Posted by: "Russell Strodtz" Malcom,

I beg to differ. In the case of an intermediate switch road they were
getting very little revenue from the movement of a "Road to Road" car.
Their profit may have been about equal to one day's per diem.
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I don't think you are really differing from what I said so much as expanding on it with good info on another common situation. I was objecting to characterizing the normal pattern of interchange operation as "frantic movement of cars".

What you say is an example of what I meant. When I said a long way from the interchange, I was thinking hundreds of miles, which was not applicable if you were working for one of the Chicago switching roads. Which railroad did you work for ? I like your brief summary of the Chicago roads.

An interesting example of a whole fleet of trains not scheduled to make per diem was NYC's westbound fleet of Chicago interchange traffic. Most of the trains arrived Elkhart in the evening from the east and departed for Chicago connections in the early morning hours and were interchanged before noon. Those schedules actually reflected time sthat traffic was ready to move in New York and New england.

Eastbound a large part of the traffic arrived and was interchange shortly after midnight. You'll recall the IHB pullers with a 1:30 am cutoff. Of course we should remenber that per diem was irrelevant to a large part of the eastbound hot traffic. That was the produce and meat traffic which was carried almost entirely in private line cars which were on a mileage basis, not per diem.




Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
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