Agree with all with a few comments. Yes, the heaters
were hung in the ice bunkers. In the case of a RB car
they would have to go inside. I think BAR had RB cars
that were constructed with a heater area that could be
accessed from the outside. CN and CP also?

Might be putting a little too much weight on the herald
painted on URTX RS or RB cars as to who is leasing them.
I would say that the road was leasing the cars at the
time they were shopped and painted but if the lease
expired URTX would usually let the cars go as free
runners until they found another lease or needed
shopping. As long as they are still getting time-mileage
settlements those cars are going to be out there running.

With the inertia of, doing things the same way all the
time, even with a car surplus foreign or private owner
free runners would probably still be used even if a
carrier had enough of it's own cars. The "Q" had a fair
number of center sidings between Savanna and Dayton's
Bluff. In slack periods these would be filled with WFE,
FGE,BRE RS cars. While this was a good geographic plan
in those days getting 50 empties from Wisconsin to
Washington was not an overnight proposition. If there
was an unexpected surge in Apple or Pear loadings in
the PNW the GN and NP would be loading anything. The
GN had the edge on the NP since their cars were pre-
positioned. Meanwhile the NP would be trying to get
MDT's and NRC's from Kensington or wherever they were
stored, at times even from the BAR. I can recall large
groups of cars moving East and West as the needs shifted.

One incident comes to mind. The "Q" required that a slip
bill be made out for every empty. Got a big string of
MDT's and NRC's for PFE loading. When they got to
Galesburg PFE cut off the flow. The "Q" gave the cars
back to the NYC at Zearing to shorten the time-mileage
charge. About two weeks later I got the same cars back
on my slip bills. They had gone as far East as Selkirk
and then were sent back West. This time they did manage
to make it to UP rails.

There was one other incident where the IHB had pulled
80 cars out of Kensington, 40 for the NP and 40 for the
IC. While the paperwork went the right places the cars
were reversed. After I found out from the IHB the IC was
involved chased down a Chief Clerk at Markham. He admitted
they had the same problem and agreed that we would just
trade cars. This was in the middle of the night with no
Management involvement at all. Just the way it should be.

Russ
Hold the phone! We're talking canned meat here, not cut meat. In the
era we're talking, there was no way to ship cut meat without hanging
it, and you can't hang meat in a produce reefer; you need meat rails,
which makes the car RSM under the AAR mechanical codes. Since most the
cars being talked about are RS, they are not carrying hanging meat.

They are also not in LCL service, just because the agent opened them
and resealed them. Keep in mind that the tariffs for most commodities
allowed multiple consignees; the car went the first, who removed his
portion of the shipment, was resealed and went to the second, and so
on. Sounds like LCL, right? But it's not, as it is moving as a full
carload under the multiple consignee provisions of the carload tariff.
The LCL tariff would be a higher rate.

And, in response to another message, I thought that car heaters were
lowered into the empty ice bunkers. In that case, the car seal didn't
need to be broken to service them.

Dennis






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