How do the Class 1 railroads keep track of their locos and freight cars? I watch the BNSF in southwestern Wisconsin, and see cars from every major railroad in every train I see. Do the railroads pay a fee to use another road’s cars?
Thanks for the info.
Greg–Thanks for the detailed Information.
They pay a fee but I don’t remember if it starts right away or after a certain number of days. I think they have a certain grace period in which to get the cars back to the originating railroad.
First, as to keeping track of cars. On the Class I railroads, no car makes a move without that move being reported to the central computer system. In some cases this is done directly from the locomotive cab, in others at the end of the run. These record in turn are send to the AAR’s TRAIN II (TeleRail Automated Information Network II) in Cary, NC. Some small railroads just report interchanges to TRAIN II.
As to payment, railroad marked cars are paid for by the hour and by the mile. Only the very smallest switching railroads have a five day or 120 hour time exemption, otherwise every minute and every mile count. Payment amounts are determined through the AAR’s CHARM (Car Hire Automated Rate Master) file, and vary from railroad ro railroad and by car series. Railroad pay private car owners (cars ending in “X”) so much a loaded mile and that’s it.
This is a very complicated system and the subject of much haggling, legal maneuvering, and legislative activity over the years.
Since you also asked about locomotives, I’ll mention that railroads compensate each other for the use of other’s locomotives by horsepower hour. Usually it is paid in kind and not in money, i. e. if BNSF used 2,000,000 hp hours of NS power this month, NS gets 2,000,000 hp hours of BNSF power next month.
Besides what the other responses have already said, it should be noted that a sizable portion of the railcar fleet is pool cars. That is, they belong to a pool that all the railroads own, so in a sense they are everybody’s, and nobody’s. They can be used by anyone wherever they are. This greatly simplifies the accounting and the routing, and reduces the empty mileage.
RailBox, RailGon and anything TTX are pool cars. (Are there others?) I believe in some cases railroads allow certain of their cars to be used like pool cars, e.g. the 20% or so of the autorack fleet that isn’t owned by TTX.
Joe
You can add auto parts boxcars to the pool list.This will include the 60 footers as well.I also believe some 50 footers as well.
Pool cars and “free runners” like TTX are the exact opposite. TTX Corp. owns Railbox and Railgon. TTX Corp. in turn is owned by the Class I railroads, some Class II railroads, and a shipper. The railroads with an agreement with TTX pay a lower rate than the few others not participating but it most assuredly does NOT simplify the accounting in any way. Pool cars, on the other hand, are cars assigned to a particular service, such as General Motors auto parts, and are pooled in accordance with the percentage of carloads of that traffic each railroad handles, so if NS handles 40 percent nationally, it provides 40 percent of the pool, even if the cars run back and forth on the West Coast. Car hire is still paid the same as any other car. It is a complicated business and was part of my responsibilities at the short line railroad I retired from.
On all cars and engines there is a electronic tag that a trackside detector recieves a reply signal from.These are located usally afew miles from classification yards to keep track of location and time on the system.A train consist can be made from this report instead of walking the cars.Help?