I need to ask a newbie question about transfer and empties operations for a better understanding of how the prototype worked. So, I want to apologize ahead of time; knowing that this is probably somewhat elementary knowledge for most of you.
If I understand correctly, in a city environment - one RR (we’ll say the NYC) would retrieve the empties from another RR (we’ll say the PRR) and bring them back to their own classification yard to be returned to wherever. If this were a frequent event, would the cars from the PRR yard be situated on a given track or tracks for easier removal by the NYC?
Let’s say the yards are farther apart - i.e. 50 or 100 mi. Would the NYC drive a road switcher or a pair of Geeps to a PRR classification yard to pick up their own empties?
Lastly, in an industrial situation, would the PRR ever pick up empties for the NYC (or vice versa) and bring them back to their own classification yard for pickup by the NYC.
Again, sorry for the somewhat pedestrian questions. I was reading something recently written by Lance Mindheim about transfer operations and wondered how a given RRs cars were returned to its own facility.
Thanks for any input you all might have. I do appreciate your help. [:D]
There’s been several threads on interchange before. Whether the cars are loaded or empty is not really important. ALL interchange cars, loaded or empty, are handed off the same way.
This could be by spotting them at a common interchange track, or by one railroad delivering cars to the other.
Yard-to-yard transfer could be done by each railroad delivering cars to the other, but running back light, or all transfers could occur from one yard with one railroad running a job that delivers and picks up.
Ignore whether the cars are loaded or empty. In a lot of cases, one railroad would run a transfer to the other to deliver interchange cars. The other railroad would run a corresponding transfer to deliver their cars.
Running rights occur in some locations, but highly unlikely for an NYC train to run that far on another railroad. Cars will be exchanged at a particular interchange point, which could be interchange tracks at a juction point, or transfers between yards in a city served by both railroads.
If the industry is located on and served by PRR, PRR switches the industry (NYC would not be allowed anywhere near it since that’s not their track) and delivers the cars to the nearest NYC interchange. If there’s no interchange in the immediate area served by the local, then the goes back to the nearest PRR and routed appropriately to another place where the two interchange (or an interchange with another railroad that will get the car closer to the destination), just like any other car. Empty or load is irrelevant.
Two railroads go from a to b. The shipper is on one and the receiver is on the other 500 milesaway. The shipper calls railroad one and orders a car. He gets a fixed amount of time to load the car or is charged a penalty called demurrage. Now the car is picked up. Railroad one will set out the car.for railroad two as close to its final.destination as possible because they get the percentage of the revenue based on the percentage of miles they haul the car. Railroad two deliversthe car and gives the receiver a set amoint of time to unload it or charges a penalty. All the costs,every carin interchange service, where railroads interchange and far moreinfo is containedin the official railway equipment register or orer publishedquarterly. Well worth getting an old one on ebay asit is invaluable tounderstanding real railroads.
If the receiver is in the same town as the PRR interchange, but a team track is available on a different line, sometimes the car will show up on the team track. PRR charged a quite a bit to pull a car from interchange and spot at the customer’s dock.
There are all kinds of arrangements, agreements, obstructions and other things going on that sometimes, you need to know somebody who was there at the time and knew what really happened.
In the older days, generally empties went back to the owning road via the nearest interchange. This stopped the car-hire clock. Many times there was a rush to interchange the cars before midnight, saving a day of car-hire.
Railroad cars are in the "accounts’ one railroad. That means that that railroad has physical possession of the car. they are responsible to pay the per diem/car hire for the use of the car and are liable for damages to the car and lading.
When a car is interchanged the car moves for the account of one railroad to the acount of another railroad.
The reporting marks of the car have nothing to do with it. The car could be a PRR, UP or NdeM. Doesn’t matter.
In certain areas there are reciprocal switching agreements where one road will perform switching sevices for another.
Not sure about what you mean by “their own”. Do you mean ccars with PRR initials or cars being interchanged to the PRR? Really the answer is generally no, sorta.
In yard to yard interchange where the transfer is fairly short, the railroads are more likely to deliver than pull. The NYC takes the cars for the PRR to the PRR yard and the PRR takes the cars for the NYC to the NYC yard. These cars are any reporting marks, not just PRR or NYC marked cars.
If the distances are large and a railroad can come up with enough cars, the railroad may originate a train of interchange cars for the other railroad. So The UP runs a train of perishable traffic from Washington
I am no expert, but as I understand it from my father they also traded the miles the cars and engines as well. Let’s say the NYC had 1000 miles of moving Pennsy cars around and the Pennsy had 900 miles of moving NYC cars around then the Pennsy would owe only for 100 car miles. No sense of exchanging huge piles of paper when you can do it with a pen. They also did the same with engines, per-diem, demurage charges etc. You would see Pennsy engines in the NYC yards and vice-versa. Example: My father worked in Walbridge yard in Ohio Near the P-Company and the NYC yards. One of the jobs he would bid on was taking mixed freight loads destined for P-Company and NYC destinations as well as both roads empties. They would strike out on the Toledo Terminal (jointly owned by several railroads, including C&O, NYC, P-Company and others) go over to the NYC Stanley yard, deliver the loads in various railroads cars (C&O, AT&SF, T&P whatever railroad) as well as many NYC empties, pick up cars destined for the C&O Walbridge yard. They then procede back out on the TT and go to the Pennsy Outer Yard, repeat what they did at Stanley then head back out on the TT back to the Walbridge yard, and by then they have probably traveled 30 miles at most, and have worked well over 8 hours. Easy gravy overtime job, not much work, lots of time spent getting a slot to go out on the Toledo Terminal and dodge coal drags, manifest freight and the infrequent passanger and M&E trains travelling through East Toledo. Of course the NYC & the Pennsy had crews doing the same thing. If all three railroads had an equal number of loads/empties(imaterial) transfered between each of the yards, the net results would be no railroad owed anything. All that being said it depended on the agreement that each railroad had with the other. That may have changed everything, and what happend at those three yards may not be the way it worked at any other location. If this is not correct somebo
In Northern Michigan there is an interchange between ex CNW (now CN?) and a shortline LS&I. They each have their own interchange yard (basically just a siding) within a few miles of each other. The railroads cannot pick up cars from another railroad’s track. So if the CNW has a car that needs to be transferred to the LS&I, CNW will drop it in the LS&I interchange yard. LS&I can then pick up the transfer out of it’s own yard and drop any cars in the CNW yard. The two railroads will not pick up any transfer cars off a track that is not their own.
I have no idea if the is a general rule or just the agreement that these 2 railroads have, but it makes for an interesting operation to be modeled.
Guys,A lot of times we would pick up(say) 2 B&O empties and instead of dragging those cars back to the yard the conductor filled out a form and we would leave those B&O empties on the B&O interchange track…The reason that was done PRR did not want to pay the B &O a demurrage fee for holding their cars.
As far as industries.If a car arrives on the (say) NYC bound for a customer on the PRR the inbound car was spotted on the interchange track even though the receiver may be in plain sight of NYC’s track and interchange.PRR was not about to give trackage rights and open up a customer to a competing road.Of course if there was a prior agreement or if there was something for PRR to gain in giving trackage rights to the NYC the PRR would give the trackage rights other then that…
Trains Magazine has covered such rail/customer woes for years to include one receiver that seen his car sit in plain view on a interchange track for 36 hours before it was finally picked up and spotted at his dock.
As far as interchange runs…Some railroads could pickup their interchange cars when they brought their interchange cars to the connecting road while other interchange agreements forbid the connecting road to pick up their interchange cars.
PRR/C&O had such a agreement…Both roads paid full 5 men crews to deliver interchange cars twice a day.One 5 men crew could have done the job!
Such jobs was gravy since you made one trip in 8 hours and still got paid for sitting around half the shift.
Railroad owned cars wer charged on a per diem, not mileage rate. After some time in the 1980’s IIRC, they went to an hourly charge.
Private cars are charged on a mileage basis.
So if both railroad gave each other the cars on the same calender day, they could haul them around for thousands of miles and it wouldn’t matter.
Diesels and EOT’s are charged on a “horsepower hour” basis. So if my 2000 hp engine is on your railroad for 100 hours, you owe me 200,000 hphrs. If I have one of your 1500 hp engines for the same amount of time, I would owe you 150,000. So the net would be at the end of the month, you would owe me 50,000 hphrs. These numbers bounce around several million hphrs a month. When one railroad owes the other millions hphrs they start giving hphr pay back engines.
Unless a car is one of the ones in a limited service so it’s marked “when empty, return to ABC Ry. at Cincinnati Ohio” or something like that, a railroad might try to find a load for the now empty car to carry back towards it’s home. A Santa Fe boxcar in New York might when empty be filled with a load going west, perhaps to Chicago or Kansas City. That way the empty car is being used (and earning money) both ways.
I think there were as many scenarios as there were railroads and track arrangements. I was a fireman on a B&O transfer run in Toledo many years ago. We would leave the B&O yard in Rossford with a train (loads and emptys) bound for the C&O yard in Walbridge and for the Ottawa DT&I yard in North Toledo. At Walbridge, we picked up cars from the C&O that were bound for Rossford and eventually departed for the DT&I yard. In North Toledo, we dropped those cars destined for that yard and picked up any cars destined for Rossford. Then we headed back to the Rossford yard to deliver our collected train. These runs are called “Pullers” around here and ran on the Toledo Terminal RR tracks that ran around the city. This run probably covered 30 miles round trip and took at least 12 hours. In the early days (say after 1905), TTRR crews did the work, but later the railroad was sold to seven of the major RRs in the area and they took turns doing the Puller work. Later, the work was done by any RR that wanted to do it, still using trackage rights on the old TTRR trackage. The trains are still called Pullers.
Stix,I’ve seen my fair share of empty foreign road cars going home with their doors open hauling air.Most railroads would rather load their car or even a IPD car over a foreign road car.
But don’t the rules of interchange specify that an empty foreign road headed in the proper direction be preferred to a home road car? (And I do realize what the rules say and what actually happens are two different things.)
I suppose it would be up to the guy in charge of filling empty car request and if he was a company man…A good company man loads his empties first then any left over freight moving toward a foreign road cars home rails the clerk may assign that car as a last resort…A empty home road car isn’t making money for the company…
Railroads never played well together-even today there’s a tenancy to load home cars first.