On Feb 9, 2008, at 11:43 AM, Ned Carey wrote:

Were stock cars cleaned just after unloading and on the return trip
home be clean? Or would they return home dirty and be cleaned before
loading? In other words should empty cars be modeled as clean or dirty
inside?

Standard practice on the western RRs, where stock cars could travel
long distances without going off line (or very far off line) was to
clean stock cars at the nearest cleaning facility to the point where
they were unloaded, so that they would be ready for re-loading wherever
they were needed. What other RRs did, especially with foreign road
cars en route back to their owners, I don't know.

Richard Hendrickson