I suspect we need information on operational practices to answer this, but my guess is that you'd see more open doors in locals that gather the empty cars. After they're cleaned and checked at the major yard, the RRs closed the doors before they hit the main line. Hence both observations are correct, yet incomplete.

David Soderblom
Baltimore MD

On Sunday, Jul 20, 2003, at 04:21 US/Eastern, STMFC@... wrote:

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Message: 20
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 00:26:56 -0400
From: "Steven Delibert" <STEVDEL@...>
Subject: Re: Working doors on box cars

closable. OTOH, a review of 4 frt trains in the Big Boy Collection video,

of 254 box cars rolling >past the camera, only one had a partially open
door. At least one train is headed west with...I'm >pretty

Then the video is a bad sample, or practices varied from region to region,
or UP ran an unusually tight ship (certainly not unbelievable) -- I think
the rules always said that cars weren't to be moved with doors open (keep
the hobos out), but (mostly in The Empire State) I rarely saw a train in the
40's-50's-60's without at least a couple of wide-open boxcars in it --
especially noticeable because they were so fascinating as they came abreast
and you could look through to daylight on the other side.

Steve Delibert

David Soderblom
Operations and Data Management Division
Space Telescope Science Institute