The AAR states that “as of year-end 2017, the North American railroad grain car fleet consisted of nearly 283,000 cars (owned by railroads and non-railroads) with a capacity of 1.43 billion cubic feet.”
You have to spend money to make money. (Invest in your plant) Plenty of places in the real world out there have seen zero investment in years while a few of the newer facilities on the receiving end get it.
When I wore a roadmaster’s hat, I put plenty of tracks out of service to protect our operating crews from facilities that were beyond dangerous. Inevitably, the trainmaster or supt. would get a complaint that shipper X was in a world of hurt. Once you showed the industry what was wrong, there would be grumbling that died immediately when FRA/OSHA/PUC got dialed into the equation. The serious shipper fixed his problem and the fly-by-nites left the country. Any investment in the facility generally paid for itself in short order. (AG business, especially grain elevators, also had the reputation of being the most clueless/dangerous in that department.)
Yeah, but there’s a huge difference between “fix your tracks so your cars don’t fall over” and “tear out your perfectly adequate pit for a larger one so we can bring in this new car I designed!”
Hey! I know the solution to that! Close all the hump yards.
I’m sure both EHH and JGK would approve.
Jeff
But will it gain general acceptance by the shippers or become an outcast?