How closely do railroads manage their rolling stock when handed over to another railroad? For example, lets say Union Pacific sends one of its boxcars to Montreal via CN. Instead of sending that boxcar directly back to UP, CN reloads it for Calgary, and then reloads it again back to Montreal. Would UP need to be made aware of that or can CN get away with not telling UP about those moves? Or is every move of UP’s boxcar somehow monitored by UP?
All interchange cars are monitored by computer thru the AAR, so all railroads are informed of their cars moves.
Car mileage and hire is calculated thru this system.
Some railroad owned cars are ran as “free runners” and can be loaded by any road for any destination. Similar to the RBOX cars. This is also controlled and monitor thru the AAR.
Matt
And when a host railroad makes repairs to a foreign car the home road is billed for it.
LIRR made money doing this since they had no cars to be repaired by off line roads.
ROAR
I guess “controlled by AAR” would require honest and accurate input from all roads…or do freight cars have some kind of onboard monitoring and tracking system that the railroads can’t tamper with? Otherwise what would prevent a railroad from underreporting miles and usage of foreign cars? Any given railroad would be incentivized to minimize the use of its own equipment in favor of running the wheels off of any foreign rolling stock in the system.
Today U S freight cars carry transponders that are read from time to time. I assume the Association of American Railroads has access to the transponder reports.
All consisting as well as interchange data of each carrier goes to the AAR. These consisting reports are a part of each carriers operating data systems. As well as tracking mileage each carrier is putting on foreign and Private owner cars that are on their lines the AAR also makes data tracking products available to shipper/consignees who sign up for the services and provide fleet reports across carrier boundries.
Thanks… .the AAR sure has a great website. One could spend hours reading it. …lots of good info there.