Larry Kline wrote:

My one car turn per month was off the top of my head, and low for the early
1950s. An article in the Jan 7, 1950 Railway Age gives the following numbers
for October 1949: All car types, 19.87 days, boxcars 13.94 days, gons
23.63 days and hoppers 36.89 days. The gon and hopper numbers were higher
than usual because of steel and coal strikes. For 1952 there were
approximately 36.4 million car loadings and 2.1 million cars so there were
17.3 turns per year, or 21.1 days per turn.

I'm interested in these numbers because of my familiarity with similar
numbers for reefers in the 1950s. Because of their specialized usage and
short produce seasons in many parts of the country, the national average
was about 6 reloadings per year. PFE was very proud to accomplish 12 or 13,
but compared to other car types, this clearly was not very high. (OTOH,
most PFE cars traveled quite long distances per load, so this may not be
QUITE as bad as it looks.)

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
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