Not to go into the nitty-gritty of Chinese arithmatic, but....

In general terms, how were shippers charged for the railroad's
services. In particular, a shipper has 3/4ths of a 1944 box car
volume worth of widgets, but the railroad supplies a 1923 built 8
1/2 foot tall car, which gets filled to the rim with the same number
of widgets. Do the shippers get charged for "a car and up to 50 tons
times X number of miles", for "volume times weight times miles", or
what? Same thing applies to grain shipments (actually, the photos in
the 1932 ARA box car book which show the different lines on the
inside lining, for different grain types, is what got me thinking
about this!)

A "high level" explanation of how this worked might help making more
realistic car assignments during an operating session.

Thanks!

Phil Buchwald


--- In STMFC@..., "Jerry" <jrs060@m...> wrote:

--- In STMFC@..., "Gene Green" <lgreen@e...> wrote:

"Included in a lot of stuff I bought on eBay was a bunch of
supplements to Freight Tariffs. At first I was just going to

throw

them away but then I thought I'd put them on eBay and see what

they

would bring. Today I thumbed through them to get an idea of

what

they were so I could write a description.
When I first glanced at them they looked as indecipherable as
Chinese arithmetic but perhaps these things have some use for a
model railroader.
My question is, is there anyone in this group who has experience
using Freight Tariffs either in the real world or as an adjunct

to

modeling?"


Gene, I was a grade "A" reviser for about 5 years and worked
with this stuff all the time. And yes, it would seem like
"Chinese arithmetic" if you did not know how to use a freight
tariff. It was done that way on purpose by the railroads so
shippers would not be able to dispute a freight bill unless
thay too knew what they were looking at!
For the model railroader thay are just about useless, and
the mechanics of using them are way too involved to try an
explain here. About the only thing that I use from that part
of my railroad career is the "Route Guide" tariffs, as I
do know how to waybill and route cars correctly, and it dose
make for some very correct model paper work and routings.
But again, I should caution you, it's very involved and it
really is all about making a profit in railroad industry
as well as saving money as a shipper.
In short, you can make an entire career out of working with
that stuff, and you do not want to go there if you are just a
model railroader. You are just not going to get that much out
of your time investment to learn the freight rate side of it.

Regards,

Jerry Stewart
Chicago, Ill.