HI everyone how is we all doing. I was wondering something everyday I go over the 35th St. Viaduct here in milwaukee and and for the past 2 or 3 months. I have seen brand new tank cars sitting on three side tracks. just west of Mitchell yard. They have been sitting there for a while cause they are covered in snow and dirt. Also the trucks are beginning to collect rust on them. So I was wondering if they are for the Cp/ Soo line railroad or did the manufacture send them to those tracks for. Other railroads in the southern part of the state of wisconsin Again thanks for any insight on this subject.
I think you’re just seeing stored cars that don’t have a need for them yet.
Almost all tankcars are owned by shippers or leasing companies and leased to shippers; very few are directly owned by railroads or leased to railroads. There are a number of possible answers for what you’ve seen, such as: the cars were manufactured for a leasing company and it hasn’t placed them with a shipper yet; the cars are leased or owned by a shipper that has a temporary manufacturing downturn and doesn’t need to use them yet; the manufacturer has highly seasonal traffic (for example, fertilizer) but took delivery of the cars during its off season because that was when the manufacturer could build them economically.
Railroads themselves do not buy nearly as many cars as they did 50 years ago, preferring that shippers and leasing companies take the risk of owning cars. Freight cars have a 40-year lifetime under federal law, after which time they must be retired or rebuilt. Rebuilt cars get a 10-year extension to their lifetime.
If you would write down the reporting marks (the letters that probably end in “X”) and a car number, and post it here, someone will look it up for you and tell you who the owner is and possibly what commodity these cars are designed to carry.
RWM
I’ve never seen a tank car owned by a railroad!
This guy knows whereof he speaks. Reporting mark and number can do a lot for you, in the right hands (two of which are punching out this message!).
Railroad-owned tank cars–if you haven’t seen 'em, you’re in the wrong place or watching the wrong railroad. BNSF has a lot of them for its own fuel supplies. UP doesn’t have many, but there are a lot of SP tank cars floating out there. Otherwise, most of the cars operated by railroads are in non-revenue series, and probably obtained secondhand from one of the leasing companies.
As for new equipment, RWM is right–railroads aren’t getti
CN has rounded up a large group of the the 1960’s and 1970’s Covered Hoppers then refurbished and repainted them for many more years of service. They do not look like they will be retired too soon. If they maintain them properly they will get 50 years of use out of the cars before some amazing new design is produced that will replace everything.
Andrew
I’m pretty sure those are PROX tanks. They were there the last time I was down that way. Look to be ethanol tanks.
A lot of cars are being stored right now. Centerbeam flats and boxcars are all over the place in Glendale.
If I am not mistaken railroads do not buy cars they lease them for the most part. There has to be some financial reason for that but that was the norm as far back as the 40’s.
You’re correct that railroads usually lease cars rather than buy them outright, and often shippers do to. The key point is who controls the car. So a better way of looking at the car fleet is to break it into three groups:
Railroad-controlled cars (usually carry the individual railroad’s reporting marks, e.g., UP; often carry reporting marks of a subsidiary railroad, e.g., CHTT, CMO)
Shipper-controlled cars (usually carry the individual shipper’s reporting marks which end in X, e.g., CONX)
Lessee-controlled cars (may carry the leasing company’s reporting marks, e.g., UTLX or HLMX, or the reporting marks of short-line railroads owned by the leasing company, e.g., NOKL)
Per the AAR, railroads control fewer than 1,000 tankcars of the 250,000-car North American fleet.
RWM
Except for cars owned by railroads and used for company service, tank cars and reefers have generally been leased cars for a century or more. In recent years flatcars and well cars used in TOFC and double-stack service are often leased, and starting in the 70’s “Railbox” leased boxcars have been around.
A quick guide is a car whose reporting marks end in X is a leased car. (UTLX, BREX etc.)
Before that railroads generally bought boxcars, flats, hoppers etc. but often through a trust (kinda like a mortgage) so if you look closely a car might have a placard on them saying the car was bought through “ABC Guaranty Trust Co.” or something. In effect the railroad doesn’t completely “own” the car until it’s paid for the car entirely, kinda like you don’t own your house entirely until the mortgage is paid off.
However, unlike actual leased cars, these ‘trust’ cars would carry the railroads reporting marks.
Could I offer some clarification? This conflates purchase vs. leasing vs. control of the car. Lease vs. purchase is a separate issue from railroad-controlled, shipper-controlled, or lessee-controlled. For transportation purposes what matters is who manages or controls the car and seeks to place it for constructive loading. The entity who controls the car collects the money for the use of the car. The entity who controls the car may own it outright, may have mortgaged it, may lease it, may rent it, or may have rights to share it from a pool in return for a fixed fee.
Railroads have rarely leased tankcars. Most tankcars have been shipper-owned, or shipper-leased from a leasing company, since the car type was invented. Railroads did not want to invest in what they felt were specialized cars useful for only a single commodity.
Reefers in contrast were either railroad-owned, shipper-owned, or owned by a specialized refrigerated car company which might have itself been controlled by a railroad or group of railroads, e.g., UP and SP jointly owned Pacific Fruit Express. Refrigerator line cars usually did not have reporting marks ending in X, e.g., PFE, ART. Railroad-controlled refrigerator lines pooled the cars among the owning railroads according to a schedule .
Boxcars have been around as shipper-controlle
Reporting marks have no bearing whatsoever on whether cars are leased, at least in terms of railroad companies. There are series of cars out there that were built for lease to one railroad (CSX coil cars and NS auto-parts box cars come to mind) that have now gone through at least a couple of other reporting marks and still carry the same numbers. They were leased to the original railroad for X months or years, and the leases were not renewed.
RWM says that railroads have rarely leased tank cars. It has happened, though–when the railroad is the customer. There are some UTLX tank cars out there that are stencilled as being leased to UP–and before that, they were leased to CNW! They are/were used for diesel fuel.
Another thing to watch out for are these small shortline railroads that own an inordinately large amount of equipment–reporting marks like HS, EEC, RVPR, TR, AOK, NKCR, NOKL. The cars aren’t necessarily leased to those companies, but you can bet that the cars are owned by leasing companies–and more than likely, those railroads themselves are as well. The leasing company has figured out that the car can earn them more money collecting per diem with a railroad reporting mark (with a private-company mark they only get car-hire on a mileage basis). You can’t tell from the reporting mark whom the cars are leased to. Take, for example, those EEC box cars. They’re owned by General Electric Rail Services Corporation, as is their “home” railroad, the East Erie Commercial. Yet, if you sent all of those cars to EEC trackage, you wouldn’t be able to squeeze any new locomotives out of the GE plant! Most of the EEC box cars are actually leased to the Union Pacific Railroad. I’m sure that people who have to know that, do know that, but I have no idea of what the significance of that is to GERSCO, to the UP, or to anyone who has to pay the car hire–and there is no way that anyone just looki
Reporting marks PROX are assigned to Procor Limited, a subsidiary of Union Tank Car Company. It used to be that these cars would be either built or used in Canadian service, and there may still be some way that they’re restricted to international service, but the rigid lines are pretty blurry in recent years (since NAFTA?): A lot of the PROX cars are built Stateside, and plenty of UTLX cars are used in Canadian or international service, and quite a few are even built up in Canada. You’d have to look at the markings on the car itself (see where initial tests of the tank were done) to see where the cars were built–that’s in that large rectangle toward the right. As for what they transport, an ethanol tank car carries about 30,000 gallons of product. That info is on the end of the tank.
I was looking at the cars today from the bridge and all of. The cars have PROCOR on them is that some sorta leasing company. Or is a railroad manufacture. But I could not see any thing else on the cars from numbers or anything.
Eastern Idaho RR does a lot of car storage business. Right now their storage tracks are full of center beams and tank cars.
dd
IIRC, some of those EEC boxes are former CNW cars. Must be some sort of sale/lease back deal going on.
A friend has the last name of Prox, so I keep a lookout for those cars.[;)] I have seen the tanks in 3 colors: black, white and green. I’m sure some sort of color coding for commodity is in use.
You’re correct about that–most of the upper half of the CNW 718000 series (originally ROCK and WOV cars built by Pullman Standard) went to EEC. I think UP may have negotiated a better lease deal for them or something. The other half of the CNW series are now the low-numbered MMA box cars.
Probably not for just commodity, as I’ve seen PROX sulfuric acid cars in both black and white, original paint. The green PROX cars I’ve seen are of the type used for vegetable oils, but there are plenty of black ones out there for that commodity as well. Could be a different lessee, but since it isn’t stencilled on the car I can’t say that conclusively.
This related question may be more appropriate for a new thread, but who owns all the containers that travel on the double stacks…and how is receiving a container of goods different from a rail car full, other than the type of loading dock needed and the container arrives on a frame?
When I empty the contianer, who is responsible for pick up and return to it’s real owner?
Who pays for all the empty containers sitting around in storage yards…is there something akin to Demurage on containers?
For the most part, containers are owned by ocean shipping companies, however rail carriers and domestic trucking companies have purchased (leased) containers (all containers have a alpha reporting mark that ends in ‘U’, conversley trailers that are used in intermodal service normally have alpha reporting marks that end in ‘Z’). Containers are controlled by their owners and are moved from rail or port facilities by trucking ‘draymen’. For the most part the Consignee of a container load is responsible for contracting Drayage to move the container from its point of ‘landing’ to the consignees facility and return to the point of landing.
There are demurrage concerns with all shipping equipment that is not owned by either the Shipper or the Consignee. The movement of containers across the highway also sets up the requirement of securing a bogie (wheeled frame upon which the container is hauled) and it’s resulting fees and demurrage.