Freight Car Interchange (with other modellers)

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

In the past, modellers would interchange freight cars with each other via USPS. But there are two problems with this: $$ and the need to make arrangements with the receipiant.

Is the 21st century of interchange Geocaching? Geocaching is a hi-tech treasure hunt were the players can move trackable items called “Travel Bugs” across the country. (see: http://www.geocaching.com)

If a freight car were to have a “Travel Bug Tag” attached to it and released into the wild, it would face the same hazards that a real freight car would face in interchange service - it would depend on other people to move it, you would have an accounting of the actual miles that it has travelled when it reaches a destination, and the car also face the risk of damage or destruction in transit.
The one difference is that there is not a fixed destination for the car.

I have done just this with a cheap freight car to test out the above concept. You can track this car’s progress by visiting:
http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=TBGX30

If there is interest, I can expand on this concept and a couple of twists on this idea.

Later…

2

This is so cool!
Very interesting!

3

awesome idea! I wish I would have thought of it. Hopefully one day that car will be pulled through my subdivision. it’s kinda like spotting the WSOR MRR boxcar. HE HE But for a real question is how does it from place to place. do you ship it or just trade it off until it gets where it wants to go?
Andrew

4

Andrew,

Cache boxes are peppered all across the country, typically they are old ammo boxes. The idea is to place the object in the cache box. The next person who finds that cache box will pick it up and move it to a different cache box. At this point the freight car (Travel Bug) can end up in any cache box. It is totally up to the person who found it.

The interesting part of this concept is that you have a log of your freight car’s adventure on “foreign rails.” Here is another RR Related Travel Bug that has travelled over 3000 miles that illustrates the tracking fuctionality: http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?tracker=TB44c8

If the concepts proves successful, I will be seeing pictures from your (and others) subdivisions.

Mike