-----Original Message-----
From: STMFC@yahoogroups.com [mailto:STMFC@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Tim
Gilbert
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2006 1:55 PM
To: STMFC@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [STMFC] hoppers in interchange,

Joseph Walder wrote:

What are your thoughts on what the anthracite railroads did to foreign
open top hoppers during the steam era?

Joe,

Between November 5th and December 10th, 1952, New Hampshire's Suncook
Valley RR received four loads of Anthracite from a mine or breaker in
Coxton PA which was in the Lehigh Valley: - D&H 3835; L&NE 14087; LV
17350 and PRR Glca Class Gon #209917. From November 1st to December 20th
when the SunVal was embargoed prior to abandonment, there were seven
inbound loads of anthracite (including the above), and three loads of
bituminous. All three of the bituminous loads were loaded into home road
hoppers. Only three of the six hoppers loaded with Anthracite were
loaded into home road hoppers - the seventh was the PRR Gon.

This may be an indication that roads loading anthracite were more apt to
poach foreign hoppers rather than classify the home from the foreign
ones which could then be returned to their owners as empties. Please
note, however, that hoppers of bituminous roads were not loaded with
anthracite for this small sample.

Most of the railroads in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania would
use foreign cars on-line to fill with coal and they tended to remain
on-line going back and forth between the coal mine/breaker and the
customer before the foreign railroad called and asked where their
hoppers were. You can find this fact in one of the Morning Sun books
because there's a comment in the book (I apologize to the author of
the book because I forget the exact book, but it's one of the freight
car books on the CNJ/LV, Erie/DL&W, D&H, RDG).

In these mine-to-breaker-mine movement cycles, did they include only
hoppers of the anthracite roads, or include some from the bituminous
roads, too? For this purpose, please consider the PRR and ERIE as
anthracite roads.

I know that the NYO&W Railway was doing this in the late 1940s-1950s.
Many B&O, D&H and PRR cars were in O&W coal trains moving over the
road (especially after WWII when Europe was rebuilding and coal was
being shipped like crazy to the East Coast ports to be loaded on boats
to head "across the pond").

Carrying Anthracite, Bituminous, or Both? Also, to the best of my
knowledge, the Port of New York was equipped to load barges with coal,
but not ships while I don't believe any southern New England port was
equipped to load ships with coal.

Now yes, there was some leasing agreements involved, and yes, the O&W
did purchase both PRR & NYNH&H hopper cars, and yes, the O&W did not
have many of their own cars available for interchange, but there were
many comments from former O&W railroaders that said that if there was
a foreign car was on-line and available, then it was "grabbed" and
placed in the train.

That seems to be more of a testament to the condition of the O&W hopper
fleet more than anything else.

Ben Hom may be better able to comment on this than I after his study of
hopper movements on the Rutland.

Tim Gilbert




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