All this speculation about WHY eastern hoppers could be
found roaming UP rails on Sherman Hill is somewhat silly,
in the absence of actual shipper-consignee (i.e. waybill)
information. Equally likely explanations are a temporary
car shortage, a long term car shortage, miscellaneous coal
strikes, badly misrouted cars, or just the prosaic use of
another's railroad's equipment to conduct one's business.
Indeed, single carload lots of coal travelling 1500 miles
or more would be of great interest -- where is the proof?
You can't accurately infer that an eastern car loaded with
coal came from east of the Ohio (way east, in the case of
Lehigh Valley!) without some other documentation. Car rent
(per diem) was historically very cheap, and many railroads
were net car 'lenders' against their better wishes. (Great
Northern was one, and complained noisily about it in their
annual reports.) Some time ago on FCL we discussed aerial
photos of a sand quarry in western South Dakota in which we
could easily identify PRR, NYC, and other eastern hoppers
being loaded with sand - for use within a couple hundred
mile radius. Those cars could have been shanghied and not
returned to their owners for months, or maybe longer. Who
knows?

Timothy O'Connor <timoconnor@...>
Marlborough, Massachusetts