Can any one help me find Rolling Stock rosters for Class 1 Railroads.
UP has one available in PDF on their website. I think it’s in the public information section, but you should be able to find it. It lists by number ranges and types.
The Railway Equipment Register of North America (not the exact title) is a quarterly publication that lists all of the American, Canadian, and Mexican freight cars in interchange service. The book includes descriptions of each car or car series, the owner’s name, and it applies to Class 1s, shortlines, switching and terminal roads, plus private line operators, i.e., car owners or car lessees whose reporting marks end with the letter “X.”
Check with the Colorado Railroad Museum because they may have some recently published copies for sale.
Hope this helps!
You can find the ORER on Ebay also, I got mine for 1992 for about $20.00, the sad part is my grandfather was a traffic manager at a railroad and had them in stacks, as well as the other book, name ecscapes me that listed stations and times of all the US and Canadian railroads.
If I have heard correctly, the ORERs do not list individual numbers for car series. I wonder where Carl Shaver is at.
That’s the name. Ask for The Official Railway Equipment Register for North American Railroads.
In recent years, the only ones I’ve seen have been for freight equipment. I don’t know if a passenger equipment register is being published.
A passenger edition of the ORER hasn’t been published for years because there hasn’t been any need. The last edition of which I’m aware was published in 1969 and it was pretty thin. Many roads did not include some equipment in their listings (IC’s suburban MU cars come to mind) because it wasn’t in interchange service.
RPC Publications did publish several editions of a passenger car roster in the mid to late 1970’s.
Carl was taking a brief vacation.
Current issues of the ORER are available in a four-issue (one-year) subscription for $318.00. A little out of reach for most of us, I’m afraid.
However, due to the sheer size of the freight car fleet (probably about 50-100 times the size of the nationwide diesel locomotive roster), you’re probably stuck with the ORER, deficiencies and all, if you want an idea of what’s currently out there.
As Eric mentioned, the ORER will give you series of cars, not individual numbers. If the railroad bought 500 cars of a certain type a few years back, the ORER might still show the original series limit, and tell you that, say, 350 of these cars still exist. There would be no way, in normal circumstances, to track down which 350 cars are still around, using just the ORER.
Other deficiencies of the ORER:
–some of the private companies currently operating good-sized fleets of cars don’t have a listing in the ORER. Their reporting mark is shown in the index, with a “not listed” star by it.
–descriptions of cars aren’t always reliable. Many aluminum-bodied coal cars are shown as “steel” in the verbal equipment descriptions. That’s one of the less amusing errors.
–although information in the ORER is based on data from UMLER, somebody from the railroads, private companies, or leasing companies involved is probably responsible for keeping it updated. There are many, many instances of the same piece of equipment being shown under more than one company’s listing (takes a detective who knows what he’s doing to sniff 'em out! [;)]), and I wouldn’t be surprised if some cars show up more than twice!
Best bet would be to get the newest ORER possible at a railroadiana show, then go to one of the railroads’ UMLER websites still accessible to the public and “refine” your information. CSX and BNSF both offer UMLER information to the public on their websites–I won’t give the addresses for fe
To add a little more information to this excellent thread, I thought you might like to see an example of the record. This is the record for the City of Prineville Railway, a railroad operating in Oregon. This citation is from the Jan. 1981 ORER.
If you down load this and print it, it should be easier to read.
Jim
Ok thanks for the replys i will check that out.
Also is there a way besides pics. IS there any sites?