No PTRA

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

The “American Shortline Railway Guide, 5th Edition” (Kalmback Books, 1996, 0-89024-290-9) that I ordered arrived yesterday. I was looking through it and noticed it does not list the Port Terminal Railroad Association. It does list Texas City Terminal.

2

Yup,
And we dont appear in most listings either…

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/PP/eqpnf.html

http://www.ptra.com/

http://www.trainweb.org/southwestshorts/ptra.html

http:http://www.ptra.com/pages/basetariff2000A.pdf//www.uprr.com/customers/
shortline/lines/pt.shtml

http://www.thedieselshop.us/PTRR.HTML

This is about all I could come up with…

Ed

3

“Prisoner exchange” sounds interesting.

4

With all due respects to Ed and his co-workers, the reason for PTRA’s invisibility may have been the lack of its own diesel motive power prior to the MK1500D’s. About 25 years ago, when I visited my brother in Houston, I was aware that one operation I was watching was PTRA but the MKT GP7 doing the switching did little to advertise that fact.

5

True…
Until we received the MK1500Ds…We used leftovers from our member lines…
Ever see a UP SW10 up close…looks like a SW9 mated with a GP9…rode like crap, but tough little suckers, would pull till the rail burned up under them, and if you got one on the ground, it rarely did any damage to it.
We have used old SD9s from SP, old GP30s from Santa Fe…GPs of all kinds from all of our member lines…most on their last lease on life.

Andrew…
Prisoner exchange was a program where we took plant managers and shipping managers from our customers, and put them to work on the railroad for a day or two…and let them work along side our guys…so they would see first hand the problems we face when they don’t do their part.
And, our trainmasters would spend a day with the plant managers to see it from their side.

Part of this was a success…we have a totally electronic order system, our customers go on line to request cars, pulls, spots, intra plant and interplant moves, and can check rates and get quotes on line…they can even find their car in the yard or in the Class1 consist…saves about 200 hundred phone calls a shift, and really speeds up our ability to work the plants.

Ed

6

Off the top of my head, I can think of one railroad listed in there that had no locomotives, it is Port Railroads, Inc., for more details on it see this topic.