Gentlemen,

How deep into Banana traffic do we want to go?

I have the 1941-1945 ICC Class I railway freight commodity statistics. Each runs about 200 11x17 pages.

For each class I railway, it lists the number of tons shipped for the year in four categories:

- Originated on home road and delivered on the home road
- Originated on home road and delivered to connecting carrier
- Received from connecting carrier and terminated on the home road
- Received from connecting carrier and delivered to a connecting carrier

In 1941, Class 1 Railways originated 76,692 carloads of bananas carrying 820,614 tons, generating $12.4M in revenue. Average revenue per ton was $15.

It is not an insignificant effort to compile the stats for all railways, but a quick scan revealed that the ICRR did load over 179,000 tons of bananas - which is a pretty hefty chunk of the US total. The ICRR also received another 69,000 tons from other carriers. The ICRR delivered 139,000 tons to other carriers. A total of 23,457 carloads were hauled by the ICRR, with revenue of $2.96M (almost 25% of the US total.)

Other significant originating roads:

PRR              - 95,000 tons
GM&O           - 79,000 tons
Southern        - 63,000 tons
NO&NE (SRY) - 8,200 tons
NYC               - 46,000 tons
B&O               - 41,000 tons
ACL                - 25,000 tons
New Haven    - 24,000 tons
Seaboard       - 15,000 tons
Erie                - 13,000 tons
L&N                - 12,000 tons

Some west coast roads also originated banana traffic (e.g. NP at 6,500 tons), although not to the extent of the total for southern and east coast roads

Looks like the ICRR was the "Banana Road"

Dave Evans