Re: Automobile Car Shortage
water.kresse@...
It appears, from reading between the lines in Mr. Lane's article that the driving factor for the all-steel 55-ton hopper cars was that there was an across the country coal car shortage and they would benefit many industries serviced by many railroads. Some of the other USRA proposed designs were less universally needed.
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Al Kresse
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From: "Steve Lucas" <stevelucas3@...> To: STMFC@... Sent: Sunday, January 18, 2009 12:09:51 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [STMFC] Re:Automobile Car Shortage I have to wonder if a wartime (or pre-war) shortage of steel may have been a factor in reducing automobile car construction at this time, and thus availability of many new automobile box cars. I have read that the USRA had to politick for a sufficient allocation of steel to have hopper cars built in 1918/19. (Mainline Modeler, March 1982, page 20.) The article cites a RLHS article by James E. Lane that appears to quote a USRA committee meeting-- "The question then arose as to what we should do concerning the proposed 25,000 all-steel hoppers of 55-tons capacity. A few days ago Mr. Williams and Mr. Spencer had attended a meeting of the War Industries Board, the Shipping Board, and other Government departments and at this meeting it had been indicated that the amount of steel plates available for railroad use would have to be cut drastically in order to obtain enough steel plates for shipping purposes. Mr. Williams at this meeting agreed to the program proposed and this program cut down our steel plates to such a point as to preclude us from getting the 25,000 all-steel hoppers, since the steel plate allotted to us would fall about 49,000 tons short of enough to construct these hoppers. The Conference decided, however, that the all-steel hopper should be insisted upon and that we ought to find a way to get the additional 49,000 tons of steel plate." Also keep in mind the well-documented precarious financial position that many railroads of the time found themselves in. Steve Lucas. --- In STMFC@..., James D Thompson <jaydeet@...> wrote: in thatMight have been an issue with the rapidly escalating cost of steel period? [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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