Re: The steam era, 1960
Dave & Libby Nelson <muskoka@...>
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-----Original Message----- And the bottom dropped out with the shift to individual And the Nice analysis John. Many years ago I researched the horse drawn street cars of Oakland and Alameda, CA. The major learning was such transportation companies were usually fronts for real estate developers -- buy distant land cheap, build transportation, sell accessible land high. IOW, land values are inversely correlated with transportation expenses, which explains alot about the impact on cities with the widespread introduction of public roads into the burbs. Build a better, cheaper mousetrap.... I had not previously considered how this effect played out on freight car design -- I like your thoughts on moving from the generic bulk carrier to the specialized, dedicated vehicle. On the other end of the timeline, from Whites _American Freight Car_, there is the effect on design present from 1) declining old growth hardwoods, 2) refining steam locomotive techology and 3) the availability of cheap steel. All of which then sets logical boundaries for the "generic, steam era, steel freight car". As for usage, industry practice was *very* different 50 years ago too: relatively very few national companies and those few were mostly oriented to vertical integration, which is to say that rather than buy locally, there was a lot of stuff shipped between the companies own plants. This of course led to rate issues for intermediate production (wheat to flour to breakfast cerials) and I suspect more closed routings than would otherwise have been the case. Dave Nelson
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