Ok guys I am new to trains, so my question is this. When I see trains say for example Chicago and Northwestern, how do they end up pulling Milwaukee road cars, or NS, or BN? Do they lease these cars? I thought they would pull their own company cars plus private industries. I apologize if this is a stupid question, but I really am a rookie, and I just don’t know. Any help wouuld be appreciated
Simple version:
Railcars get interchanged between railroads to get the goods in the cars where they need to go. The “home” road (i.e. the car’s owner) pays the other roads for handling a car loaded on their railroad, and bills the customer for the whole trip.
Conversely, when the car gets to its destination and is unloaded, the railroad that has it may load it for part or all of the return trip, in which case they pay the road that owns the car for its use and bills their customer.
In either case, the customer generally only gets one bill. Either the shipper pays the originating railroad, or the consignee pays the terminating railroad. Whichever railroad gets paid settles up with the rest.
The only stupid question is one that is not asked!
Bob Boudreau
It also makes for much more interesting Modeling. I would mix them even if the real roads did not. I fanticize memories and imaginations, not past realities.
I agree with Bob. There are not stupid questions!!
And to be quite honest - the question here really isn’t all that obvious to a newbie. If one thinks about it, the railroads were running a very complex system. I can only imagine the paper work required to keep track of all the cars - it’s loadings and who to bill. And it was done decades before the advent of computers!!
That was NOT a stupid question. Not even top 2500 around model RR boards from what I have seen. If fact, I thought it was a rather intelligent question.
this also answers the question about how far the rails were to be spaced apart and why there is one standard rail width…when the railroads first began, each railroad company had their own track width so for freight to go from one part of the country to the other, the goods would have to be unloaded from one railroad companies’ rolling stock and then be re-loaded to another railroad companies’ cars…you can now imagine the mess that created with all the loading and unloading going on…so to alleviate this problem, President Lincoln enacted a bill that would standardize the track width among all railroads (well almost all, there were still plenty of narrow gauge mountain railroads) so that one piece of rolling stock could travel from point A to point B on only one set of tracks yet get to point B via various railroad companies…the width?..4’ 7"…the standard width between the wheels of the old Roman chariots…Chuck
I think alot of new people to MRR get confused when they see people saying “I model the Milwaukee Road” or whatever the particular roadname is… I know I was hung up on it, too, thinking that if you’re modeling the C&NW, you better have all C&NW gear on that railroad or some “mature” model railroader is going to see what you did and give you a hard time about it… Not the case at all.
Chuck - I always had heard and read that the standard US gauge was 4 foot, 8 and one-half inches… Now I’m confused… Or should I say … still confused. 
that was my original answer because that is what i always thought it was (4’ 8 1/2")…I wanted to be sure so i did a search and the the website said 4’ 7"…who’s right?..I think i’m going to go with my original answer because I think it is right…4’ 8 1/2"
I would suggest you read “Railroad: What It Is, What It Does” by John Armstrong. This book is an excellent introduction to the business of railroading.
Enjoy
Paul
Here’s some cool info on the standardization of track gauges.
http://standards.nasa.gov/documents/RomanChariots
http://encarta.msn.com/text_761557841___5/Railroads.html