May Ask MR Follow-up

Model Railroader
1

OK Forum friends. Got another one for you. In the May Ask MR, a question was asked about operations of one short line using running rights on another. Would the rules discussed also apply for a privately owned engine(s)?
Scenario is this: Privately owned lumber mill has it own road engine(s). (Still developing idea as to one or two. A couple of spare GP30s.) It would use track rights to haul log cars, its own lumber and pulpwood cars and wood chip cars. The cars would interchange with a Class II road via a terminal road.

2

If that isn’t plausible, then another option would be to lease and operate the trackage. This is what the Delmarva Central RR did when it began operations around 2016, leasing Norfolk Southern tracks on the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.

Hope this helps,
DFF

1 Like
3

A shortline operates the track already. They handle general freight.

4

From everything I understand the lumber mill’s engines would only really work doing switching on the mill’s property and wouldn’t really go out onto the short line’s tracks due to liability issues. There would however obviously be tracks for interchange between the two at the edge of the mill’s property. I do not give the good ol’ cliche “rule number one” as an answer because I figure somebody who asks questions like that is serious about operations and wants real answers and not platitudes.

5

Yes. As I protolance, I want to get as much as right as I can. (I have a few things stretched as to era but I try to keep everything as close as I can.)

Part of the question also goes to what colors I paint the engines in question. If the shortline owns them, they would be an already designed scheme. If the sawmill owns them, I’d need to design up a scheme. (Designing up one wouldn’t be a major hassle. I’ve come up with so many schemes, one more wouldn’t be a problem.)

6

In the very early days of railroading, some systems were organized as literal ‘rail roads’ where people could run what they brung as long as it could be given wheels and axles to fit the gauge. The ‘common-carrier’ obligation was solved by allowing any reasonable operator on, and providing the equivalent of the intermodal ramps of the '60s in communities that wanted their share of freight traffic.

When a railroad came to be built without full double track, the issue of priority at sidings became important… as did signaling. One system provided a post halfway between sidings; whoever was ‘first to the post’ had the right-of-way and anyone else had to give way back to the siding. This worked fine in the age of early adopters, but as soon as there was any substantial traffic the results can easily be imagined. Still, it would be possible to imagine a world where private operation, not just private ownership of rolling stock, would be possible (just as we can imagine a world in which steam locomotives were actually required to “consume their own smoke”).

More to the point: a private entity wanting to operate their own power on unit trains has a precedent: the early Detroit Edison coal trains. The utility owned both cars and engines, but the operations were entirely conducted by railroad employees. I see no reason why a similar arrangement would not characterize a log ‘unit’ operation, where capital requirements and liability concerns would both be satisfied. But you are still left with careful legal contracting, and the need for satisfactory insurance coverage that would be subject to insurance underwriters’ oversight.

Now, it’s possible that such agreements could be made that would permit “mill” employees to operate unit trains. I am not thinking that this would involve ‘traffic rights’ unless the mill ownership, Riffin-like, were able to have their mill trackage declared a ‘railroad’ in law, but that course certainly has sometimes-agonizing precedent. Expect all FRA responsibilities that apply to ‘the general system if transportation’ to apply to the mill’s equipment and trackage, for the training and personnel management of mill crews to be satisfactory to railroad management, and for the railroad to demand that one of its route-qualified employees be present as a pilot (and his services reimbursed by the mill on a cost-plus basis) whenever the unit train is actively operating over the line of the railroad.

Another approach that might work is the kind of time separation sometimes seen on these smaller railroads. Traffic can be restricted so ‘railroad’ moves are only made at certain times of day, so there is no chance if a ‘railroad’ move interfering with a unit-train move. That might easily permit the unit trains to operate with appropriately-qualified private employees during the time the track is essentially ‘engaged to be waiting’ for the mill trains to run. Still requires the mill to take out and maintain suitable full-liability insurance coverages.

7

In your case, I doubt the shortline would let the lumber company run over its track to directly interchange with another railroad. I am presuming the lumber company equipment is suitable for interchange service. I also doubt the shortline employees would be happy having someone else take their jobs in this case.

Detroit Edison example was good. Another one would be the Quabog Transfer operation that ran on Central Vermont in the 1980s. They loaded lumber trailers on flatcars for TOFC service from St. Albans, VT to their facility in Belchertown, MA. The provided the power, painted in their own scheme, and CV the crew. Also in the ;80s, Shamrock Coal bought the power and hoppers to L&N specs but painted them to honor the old Oneida & Western. L&N provided the manpower.

Another alternative would be for the logging company to own the shortline. All of the logging company trackage could be privately owned/operated with the shortline being a “common carrier”. Numerous examples of unit log operations combined with common carrier operations exist.

1 Like
8

@VaCentralRwy
The shortline interchanges with that same set of companies as well.
The idea of the company owning the engine but having the regular railroad provide the crew is an interesting idea. (The log cars are owned by the Class II shortline.) I just have to figure out a caboose for the log train.

9

From a July 2017 thread at MRH entitled *Revisiting “Modern” Logging Railroads: “Then there were several private logging railroads that had trackage rights over common carriers- both Hammond Lumber and Pacific Lumber Companies had trackage rights over parts of the Northwestern Pacific, and Pickering operated over a couple miles of the Sierra Railroad mainline.”

10

Yes! Here in Minnesota, the state legislature passed laws in the 19th century that taxed private railroad property much higher than a “common carrier” (i.e. a railroad subject to federal regulations and interchange rules) railroad. So the vast majority of logging railroads were incorporated as common carriers - even though some of them only ever carried logs.

A good example is the Split Rock & Northern RR, which was owned by Split Rock Lumber Company. It ran from where the Split Rock river flowed into Lake Superior (near where Split Rock Lighthouse was eventuall built) up into what is now Superior National Forest. AFAIK it only ever hauled logs and perhaps supplies for the logging camps, but I guess if someone had wandered in from the wilderness at one end of the line and wanted to pay them to take it to someone at the other end, they’d have had to do it as a “common carrier”.

p.s. my favorite MN logging railroad name was “The Estate Of Thomas Nestor Railroad”.