Your favorite commodity?

[P42 108]

I like when trains haul vehicle frames on open flat cars. What is your favorite railroad commodity? Does it require a special kind of freight car?

[MP173]

Scrap metal.

It is always interesting to look down from an overpass at gons filled with scrap. 

ed

[bobwilcox]

VCM aka vinyl chloride monomer.  If the fire and explosion doesn't kill you the cancer will a few years later.  Its the raw material for all of that PVC drain pipe.

[edbenton]

Very simple anything and everything that moves via rail.  Now one thing specific I have to say Class A explosives that way I know someone else is pulling those instead of me like I used to all the freaking time.

[Railway Man]

Yak fat.  It defined an entire era.

 

RWM 

[jeaton]

Sewage sludge.  Well hidden in tank cars.

[emmar]

Apples !!!!!!, cause they taste good and they always seem to be in cars from fallen flags (at least in Washington anyway).

[jeffhergert]

Yak fat.  It defined an entire era.

 

RWM 

Is this in reference to an incident that Don Phillips wrote about in his Trains column many years ago?  Back when he had a full page.

Jeff

[Railway Man]

Yak fat.  It defined an entire era.

 

RWM 

Is this in reference to an incident that Don Phillips wrote about in his Trains column many years ago?  Back when he had a full page.

Jeff

In 1965, the Hilt Truck Line of Omaha, fed up with the automatic protests of its tariff applications and the ponderous inanity of the ICC, one night published a tariff rate for fat derived from the longhaired Yak of Tibet in truckload lots from Omaha to Chicago.  No such commodity exists, of course, and Robert Hilt figured that the railroads would in knee-jerk fashion protest his imaginary commodity.  The Western Trunk Line Committee duly filed a seven-page protest stating the proposed rate on Yak Fat was noncompensatory and should be denied.  The ICC did so.  Hilt then exposed that this was a joke.  The ICC, quite annoyed, dismissed the application, making noises about filing charges with Hilt for his irreverence for the law, but that came to nothing.

The Yak Fat case when exposed was regarded as hilarious or a sign of the pathetic state of U.S. transportation by everyone in the transportation community, railroads, truckers, and shippers alike, and for years afterward it was a poster child for the senselessness of regulation as it was then practiced.  Undoubtedly the WTL Committee members had to put up with good-natured abuse for years afterward, with everyone they knew asking them if they had filed any protests lately against Pixie Dust or Dodo Feathers.

RWM 

 

[Ted Marshall]

I like when trains haul vehicle frames on open flat cars. What is your favorite railroad commodity? Does it require a special kind of freight car?

Pound for pound, I gotta say that unit trains of rock, either limestone or granite, are the most impressive to observe in action. Here in Florida, on the FEC and CSX, rock is hauled in 100-ton Ortner and 70-ton quad hoppers. While I'm not sure if an Ortner is considered a "specialty" freight car, rock and gravel are the only commodities I've ever seen hauled in them. 

Second to that would be unit coal and third, powdered cement.

 

[SilverSpike]

I liked the salad express that Southern Pacific ran from the west coast, a whole train of lettuce and produce going to eastern markets.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Yak fat.  It defined an entire era.

 

RWM 

Is this in reference to an incident that Don Phillips wrote about in his Trains column many years ago?  Back when he had a full page.

Jeff

In 1965, the Hilt Truck Line of Omaha, fed up with the automatic protests of its tariff applications and the ponderous inanity of the ICC, one night published a tariff rate for fat derived from the longhaired Yak of Tibet in truckload lots from Omaha to Chicago.  No such commodity exists, of course, and Robert Hilt figured that the railroads would in knee-jerk fashion protest his imaginary commodity.  The Western Trunk Line Committee duly filed a seven-page protest stating the proposed rate on Yak Fat was noncompensatory and should be denied.  The ICC did so.  Hilt then exposed that this was a joke.  The ICC, quite annoyed, dismissed the application, making noises about filing charges with Hilt for his irreverence for the law, but that came to nothing.

The Yak Fat case when exposed was regarded as hilarious or a sign of the pathetic state of U.S. transportation by everyone in the transportation community, railroads, truckers, and shippers alike, and for years afterward it was a poster child for the senselessness of regulation as it was then practiced.  Undoubtedly the WTL Committee members had to put up with good-natured abuse for years afterward, with everyone they knew asking them if they had filed any protests lately against Pixie Dust or Dodo Feathers.

RWM 

 

I remember reading about this case in Second Section when it first happened.  The stated reason for the various and sundry protests of this ridiculous rate was to prevent a precedent being established for the allowance of a potentially non-compensatory rate.

[nanaimo73]

A unit train of bright yellow powdered sulphur, loaded in black gons, as seen from above, on a sunny day.

[Cris_261]

Favorite commodity railroad hauled hands down was the Southern Pacific sugar beet trains and the composite gondolas used to haul the beets. Second favorite is the Union Pacific sulfuric acid trains from the Kennecott copper mine in Utah. It's one long line of white tank cars, with a spacer car, usually a weathered UP covered hopper, on the head end.

[P42 108]

Favorite commodity railroad hauled hands down was the Southern Pacific sugar beet trains and the composite gondolas used to haul the beets. Second favorite is the Union Pacific sulfuric acid trains from the Kennecott copper mine in Utah. It's one long line of white tank cars, with a spacer car, usually a weathered UP covered hopper, on the head end.

 I was trying to think of which video to watch tonight and I have a video from Pentrex about the sugar beet trains. Thanks for the good idea...

[TH&B]

I like the grain train scene.

[blhanel]

I love watching a whole line of flats hauling John Deere tractors roll by...

[dldance]

Scrap metal.

It is always interesting to look down from an overpass at gons filled with scrap. 

ed

I concur.  The gons are also very interesting from the ground.  No pristine string of identical aluminum coal cars.  Scrap gons look like they've been everywhere and seen everything (and lived to tell about it).

dd

[Cris_261]

This may not qualify as a commodity, but mixed freight trains are fun to watch for reporting marks of fallen flags.

[IRONHORSE77]

General mixed freight cars.

CHUCK

[greyhounds]

Yak fat.  It defined an entire era.

 

RWM 

I remember reading about this case in Second Section when it first happened.  The stated reason for the various and sundry protests of this ridiculous rate was to prevent a precedent being established for the allowance of a potentially non-compensatory rate.

Does anyone remember the Trains cartoon showing their proposed "Yak Fat Rack" railcar?

My favorite is perishables.  They represent heads up, on your toes railroading.

[TH&B]

I ageree with that, perishables as hot shots.... amits slow grain trains

[Mookie]

See grain, see coal and since we watch very close to a scrap metal yard, see scrap. 

I like the blue kitty litter cars with the paw print.  And if I have to be very serious - the airplane bodies that we see not often enough.

[CNW 6000]

I have to go for big, heavy, long coal drags.  I love the thunder of the cars and the roar of the engines working them.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Yes - I thought of it as soon as RWM mentioned it (above). 

 You're close with the name - it was actually a "Yak Fat Rack Flat".  John Swatsley (sp?) did a sketch (pen & ink ?) of a herd of them crammed shoulder-to-shoulder aboard a bulkhead-end flat, as a method for the rails to haul all of that commodity that was offered.  CSSHEGEWISCH is exactly right - it was a "Section Section" note from the 2nd half of the 1960's - I would guess at 1967 - 1969.  All of my Trains from then are in storage, so I can't pull mine out and scan it in - but maybe someone else can.

[Modelcar]

.....Lots of covered hoppers, many probably hauling grain through here on NS.  But for me, as long as the railroads have much of most anything to haul, that seems to be a good thing to me...Keep them in business and more traffic off the open highways.

[Ulrich]

Made in China stuff moving along the rails on stack trains. What an efficient way to move freight.  

[cherokee woman]

general mixed freights, and the flat cars hauling military vehicles. 

[baberuth73]

Talk about a sight to see, when I was with NS we regularly hauled high and wide loads of military stuff like humvees, trucks, and tanks. These were my favorites. 

Ever notice a white tank car with a broad red band painted around its' girth, placed as the last car on an NS train? We called them candystripers. They contained cyanide. When yarded, they were placed on an otherwise empty track as far from other cars as possible. This was my least favorite commodity.

[CShaveRR]

I also remember the drawing of the "Yak Fat Rack Flat" that appeared with that "Second Section" column in Trains.