This afternoon's mail brought a package from the NMRA containing a
copy of the Cline/Culotta POSTWAR FREIGHT CAR FLEET book. I missed the
first printing but ordered a copy as soon as I saw the announcement
(here) of a second printing. I can't find anything in the book that
says this is a second printing. Perhaps it was less costly and faster
to just reprint it as-is rather than add a bit of text to the info
page??

Tom Madden

I said:
. . . I know of no one who claimed that Erie carried most of the perishables east of Chicago. . .

although Schuyler Larrabee said:
". . . The ERIE was the largest carrier of perishable traffic from the west via the Chicago gateway to the east coast. . . ."

and then Kurt Laughlin wrote:

I think part of the problem is that some people are arguing "Which RR would be used if the shippers had a choice?" while others are talking about "Which RR carried the most?"

Kurt is right about the differences in discussion, but notice that Schuyler did NOT say the Erie carried MOST of the perishables, only that they were the LARGEST of the several carriers; that can be true even if they only had, say, one-third of the total, as long as no one else carried more than a third. Then NO ONE would carry "most," or over half, of the perishables
It's clear in any case that many people in railroading believed that the Erie provided superior perishable service from Chicago to the New York area. That of course doesn't mean that they necessarily dominated the market. To quote an example from another field, no critic I'm aware of would say that Budweiser makes the finest beer, but their sales are over half of ALL the beer sold in the country. I guess that kind of makes Budweiser the Pennsy of beer <VBG>.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Richard Hendrickson wrote;
Doesn't that qualify as child abuse? Be careful! All too soon she'll
be bigger and stronger than you. Maybe smarter as well.

On the smarter point. Bruce likes the Pennsy, Brianna likes the New Haven,
some would postulate she is already smarter. :-)

Brian J Carlson P.E.
Cheektowaga NY

Douglas Harding wrote:

Some fruits and vegatables could be loaded in stockcars or gons, ie
melons, tomatoes, and the like.

Also overlooked was canned goods which were often shipped in reefers. No
ice of course. What do they call that today... RBL?? And don't forget beer
either.

Dave Nelson

timboconnor@... wrote:

Dave, I think you've been misplacing decimal points somewhere.

-------------- Original message ----------------------

No, I goofed the unit of measure. Should have written tons where I wrote
carloads. Makes those 54 whatevers of Peaches out of PA 54 tons... So, ahh,
maybe 4 or 5 carloads worth. Huge business, what? Percentages still
correct tho.

Dave Nelson

Gary not to disputed your assumption that the commodities cited moved in
reefers. But there are exceptions. Sugar beets were loaded in open cars,
gons or hoppers, for delivery to the processing plant. And I believe
flaxseed was treated like other grains, shipped in boxcars. Flaxseed added
an additional dimension as it is a very find and slippery seed. So the
boxcars had to be tight, very tight, all holes plugged or coopered. This
seed required top quality boxcars.

Some fruits and vegatables could be loaded in stockcars or gons, ie melons,
tomatoes, and the like.

And other products of ag .... Would not this be primarily livestock and
grain? Ie stockcars and boxcars?

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

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3:02 PM

Tim, I emailed him last we and he relied promptly. I used the email address
Richard quoted

David Ball


_____

From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of
timboconnor@...
Sent: Tuesday, 19 June 2007 6:51 a.m.
To: stmfc@...; mfcl@...
Subject: [STMFC] looking for Ted Culotta



Anyone been in contact with Ted since Collinsville? I've
been trying to email him without any luck.

Tim O'Connor





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3:02 p.m.

Plus, no one has yet mentioned the fact that so much produce was shipped
without a known ultimate destination (i.e. no buyer) and was diverted enroute.
I'll bet this accounted for a lot of interesting routings!

I wonder how much, if any, of the produce traffic east of Chicago had no buyer
yet and had to be diverted while travelling on the Erie, PRR, et al.

Tim O'

Malcolm Laughlin wrote:

This overlooks an essential fact. It was the shipper who determined the routing, not SF or PFE of their owners SP and UP, so it didn't matter that much if the PFE car service people preferred the Erie. The routing wasn't their call. Shippers had the absolute right to select any route in the tariff.

This is absolutely true. But as PFE people said, many shippers wanted advice about conditions in the east. Sure, they had the call, and some shippers had hard-nosed traffic people who would make routings regardless of advice. But many, from what I was told, were fairly small concerns and would accept, even request, guidance.

We have some annecdotal evidence from a few PFE people looking back 50 years and talking about how the situation was perceived, but that tells us little about how traffic was actually routed. Some it had to do with which railroad's salesman had most recently bought them a good dinner on the San Francisco waterront.

I admire your cynicism, Malcolm, but I really doubt this was dominant. Yes, schmoozing was a factor, but performance mattered to PFE: those cargoes were perishable, remember. Of course, I realize YOUR anecdotes are much more reliable than those of senior people at PFE.

That may have been their impression, but I know that in the case of the NYC it was false. In the 50's and 60's we may not have been as good as the Erie, but not for lack of trying. Don't know about PRR, but wouldn't be surprised.

I don't know that PFE people were very interested in whether NYC was trying or not--they just talked about performance.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Malcolm Laughlin wrote:

Something else to consider in regard to the share of traffic thing. While PFE may have preferred one eastern road, say the SDG, it was owned by SP and UP, which had relationships with other roads, say for example road RME for auto parts or other high value westbound traffic. If PFE caused traffic to be routed away from RME, that road might retaliate by trying to get that other traffic going west routed ATSF or DRGW/WP. A lot of that log-rolling behavior occurred and was, I believe, an important factor in maintaining traffic balance.

This is very true, and all the PFE people I spoke with remarked on their need to understand the concerns of the "parent railroads" and follow them, within reason. But at the same time, UP and SP understood that PFE's stock in trade was consistent, timely delivery of perishables. I seriously doubt that UP or SP would have required PFE to do routings which resulted in poorer delivery. Remember, UPD and SP were not exactly podunk railroads which could be pressured by smaller roads; and "retaliation" can works both ways.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

On Jun 18, 2007, at 11:50 AM, timboconnor@... wrote:

Anyone been in contact with Ted since Collinsville? I've
been trying to email him without any luck.

I talked to him on the phone Saturday. You may have an out of date
e-mail address. Try <tculotta@...>.

Richard Hendrickson

On Jun 18, 2007, at 11:28 AM, Bruce Smith wrote:

Blah, blah, blah...
Now to collect my winnings from Brianna! ;^)

Doesn't that qualify as child abuse? Be careful! All too soon she'll
be bigger and stronger than you. Maybe smarter as well.

Richard Hendrickson

If the ERIE is supposed to be the bridge line to New England,
it seems like a lot of Maine spuds are moving on the PRR compared to
the ERIE.

Bruce F. Smith
========

Let's not start comparing app[les with bananas. The bulk of those spuds are most likely going to the area of largest population, i.e., New York to Washington. I don't seeErie in that ruting.



Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

Something else to consider in regard to the share of traffic thing. While PFE may have preferred one eastern road, say the SDG, it was owned by SP and UP, which had relationships with other roads, say for example road RME for auto parts or other high value westbound traffic. If PFE caused traffic to be routed away from RME, that road might retaliate by trying to get that other traffic going west routed ATSF or DRGW/WP. A lot of that log-rolling behavior occurred and was, I believe, an important factor in maintaining traffic balance.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

Posted by: "Anthony Thompson" Schuyler Larrabee wrote:

Most perishable fruit and vegetable traffic from the west went to
Chicago via SF and was transferred to the ERIE when headed to NYC or
New England.

Ahem. If you check, Schuyler, you will find that PFE's traffic
through Chicago was more than 50% greater than SFRD, and in some years
was double.
================================

That's what you would obviously expect if you look at who served the four large rpoduce areas of California.

Imperial Valley - SP only
San Joaquin Valley - SP, SF
Salinas Valley - SP only
Sacramento Valley - SP, WP

The largest share went SP, in PFE reefers. The largest share of that went UP and MILW/CNW/RI/Q to Chicago. But don't forget the St. Louis gateway. It also was a big player in the produce traffic, but not so much for SF. SP's long hauls were Tucmcari/RI and Denison/SSW.

Traffic from the SF at Chicago went directly to NYC, Erie, PRR, B&O and NKP. I know that NYC, NKP and PRR got a lot of it, and a large part of that was to NY and New England. It might be reasonable to think that Erie got 30 %, a stretch to think 40 % and preposterous to say most of it. The shippers weren't that dumb. They spread the traffic well among competing railroads to avoid becoming dependent on any one.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

. Having the SFRD or PFE somehow prefer

the Erie makes a good story, but I don't believe it's borne out by
the facts.
============

This overlooks an essential fact. It was the shipper who determined the routing, not SF or PFE of their owners SP and UP, so it didn't matter that much if the PFE car service people preferred the Erie. The routing wasn't their call. Shippers had the absolute right to select any route in the tariff.

We have some annecdotal evidence from a few PFE people looking back 50 years and talking about how the situation was perceived, but that tells us little about how traffic was actually routed. Some it had to do with which railroad's salesman had most recently bought them a good dinner on the San Francisco waterront.

I'm not saying these reporters are in error about their route preferences, just that we should not be generalizing too much from their statements.

> way, their opinion of New York Central perishable performance was only a hair better.
Neither road especially seemed to care about timely perishable deliveries;

That may have been their impression, but I know that in the case of the NYC it was false. In the 50's and 60's we may not have been as good as the Erie, but not for lack of trying. Don't know about PRR, but wouldn't be surprised.

> He clearly stated that Erie was the most dependable service to New York and as a connection to Boston. I really doubt he was just telling a "good story." He had no reason to.

A comment like this should be taken in context. Most likely he's talking about the difference between 80 to 87 percent reliability for one and 85 to 92 percent for the other. It's not like the difference between 60 % and 95 %. The 80 to 90 % on major routes was typical of the 60's. Much over 90 % was of course unachievable because of the inevitable bad orders, derailments, storms and other events that made perfect connections impossible.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478

The ERIE was the largest carrier of perishable traffic from the west via the Chicago gateway to the east coast.

I don't dispute this, but Erie wasn't exactly dominant. NYC and PRR were major carriers, and the NKP/WAB-LV/DL&W routes were not insignificant.

> The ERIE's service to NYC was the fastest for this type of merchandise.

Not true. If you look at those trains arriving Chicago around midnight with traffic for the NY produce market 48 hours later, you'll see that Erie and NYC are about equal. Erie service was commendable given their disadvantage of having to float all of their NY traffic across the river. As a former NYC man, I will not contest the fact that service relaibility on the Erie was better.

To Boston, however, NYC was definitely faster. I'll have to check my Erie freight timetable tonight, thanks to Schuyler that I have it, and see what the actual times were.


Malcolm Laughlin, Editor 617-489-4383
New England Rail Shipper Directories
19 Holden Road, Belmont, MA 02478