beaulieu To my knowledge no Class I Line-haul carrier lost its standing as a Class I railroad due to the raising of the revenue requirements since 1960. There would be several more Class I railroads in the major commuter railroads were not excluded by reason that they are not private corporations.
Florida East Coast was formerly classified as a Class 1 road and is now considered Class 2.
"That is a lot of carloads not counted."
What does a lot of carloads look like as a per cent of all car loads?
If a car originates on a Class 1 carrier, say UP, but is delivered to a regional railroad, i.e. South Orient Rail, which really runs from Alpine Junction to San Angelo, is it one car or two cars for reporting purposes.
Most of the traffic on the South Orient is fracking sand that is delivered to Fort Stockton, where it is transferred to trucks to be taken to the oil fields. During harvest season, some grain originates on the South Orient, for delivery to the UP or BNSF.
If the UP and South Orient count the car for statistical reporting purposes, it would appear as two cars when in fact it is just one car unless it is backed out somewhere. Or is it the originating railroad that reports the car?
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass
Boomer5 There seems to be a wide range opinion on this issue but no clear consensus. The argument for the decreasing number of class I’s as opposed to declining Class I’s makes sense to me and is perhaps the most logical answer to a point but by definition decreasing and declining mean the same thing: to become smaller or fewer in size or number.
One could argue that membership in the AAR could have very closely determined the number of Class I’s and for years it did until the number of Class I’s declined so much that they started to allow holding companies to buy their way into the association.
jeffhergert Brian Solomon has a book out, "North American Railroad Family Trees." It has chapters on different eras, but mostly names the railroads has they have traditionally been known. They don't go into all the little railroads that became the bigger ones most of us would recognize. It also has a chapter that has a section about how the railroads might "unmerge" into smaller systems. He's not advocating, like some railfans do, but more of a "what if" type scenario. Jeff
Brian Solomon has a book out, "North American Railroad Family Trees." It has chapters on different eras, but mostly names the railroads has they have traditionally been known. They don't go into all the little railroads that became the bigger ones most of us would recognize.
It also has a chapter that has a section about how the railroads might "unmerge" into smaller systems. He's not advocating, like some railfans do, but more of a "what if" type scenario.
Jeff
Most of the writing I've seen in magazines on the subject of the "final mergers" (i.e resulting in two transcontinental class 1 railroads in the U.S (which may or may not also incorporate CP and CN) have made the point that there would almost certainly be a lot of "spin offs" resulting in additional mileage being acquired by existing regional railroads and/or the creation of new regionals.
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
Some time ago, I came across a document that gave the geneology of all the carriers that went into forming CSX before the ConRail acquisition. As best I could count, over 250 companies went into forming the Chessie System over the years and a roughly equal number had gone into forming the Seaboard 'Family Lines'. Some of these carrier name existed in real railroad equipment; some of them were name only carriers that had been created for specific financial purposes to separated the liability of projects away from the 'real' carrier generating the project, and myriad of other financial needs.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Something to consider is adding the 2 Canadian carriers CN & CP swallowing much more than "independent" owned captives Soo Line & Grand Trunk. To get to 15 carriers, search the merger tree of UP, CSX,NS & BN and Conrail.
Good info and insights, Carnej1. Thank you.
dakotafredI mean, when you stop to think about it, how fast do you really have to have most stuff? Maybe the tortoise can win the day with price, along with reliability and otherwise keeping its promises.
As a former user of rail transportation I want consistancy. When I am quoted that my car of starch will be delivered in 5 days I want it in 5. Not 3 and not 10. A 10 day delivery would be OK if it would always be 10 days. When I order one car to be delivered each day that is exactly what I want. I don't want to go 7 days with no delivery and then suddenly receive 10 cars on one day. The uncertainty of supply is what drove us away from rail deliveries. I do not want to pay for the inventory necessary to tide over the unexplained delays, not to mention the cost of putting in all of those silos and tanks. Consistancy in delivery times has been sorely lacking and has lost the rails a lot of business.
dakotafred BaltACD Transporting bulk commodities by air is possible - just not economically the best choice. Does anybody besides me remember when, about 40 years ago, DPM sounded the alarm in TRAINS about the big new military aircraft -- the symbol C5A sticks in my mind -- whose civilian application was supposed to threaten the survival of rail freight? He illustrated his news story/edit with a photo of a rail car or truck or something disappearing into the giant maw of the plane. Somehow that never happened -- at least to the best of my knowledge -- probably for the reason of economy cited by BALT. I also note -- with pleasure, I'll admit -- that even the air express of FedEx and UPS, while still having a role, is losing market share to their surface modes. I mean, when you stop to think about it, how fast do you really have to have most stuff? Maybe the tortoise can win the day with price, along with reliability and otherwise keeping its promises.
BaltACD Transporting bulk commodities by air is possible - just not economically the best choice.
Transporting bulk commodities by air is possible - just not economically the best choice.
Does anybody besides me remember when, about 40 years ago, DPM sounded the alarm in TRAINS about the big new military aircraft -- the symbol C5A sticks in my mind -- whose civilian application was supposed to threaten the survival of rail freight? He illustrated his news story/edit with a photo of a rail car or truck or something disappearing into the giant maw of the plane.
Somehow that never happened -- at least to the best of my knowledge -- probably for the reason of economy cited by BALT. I also note -- with pleasure, I'll admit -- that even the air express of FedEx and UPS, while still having a role, is losing market share to their surface modes.
I mean, when you stop to think about it, how fast do you really have to have most stuff? Maybe the tortoise can win the day with price, along with reliability and otherwise keeping its promises.
There certainly is a fair amount of LCL freight flying now that back in the day would have been handled by the Railway Express agency but the Railroad industry in North America has largely moved away from LCL parcel type business so I'm sure the lost business has been far offset by TOFC.
A number of air freight carriers have looked at the economics of operating "civilan-ized" versions of heavy military jet transports (like the C5 Galaxy,C17 etc..) over the years but such aircraft are considerably more expensive to purchase and maintain that conventional airliners configured for freight and the fuel consumption issues are huge.
There are a fair number of civilian air freight versions of the Lockheed C-130 still in service and the Russians (and a few other former soviet component states and allies) do have commercial freighter versions of the Antonov AN-124 (along with a single even larger variant ,the An-225) in service,which are considerably bigger than even the newer Lockeed C-5B.
All of these specialized planes are used in custom project cargo services and operating costs would be much too expensive to compete against the railroads for container traffic..
Boomer5Currently researching the decline of the Class I Railroads since the 1950's and found this so far: 1950 127 Class I railroads in Operation 1960 102 1970 58 1980 15 1990 11 2000 7 The information for the 1980's seems low to me. As I recall in the early 80's there were around 35 or so Class I's with several roads falling out soon thereafter due to bankruptcies and mergers but by 1989 I find it hard to believe that there were only 15 Class I's remaining. Does anyone have any hard data on this topic?
All of the Terminal and Switching railroads like TRRA, IHB, and BRC were arbitrarily reclassified as Class III railroads in 1979, even if they had enough revenue to qualify as Class I railroads. If the count for total Class I railroads was taken on December 31, 1980, then St.Louis - San Francisco Rwy. and Rock Island disappeared during 1980.
KyleI wouldn't say that Class 1s are declining. The biggest reason that the number is decreasing is because of mergers.
The change of definition of the classes probably has had as much to do with the decline in numbers as mergers.
The revenue minimum of a Class I: $1 million increased to $3 million (equal to $26,023,256 today) in 1956, increased to $5 million (equal to $37,418,163 today) by 1965, to $10 million (equal to $41,444,444 today)in 1976, to $50 million in 1978 (equal to $180,790,816 today), and to 289.4 million in 2006.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
I would opine that the rationalization of the plant has made "demergers" virtually impossible, unless one was going to create end-to-end systems. Many of the duplicate routes built by competing railroads back in the day have been abandoned or truncated.
As for spin-offs and regionals - I think that will be a mixed bag. Some regionals have been re-incorporated into the system that spun them off, while others are doing quite well as regionals. And some are struggling.
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...
,
Kyle Mergers can make the industry more efficant, though they could rise prices due to a lack of competition. But that is another topic.
Mergers can make the industry more efficant, though they could rise prices due to a lack of competition. But that is another topic.
I wouldn't say that Class 1s are declining. The biggest reason that the number is decreasing is because of mergers. Just take a look at the Norfolk Southern Heritage fleet. Class 1 today are so much larger because they have merged creating huge Railroads. Take Conrail for example, it was formed from several Class 1s, before being split and absorbed by CSX and NS. Look at BNSF, several Class 1s merged into one railroad over the years.
That would be an interesting document to post if you happened to find it. I suspect that it was heavily flavored at that time with northeastern roads data since the 3R and 4R Acts were just around the corner. Clearly, Conrail wiped out several Class I's when it came into being but some the troublesome western carriers were still hanging on at that time.
That said, I am still about a decade off from where I would like to see information from. Ideally if there was a source of data that gave the number of Class I's operating in each of the years starting in 1979 (or pre-Staggers) to 1990 that would help imensenly, but I have not found anything like that yet. I have heard reference to give or take 35 Class I's operating in the early 80's but I have not been able to document it. Clearly the 80's were a pretty dynamic time for the railroad industry and many changes took place very quickly post Staggers.
Back around 1974 (or so), I researched, calculated (with an IBM 360 mainframe computer !), and wrote a term paper for an undergraduate economics Antitrust course, on the 'concentration' of the then-Class 1 US railroads. That is the number of them vs. market share of each (probably gross revenues or similar), and the various indexes or numerical measures of market power, etc. I can't remember if I used just the data for the northeastern railroads, or nationwide; nor the time frame (just a couple of years, or several decades). The Railway Age data that I referenced above was my source. As expected, the indexes confirmed that the industry was highly concentrated in a few large firms, and grew slightly more so during the time period that was examined. I might have a copy of that paper someplace in my 'archives' . . .
- Paul North.
Balt, you stirred me to search for the Alphabet Route, and I was amazed to see the number of sites.
https://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AoAW7eND51o3oNqe2rXdg0WbvZx4?fr=appattach-s&toggle=1&type=94&fp=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8&p=alphabet%20route%20railroads opens to a list of several sites.
I did not remember that the trains were Alpha Jets, but I found that you remembered correctly.
The routing lasted from 1931 until the Penn Central took control of the New Haven.
Johnny
Deggesty Indeed. There was one routing that was called "The Alphabet Route," which used many railroads to carry merchandies between Chicago and the East Coast--even going into Boston through Poughkeepsie. I do not remember all of the roads that worked together on this, but the Lehigh and New England was one. when a train was handed off from one road to another, there was little, if any, terminal delay--the routing competed with the major roads. There was an article covering this route in a Trains issue in the fifties. Some potential customers were scared off by the number of roads participating, not believing that the servicewas truly expedited.
Indeed. There was one routing that was called "The Alphabet Route," which used many railroads to carry merchandies between Chicago and the East Coast--even going into Boston through Poughkeepsie. I do not remember all of the roads that worked together on this, but the Lehigh and New England was one. when a train was handed off from one road to another, there was little, if any, terminal delay--the routing competed with the major roads.
There was an article covering this route in a Trains issue in the fifties.
Some potential customers were scared off by the number of roads participating, not believing that the servicewas truly expedited.
As I recall (and I could be mistaken) the Alphabet Route was
NKP-WLE-PWV-WM-RDG+ other carriers to the Northeast.
I believe, but could be mistaken, the premier train on the route was known as the Alpha Jet
Paul_D_North_JrThe difference now is how far each railroad can carry the shipment - maybe all the way, from shipper to receiver, with no interchanges; ...
Indeed. Back in the day there were sometimes "alphabet" routings that might cover half a dozen railroads from point A to point B. In fact, some were actually coalitions of railroads who set up such routings as competition to another routing.
Boomer5 [snipped - PDN] . . . No longer do the railroads have to undermine revenues chasing those loose carloads because there is potentially only one rail competitor at origin and one at destination . . .
The difference now is how far each railroad can carry the shipment - maybe all the way, from shipper to receiver, with no interchanges; or with a lot less interchanging to intermediate roads that had to compete with each other for the shipper's or originating carrier's business (depending on which one could choose). The Ogden Gateway Case is one example - see: http://utahrails.net/ogden/ogden-rg.php#heading_toc_j_2
I can distinctly remember sitting in my old school reading an article in Trains Magazine which said that there would be only 4 big Class 1s in the future ... that would have been in the early to mid-'60s. I could not believe that all the contemporary railroads I knew about through the pages of Trains would be gone. Now it's a bit hard to believe we had so many for so long...
One internet article said in 1980 there were 40 class 1 railroads.
I'm not sure that partial deregulation accelerated the merger movement. I have a Modern Railroads magazine issue from 1966 that had an article about the future of the industry. The small panel was divided on the number of major US railroads that would be operating in the year 2000. Half said 4 major railroads, the other half said there would be 2.
While they didn't get it exactly right, they came pretty darn close.
Good comments all but perhaps since there does not appear to be any readily available information the best remedy is to change the dates to match the end of the decade (instead of 1980 it would be 1990 for example). This would at least get me closer to the actual number though that still eludes me.
Clearly post Stagger's has had a dramatic impact on the railroads in the amount of spin-offs and mergers as well as thier greatly improved financial abilities. Mergers made the rail industry more efficeint by eliminating duplication and therefore becoming more competitive with other transportation modes. No longer do the railroads have to undermine revenues chasing those loose carloads because there is potentially only one rail competitor at origin and one at destination (speaking of Class I carriers of course; 2 in the north, 2 east, 2 west and then the KCS). It appears that Jim McClellan in a recent article hit it on the head when he said "with fewer companies comes less competition and higher rates".
Thanks for all the comments. They have made me realize how much more impact the Stagger's Act had on the industry than I orginally thought.
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