Greetings,
This weekend I was doing a count on my freight cars and noticed that all my freight except 2 cars are railroad company cars.
No private companies, whats is your percentage of railroad Vs. private car companies.
Just curious?
Mark in Texas
100% railroad owned cars
Well… I dont know the exact percentage but I count some 80 cars in the freight section. Approx 8 are dedicated to the Dominos Sugar fleet and 4 are dedicated to the ore, and three are Bethlehem steel cars.
If you expand private to include those who used own reefers to haul products then I would add about 12 Reefers to the list. My fleet includes every type except log cars and cattle cars. That will be added on by end of April. I suppose the log cars and cattle cars will be private owners as well.
Most of the fleet, about 98% are RR company cars.
Gordon
I have about 10 of 200 cars that are private cars this is split between chemical tankers and reefers
i think i probably have 3 that a private owned. i have 2 ADM trinity hoppers and 1 Cargil hopper. thats it i think. i probably have more but just can’t think of it.
This is an interesting topic. I fall into the majority railroad owned category as well, however many of you may be interested in the Trains magazine from a few months ago that discussed railcars and their production. A larger and larger number are receiving X marks due to railroads selling many cars in their fleet and using lease fleets to make the books look better.
It was also interesting to not the numbers of cars that the major roads owned. Virtually no tank cars are owned by major roads, and I’ll bet the few that they own are MW. Also you could just about tell a western road from an eastern by the types of cars that they had on inventory.
It was really interesting and very useful for a model railroader. If I were home I’d give you the actual month. Maybe someone else can help out…
My roster is probably somewhere in the 65% railroad owned category. out of my roster of 625 cars (or so), I have a large number of tank cars, reefers, Mathers stock cars, and a few Mathers box cars. None of these cars were railroad owned. Railroads rarely owned more than a smattering of tank cars and reefers, especially in the 1950s, which I’m modeling. Railroads would rather lease single commodity cars (except for hoppers).
About 30% of my fleet is private owner because two of my major cargos are grain and Kalin. Some grain is carried in private owner covered hoppers ADM Cargill ect,
Kalin is mostly hauled in private owner cars as these cars are in captive service for a certain company.
I have just over 500 frieght cars in HO right now. Of that, nearly 150 of them are private owner.
About 100 cars with 5 not RR owned
Not counting unbuilt kits, I think I have eight cars not on the bad-order list right now, and the only non-RR-owned one is a Coors reefer car.