At least several were, the Middletown and New Jersey for example.

[BaltACD]

The why's and wherefore's for railroad doing anything revolve around one thing

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