The part we haven’t really discussed is the customers and what’s being hauled. Depending on where you are, what customers you are serving and what they are shipping, you might not see a single home road car or you might see 90-95% home road cars. For example if you modeled the MP branch from Angleton to Freeport you would almost never see a home road car (or foreign road car for that matter). Virtually all the cars would be private owner tanks and covered hoppers. On the other hand if you modeled the Crystal City Branch of the MP, you might never see any other car than a home road car because they would all be hoppers and gons loading sand and aggregates out of the mine.
If you are modeling central Florida and aare modeling a phosphate mine then you would most likely see a large number of home road cars because the home road would have cars specifically designed to haul phosphate. The ACL/SCL would have hundreds or thousands of those cars, the PRR, none.
The general car mix is a good starting point, and might be great for overhead traffic that just runs on through trains, but the local business is way more dependent on what the local customers need. For example if you have a brewery you will need CNW covered hoppers because they grow hops in the CNW territory and that’s what the CNW wil ship the hops in. If you have a newspaper or printing plant that uses newspaper, you will see CN or CP boxcars because papermills on the CN or CP made a lot of the newsprint and shipped it all over the US.
Stix makes a very good point about the reciprocal agreement between the Northern Pacific and Merchants Despatch Transit, the refrigerated and specialized transportation arm of the New York Central System. Similar collaboration between the Missouri Pacific and the Wabash resulted in the formation of American Refrigerator Transit. A modern day version of ART is visible in those large, white, reefers bearing Union Pacific shields and ARMN reporting marks, we occasionaly see.
Due to the fact that harvest times for various crops were dictated by the growing seasons of their regions, reefers often sat idle for extended periods. Their reduced cubic capacity and narrow doorways made them unsuitable for other cargo. Railroads were not excited about putting money into equipment that would sit idle most of the year which is why you saw such refrigerator car operators as the above mentioned MDT, whose majority player was the NYC. Not only did MDT cars bear the heralds of the NYC, but also those of the IC, GM&O, and Lackawanna, as well as cars with no herald at all.
Two more notable collaborations took place between Pacific Fruit Express and the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad and also between Western Fruit Express and Fruit Growers Express. BAR needed cars for the potato rush which took place in the winter months. PFE needed cars during the summer and fall harvests in th west. An agreement between the two entities saw BAR cars working for PFE until it was time for the potato harvest, at which time, they would be joined by surplus PFE cars in Maine. The degree to which this was an ideal arrangement for both parties and Pacific Car and Foundry can be seen in the 857 reefers PC&F built for BAR with PFE assisting with the financing. They were built to the same blueprints as PFE’s R40-26, the only difference being the graphics on their sides.
This gets into the area of the “per diem” system. Basically, if railroad A’s freight car is on railroad B, railroad B has to pay railroad A for the use of their car while on railroad B’s property.
However, I believe it’s also to a railroad’s economic advantage to haul a loaded car as opposed to an empty. So let’s say UP has an empty Pennsy boxcar on their property, and a customer who wants to ship something to Pittsburgh. They can let the customer load the Pennsy car and then send it east towards the PRR, rather than just send the empty car back - unless the car is stenciled that it’s in some type of captive service, and must be returned empty.
Thanks for the volume of good information. Yes, it had never really occurred to me that foreign road named cars would come from where products or commodities are generated. Being a modern era modeler, its either home road equipment or generic leasing company owned, so that thinking was never prompted.
Really, the bottom line is the US railroad system is designed to allow cars from one railroad to go pretty much anywhere in the country, so businesses can ship their products and receive the raw materials they need from anywhere. Cars of newprint rolls from northern Minnesota might be sent to New York, as might reefers with fruit from California or Florida. Construction equipment built in Illinois might go to Washington state or Washington DC.
Yes, the majority of cars you’d see in a particular city or state would be from railroads serving that area. Next most common would be railroads those railroads connect to. But beyond that, cars from any railroad might show up on occassion.
Most likely, you can find a number of books (like Golden Sun’s “Trackside Around…” series) or DVDs about the place and time you’re interested in modelling, that will show what cars were in use there.
Actually the system covers pretty-well all of Noth America. That’s why it’s not unusual to see Mexican cars here in Canada.
At the steel plant where I worked, there was always a string of Union Pacific plugdoor boxcars (can’t recall if they were 50’-or 60’-ers) at one of the sheet-coil mills. They were used to move the coils of coated steel (not galvanised) to what I assume was an automobile plant somewhere in the U.S. It was always U.P. boxcars, never CN or CP, even though both of those roads switched the plant and would have had comparable cars available.
Canadian road cars presented some interesting circumstances as far as interchange, at least up to the late 1980s. Due to Canadian customs regulations, cars built in the U.S. were restricted to international service between Canada and the U.S. and were not to be used in domestic Canadian service. There were other Canadian customs regulations that restricted cars to international service only, but the ORER does not go into detail as to what they are. The British Columbia Railway, whose domestic reporting mark was BCOL, used BCIT for its international service cars. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific used CNIS and CPI respectively, for their international cars under Canadian customs rules. Canadian cars used in the automobile industry were marked CNA on the CN, and CPAA on the Canadian Pacific. They traveled to all parts of the U.S., and possibly Mexico, seemingly without restrictions, except those of the supply chains they were equipped to serve.
Cars in auto industry service were some of the most restricted cars in railroading. They were fitted with equipment to handle highly speciallized components for individual makes and models such as Chevy Impala rear axles or Dodge hoods. During model year change over, these cars would be reconfigured if necessary, to accomodate these changes. One of the factors reputed to have played a part in tamping down the wild and radical model year changes of the 1950s, in the 1960s is, the car manufacturers had to eat part of the cost of re-configuring the cars each year. Cars bearing original Erie Railroad or, New York Central “Early Bird” markings could regularly be seen on SP’s hot “APLAA” auto parts train, in the early 1980s. Remember the Erie and Lackawanna merged around 1960 and the Early Bird harkens back to the mid 1950s. Auto parts service seemed to age equipment gently.
Canadian (or Mexican) railways’ cars weren’t supposed to be used domestically in the US, and US cars weren’t supposed to be used domestically in Canada since customs duties weren’t paid to import the cars (in either direction).
Additionally various import tarriffs made it attractive to purchase equipment within the country where it would be used, hence EMD, Alco, and Fairbanks-Morse all had Canadian subsidiaries that built locomotives for the Canadian market, and Canada (and Mexico) had their own car-building companies. 95% of all Canadian railway equipment was built and purchased within Canada, and 95% of the business of the Canadian equipment manufacturers was for railways operating in Canada.
After the free trade agreements it became more attractive to buy across the border, and Canadian railroads began acquiring more US-built equipment, and the remaining Canadian builders sold to more US railways.
Not just automotive cars, but the CNA and CPAA marked cars were cars that were built/acquired in the US, and considered the same as US railway’s cars (i.e. not exported from US to Canada and no customs duties paid) for the purposes of both international and US domestic service. The majority of automotive related equipment was purchased in the US in this manner since a lot of automotive (especially auto parts) cars a
And his answer is just as relevant. Tracks connected all the way from Canada to Mexico back then too.
Free trade agreements maybe mean more stuff is flowing back and forth now, but it has always been possible for Canadian cars to make it to Mexico, and for Mexican cars to make it to Canada, and US cars to make it everywhere.
While some things are less likely than others, it’s possible for a car from just about any railroad in North America to end up on any other railroad.
I think modeling what is/was common/normal is more effective than modeling ‘oddball’ stuff. Of course North America was connected by rail in the 1960’s, but before NAFTA there were many more obstacles to crossing an international border - let alone two.
If you visited a Canadian railyard in the 1960s, virtually all the cars you’d see would be Canadian cars, a US yard would be virtually all US cars. Very different from today.
I suppose it’s possible someone once shipped something from Mexico to Canada via rail in the 1960s in an NdeM boxcar, but I suspect it would be very rare.
As noted, the gauge was 4’8.5" from the northern most point in Canada all the way to Ciudad Hidalgo, on Mexico’s border with Guatemala. And, as interesting as the international interchange of freight cars was, passenger equipment was also swapped across both borders. In New England, RDCs belonging to Canada’s Dominion Atlantic Railway could be seen on the B&M, in Boston’s North Station.
Canadian National joined up with the Pennsylvania, New Haven, Boston and Maine and, Central Vermont, to offer international service between Washington DC and Montreal, via New York City, New Haven CT, Springfield MA and White River Junction and St. Albans VT. Cars were supplied mainly by CN, PRR, NH, and B&M, until Patrick Mc Ginnis made the B&M an all Budd RDC railroad. Yes, those black and green CN cars in a train with PRR tuscan red and New Haven’s stainless steel and orange were quite the sight.
Going south of the border, Mopac and NdeM swapped 10-6 sleepers at Laredo, Texas on the daily run between St Louis and Mexico City. The Mexican cars added additional color to the Texas Eagle. A note in the June 1965 Official Guide of the Railways, informs the traveler that the southbound Mexican side of the run due to depart Nuevo Laredo at 6:15 PM, “could be held until 7:45 PM when necessary, for border inspection”.
Another detail to be noted on house cars coming from Mexico, at least in the 1980s, was the sealant applied to the doors once the car was loaded. This was to make it obvious once the car had been loaded, it hadn’t been tampered with. Remnants of this sealant clung to the door and doorway for months after the car’s return from south of the border. Anyone modeling a railroad in a border state, interchanging with Mexico in the 1980s, should have some boxcars and/or reefers with this detail.
The cars which I saw in the '60s (and mid-to-late '50s) here in southern Ontario were from all over North America, even though CNR and CPR might have been most predominant. This might have been while sitting at a crossing, watching the freight cars from everywhere as they passed, or sitting on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, with a telescope in-hand, checking out the railyards and industries which were viewable below in the city of Hamilton.
When I got my driver’s licence, there were lots of train-watching spots within or near the city, which offered good views of North American rolling stock (and locomotives, too)…so diverse that it was almost like a map of North America rolling by.
That’s one of the main reasons why I have so many foreign-road cars on my layout.
Railroad amalgamations and takeovers may have made the railroad system in North America more efficient, but it also made it more boring.
Agreed! I bought my kids a childrens book when they were little that was all about watching a freight train go by at a crossing and seeing all the cars from different roads. 99% of those roads were long gone when the book was published.
Can you imagine doing anything like this manually before computers took over? It wasn’t until the late 60’s that railroads started to get mainframes let alone pcs. No wonder businesses were broke long before they knew it.
Yes I’m aware of all that. Here in Minnesota, CN’s mainline has run through northern Minnesota for a century, and the DW&P ran freight and passenger trains from Canada to Duluth MN, often including Canadian cars - which had to be returned to Canada within I believe 48 hours or pay extra fees/duties.
The point you’re making is actually kind of the point I was trying to make. Seeing Canadian cars in the northern US wasn’t uncommon, and it would make sense that Mexican RR cars showed up along our southern border back then. But how common was it that say a NdeM boxcar from Mexico would go all the way across the US to a destination in Canada before NAFTA? My guess would be ‘rare to never’. COULD it have happened, that a shipper paid all the associated extra duties etc. to do it? Yes. But did it happen ever? Did it happen a lot? Are there lots of photos of Mexican cars in Canada in the 1960’s?
There are a lot of contingencies in those questions. Generally your chances of seeing a car is somewhat dependent on how big the railroad’s car fleet was. It would be more likey to see a PRR car than an NdeM car by the fact that there are several times more PRR cars than there are NdeM cars. Even if duties etc. wasn’t an issue, it would be “rare” to see an NdeM car just because they a very small (a rare) fleet.
Also it would depend on how much business Mexico and Canada did, pre-NAFTA. The chances of a Mexican car vs. the chances of a US car would proabably be close to the level of business with Mexico vs. the level of business with the US.
You are probably correct that there weren’t many NdeM cars in Canada, but there probably some just because if it can happen on a railroad it probably does.
As far as there being “lots” of photos. That’s a double edged sword. Since a Mexican car is relatively uncommon, its quite possible that they got photographed more than just another CN car. There might be more Mexican car photos proportionally than there was Mexican traffic, just because they are a “photogenic” car. On the other hand since they are not as common, and in the pre-NAFTA era relatively plain, they might not have been noticed and therefore not photographed.
I would think there’s sort of an economic “Catch-22” at play also. If a company in Toronto needed one or two boxcars of something a month, I would think they could find whatever it is they needed in Canada or in a bordering US state, rather than spending the money (duties, tariffs, etc.) and time/delay risks to ship a car or two all the way from Mexico.
Conversely, if they needed a lot of something, like say they got a great deal on steel I-beams they needed to build a large building with, it would probably be cheaper to ship it directly from Mexico by sea to a Canadian port rather than by rail.