hi everyone,
May seem like a silly question but I will ask anyway. Would ya run mixed rail names or would you run just one name such as Bnsf, Santa fe, B&O, etc. I am trying to running all Santa Fe. or as much as i can run mostly all Santa Fe. Just curios as to others thoughts.
Not a question with a yes or no answer. Some trackage allowed foreign roads. As another example CR would allow run through power to Elkhart Indiana to get trains through Chicago in a timely manner. Rrs includedATSF,BN,CNW,UP and some others. However ifthe power ran all the way to the east coast it would often show up in railfanningmagazines. Interchanges also allow two rr engines to show up.
Sean, I guess there are two parts to your question:
Engines - Since the late 60’s, there there been ‘power pools’ that railroads set up where locomotives operate on another railroad. Basically, the horsepower/day is kept track of and some accounting is done at the end of the month to see who ‘owes’ who for the time a locomotive was ‘off line’. On BNSF here in Minnesota, we tend to see a lot of NS locomotives. If you go out to Nebraska along the UP main line, you will see lots of just about everybody’s locomotives in trains!
Frieght Cars - Virtually all railroad owned freight cars in North America can run in ‘interchange’ service. Thus a car can be loaded by UP in Los Angeles, and the load does not have to be transferred to a CSX car for the trip east of Chicago. Again, there is accounting done, and the owner of the car collects’ per diem’ when his freight car is ‘off-line’ This system has been in effect for at least 100 years.
Jim
Yup, engines do mix, but in more specific situations.
Freight cars travel all over. If you ship a load from New York to Los Angeles, the same freight car will be exchanged from railroad to railroad as it travels, rather than reloading cargo into different cars at each junction point. In fact, it would be exceedingly rare to see a train with only one railroad’s cars in it. (Unless it’s a unit train of all the same type of cars). Just go trackside and watch some trains go by, or look at published photos and video and make note of some of the different car types and railroad names you see.
So, if you’re modelling Santa Fe, you’re likely to have only Santa Fe engines and cabooses, and a mix of freight cars from all over (but with a high percentage of Santa Fe cars).
Most railroads hve trackage rights on a foreign line to get to a location in a more timely manner. For example CSX and GTW just applied to the STB (Surface Transportion Board) for approval of a swap of GTW track in the Chicago area. GTW would get a line to Memphis and both would continue to have trackage rights (the right to run their trains on the others line. This is being done to allow more timely movement of trains around the Chicago area by CSX and it gives the GTW more timely access to Memphis.
This is being done to allow more timely movement of trains around the Chicago area by CSX and it gives the GTW more timely access to Memphis.
Sounds like the pre merger “seamless operation” “faster service” railroads used freely to persuade the STB to allow the merger…Those words was the catch words of the 80s and early 90s.
I could, with perfect validity, model using only home railway locomotives and cars.
Of course, I’m modeling a national monopoly. In 1969, almost everywhere in Japan, the Japan National Railways were, literally, the only game in town. So much so that you had to look hard in the right place to find the owner’s name on a freight car. (You also had to be able to read kanji…)
In North America, starting 'way back when, freight cars moved from where they were loaded to where they were to be unloaded by whatever railroad or combination of railroads connected the two dots. The size, names and number of railroads has changed, but the principle hasn’t.
A little later, railroads banded together to run through passenger trains, or to switch cars from one passenger train to another. That continued right up to Amtrak. (I’ve seen UP Armour yellow cars in New York’s Sunnyside Yard. I’m sure their PRR counterparts showed up on the Oakland Mole.)
In the steam era, railroads which operated seasonally would lease locomotives to other railroads which operated to a different seasonal pattern (Missabe 2-8-8-4s on the Grande during the winter, when the lakes were frozen and the Grande had a lot of coal to move…) During WWII, surplus N&W 2-8-8-2s showed up in the Rockies, as well as in PRR hump yards. (Of course, they were painted with the new owner’s name and numbers…)
Once diesels came in, with their commonality of spares and standard maintenance procedures, it became more convenient to lease locomotives across railroad boundaries - and a lot more expensive to hold a pool of stored power for most of the year so that it would be available for the one month that it would be needed. Now it’s easier for a railroad to lease that diesel unit on the run-through train than it would be to change it. All it takes is a couple of keystrokes on a standard E-form.
Bottom line. Mode
Have you taken a good look at a freight train? I’ve been to many parts of the nation and nearly all the freight trains I saw had a virtual jigsaw puzzle of a consist of cars. The trains on the KCS are no exception. I see freight cars from the upper reaches of Canada all the way down to southern Mexico on a regular basis.
Some depends on your era, though leasing and trackage rights have been around quite awhile.
The transition era that I am familiar with, locos stayed pretty much at home, unless on trackage rights or in some cases two roads under virtually the same management.
Freight cars move all over everywhere, though the usual plan is to head them back home as soon as there is a call for such a car to move something in that direction. Regional roads would be most prominant in their area: Northeast, Southeast, Mid-west, Southwest, West Coast. When grain moved in box cars they grabbed anything they could get their hands on during harvest time, that’s when SP cars would end up in New England.
Passenger cars were a bit different. Sleepers seemed to keep going. I rode on a New Haven coach from Hartford, CT to White River Jct, VT behind Central VT loco. That was about half way up the CV’s line. The NH cars did not go north of White River, so I had to change coaches. It was a CN, but CV was owned in large part by CN. Don’t know the exact rules that CV and NH worked under, but there was obviously some sort of agreement.
Have fun,
Richard
About a year ago, outside Pittsburgh PA, I saw a Norfolk Southern train with about 100 cars on it. Thing was, there wasn’t a single car on the train with NS reporting marks, and most of them weren’t even from East Coast railroads (a couple of CSX, lots of BNSF and UP, and some other stuff thrown in).
I would be more concerned with the types of cars. If you have trains just passing through, you may have cars that don’t have corresponding industries, but any car that “stops” on your layout should have a reason for doing so.