I often wondered how railroads made money with seemingly very little track. The L & HR had 73 miles and trackage rights on another few. Many railroads I’ve read about had what appear to be small amounts of their own track.
What did they do, load a car and drag it to the end of their track for another line to pick up? It would not seem profitable to load up a train, only to unload it 73 miles down the line.
I’m not very well educated on what went on back in the day.
Back in the day (up to the 1920’s) paved roads were a curiosity. A U.S. Army convoy took two months to travel across the width of the USA. Anything that moved much farther than from Farmer Jones’ barn to the local freight station traveled by rail.
More recently, some rather short railroads make a living serving industries that can only be reached by county or local roads that lack the clearances and load capacity to accept highway trucks, or ship to/receive from commercial partners that prefer rail. (Obviously, rates enter into that equation.)
For a given carload, the originating and terminating railroads charge additional fees, over and above simple mileage, that can add a lot to the bottom line of a busy short line. This is why some industries which rely heavily on rail traffic operate their own ‘captive’ railroads, which may be little more than in-plant switching operations with an interchange track at the perimeter fence.
For railroads, as for so many other things, it isn’t how big, it’s how profitable.
Chuck
To add to Chuck’s points I believe the L&HR was an anthracite coal carrier which was a quite profitable commodity through, roughly, the first half of the 20th century (it was also the stable of several other fallen flags like the Reading and Lehigh Valley).
The Lehigh and Hudson River was what was known as a bridge route. Traffic from the Pennsylvania, Reading, Lehigh Valley and the CNJ used the L&HR to reach Maybrook. Maybrook was the western end of the New Haven’s Poughkeepsie Bridge line. Once the NH was merged into Penn Central, the bridge traffic disappeared.
Size doesn’t matter, it’s traffic. The Minneapolis Northfield and Southern, a belt line around the north-west-south of Minneapolis, was smaller than the L&HR but was very profitable because it moved a TON of cars between the various other railroad’s yards (GN, NP, Soo, CGW, Rock Island, etc.). A railroad got paid the same daily rate for moving a car whether it was on the railroad one hour or all day. The MN&S was adept and moving cars very quickly, then picking up and delivering more.
There is a book on the L&HR but in a nutshell the road began as a group of roads laid end to end then as a link to haul anthracite (and in fact was under control of the Philadelphia and Reading) before ending up as a bridge route… Even more important were the NJ iron, zinc, and limestone traffic taken to PA (Palmerton). With the opening of the “P’kipsi” bridge, the route became important for PRR, CNJ, RDG, DL&W, B&O, LV to get traffic to the NH at Maybrook. In the 1950s stock ownership included PRR/CNJ/SanteFe among others. Before the tunnels were dug, the PRR ran a passenger train, the Federal Express, from D.C. to Boston via the main line, the Bel-Del, the L&HR and NH (the DL&W kicked in a few cars via the Port Morris connection, too). There was trackage rights to Allentown on the CNJ where RDG and CNJ traffic was interchanged, the LV interchanged at Phillipsburg as did the PRR’s Bel Del; the DL&W connected at Andover Jct. but the L&HR had trackage rights to the DL&W’s POrt Morris Yard. The crowning moments of the line’s history had to be the Piggyback Jet Service provided by the NH and PRR from Boston to Chicago in which the L&HR played an important role picking up the train at Maybrook and delivering it to the PRR’s Bel Del at Hudson Yard in Phillipsburg, NJ. I remember one night in the “tower” (shed) at Andover Jct. (witht he DL&W Sussex Branch) when we all had to vacate the building as the Jet approached from the northeast. The shed was located on the southwest quardrant of the diamond and no one (from Warwick offices to the towerman) felt it was safe for a 55mph train to cross the diamond and pass the shed while it was occupied. Just in case. The burning of the “Pk’ipsi” bridge followed by Conrail, doomed the road. Plus the zinc smelter at Palmerton, PA closed and there was no need for
I’d certainly go along with this.
Of the many separate railway companies taken into the UK’s Great Western Railway fold in the 1923 amalgamations, arguably the best financial performers were 3 South Wales coalfield lines, the Taff Vale, Rhymney, and Barry Railways.
For the vast bulk of their business was moving export coal from pit to port (i.e. excluding that portion handed off to the Great Western for destinations off their lines), the maximum distance of each loaded trip was rather less than 30 miles. But what they did was very, very, well organised and managed, with a clear customer focus, and that’s what made the big difference.
Hwyl,
Martin
The CEMR Pine Falls subdivision is 67 miles long, and it is doing fine. It has quite a few good industries on it’s line, and at Norcran Industrial Area they switch the industries 5 days a week
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Manitoba_Railway
