I’m starting to develop my freight car fleet. My modelling goal is Soo Line freight in Central Wisconsin in the late 1960’s. I’ve read the guideline - 50% home road, 25% connecting roads, 25% everything else - for developing a plausible fleet, and would like to follow that guideline. I have two questions that I could use some help with.
What are my connecting roads? I’ve done a bunch of reading/researching over the past few years, but still don’t have a good understanding of this.
Is there such a thing as competing roads such that I should stay clear of certain roads?
I’m just looking for a reasonable fleet, nothing precise. But for instance, should I have some CNW and MILW or not? Any guidance would be most appreciated.
For the remaining 25% of your roster, almost anything goes. UP, SF, MoPac, T&P, FEC, BAR. Whatever you like, it probably passed through on the Soo at some time or another.
Dave, I think you could have CNW, MILW and IC as connecting roads and depending on what your industries on your layout are, about any major eastern or mid-western road would work. I would also throw in a few canadian roads for good measure. Growing up Oshkosh near the Soo Line tracks I saw a lot of Canadian roads go by.
Your main connecting roads would be who the Soo Line met at the Canadian border (CN, CP?) and Chicago. Definately PRR (their cars were everywhere!), NYC, B&O for points east. CN&W, CB&Q, RI, ATSF etc for points west and southwest. L&N, IC, C&EI (MoPac) for heading south and southeast.
Check the internet for interchange roads with the Soo Line, you find some good information there.
Since you’re modeling a railroad before the “Fallen Flag” syndrome, I’d say that your locale would probably include a lot of ‘northwestern’ railroad cars interchanging with the SOO, such as NP, GN, Milwaukee, C&NW. And certainly some CN and CP equipment. And back then, you could find foreign railroad cars being interchanged from all over the country as cars ‘wandered’ from one railroad to the other.
Out here in the west, it wasn’t uncommon to see cars from NYC, Pennsy, Erie, Lehigh Valley and other eastern railroads on Southern Pacific trains. And Western Pacific, with its Rio Grande connection to eastern and midwestern markets, could see cars from Burlington, Missouri Pacific, Frisco, and Santa Fe.
In that era, freight cars ‘wandered’ from railroad to railroad, often not seeing their home tracks for months or even years from interchange.
On my own MR, which is set in the 'forties, early 'fifties, my freight car fleet reflects both ‘home’ railroad (Rio Grande) and Rio Grande connections (Burlington, Missouri Pacific, Southern Pacific, Western Pacific), with a smattering of both ‘eastern’ and ‘northwestern’ cars that have become integrated into my primarily east-west traffic.
Back before the mega-mergers of the 80’s and beyond, freight trains were a sort of ‘free-for-all’ as far as foreign road equipment. Even roads that were considered major competitors (such as Southern Pacific/Santa Fe or Great Northern/Milwaukee) carried each other’s cars in their consists as a matter of course. It pretty much depended on what car was available for which train, no matter what the railroad it belonged to.
A lot also depends on the traffic flow on the area you are modeling.
For example if you model the MP/UP line south out of Kansas City you would hardly ever see an auto rack or an intermodal car. On the other hand the line east of KC would consider grain covered hopper fairly rare.
So if you can identify what traffic base the trains over your area of interest served, you can better tailor the roster to serve those needs.
Railroads were biased in preferring to use their own cars. For traffic originating on their lines, they would normally use their own rolling stock over other railroad’s. For instance, if there was a load of stock animals to be carried, the railroad would prefer to use their own stock car even if another railroad’s stock car was equally available. Baggage cars carrying mail and expres from the east on the Southern Pacific were often in foreign railroads’ cars, but return traffic contained full SP cars with the foreign cars often returning empty.
The composition of trains varied by era, locality, and other factors. Some trains consisted of largely empty cars and might have a high ratio of foreign cars. Don’t take this 50% rule too seriously. For instance, if your railroad is largely an exporter of coal, its hopper/gondola cars for a coal shipment would usually be home-road cars. Also, my study of photos of SP trains in central California in the mid-twentieth century gave me the impression that home-road cars represented over 75% of the traffic, and that foreign-road cars consisted of a super majority of box cars.
One thing of many to keep in mind is that low-valued freight as well as commonly available products were normally not sent great distances. For instance, you wouldn’t see a load of gravel move across the continent whereas a load of fine Kentucky whiskey would.
Which ‘foreign road’ cars you might see depended on two factors:
Which railroad(s) connected to the ends of yours, which would have used yours as a bridge route for through traffic.
Where were cars loaded for delivery to unloading spots on your line?
To explain the latter:
Maine potatoes would almost certainly arrive in MEC or BAR cars.
California oranges would fill PFE reefers.
Pocahontas coal would arrive in a N&W hopper.
Almost anything might arrive in a car carrying PRR reporting marks.
Bassett furniture was a staple for the N&W’s non-hopper fleet.
And the list goes on. So, what industries, warehouses and freight house customers will you model, what commodities will they receive, and where will they receive them from? The answer will determine what reporting marks will be found on which types of cars.
Chuck (Modleing Central Japan in September, 1964 - where the local Class 1 was a national monopoly)
I have chosen Chicago as an approximate area because almost every RR would get some stock there at one time or another. I even have one FEC and one Mexican boxcar. I think that this applies more strictly to boxcars which,provided they conform to interchange regulations, can take “any load, any where” whether they are “Railbox” or not…unless they are in captive service…
I’m saying this hoping to provoke some wiser comment. [:-,]
I don’t recall if the OP gives a specific era… Linking era to cars permitted to interchange would be interesting… As far as I understand it cars that ceased to be permitted to be interchanged could remain in service on home tracks for a pretty long time. AFAIK the largest example of this in recent times would be 40ft cars…
Would I be correct in thinking that this might mean that consists that would stay on home tracks (Soo in this case) might tend to have a higher % of 40ft Soo cars while consists going away should have none? If so might this not be further characterised by the 40ft cars appearing in numbers shortly after the ban and then fading away to occasional cars the further one got from the enforcement date?
I take it that the reverse of this means that, after the ban, no 40footers from other roads should be seen…
I’ve never figured out clearly how this would apply to the demise of roof walks and high level brakes???
Subject to these restrictions it seems to me that one thing that hasn’t yet been mentioned is cars in captive service. From the modellers point of view a car or cut of cars might keep showing up again and again if it is cycling between end points of one regular service.
As far as the OP goes the question is then: who has the contract? Soo cars if Soo have it - even if only
There is NO ban on 40 ft cars in interchange. The bans are on certain types of components (archbar trucks, plain journals, roofwalks, triple valves, etc) or on the age of the equipment (40 years) but there is no ban on cars just because they are 40 ft long.
Who told me there was?!? Own up! Who was it? [soapbox]
AAAARGH! [banghead][banghead][banghead]
Are you sure? Certain? You’re not kidding me?
I have often wondered how the shorty tank cars got round the “ban”…
But what about the single bay airslide cars that were paired (like the Walthers model)… I thought that, that was to technically make them one car that was longer than 40’???
Hmmm [sigh] So what did happen to 40foot cars… and why…PLEASE?
Having prompted a correction on this how about setting me straight on the other elements? [:)]
Non-Connection Roads - SP/SSW/WP/SLSF/KATY/L&N/SCL/C&O/FEC/WM/Clinchfield/and all of the NE roads…MEC/NH/D&H/L&NE/B&M/CV/GT…
With the above in mind, then consider what traffic you are modeling - if you are modeling the paper mill area of Wisconsin, there will be a lot more home road pulp gons and box cars needed in the mix.
Paper products would probably have a mix of cars. On the inbound side the chips or pulpwood would be on virtually 100% home road cars. Kaolin would probably be on virtually 100% private or foreign cars. The outbound paper would be either mostly home road cars, a mix of specific home and foreign cars or pretty much any car. If it was a very specific type of paper then the home road might have a certain series of cars built just to carry that product or a certain series that that plant prefers to load. If the paper moves were on a set group of roads (same customers all the time) then they might have a pool of cars that are supplied by the roads hauling the paper. Or they may just use a certain size of car (ie 40 ft cars with a 8 ft door) and the road doesn’t matter.
Since you are in the 1960’s there will still be a lot of grain in boxcars and unit trains will be in its infancy so fairly rare. If the grain is mostly to the Lakes or local customers (flour mills, breweries, corn syrup) it will be in mostly home road cars.
If you have a choice put grain in 6 ft door boxcars and merchandise in 8 ft door boxcars (why the eastern roads had proportionally more 8 ft door cars and the midwestern roads had more 6 ft door cars).
Steel products would be in mostly eastern road gons.
Coal would be in cars from eastern roads or roads serving Illinois.
Ore, rock would be in home road cars.
Overhead business would be a lot of Canadian car and eastern road cars.
The above are just generalizations, there are local exceptions to everything.
if you can find an old copy of the Railway Equipment Register, i suggest you read up on car hire or per diem charges and the car service directives and orders therein. it will enlighten you as to the why’s and wherefor’s of car usage on the railroads.
i will offer a hypothetical but somewhat long winded example.
lets say a shipper in Memphis needs a clean 40’ box car for a load of widgets destined to Milwaukee via the IC to Chicago and Milw to destination. assuming we have available these cars available; IC - MILW - GN - ERIE - and ACL.
first choice would be to use the IC car since we get the largest portion of the road haul revenue and the car hire charges or per diem while it is on the MILW.
second would be the MILW since the load would terminate on home rails for that car.
third would be the GN since it could then be forwarded on home by the delivering carrier when it was made empty.
fourth would be the ERIE car since the empty would wind up closer to home rails than it is now and it is a short backhaul for the delivering carrier to return it to the owner at Chicago.
last choice would be the ACL since this move takes it even farther from home than it is now.
there are exceptions to every rule and if the car is in assigned service then it would have a prescribed route and loading plan.
The majority of airslides cars operate as single cars. I doubt that it had anything to do with being 40 ft long, more likely it was to be able to have a “one car” shipment that had a capcity of 100 tons or more to allow the older cars to compete with the newer cars from a tonnage standpoint.
They got old. Most of the 40 ft cars were built in the 1930’s and 1940’s, so by the 1970’s they were bumping up against the 40 year age limit. Rather than rebuild them they built newer, bigger, better cars.
They were obsolete mechanically. Most of the cars were lower capacity and lower cubic footage. Why rebuild a 40 ft, 40-50 ton, 6 ft door with plain bearings and AB brakes car when you can get a new 50 ft, 70 ton, 8-10 ft door, roller bearings and ABDW brakes car? Six ft doors were preferred for grain, but grain was moving to covered hoppers. Six ft doors weren’t as useful for loading with forklifts. Why rebuild a 50 ton 34 ft twin hopper when you you can get a new 100 ton, 50 ft hopper? A 100 ton hopper lets you move twice as many tons for the same number of crews and virtually the same track capacity HUGE cost savings.
They were obsolete operationally. In the 1960’s the railroad industry was losing market share. The Interstate Highway System was coming on line and trucks were eroding railroad’s market share. The traffic that moved in boxcars was the same traffic you could move in a truck. So you had fewer loads to put in boxcars. Boxcars became surplus and the oldest, lowest capacity cars (the 40 footers) were the first
Central Wisconsin would put you halfway between Minneapolis - St.Paul and Chicago, so any railroad that served either metro area would be fair game as a connecting road.
Sort of, at least in that you need to look at who would be using the Soo to get from point A to point B and who would be using a competitor. For example the Northern Pacific and Great Northern both ended at St.Paul MN so you might see NP or GN cars on the Soo going to Chicago…except that NP and GN were co-owners of the Chicago Burlington and Quincy, so most likely would interchange cars with the Burlington rather than the Soo.
The Soo also served Duluth-Superior and Upper Michigan so you might see cars from railroads like the DSS&A and DM&IR, or the LS&I or E&LS going towards Chicago, since those roads didn’t get anywhere near Chicago. Also you might see railroads that served Chicago sending their cars north to one of those roads. You could see some all-rail ore trains going from the iron ranges to Chicago too.
You don’t need to know what connecting roads there are, because your roads got cars from their connecting roads, which got cars from their connecting railroads, which got cars from their connecting railroads, which got cars from their connecting railroads, which got cars from their connecting railroads. The cycle is endless! A car could travel across the country. So i would look up the connections to the Soo, and then look up the connections of those roads. That is where I would find most of where your rolling stock roster should come from.
Everybody has forgotten the Car Ferry service across Lake Michigan with the Ann Arbor, which would then add Wabash, Ann Arbor and DT&I cars depending on the era modeled. It connected with the Soo at a couple of cities and with the C&NW and Green Bay and Western.