Ok, here’s a freight car question for everyone…
I’m starting to collect and build my layout, a New York Central railroad…
Now, I’ll have all NYC locos and passenger cars, but what about freight cars? Should I have some other nearby RRs cars mixed in as well, or some other Northeastern companies? I assume this is what everyone does instead of having all one railroads rolling stock?
I’m sorry if this questions sounds kind of weird…
Doesn’t sound weird to me. What would be weird would be all your freight trains with all NYC cars. Question, if you loaded a NYC box car in NY city going to Los Angeles wouldn’t that NYC car wind up in a UP or SP freight train? Think the other way around now with some one shipping freighr from LA to NY city. Short answer- mix 'em up. Ken
Prototypically, the only trains that wouldn’t have a mix are unit trains. Its really as simple as cars are booked together for one length of the journey, but then seperatted annd pulled apart for their destinations, and often cross onto other railroads, which is why cars appear on other railroads. I wonder if a system could be designed and implemented if anyone is interested in “modelling” the per diem charges administered by railroads when their cars are on another railroad. Might be an interesting twist, might be just plain boring.
Any car for your time period could be found on your railroad because of interchange. Sometimes it was just single cars going to another railroad; entire trains were interchanged as well.
Indeed…The NYC in Columbus Ohio would handle complete coal trains from the N&W.C&O would Handle Clinchfield coal trains now,add the coal trains from the Southern and L&N you will get the picture.Don’t forget the reefer trains from the West coast to the East coast.
Don’t discount the possibility of other road’s passenger cars showing up in your NYC consist. Just as with freight cars, passenger cars were sometimes forwarded to another road for a continuation of a journey. It was less common than with freight cars but certainly not unusual. For example, a passenger car from Los Angeles to Chicago might forward a sleeper car or two into a NYC passenger train bound for New York or Boston. That would save the passengers the trouble of changing trains in mid trip.
You would need to do a little research to determine which railroads the NYC interchanged their passenger cars with, which NYC trains accepted foreign roads, and and at what interchange points. Also remember that a passenger trains would sometimes pick up or drop off a car or two in the middle of a trip. Passenger trains didn’t always run as a single unit from start to finish. Switching of passenger cars can add a lot of interest to your operations.
Nick,
Reefers came from as far as California in order to bring fruits and vegatables to the east coast. Since NYC was such a monstrosity and far-reaching, any roadname is game.
Tom
I’ve read many places that the average for home road cars on a railroad for your time period was 50% home road and 50% foreign (sp?) I don’t think that’s scientific or anything but that’s what seems to be the standard.
For modern times the number goes down to 30% home road and 70% foreign.
Andrew
I would have thought the number would be higher for modern railroading because mergers have reduced the number of Class 1 roads to just a handful. The remaining lines cover a much larger territory so you would think there would be less interchanging rather than more. Could it be that pooling of equipment has lead to more use of other road’s rolling stock.
While any road name can appear, the largest number of cars will be NYC rollling stock, then rolling stock of connecting lines, and then others. If you’re modeling a particular part of the NYC system, some car types (i.e. stock cars, hopper cars ) from foreign roads may be scarce. One mix would be 50-35-15%, but you could alter this if you wanted to emphasize NYC to 60-30-10%.
Enjoy
Paul
Just to add this to the mix…
You probably wouldn’t find as many PRR cars on the NYC. PRR was their biggest competitor for the Chicago - New York run. Both railroads would compete for interchange traffic heading to either end point.
This would also hold true for any other railroads that paralleled them from end points, that would depend on the line/route that you want to model.
Just a thought
Rick
To add to the Pennsy inter change. Shipping steel out of Pittsburgh in the '60s & '70s bothe the NYC and and the Pennsy would long haul to Chicago and then back haul to Detroit to keep the shipments on home rails for maximum revenue. The shipments could have been routed out at Toledo north to Detroit to cut down the miles the cars travelled. Probably the time in route was shorter even with the switching in Chicago than it would have been with the hand off in Ohio.
Also with regard to refrigerators, remember the vast amount of traffic coming from the slaughter houses in Kanas City, Chicago, etc that would have been heading East to market.
Will
You need some New Haven RR cars.
If you model pre-1954/55 you need just the script herald cars (New York, New Haven, and Hartford).
Post 1954/55 you can add the block NH McGinnis cars.
A railroad never has just there rail cars. Many other railroads cars get mixed in with other railroads so yes you need to buy other cars to go along with your rr.
Whoa up old son! Both the NKP and ERIE pulled their fair share of NY-Chicago Traffic…[:D] Also PRR/NYC/NKP/ERIE interchanged cars on a daily bases.Remember a car loaded in NY on the PRR might be going to a customer on the NYC in Chicago…This load would be interchange in Chicago though.
Brakie, you are correct, I stand corrected [
]. But I would think overall, those 2 would try to keep their stuff off the others rails as long as possible. I was going to mention some of the other eastern roads that had parallel lines too, thanks for naming them.
There are folks who have lists of consists, it would be interesting to see what the actual mix was!
Rick
Rick,The PRR had one of the highest tariffs around so,some rail customers would unload their freight at freight house or team tracks rather then having their loaded car interchanged with PRR for final delivery to their factories and having to pay the higher tariff…Of course this only worked in Cities where there was more then one railroad and where PRR would make the final delivery though interchange.
I don’t know about PRR & NYC mixing but with box cars around here(Richmond Va.) CSX will often have as much NS stuff as its own & vise-versa.
Ray E