Larry Ostrech writes:

"Mark Amfahr's data showed that 30 - 33 freight trains per day crossed Sherman Hill in 1949."

Actually, so that members aren't confused, there is only one known frt conductor book covering Laramie-Rawlins in 1949...the one I have. I gave a copy to Mark. And, actually, it's 34 trains. Interesting trains...at that.

"This implied that the 120 trains in my data represented a sample of about 4.5%, not the "less than 1%" that you had previously asserted. If there were fewer than 30-33 trains per day, then my sample percentages would rise. For example if there were only 20 trains per day my sample percentage would be 7% instead of 4.5%. The sample percentage has everything to do with the number of trains - it is the denominator for calculating the percentage.

And then you said:
"Tim Gilbert pointed out that the percentage of home road cars staying on-line greatly increased throughout the depression years, and so the distribution of cars nationwide was quite different in 1949 than in 1938. The more-or-less uniform distribution of plain box cars is far more apparent in the late 1940's than in the late 1930's."

I'm not clear on this. Where does this come from?

"The year 1938 was a severe recession. Industrial output declined sharply. I assume that means there were a lot fewer PRR and other eastern cars on the SP and UP than would be in normal economic times."

"It might be that modelers wishing to have a realistic mix of cars on their trains should pick an era first - or perhaps even a specific year and season, and then check what was happening in the national economy at that time."

Alas. It's those &%*$# 4-12-2's, 2-8-8-0's and turbines. They all existed in 1954...a VERY good yeeeeaaarr.

Mike Brock

Tim O'Connor, commenting on the 1938 data [ I think ] notes:

You say your data show "dominance" of SP cars -- but isn't it just
201 or so SP cars in 34 random trains over a period of a month? Now,
that might show "dominance" but it might just also be random luck.
If the UP ran 3 trains a day, I'd say that was a great sample. But
even if UP only ran 20 trains a day... Well, it's not much to go on.

But, Tim, all of the 1938, 1949, 1951, and 1956 books show SP box cars on the UP to be present MUCH more than projected by G-N.

Mike Brock

Aley, Jeff A wrote:

Tony Thompson can answer better than I can. But if I understood his clinic correctly, the Agent wrote the empty car order and waybill BEFORE the car was spotted for loading. So the waybill, with the car # typed on it, was already completed.

Paul Koehler answered this clearly. I can add this: the empty car bill was filled out by the yard forces that SENT it to be loaded, in response (as you say) to an order for an empty car. The shipper almost always filled out a bill of lading, which gave particulars of the load and destination. The agent could THEN complete a waybill, but this was by no means a final piece of paperwork. Agents were not experts in tariffs or even (many times) in routing, and that part of the waybill would likely be adjusted by knowledgeable car clerks farther along in the process. The weight might not be known, if the car was to be weighed after loading; and as mentioned, loading multiple cars would require all the waybills to OMIT car initials and number until that information was available. That might be when the local came back by the depot after pulling the cars.

Therefore, I conclude that if the industry randomly loads the car, the paperwork would have to be changed.

Oh, yes, paperwork could be and was changed all the time.

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

Jim Betz asks:

I'm talking about how our layout trains are manipulated/handled
and how that relates to the G-N model and other such prototype
activities. It is the other side of the same coin - but the
focus would be more on how we do stuff like "set" a layout for a
run ... and how that relates to what actually happened on the
prototype ... rather than mostly about the prototype with hints
at how that might be used on a layout.

I realize that this doesn't fit the raison d'etre of this list
exactly. But we keep dropping hints about stuff like how G-N
might be used on our layouts in order to make up trains. So ...
I'm asking ... perhaps we can open up this for some limited time
such as just for one week?

Well, we need to keep in mind that the objective of the STMFC includes the sharing of
information about North American, standard gauge railroad freight cars in
the period 1900-1960 inclusive
including their operation,
distribution and the various techniques of building
models of them. Emphasis is to
be placed on the study of the prototype with
a goal of producing models of them with as great a degree of accuracy as
possible."

So, certainly discussions about the distribution of prototype frt cars is within the scope of the group. As far as how our layout trains are manipulated/handled and how that relates to the G-N model, I think it will only be in scope as it relates to actual RR's. IOW, techniques describing card systems for model RR operation are only remotely associated with the STMFC's subject and, thus, are out of scope. Similarly, operation by itself of model RR's is out of scope. Operation of real RR's is only in scope as it reflects on frt car matters.

Mike Brock...putting on his head judge robes as STMFC Owner

Tim O'Connor wrote:

I don't think railroads paid mileage on other railroads' cars.

They sure did on reefers in the period of this list. I think by 1950 the mileage on tank cars was all gone, though.

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

Tim,

Tony Thompson can answer better than I can. But if I understood his clinic correctly, the Agent wrote the empty car order and waybill BEFORE the car was spotted for loading. So the waybill, with the car # typed on it, was already completed.

Therefore, I conclude that if the industry randomly loads the car, the paperwork would have to be changed.

On the other hand, concepts like "milling in transit" or other "diversions" can certainly have no a' priori knowledge of where the car will end up.

Regards,

-Jeff





Jeff,

The shipper called the agent and ordered the cars, the agent put in the car orders to the car applicators. As the cars arrived with the "car order number" on the empty billing the cars were spotted per the car order. This was important as the car order number drove the demurrage clock to the shipper. The cars were loaded, released and the shipper filled out the bill of lading/waybill. The shipper took the completed paperwork to the agent's office; the agent signed the waybill and gave a copy to the shipper. The waybill generated an invoice. The agent had the duty of checking the protocols for the routing (generally marked on the bill as "Shippers Route") and if it was all correct he had a clerk telegraph of the car movement instructions and waybill number to the billing office. The waybill copies were sent to the billing office for processing. In the days of telegraph could you imagine if a diversion was placed on the car and the car was moving faster than expected? A copy of the waybill was sent to car accounting to apply the car hire to the books and a car online was recorded as the railroads accounting department even kept records of car hire for home road cars on line as well.

Greg Martin

Tim writes:

Now all four cars get shoved up to the shipper's dock. The shipper asked for four cars, and has his loads all prepared at their doors. The ORDER of the four cars is random -- the railroad certainly did not sort them according to each load's destination.


I would say that given your example, the chances are better than 75/25 that it would happen correctly. Most warehouses have a good foreman and he does communicate well with the transportation department as likely that is how his boss got his job, from running the dock. There was a time in this country when a company would promote from within. So I would say that the exception ot the rule would be that the cars were not loaded properly.

Greg Martin

Thanks, Dave,
You've taken this the next step and applied the thread to the model railroad
world. It has set me thinking on how to include the necessary car swapping
into my own layout. And I'll definitely be visiting my hobby shop.
Viv


Chuck and Viv,

The statistical "variability" of "traffic" you are hinting at was discussed
on this group back in February 2009.

I crafted a post based on a simple statistical analysis, not to prove or
disprove the basis for a specific road appearing at a specific time and
location, but simply to illustrate the probability of certain reporting
marks appearing in a sample set. (devansprr Wed Feb 4, 2009 4:18 pm ((PST)))

My focus is WWII, and I had been reviewing the Delano color photos to get a
sense of freight car weathering. A picture from Belan, NM caught my eye
since it had just four box cars in it - all eastern roads. One B&O (no
surprise - big fleet), one Wabash (not that surprising), one Erie (getting a
little rarer), and one C&WC 40' Steel Automobile car (C&WC's TOTAL X and XM
fleet was 532 cars - this is kind of like the mason jar car that caused so
much discussion on this group a year or two ago). The national X/XM fleet
was over 800,00 cars in 1943, so we are talking one out of every 1,600 cars.
Now that C&WC reporting mark, in New Mexico, was a LONG shot.

This triggered two thoughts - most railfans probably recall the odd, rare
car much more clearly than recalling the predominance of plain jane cars
from the majors of the day (during WWII, eleven roads owned half the
nation's box car fleet. Watch trains for a few hours at a busy spot, and
people of the era might forget the fact that 9% or so of the cars were PRR -
see them everyday). But a C&WC car? Where is that railroad? I have never
seen that before. Not to be forgotten quickly (and more likely photographed
too - which opens another can of worms.)

Thought two - for general merchandise box cars, not in captive service, on
mainlines that are primarily bridge traffic, some simple statistics are
probably a valid analysis tool to suggest trends. For example, if my planned
mainline model railroad has a number of freight trains that come out of
staging every operating session, with a total of 200 box cars arriving on
layout, then I doubt my C&WC model should make an appearance every op
session (I might be able to justify having the C&WC car pass through once
each session if I had 1600 box cars arrive on layout every session - not
likely ;-) If it did appear every session among just 200 box cars, and my
model railfan was counting cars (or we are counting his old home movies ;-),
then one would think that C&WC was a major road, since it would appear more
often than a boxcar from T&P, Cotton Belt, D&H, WM and WP since each of
those well known roads had less than 0.5% of the national box car fleet
(less than 1 in 200 boxcars nationally for each of these roads).

In the end analysis, statistics suggests that modelers are quite justified
in including a considerable "fiddle" fleet in their staging area so that
some sense of randomness can be added to the trains that appear on their
layouts out of staging. In fact, the huge number of small roads during the
WWII era might actually make a fiddle yard in staging a mandatory feature if
one wants to model the variability of freight car reporting marks that
should appear on a layout.

For example, if your fleet of cars generates 200 boxcar moves (traffic) onto
a layout every session, and you want to provide a prototypical sense of
randomness over 5 operating sessions before an unusually rare car makes a
second appearance, then you would draw those 200 box cars from a fleet of at
least 236 cars. At least 25 of those cars would each be from a different,
small fleet RR, and appear only once out of the five sessions. This is
because roads such as Rutland, Clinchfield, Georgia, SP&S, DM&IR, TH&B each
had X/XM fleets LESS than 0.1% of the national fleet. Each session, only
five of those "rare" 25 cars would appear on the layout. So over five
sessions, that Rutland box car should only arrive on the layout ONCE.

To further increase the sense of "randomness", out of the 200 box cars
arriving "on-scene" each session, 178 would be regulars on the layout,
representing the 39 roads that during WWII each had at least 0.5% of the
national X/XM fleet (at least 1 in 200 cars - Katy was the smallest fleet
that just makes this cut). So those 178 cars would appear every session.
From the rare "fiddle" fleet described above, five other boxcars from the
smallest 147 RR X/XM fleets would also appear each session.

But that leaves 17 other boxcars to deploy each session (200-178-5), and to
maintain the sense of randomness, those 17 cars would need to come from a
fleet of at least 33 cars, one each representing the 33 roads that did not
make the "big fleet" cut of 0.5% (39 roads), but that were bigger than the
147 roads/owners that are in the rare "fiddle" fleet. Each session, 17 cars
from this intermediate fiddle fleet of 33 roads would be selected. Note that
railroads in this fleet include T&P, Cotton Belt, D&H, WM, KCS & WP. Out of
the five operating sessions, some cars in this intermediate fleet may appear
three or four times, others just once or twice.

So now our model railfan captures on his model movie camera five rare X/XM's
out of 200 that passed his favorite train watching spot that day. But how
many will notice that, averaged over time, and assuming N-G is in effect at
this location, 100 of the 200 X/XM's that are captured by his camera on that
day will be from the 11 roads that owned 50% of the nation's WWII box car
fleet? (Boring...)

Note that all of this is just to "normalize" the reporting marks. Additional
"fiddle" cars would be required for "unusual" and rare cars that were a
clear spotting feature. For example, the GN plywood war emergency box cars
were unusual and standouts to some extent, and while GN would have several
cars appear every session, statistically speaking the GN car was almost as
rare as the C&WC car. So it might warrant a place in the "fiddle" fleet
instead of the every-session 178 car fleet. One could obviously extend this
concept to an absurd extent, and that is clearly not necessary.

But I think it might be a worthy objective, on a model railroad, that the
rare prototype cars remain rare, and that a WWII train full of one-offs
would never occur, and that instead a train with a significant percentage of
1937 ARA standard box cars (about 1 in 7 of the nation's X/XM fleet in WWII)
should be present, as should one or two PPR X29's (that class alone was
nearly 3% of the national fleet).

To highlight this point, during WWII, fully 40% of the nation's steel, 40
foot, non-PRR box car fleet was the 1937 ARA design! Fortunately for me
Branchline, Red Caboose, and Intermountain have a wide selection for that
fleet - many with WWII paint schemes.

Sooo, feel free to visit the hobby shop, and as long as you (1) restrict
your purchases to cars accurate for the era you model, and (2) you model a
location with significant through/bridge traffic (or else all of this ENTIRE
thread goes out the window, as Elden has clearly demonstrated during
previous discussions), and (3) include a fleet of about 40 or so fiddle cars
in your staging yard so "rare" cars are "rare" on your layout, and (4) your
visiting "consist" police have a memory that only lasts about five op
sessions, THEN, no one can question the stray appearance of that C&WC box
car, or that yellow one with the Mason Jar on it - once every five sessions.

Dave Evans

PS - looking at my Feb 2009 post on recommended fiddle fleets, it was a
little confusing - if I have time this weekend I may clean it up and re-post
so it is more understandable.

I do indeed see a couple more Dalmans that I hadn't seen before. But look at car 87043 on p. 25. This group was built with coil-elliptic trucks, not Dalmans, but the B-end truck (left in the photo) is plausibly one where the elliptic spring was removed. I have difficulty believing that to be true of the other truck (right in the photo).

I'm really trying to determine what a 'typical' car from this series would have looked like in the early 60s, and I think I'm convinced that a lot of them would still have had the Dalmans (the first 1000 cars, anyway).

My guess, also, is that non-rebuilt cars that were still in the 85000 - 86000 series would have been more likely to have them than any of the leased and renumbered cars.

Ron Merrick

Tim,
 
The Monon logs do distinguish between XM ('B') and XA, XAP, XAR, XMR ('A') cars, though not all correctly.  I haven't looked into it but I wonder if the car had double doors it was labled an 'A' weather the auxilliary door was active or not.  The cars had a wide variety of loads.  As a sample here are some from fall 1948:
 






ACL
52011
SALT

ATSF
8560
CABTS

BO
297474
STONE

CNW
111830
MDSE

ERIE
96962
CABTS

GTW
578543
AUTOS

IC
38113
MDSE

IC
39464
REFGRS

LV
6401
SPRINGS

MILW
593256
MDSE

NYC
147846
MCHY

PM
91342
REFGRS

PRR
63305
A PARTS

PRR
65370
A PARTS

PRR
66469
A PARTS

PRR
67127
A PARTS

SAL
11309
PHOS

SAL
22755
SPRINGS

SLSF
154238
MDSE

SLSF
154055
STEEL

SOU
272964
AUTOS

SOU
340282
LBR

SOU
375252
LIME

SOU
148379
MDSE

SOU
272617
REFGRS

UP
455826
AUTOS

WAB
45562
A PARTS

WAB
45718
A PARTS

WAB
17044
A PARTS

WAB
47232
MDSE




Regards,
 
Mike Aufderheide

Elden,

Was this common? I thought flour was shipped in barrels or sacks, and not loose, in bulk, in boxcars.

Regards,

-Jeff


From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Gatwood, Elden J SAD
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 12:38 PM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: RE: [STMFC] Milling in Transit



For the modelers, there are number of great Paul Winters photos of box cars
with doors open, on RIP or clean-out tracks, with the intact or remains of
grain doors, waiting for them to be restored to general service condition,
coated with flour, including over the door where the spout was located. It
appears that the grain doors were just as good for holding in the flour, as
they were for grain, and were only removed after the car finished the trip to
the flour end user/Wholesaler/bakery and was routed back into a yard for
clean out. It makes an extremely interesting modeling aspect.

Elden Gatwood

-----Original Message-----
From: STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> [mailto:STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>] On Behalf Of Aley,
Jeff A
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 1:28 PM
To: STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [STMFC] Milling in Transit

Dennis,

Could you please expand upon this topic?

For example, who is it that has his wheat milled in transit: the farmer, or
some intermediate elevator? Is the "milling in transit" done between the
grain elevator and flour consumer (e.g. bakery)?

You imply that the exact same boxcar gets used for the flour as was used for
the grain. Is this always the case, or was that a simplification?

Thanks much,

-Jeff

From: STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>
[mailto:STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> ] On Behalf Of
soolinehistory
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 8:36 AM
To: STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [STMFC] Re: was LCL - Stop Off traffic

--- In STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>
<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>, Tim O'Connor <timboconnor@...> wrote:

Ross

I've heard of storage in transit for grain, but milling in transit??
Wouldn't the transformation of bulk grain into bags of flour involve
an entirely new tariff?

Tim O'Connor

No, it was a single tariff designed to keep the flour traffic on the line
that had originated the grain move. It goes back a long way; here's a link to
a nespaper article from 1890:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802EED8153BE533A25752C1A9629C
94619ED7CF
<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802EED8153BE533A25752C1A9629
C94619ED7CF>

Keep in mind that grain is fungible, like money is. When you go to the bank
to make a withdrawal, you don't get the same money you deposited back; you
get different but equal money. Grain is the same, you don't get your grain
back out of the elevator, you get different but equal grain. Same with
milling in transit. You don't get the flour that was milled from the grain
you hauled in; you get equal flour milled from different grain. So, the car
just emptied of grain can be immediately refilled with flour and sent on its
way.

Dennis

Dennis,

Thanks! One more question: I thought that Milling In Transit was somehow similar to "Diversion" in which a car might start its journey headed for New York City, and be changed en-route to be shipped to Los Angeles.
Is this kind of operation a part of Milling In Transit, or am I just confused?

Thanks,

-Jeff


From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of soolinehistory
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 11:31 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Milling in Transit




--- In STMFC@...<mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com>, "Aley, Jeff A" <Jeff.A.Aley@...> wrote:

Dennis,

Could you please expand upon this topic?

For example, who is it that has his wheat milled in transit: the farmer, or some intermediate elevator? Is the "milling in transit" done between the grain elevator and flour consumer (e.g. bakery)?

You imply that the exact same boxcar gets used for the flour as was used for the grain. Is this always the case, or was that a simplification?

Thanks much,

-Jeff

I'm getting near the fringes of my knowledge, but I'll start, and someone who knows more can chime in and correct anything I've mis-interpreted.

Milling in transit appears to pre-date the formation of the ICC. In the rough-and-tumble pre-regulatory days it was a way railroads could induce millers to locate on their line; offer a single through rate from source to customer. It appears to be the reason that both the M &St.L and Soo Line were built; the millers in Minneapolis were tired of paying two local rates to move grain in and then ship flour out, when the same RR's they were shipping on were offering better rates to mills located further east. The Minneapolis milling interests started building a railroad to St. Louis, but lost control, they later started two other lines, the Minneapolis & Pacific to bring grain in from the west, and the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie & Atlantic to ship flour to the east. When these roads were finished, they were consolidated into the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie. Then Pillsbury and the other Minneapolis Millers could also enjoy the the advantages of milling in transit.

Since this was the entrenched way that the flour trade was being conducted, it continued under ICC regulation; the tariffs were published, and all the ICC concerned itself with is that the rates were equally available to all.

Who was the Shipper? As I understand it, it was the miller, who bought the grain delivered at the elevator, and paid the freight from there to the customer, with the priveledge of a stop-off to mill it into flour somewhere along the way. The combined rate was less than the sum of the local inbound rate on grain and local outbound rate on flour; it was advantageous to the railroad as it gave them a longer haul on grain that was captive to their line.

Did it have to be the same car? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I think most tariffs had a provision for changing the cars en route; there are instances of railroads who would reload coal into home road cars back in the days when labor was cheap.

In reality, it may well have often been a paper transaction, with fifty tons of inbound grain simply matched with fifty tons of outbound flour for billing purposes. You will notice the 1890 newspaper article I linked to concerns itself in part with the outbound loads being heavier than the inbounds :-)
However, since the same class of car was used for both grain and flour, back in the day, I would suspect that from track side, it looked like the same cars being used.

Dennis

No problem, if before hand you had negotiated a rate with the railroad
tariff bureau for the shipment of $100.00 dollar bills with a stop privilege
for the conversation to pennies. Your rate with stop privileges would be
published in a tariff and you could have shipped it. Everything that the
railroads hauled was covered by a published tariff rate.

Not knowing anything about tariffs I'm going to assume that the cost would have been for paper and copper? :-)
--
Jon Miller

Tim:



First you need to know is the industry located within the switching limits
of a city or out on the road. If in a city you didn't have a conductor but
a switch Forman. With in yard limits you had switchman working outside the
limits you had brakeman and conductor. Within the city the switch Forman
would spot the car from a switch list. In road territory the conductor
would have an empty car waybill, the same for moving an empty car across the
railroad to deliver to another city or connecting carrier.



Paul C. Koehler



_____

From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Tim
O'Connor
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 10:47 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: [STMFC] Re: Freight car Distribution






Paul, what kind of paperwork is handled by the conductor who is
delivering the empty car to the industry? Is this just called a
Car Order? Or maybe an "Empty Waybill"?

When an empty car is moved to another (distant) location (e.g. to
return to its owner) is that called a Waybill?

Tim O'Connor

Jeff:

Not so. Customer ordered a car/cars from the Car Distributor. Car
Distributor issued an order to the yard for placing an empty/empties at a
given industry. Car/cars were spotted. After loaded Industrial Clerk
signed for the bill of lading and ordered car/cars pulled. Bill of lading
was turned in to the Agents office and a waybill was typed out.

Paul C. Koehler


From: STMFC@yahoogroups. <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> com

[mailto:STMFC@yahoogroups. <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> com] On Behalf
Of

Aley, Jeff A
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 9:01 AM
To: STMFC@yahoogroups. <mailto:STMFC%40yahoogroups.com> com
Subject: RE: [STMFC] Re: Freight car Distribution

Tim,

Tony Thompson can answer better than I can. But if I understood his clinic
correctly, the Agent wrote the empty car order and waybill BEFORE the car
was spotted for loading. So the waybill, with the car # typed on it, was
already completed.

Therefore, I conclude that if the industry randomly loads the car, the
paperwork would have to be changed.

On the other hand, concepts like "milling in transit" or other "diversions"
can certainly have no a' priori knowledge of where the car will end up.

Regards,

-Jeff

Not to belabor this point, but let's suppose the railroad agent/clerk
follows the AAR rules and sends a PRR, WABASH, SP and UP box car to a
single shipper on the SP for loading -- with the intention that the
PRR box car will be sent to the PRR, the WABASH car to that railroad,
and so on.

Now all four cars get shoved up to the shipper's dock. The shipper
asked for four cars, and has his loads all prepared at their doors.
The ORDER of the four cars is random -- the railroad certainly did
not sort them according to each load's destination.

So the shipper loads the 1st car, the 2nd car, etc -- without any
regard to the ownership of the car!! How could it be otherwise? Can
you imagine the shipper worrying about whether AAR rules are being
followed properly? He just wants to get his shipments loaded.

I don't know if the above scenario is true, but I've never heard any
contradictory evidence. Looking at photos of railroad freight houses
in the Chicago area, it sures looks like a dog's breakfast of cars
was shoved onto the loading/unloading tracks, taking care only to
line up the doorways for crossing via ramps between cars.

Tim O'Connor

Tim O'Connor said

"You say your data show "dominance" of SP cars -- but isn't it just 201 or so SP cars in 34 random trains over a period of a month? Now, that might show "dominance" but it might just also be random luck. If the UP ran 3 trains a day, I'd say that was a great sample. But even if UP only ran 20 trains a day... Well, it's not much to go on."

The 201 SP cars represent 15.4% of all non-UP boxcars, whereas according to the G-N hypothesis it should be 3.3%. The expected number of cars is 44 according to G-N. That sounds like SP dominance to me, but of course it could be due to "random luck". That would make the many discussions on this list of the presumed anomaly pointless. Perhaps someone more statistically gifted than I am can tell us how likely the dominance is due to the luck of the draw.

The train books cover 120 trains, not 34. (A large number of the trains are Roseville Fruits and other trains with few or no box cars, as Mike Brock has pointed out in the past couple of days.) I wish I could believe they were "random trains" – that would give me much greater confidence that my results are valid and not some sampling fluke.

Best wishes,
Larry Ostresh
Laramie, Wyoming

Tim:



No problem, if before hand you had negotiated a rate with the railroad
tariff bureau for the shipment of $100.00 dollar bills with a stop privilege
for the conversation to pennies. Your rate with stop privileges would be
published in a tariff and you could have shipped it. Everything that the
railroads hauled was covered by a published tariff rate.



Paul



_____

From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...] On Behalf Of Tim
O'Connor
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2010 9:11 AM
To: STMFC@...
Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: was LCL - Stop Off traffic






Ah, but Dennis, suppose I shipped a box car of $100 bills to the bank,
and withdrew it again as pennies?

:-) Tim "infungible" O'Connor

I've heard of storage in transit for grain, but milling in transit??
Wouldn't the transformation of bulk grain into bags of flour involve
an entirely new tariff?

Tim O'Connor

No, it was a single tariff designed to keep the flour traffic on the line

that had originated the grain move. It goes back a long way; here's a link
to a nespaper article from 1890:

http://query.

<http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802EED8153BE533A25752C1A962
9C94619ED7CF>
nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9802EED8153BE533A25752C1A9629C94619ED7CF

Keep in mind that grain is fungible, like money is. When you go to the bank

to make a withdrawal, you don't get the same money you deposited back; you
get different but equal money. Grain is the same, you don't get your grain
back out of the elevator, you get different but equal grain. Same with
milling in transit. You don't get the flour that was milled from the grain
you hauled in; you get equal flour milled from different grain. So, the car
just emptied of grain can be immediately refilled with flour and sent on its
way.

Dennis

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

"Lumber definitely could be diverted before it reached its final
destination. And diversions could go in any direction, as long as
someone paid for it (the diversion, that is)."

Lumber cars could be billed for orders to destination such as Savage on the NMS, and other recognized hold points. There was a charge made for the diversion as well the cars would incur track storage charges after a specified time period. As to your options for the new destination you would have had to picked a hold point that would protect the thru rates which were published in TCFB 17  (NE/SE), 18 (TX/OK,KS etc),  28 (IL/MO etc) from western origins, Savage worked to destinations in these tariffs. Other western hold points were available but depending on how optimistic the lumber broker was they may have been reached too quickly.
 
I believe Marshalltown on the CNW was also lumber hold point.
 
Ross McLeod Calgary 



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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Tim

You said "It has nothing to do with the number of trains Larry".

My comment about fewer trains raising my percentages was in the context of increasing my sample percentages. Mark Amfahr's data showed that 30 – 33 freight trains per day crossed Sherman Hill in 1949. This implied that the 120 trains in my data represented a sample of about 4.5%, not the "less than 1%" that you had previously asserted. If there were fewer than 30-33 trains per day, then my sample percentages would rise. For example if there were only 20 trains per day my sample percentage would be 7% instead of 4.5%. The sample percentage has everything to do with the number of trains – it is the denominator for calculating the percentage.

And then you said:
"Tim Gilbert pointed out that the percentage of home road cars staying on-line greatly increased throughout the depression years, and so the distribution of cars nationwide was quite different in 1949 than in 1938. The more-or-less uniform distribution of plain box cars is far more apparent in the late 1940's than in the late 1930's. The year 1938 was a severe recession. Industrial output declined sharply. I assume that means there were a lot fewer PRR and other eastern cars on the SP and UP than would be in normal economic times."

Agreed!!! That is exactly what I said in post #89909:
"I think I recall Tim Gilbert writing that the G-N hypothesis fits the data well during economic prosperity but does less well during recessions and depressions. The year 1938 was during the Great Depression, of course. The high proportion of home cars (41%) is another indication that companies may be keeping their cars close by. It might be that modelers wishing to have a realistic mix of cars on their trains should pick an era first – or perhaps even a specific year and season, and then check what was happening in the national economy at that time. The choice of the G-N vs. a regional (or any other) model for an accurate freight car composition may well depend on such ephemera."

Best wishes,
Larry Ostresh
Laramie, Wyoming

For the modelers, there are number of great Paul Winters photos of box cars
with doors open, on RIP or clean-out tracks, with the intact or remains of
grain doors, waiting for them to be restored to general service condition,
coated with flour, including over the door where the spout was located. It
appears that the grain doors were just as good for holding in the flour, as
they were for grain, and were only removed after the car finished the trip to
the flour end user/Wholesaler/bakery and was routed back into a yard for
clean out. It makes an extremely interesting modeling aspect.

Elden Gatwood

"Per diem was a fixed daily charge. I don't think railroads paid mileage
on other railroads' cars. I think the only time railroads played per diem
games was when cars were near interchanges, and then they shuffled cars
to an interchange before the midnight hour, so the receiving railroad
would be saddled with the per diem for the next day. Per diem was quite
low in those days, and was the same for all cars, around $2/day. Some
railroads (like GN) had a per diem surplus and HATED it, because it
amounted to a subsidy to other railroads (i.e. they rented cars out at
less than the cost of ownership)."

In my experience mileage charges also applied but this was after the dates covered by this list, I need to dig out some old Equipment Registers. Ross McLeod Calgary



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