I took these pics at Devore and UP Colton Yard, by looking at the names, are these roads rare? Did I get lucky and catch a few unique shortlines? Maybe these are common? I have no clue! Can someone tell me if this is regularly seen on BNSF and UP freights. Thanks, enjoy!
Mississippi Export Railroad
New Orleans Public Belt
Marinette Tomahawk and Western Railroad Company
Corinth and Council Railroad Company
Columbus and Greenville
If anyone wants to see bigger pictures i can, so let me know!
yes if it is not too much trouble
Most of these are shortline roads that serve ports or industrial areas. You can find out about each of these roads through a simple Google search.
Mississippi Export Railroad, for example, is a short switching road that connects the Canadian National (formerly Illinois Central) north-south line with the CSX east-west line.
Those are old IPD cars. Back in the 1980’s there was a boxcar shortage, so the AAR created an “Incentive Per Diem” to spur investment in boxcars. All sorts of investors put money down to for just about every shortline in the US to buy boxcars and earn the IPD. When the IPD ran out, the investors cashed out and the shortlines sold off the cars. If you will notice all of those cars have been restenciled, some have changed hands two or three times. Someplace I have boxes of slides I took in the 1980’s with all of those type cars in unpatched paint and original initials and numbers.
The NOPB is a terminal switching railroad in New Orleans, they operate the Huey P. Long bridge, the tallest railroad bridge in the US. They were also some of the earliest purchasers of Baldwin diesels.
Dave H.
Here ya go cheese dude-
I wonder how many of these boxcars are Incentive Per Diem babies of the 1970s - when every short line no matter how obscure got into the action.
Here’s a story of one Shortline and it’s IPD fleet - many of the other shortlines followed the same fate (until such time as the boxcars of the 1950s and 1960s were retired, and business started picking up so modern-design boxcars were needed once again).
There’s a story that when the incentive per diam ran out a short line in North Central Idaho that connected w/ the Camas Praries (a short line that connects as a feeder to another is a real SHORT LINE) started getting all it’s cars back they litterally ran out of track.