Lately I have been doing research on the Yakima Valley Transportation
Co. and have been going through the 1967 Freight Abstracts for cars
received and forwarded for the year. While this date is out of scope
I found several instances of Canadian Pacific boxcars being loaded
with lumber at Northern California and Oregon sawmills and then
shipped to Yakima Pine Products in Yakima who further processed the
lumber.

Richard Wilkens

--- In STMFC@..., Anthony Thompson <thompson@...> wrote:

Steve Lucas wrote:

Tax laws?? The CPR did purchase PS-1 boxcars from Pullman-

Standard

for this very reason. Yet, those tax and customs laws did not

prevent

US roads from keeping Canadian cars for their own use, simply

paying

the demurrage on them.

This is not an area of my own expertise, but we have been

told by

several people on this list in the past, that Canadian cars could

only

move in the U.S. to destinations to unload, then return empty, or

else

the Canadian owner would have to pay U.S. taxes on the cars if they
remained in use in the U.S. (if I'm remembering the story

correctly).

So yes, Canadian cars brought newsprint to Los Angeles, for

example,

but went straight back. I don't know about Canadian rules regarding
U.S. cars in Canada.
If this story is wrong, Steve, please enlighten us with the

right

story (or correct my wrong memory of what transpired previously).

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

Mike Brock wrote

... an error of 200% ... an error of 34% ... an error of 100%.

Many people who don't understand statistics think that any
variance from the MEAN indicates an ERROR. If everyone in
the U.S. had no money, and Bill Gates had a trillion dollars,
then the AVERAGE American would have $3,333 dollars. Then when
Mike visits his friends and finds that no one in the room has
any money, he'd call that an ERROR. Which it isn't.

Tim Gilbert did understand statistics. He knew that a random
distribution can result in some very interesting variations.
Considering the large numbers of freight cars in the U.S. those
samples Mike cites are completely consistent with a random
distribution.

Throwing dice is random too. If you throw 6 sixes in a row, is
that an ERROR? No. Is it unexpected? Not at all. Does it change
the chances of throwing 6 more sixes in a row? No. Is it likely
(probable) that you will? No.

Bottom line Mike: If you want to model ONE DAY on the UP main
line, you can run any thing you want. Because of all of the
possible permutations of freight car combinations that occurred
on the UP in 1952, chances are that your collection is not that
different than ONE day that occurred during that year.

Tim O'Connor

Dave Nelson wrote:

P.S. I miss Tim. He'd have willingly stepped into this discussion a long time ago. I don't much like to write about this anymore... it's a bit like explaining that the world is indeed round. It was a startling discovery and worthy of debate when first revealed but it has been explained for 10 years now. Search the archives. It's all still there.

Exactly. Wish I could have said it as well. And the world IS still round.

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 and those who worked with him, like Dave Nelson, NEVER tried to

understand individual trains.

That is correct.

Here's a simple explanation of the issue:
---------
Safeway sells all sorts of things, one of which is Yoplait Yogurt.
Railroads move all sorts of freight cars, one of which is a SP 40', etc,
etc, etc boxcar.

On average, not every shopping cart has any Yoplait Yogurts.
On average, not every train has any SP boxcars.

When Yoplait yogurt is on sale, one of Dave Nelson's shopping carts once had
20+ Yoplait yogurts in it.
When UP is pulling empties across Sherman Hill one of UP's train once had
20+ SP boxcars in it.
---------
So which do you want to talk about -- one of my one-of shopping carts when
Yoplait is on sale or the overall average of what Safeway sees day in and
day out? IMO only the overall average has any informative value as you can
create from that any combination of items for the individual events as you
see fit. OTOH, following the one-of event **as-if** it had informative
value does nothing but create identical events, repeated ad-nauseum.

All the one-of events are good for is to example the extremes that might, on
occasion, occur: 20+ yogurts in one cart. Who-dda thought? It doesn't tell
you anything about the variety that will be found in many shopping
carts/trains, and is particularly useless when you want to understand what
happens in one day, multiple days, weeks, months, or longer.

Dave Nelson

P.S. I miss Tim. He'd have willingly stepped into this discussion a long
time ago. I don't much like to write about this anymore... it's a bit like
explaining that the world is indeed round. It was a startling discovery and
worthy of debate when first revealed but it has been explained for 10 years
now. Search the archives. It's all still there.

--- In STMFC@..., "John Golden" <golden1014@...> wrote:

Gentlemen,

The anticipated loss of RMJ is just a form of evolution.

Oh no, John, not evilution!
Jared Harper
Athens, GA

On Aug 11, 2008, at 7:52 PM, Douglas Harding wrote:

MR or RMC can only published freight car based articles, IF they
receive freight car based articles. Hopefully Richard H. will
begin submitting to another publisher. Others also need to submit.
Writing articles, esp. on a regular basis, ie monthly, takes
discipline, dedication to research, modeling skills, photography
skills, and the ability to write (hopefully well).

Having worked with Bill Schaumburg, I am sure he would welcome
quality material. He likes historical perspective, in-depth, and
prototype material.

I've submitted stuff to Bill S. at RMC in the past and he is a
pleasure to work with. The problem is space. Typically, my freight
car articles in RMJ consisted of substantial text plus anywhere from
10 to 30 prototype photos. Bob Schleicher was willing to devote the
space they required, even doing them in installments if necessary,
and in later years was pretty good about running the photos large
enough to be useful. With a more diverse readership to serve, RMC
can't give me or anyone else that kind of space. Kalmbach wouldn't
dream of it, and in addition it's been my experience in the past that
their bloated editorial staff can't resist messing with my copy,
which - as I am a professional writer of long experience - I won't
tolerate. So at present there really isn't another publisher I can
submit my freight car articles to.

That doesn't trouble me at the moment because I'm hard at work on a
book for the Santa Fe Railway Historical & Modeling Society (ATSF
flat cars and gondolas 1902-1960) as well as an article on wine tank
cars for Ed and Pat's Railway Prototype Cyclopedia series for which I
have, at current count, well over 50 photos (no one else would even
think of publishing it). After that, we'll see.

Richard Hendrickson

Mike Brock wrote:

The problem, of course, is that we have so little data.

Mike is, again, treating an entirely different problem--no less important, but different. Tim and those who worked with him, like Dave Nelson, NEVER tried to understand individual trains. Sure, as modelers we need to understand those trains if we can, and I have always enthusiastically agreed with Mike that we desperately need more data on train consists in each of our eras and locations of interest.
Tim was more interested in the global problem, that is, the average over all trains over some suitable time interval, if you will. Because his results were consistent and seemed to me robust, I think anyone wishing to state some other OPINION about the subject, is only expressing their own, possibly wandering, thoughts, unless they can counter what Tim did. That's what I meant by saying Malcolm has the burden to prove Tim wrong before suggesting contrary opinions--or provide equally extensive and consistent results as what Tim accomplished.

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

Doug Harding wrote:

There is an option in PowerPoint to embed your fonts, video clips, or anything else that PowerPoint may link to on your computer. When you save your presentation to a disk or thumb drive, clic on File/package for CD/options/embedded TrueType fonts.

Not in my Macintosh version of PP. There is no "package" option anywhere.

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

Steve Lucas wrote:

I'd like to say that there is a method that works for every time and location, but the fact is that with two million cars in the North American rail system, just about any combination of railroads' cars are possible at a specific time and location.

I'm glad Tim Gilbert isn't with us any longer, to see his work ignored. The issue is not, and has not been, what is POSSIBLE. The issue is, what is reasonably typical, on the average. Tim's work addressed that in considerable detail, and I for one found it persuasive.

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

Steve Lucas wrote:

Tax laws?? The CPR did purchase PS-1 boxcars from Pullman-Standard for this very reason. Yet, those tax and customs laws did not prevent US roads from keeping Canadian cars for their own use, simply paying the demurrage on them.

This is not an area of my own expertise, but we have been told by several people on this list in the past, that Canadian cars could only move in the U.S. to destinations to unload, then return empty, or else the Canadian owner would have to pay U.S. taxes on the cars if they remained in use in the U.S. (if I'm remembering the story correctly). So yes, Canadian cars brought newsprint to Los Angeles, for example, but went straight back. I don't know about Canadian rules regarding U.S. cars in Canada.
If this story is wrong, Steve, please enlighten us with the right story (or correct my wrong memory of what transpired previously).

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

To repeat an old story: my favorite weird example is described in
message #60611. I have no idea how it got there (apart from,
presumably, by rail).

Al Brown, Melbourne, Fla.


--- In STMFC@..., "Steve Lucas" <stevelucas3@...> wrote:

I am not asserting that "track gauge" is the only issue here. In
fact, there are some very complex issues at play, maybe some not

yet

addressed on this board.

Tax laws?? The CPR did purchase PS-1 boxcars from Pullman-Standard
for this very reason. Yet, those tax and customs laws did not
prevent US roads from keeping Canadian cars for their own use,

simply

paying the demurrage on them. This was an issue that bedeviled the
Canadian roads from the 1950's until the 1970's. CN discouraged

its

employees from placing newer CN cars at customer sidings for

loading

to US destinations for this reason. (Canadian roads' older cars

that

were equipped with K brakes were prohibited for loading to US
destinations and is a separate issue from this discussion.)

And when the grain was running, US cars were used by CN for loading
in the early-to-mid-1940's with export grain, yet, per AAR Car
Service rules, they should have been returned empty to the home
road.

Steve Lucas.

--- In STMFC@..., Anthony Thompson <thompson@>
wrote:

.

Yes, COULD be, but Steve, there were tax and customs laws
preventing free circulation of Canadian and Mexican freight cars

in

the

U.S. So track gauge is far from all of the story.

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

Tony Thompson writes:

"Malcolm Laughlin wrote:

I would be very wary of any interptretation of statistics that
varies far from common sense.

If you haven't read Tim Gilbert's analyses, please do so in the
archives before commenting further."

Well...to be completely fair to all, Malcolm notified me that he wanted to comment on this issue. My response was a suggestion that he read through the many messages regarding this issue during the period 2003-2006 or so. He informed me that he would do that before reaching his conclusions. The point here is that this issue is not a closed subject...anymore than whether life exists on Mars or not. OTOH, it behooves us, I think, to not ignore previously analyzed and presented information...hence, my suggestion to read through the previous messages.

"I found his statistical approach
entirely convincing, and would say, with all due respect, that in my
opinion the burden of proof is on you to show why he was wrong."

Tony's point is well taken. The problem, of course, is that we have so little data. I will add to that that I, myself, have more data that has not been analyzed. My fault. In the case of my analyzed Fraley data, it consists of 34 frt trains in about a month and a half in the spring of '49. Given that UP was running about 35 frt trains [ if I remember correctly ] per day, that's a very tiny bit of data. If the distribution of the approximate number of frt cars moving through Wyoming on a given day, let's say 2800, was uniform, perhaps 80 in a single train is enough to generate a prediction model. Unfortunately, however, the data indicates quite a different sampling. As I pointed out back in June 2006 and repeated on 8-9-2008, the presence or lack thereof of SP box cars was VERY inconsistent. Thus, of the 34 frt trains, 15 trains contained one or less SP box cars and 9 had none at all. This in a population that contained 136 SP box cars. The model of SP box cars being 2.79% of the nation's box cars predicts 46 SP box cars. Not good, an error of 200%. Another significant interchange with UP was C&NW. The model predicted 41 C&NW box cars but the data shows 55...an error of 34%. CB&Q was predicted to be 38. The actual number was 75...an error of 100%. So, what does this mean? Well, consider that the UP Wyoming trunk line interchange with other RR's at Ogden [ SP and D&RGW/WP ], CB&Q [ C&S ] at Cheyenne and Grand Island, NE, and more RR's than I can count at Omaha. Note that the SP line from Sacramento essentially had no interchange between there and Ogden. We're talking about a rather lengthy system with very limited interchange with other RR's. If the UP Wyoming trunk line had numerous interchanges throughout its distance, perhaps like just about any midwestern RR, maybe the population of frt cars WOULD follow the model's predictions. Who knows.

Incidentally, it has been argued that the model predicts over a long period of time...say a yr...rather than just 34 trains in a month and a half. Perhaps, but that doesn't work for me. Every day is May 14, 1953. Do groundhogs live in Wyoming? At least I don't use a clock radio. And, unlike the weather guy, I like to watch big steam power working up the Hill every day...although I will admit to a certain amount of annoyance when the occasional turbine or diesel rolls by.

Mike Brock

On first read, Tim Gilbert's work seems to be extremely well thought
out, and gives very good statistical data on car distribution at
specific locations in the US as of 31 December, 1952.

Steve Lucas.

--- In STMFC@..., Anthony Thompson <thompson@...>
wrote:

Malcolm Laughlin wrote:

I would be very wary of any interptretation of statistics that
varies far from common sense.

If you haven't read Tim Gilbert's analyses, please do so in

the

archives before commenting further. I found his statistical

approach

entirely convincing, and would say, with all due respect, that in

my

opinion the burden of proof is on you to show why he was wrong.

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 Aug 11, 2008, at 6:01 PM, rwitt_2000 wrote:

Now the next question, are there listings of these pool numbers and
assignments for auto parts service?

Obviously, such lists had to exist at one time, but I'm not aware
that any have survived, and in any case they would have changed
frequently, so such a list - if you could find it - would be useful
only if it happened to date pretty closely to the period you model.

Richard Hendrickson

I am not asserting that "track gauge" is the only issue here. In
fact, there are some very complex issues at play, maybe some not yet
addressed on this board.

Tax laws?? The CPR did purchase PS-1 boxcars from Pullman-Standard
for this very reason. Yet, those tax and customs laws did not
prevent US roads from keeping Canadian cars for their own use, simply
paying the demurrage on them. This was an issue that bedeviled the
Canadian roads from the 1950's until the 1970's. CN discouraged its
employees from placing newer CN cars at customer sidings for loading
to US destinations for this reason. (Canadian roads' older cars that
were equipped with K brakes were prohibited for loading to US
destinations and is a separate issue from this discussion.)

And when the grain was running, US cars were used by CN for loading
in the early-to-mid-1940's with export grain, yet, per AAR Car
Service rules, they should have been returned empty to the home
road.

Steve Lucas.

Good information Doug...but my 2000 edition of PowerPoint doesn't have those
options that I can find.

Jack Burgess
www.yosemitevalleyrr.com

MR or RMC can only published freight car based articles, IF they receive freight car based articles. Hopefully Richard H. will
begin submitting to another publisher. Others also need to submit. Writing articles, esp. on a regular basis, ie monthly, takes
discipline, dedication to research, modeling skills, photography skills, and the ability to write (hopefully well).

Having worked with Bill Schaumburg, I am sure he would welcome quality material. He likes historical perspective, in-depth, and
prototype material.

Also be aware that the magazines can only publish if they have advertising space to pay for the pages. I have had an article or
two get delayed or not published because the "adman" didn't sell enough ads that month, meaning they had to cut pages that month,
cutting articles. This is one of those factors that the web based magazines don't normally face.

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

There is an option in PowerPoint to embed your fonts, video clips, or anything else that PowerPoint may link to on your computer.
When you save your presentation to a disk or thumb drive, clic on File/package for CD/options/embedded TrueType fonts. This will
ensure your chosen fonts, which you worked so hard selecting and formatting for visual impact, will be saved with your PowerPoint
file. This will ensure your presentation will look the same on any computer. You can then copy your presentation to a CD or
designated drive. It is also a good precaution to also copy your video or music clips as well, just in case.

Or before you save, go to tools/options/save and clic on the embed font as true type. This will also save the fonts exactly as you
created in that particular file.

You can even save your presentation with PowerPoint Viewer loaded, so it can be shown on a computer that does not have PowerPoint,
really nice when you do know the computer you will be "borrowing".

I travel with my own laptop, remote clicker, and sometimes my projector. It is also smart to have a copy of your presentation on a
CD or thumb drive as well. I had a computer die after arriving in Calif one year. I have used provided projectors without
problems, and the organizers are often happy to see another projector. At a NMRA National I caught someone downloading
presentations from the provided pre-loaded computer. I was not happy as my presentation at that time had photos that were the
property of a Library. I permission to use them, but not distribute. If someone asked I was more than happy to share/provide what
I could. But I was not happy someone was taking without asking.

At Naperville, Martin's son has assisted with technical setups, but he can not be in every room at the beginning of each
presentation. At Cocoa Beach, Jeff Aley is the technical guy. Again he can not be in each room at the beginning of each
presentation. So it is wise to be familiar with the equipment yourself, or have a friend along who is familiar. I can recall at an
NMRA National a number of years ago watching a very frustrated Andy Sperandeo having to cancel his presentation because the
technical guys could not get Andy's computer to work with the provided projector.

Doug Harding
www.iowacentralrr.org

Re: what I said about CAD works being done....

Corrections to 3 links
Early diesels:
http://www.3dtrains.com/screens/screens_routes_wp03.jpg
http://www.3dtrains.com/screens/screens_funits_atsf_f708.jpg
http://www.3dtrains.com/screens/screens_trainset_cz09.jpg

Dave Nelson


------------------------------------

Steve Lucas wrote:

Becuase of a continuous North American rail system, common track gauge, coupler height, and air brake compatibility, any North American freight car could be found anywhere in North America from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico to Husdon Bay. . .

Yes, COULD be, but Steve, there were tax and customs laws preventing free circulation of Canadian and Mexican freight cars in the U.S. So track gauge is far from all of the story.

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