I had a question regarding freight operations in the 50s.
You typically see a train, lets say B&O for this example, hauling other railroad’s cars along with its own. How does it work when the B&O railroad delivers a NYC, or PRR, etc. car to a business as far as who gets paid, etc? I know this is a complicated one, or maybe not as much as it seems if you know how it works.
I’m planning a PRR based coal layout and am wondering what other hoppers I should run besides the home road…the same with regular freight. It would be great to know how and why certain cars of various road name end up where they do. This has been a confusing topic and I haven’t found any resource where the answer is laid out in black and white. Thanks! ----Rob
I believe that the N&W and the Pennsy routinely exchanged/leased hoppers as needed. NYC boxcars were towed occasionally by the Pennsy and vice-versa, even though they were fierce competitors.
Then, in my history, on my railroad, I even place a single CP coal hopper in the line-up behind both the Y6b and the J1 when I wish to…sorry…when the need is great. [:D] I only ever had one snarky comment from a fella, but he was rode outa town on a rail.
I have just recently started running operations on my railroad and I am working through the same issues. Here is the way that I have interpretted it. Industries shipping out product that are on the Santa Fe ship via Santa Fe rolling stock. So, since my entire railroad is SF, all outgoing products are shipped in SF cars. Incoming shipments are shipped in whatever railroad’s cars were the shipment is originating. For example, if a business on my railroad is getting parts from a company in Wyoming it will come in a UP boxcar. Wood from the pacific northwest will come on a SP flatcar. Tractors from Wisconsin will come on milwaukee road flats, and so on. I still have SF cars inbound, like oranges from southern Cal will come in an SF reefer. I’m not exactly sure if its prototypical but it’s logical to me.
The equipment is normaly leased for a short term. Even though railroads compete with each other, it only makes good business sense to work together for the greater good. For example, no single railroad runs from coast to coast in the US. So if I were a fruit shipper in California and wanted my produce to be on the east coast in 24 hours so my product is available and fresh to my customers, how will the railroad do this?
Option 1:
Take my produce on a UP reefer from CA to a transfer yard in say Salt Lake City, then unload my veggies onto a reefer from KCS, then transport to another transfer yard in maybe Chicago, then unload my veggies onto a reefer from CSX to deliver to the destination.
Option 2:
Take my produce on a UP reefer from CA to Saint Louis, transfer the reefer intact to a CSX train leaving in 1 hour to JAX.
Option 1 makes me, the customer, have to trust my produce to 1. not get stolen in transfer 2. stored at the correct temperature to a clean reefer without me ever seeing it in person to ensure it meets my standards, and 3. my delivery will get there sometime next week maybe
Option 2, my shipment gets to the east coast in 24 hours and I ship again with your railroad because you delivered. The UP reefer can be refilled with quality east coast products and shipped back to CA full.
Multiply this scenario by the millions of tons of shipping every day and you can quickly see why it’s valuable for a railroad to have lease agreements and work together for the collective good. The US mail, UPS, FedEx and others ship by rail in just such a manner.
if you can get a copy of the aar car service rules it will explain a lot of things for you. usually a railroad would try to furnish the shipper one of their own cars for loading, and get foreign line mtys off their rails and back home as soon as possible to save per diem charges… if no suitable system car was available, they would use a car that belonged to the terminating carrier if possible. next best choice would be a foreign line mty that would be closer to home rails when unloaded that it was at the present time. for example, a shipper on the southern railway in tennessee wants to load a 40’ box car with widgets for a customer on the illinois central at chicago. first choice would be a southern box car, if none was available then give him an ic car, no ic car? how about a cnw mty then the ic can give it to it’s owner when made mty at chicago. last ditch effort might be a northern pacific car which would at least be closer to home rails in chicago than it was in tennessee. or in very rare circumstances if all the previous options failed, to hell with the rules and give him a fec car just as long as we don’t loose the business. i remember when the “q” at e st louis was so desperate for grain cars they paid a $5.00 cash bounty for any suitable empty regardless of who it belonged to. when ever possible, mty cars were returned via reverse route of the loaded movement.as a general rule, no carrier was responsible for handling an mty if they did not get paid for hauling the load. cars in assigned service subject to car service directive 145 were returned empty to the point of origin. this is especially true with cars hauling auto parts since they contained racks for that particular part and were only good for loading that particular kind of engine, transmission, sheet metal stamping, etc. other assigned cars might be for flour loading or some other dedicated service. some cars became contaminated by their lading to the extent they were not good for any other commodity. no bod
if you want your produce on the east coast within 24 hours, you better relocate your farm to somewhere east of the mississippi river. the standard gauge of 4’8 1/2" was established so loads did not have to be transfered from one car to another.
I don’t think it was “established” than it kinda “fell” to it.
recall there had been many rail gauges early in history, the “standard” gauge is rumored to be the tire rut width of Roman wheel chariots, the width of 2 horses, and the measure just carried down the line.
For some black and white answers to what cars in what proportion should be on a PRR layout, check out back issues of Keystone Modeler on the Pennsylvania Technical and Historical Society website http://www.prrths.com/
The e-zine is on the National web page - lots of great info with back issues about 14 months or so
You can buy CDs with PDFs of all the issues for fairly reasonable prices
Bascially, there are two transactions for hauling interline rail freight. One is the frieght charges from A to C via B. Shipper or receiver (consignee) pays that. Railroad AB and Railroad BC participate in the haul, and they devide the freight revenue between them
The second transaction group is car ownership. If Railroad AB is the car owner, Railroad BC will pay it for the per diem charges. If a third railroad owns the car, both AB and BC pay the third railroad the per diem charges.
Railroads have mutual agreements pertaining to car service rules. Also, the ICC dictated certain rules pertaining to car service and car hire (per diem). In general, after a car is unloaded at its destination, it should be returned to the car owner. Normally, that would be via reverse routings. Cars could be diverted to pick up backhaul loads under certain conditions.
The coal cars, of course move from mines to power plants. You would not see back haul business in coal cars. Therefore, the mines served by PRR would normally have all PRR hopper cars. Exceptions would be cars owned by mines or by utilities.
Automotive plants were exceptions. Railcars would be assigned to specific locations. Railroads particpating in hauls from those plants would assign railcars to pools for each of the plants. Any railcar in the pool could be shipped to any of the destinations to which the plant ships. The proportion of assigned number of railcars was computed based upon the revenue proportions. This calculation gets a little complex because it requires indentifying all destinations with specific routes and with revenue divisions for those routes. Estimated carload volumes were entered into those calculations, too.
The ownership of the car has no bearing on the freight charges (the cost to the shipper or consignee for moving the goods). The freight charges are paid to the railroads that move the cars, actually to the railroad that cut the waybill and then that railroad divides the money between the railroads on the route of the car.
The owner of a car gets paid a combination of mileage and car hire or per diem. Per diem was a charge that was paid by whoever had the car on their property at 12:01 am to the owner of the car. It had absolutely NOTHING to do with the freight charges. Eventually railroads went away from per diem and now use “car hire” which is an hourly rate. Private cars genrally get a mileage rate.
What do you mean “coal based” layout? Makes a big difference. If you are modeling the mines, then you will use predominately all PRR cars. If you are modeling the users (steel mills, power plants, etc) then you will use cars that match where the user buys their coal. For example if you have a boiler at a factory and retail coal dealer, the boiler might get PRR or B&O cars because it burns soft coal, but
First to add to what Dave said…Let’s say PRR will deliver a Santa Fe boxcar to Miles Milling Company…The PRR will get a small fee(from the shipping charge) to handle this car from the Santa Fe PLUS a switching service charge from the receiving customer when the car is delivered…Now the customer has 72 hours to unload this car before its charged late fees for holding a car…
Now in PRR coal country PRR hoppers would be use…
As for regular freight…
Very good question that has many answers that varies from division to division…
A East-West division like the PRR’s Ft.Wayne Line would be strong in Western road cars since it was a direct route from Chicago to Pittsburgh and points East.Now a North-South line would be strong with cars from the South and North. railroads.On the other hand PRR’s old Sandusky line would see solid N&W hopper trains going to Lake Erie,steel mills,coke plants and maybe power plants.Same held true on other railroad
First the car gets picked up by a local. The local brings it to a yard where it’s sorted and eventually put on an outbound train (not necessarily a fast process - I’ve heard several times that the average time that a car spends in a yard is over 24 hours). By the time the car leaves California it’s probably been at least a day and a half. Allow at least another day to travel to someplace like Chicago or St. Louis to be transferred to an eastern road. (And that’s all assuming that it hasn’t had to be transferred between different UP trains in order to follow the correct route.) Another 20-40 hours wasted interchanging and sorting the car again. Once on NS or CSX it’ll probably travel on at least two more trains and then a local to deliver it.
Perishable cargoes like fruit will be expedited and handled with priority, but a plain load like a flatcar of lumber could take a couple weeks from shipper to receiver.
In my hometown in southern Ontario, there’s a utility pole company that receives its poles by rail from British Columbia. Cars can come from CN or CP (via the two shortlines that service the city) and I heard once that they prefer to get the cars routed over CN because it only takes a couple weeks, while cars from CP averaged about a month to travel from the shipper in British Columbia.
As long as a “short term” lease is months or years, I’d agree. If you are talking about loading cars, they aren’t “leased” in the sense I think you mean it. A customer or railroad might lease cars for a particular service. So if I am a customer l
The most common reason you see one railroad’s cars on another railroad is INTERCHANGE - that’s what makes railroading work. You can load a boxcar in Seattle (regardless of who the owning RR is) and ship it over three or four different railroads to somewhere on the east coast.
Railroads will use whatever cars are available in it’s yards, but generally try to get a car headed back in the owner’s direction…for example let’s say a small railroad in Chicago had an online shipper that needed two boxcars that would go to New York. In their yards, the small RR has two Boston and Maine boxcars, and two Santa Fe boxcars. All else being equal, they’d probably use the B&M cars to get them headed back towards B&M country. They wouldn’t have to of course, if the Santa Fe cars were better suited for some reason they could use them.
Sometimes if a railroad needs cars for a long term situation, it might LEASE them from another railroad, just as they may lease motive power. This would be more likely in a situation where the whole operation was online - let’s say the Great Northern in Minnesota has a surge in ore traffic between the Mesabi Range and their ore docks in Superior WI. They may try to lease some cars from the Missabe Road, or Northern Pacific etc. to tide them over.
In your coal hauling example, I suspect a lot of the PRRs coal would be going to online companies, so they probably would be using PRR cars to ship it in. But other cars from other r
Listen to Brakie and Dhusman. Basically there are ‘car service rules’ Back in the 50’s(to make it simple), a car was ordered and loaded on a railroad ‘A’. Railroad ‘A’ got a good share of the initial origination revenue because they went out and got the ‘load’. The second part of the division of revenue was the split for car miles. The 3rd pieces was the ‘switch’ to deliver/spot the car. All of this was worked out in the published ‘tariff’.
If the car used happened to be an ‘off-line’ car, the railroad paid a ‘car hire’ charge(about $6/day for a class 1 box car) to the owning railroad(also known as ‘Per Diem’). This charge was calculated at ‘Midnight’. For example; a PRR box car is used to load a product on the MILW road a Perry, IA. The MILW pays $6/day for use of that car until it leaves the MILW rail system(usually Chicago). The MILW gets a nice piece of the revenue for the load as they loaded it, and they got maybe 300+ miles of the overall transit. The car is interchanged to the PRR at Chicago. The PRR get the ‘mileage’ from Chicago tro Altoona, PA, and gets a ‘switch’ charge to deliver/spot the car at the ‘consignee’.
These ‘rules’ favored the railroad that got the load, biut the mileage was a pretty fair division. This gave the ‘incentive’ to the originating carrier to go out and get the business. In the 1980’s, the ‘Staggers Act’ relaxed the rules and the current system involves the participating carriers and the customer to set the rate. It is not publically ‘published’ and you do not see long winding routes(via multiple short lines/terminal operations) trying to get the routing(for the same tariff). The old system allowed other carriers to ‘match’ a tariff, but many times they were not making money at it. Lumber was a good example. A routing via several short line would be specified via the ship