Fellow Listers,

Where would one go to find information on the interaction
between railroads and the automobile industry in the 1940's
and 1950's? My interest in this actually goes a decade beyond
this time frame, but I'll keep the question within the limits
of this list's charter.

Being as how the Southern Pacific and Cotton Belt did a huge
amount of business hauling automobiles and auto parts over the
years, I've been attempting of late to discover the basic "in's
and out's" of how all this freight was moved:

* Where the on-line parts manufacturers were located.
* Where the on-line assembly plants were located.
* What freight cars were assigned where - and when - to handle
the traffic from the various plants.
* What documents exist - if any - that show automobile and auto
parts car "pool" assignments.

Walther's book "America's Driving Force" addresses this subject, but
since the book was written with the assistance of Ford Motor Co., I
suspect it's a bit biased. In addition, most of the information in
the book is related to the 1980's and later, which doesn't help my
steam-and-early-diesel era research much, if at all.

Where can I go to find publications or documents that have this kind
of detailed information? Does any such document even exist? Would there
be some kind of government publication that contains this information?

Any and all thoughts, opinions, and advice are most welcome.

Thanks,

Shawn Beckert

Shawn,

My question to you is, what is this information for, modeling? Are you writing and article? What?

The Auto Industry was and has been a very demanding business for the Railroads. Timing is and was everything. Remember the rates during OUR era were fixed, in regulation. Never reading the Walthers book I would imgine that it is not as bias as one might think. The infrastructure of the industry was much the same for all the producers during this period it was just the loading techniques and equipment demands that were different as was the destinations and origins.

Greg Martin

Greg Martin wrote, in part:

...The infrastructure of the industry was much the same for
all the producers during this period it was just the loading
techniques and equipment demands that were different as was
the destinations and origins.

Ah, but the devil is in the details, in this case the details
of *which* equipment, *what* destinations and origins. I intend
to run one or more sections of merchandise and auto-parts trains
on my St. Louis & Southwestern, and I want the motive power and
the cars to be as accurate for the time period as I can possibly
make them. It won't do to have auto-parts cars in the consist
that normally would have been seen on another railroad during the
late 1940's or 1950's.

An example: General Motors assembly plants were located in Southern
California, while Ford seemed to have its plants around the Bay Area.
I wouldn't want auto-parts cars that were assigned to Ford via the
normal CNW-UP-SP route showing up in SSW-SP trains that normally
carried General Motors traffic via St. Louis - Los Angeles.

Tony Thompson once mentioned that the Espee renumbered its auto
parts cars every time they were assigned to another manufacturer
or model year. If that's the case, I be hard pressed to know if I
was running the proper number series of cars for a given time period
or not. Granted, nobody else would know either, but that's not the
point. I strive for accuracy, unreasonable as that may be!

Shawn Beckert

Regarding RRs and the auto industry, Dave Nelson writes that in 1950

Texas was ranked #2 (behind NY) in states receiving automobiles shipped by
rail 11.6% of all such shipments. CA, WA, OR were #4, 5, and 6 -- strongly
suggesting that few (or no) auto assembly plants were in those states. All
5 of these states were in the top 6 again for trucks. At the same time, CA
was ranked #2 for receiving auto parts in rail shipments, NY #4 -- so the
data suggests those two did have some assembly plants (and from other
sources I know CA did)....

California was a major market for automobiles, even ca. 1950, and in the
post-WW-II era Ford, GM, Chrysler, and Studebaker all had assembly plants
in the Los Angeles area. Some dated from as early as the 1920s (e.g. the
Ford plant in Wilmington) but most were set up in surplus WW II facilities
for war production which became available after the war for pennies on the
dollar. There were auto assembly plants in the Bay Area as well (e.g.
Chevrolet in Oakland), and cars produced in these Calif. plants were
shipped throughout the western states, as well as supplying the local
market. In the freight interchange records between the WP and GN at
Bieber, CA for this era many auto rack equipped cars are shown northbound
to Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and the same cars often returned empty
over the same route, suggesting that they were in assigned service.

Of course, only the most popular models were produced from parts shipped to
the satellite factories, so many complete cars and trucks also had to be
transported from factories in other parts of the country. For example, the
Santa Fe wrecked (at considerable cost) several auto cars loaded with new
Lincolns on Cajon Pass ca. 1950.

Richard H. Hendrickson
Ashland, Oregon 97520

Greg

I wrote the section on the automobile cars prior to the introduction of the high cube and auto racks and it was edited down from around 60000 words to just over 3500 to fit in the space, so there was a lot left out I can tell you that it wasn't written from the Ford viewpoint, although they did help a lot, namely Jim Kallow from Detroit. Ford's main parts plants were in Michigan and they shipped parts from there to all of their assembly plants in all different parts
of the country. The cars for the railroads that Shawn is asking were mainly in pool service and the way I understood the pools to acr was that a percentage of the total cars in the pool were based on the per centage of milage the parts traveled over that particular railroad. For example if there were 100 cars in the pool and the parts traveled 50% on the SP then the SP would contribute 50% of the cars to the pool. I have diagrams for B&O cars that specifically
state who the cars were assigned to. Chrystler motors wouldn't fit into Ford racks etc.

Hope this explains some of the car situation

Larry Smith

tgregmrtn@... wrote:

The only auto assembly plant I'm sure of in NY at the time was
GM's plant in Tarrytown, a northern suburb of NY City. This plant
was originally Maxwell's, and dated from before 1910. It closed in
the mid-90s after mini-van production was ceased; the plant has now
been demolished and the site is well on its way to becoming
residential development and a riverfront park.
Ford now has a presence on the south side of Buffalo, but I
don't know if that dates as far back as 1950. It was once huge, but
I don't know if it still is, as just about all heavy industry in NY
has retrenched to very little. The Ford plant is/was adjacent to
the now nearly defunct Bethlehem Steel facilities.
As for parts manufacturing in NY, GM still has an aluminum
castings plant in Massena, but again I think that is a 50s
development (when the St Lawrence Seaway made cheap hydroelectric
power available and both Alcoa and Reynolds greatly expanded raw
aluminum production there). GM subsidiary Harrison Radiator was
historically in Lockport. Rochester Carburetor was, I believe, in
Rochester, NY.
Ford made copper/brass radiators in Green Island until the
early 90s, when aluminum/plastic superseded the other metals.
An outfit called American Axle made just that in Buffalo, and
is, I believe, still in business there. Dunlop (now a subsidiary of
Bridgestone?) still makes tires in Tonawanda.
Chrysler used to have a subsidiary in Syracuse called New
Process Gear. I don't know when that was established, but I get the
impression it was in the 50s or 60s, and it was spun off by Chrysler
a few years ago.
Other automakers in NY State included Franklin (Syracuse) and
Pierce Arrow (Buffalo), neither of whom survived the Great
Depression.

Jeff

--- In STMFC@y..., "Dave Nelson" <muskoka@a...> wrote:

A couple data points from the 1950 ICC data.

snip

Texas was ranked #2 (behind NY) in states receiving automobiles

shipped by

rail 11.6% of all such shipments. CA, WA, OR were #4, 5, and 6 --

strongly

suggesting that few (or no) auto assembly plants were in those

states. All

5 of these states were in the top 6 again for trucks. At the same

time, CA

was ranked #2 for receiving auto parts in rail shipments, NY #4 --

so the

data suggests those two did have some assembly plants (and from

other

sources I know CA did), but TX, WA, and OR are all way down the

list,

suggesting those shipments of parts might have been just for repair
purposes. The data for other states leads to other guesses.

The state to state data would suggest all the relevant origination

points

for the above. But all in all, not much more than clues and

guesswork.

And surely 5-7 years later it'd all be very different and the data

I've

collected for 1950 almost meaningless.

Good luck!

Dave Nelson

Shawn, SP carried Bay area traffic via the Sunset route as well
as via the Overland route. The exact distribution of traffic would
be very difficult to pinpoint at any particular time, but you can
make some generalizations about it. One is that traffic managers
were wined and dined by practically all railroads which resulted
in major shippers using many different routings. This practice of
spreading the wealth continued into the 1960's at least. So I'd
say that almost any car in auto parts service was likely to be
seen on the SSW or SP, if it also was seen on the AT&SF and UP,
at that time. And lots of equipment was pooled as well by the
1950's. The SP 1956 roster lists the assignments of a number
of box cars so that should give you some clue as to the pools
that the SP likely belonged to.

The best thing would be to get hold of a Ford or GM car pool
list of cars, if they even existed. I have never seen one.

An example: General Motors assembly plants were located in Southern
California, while Ford seemed to have its plants around the Bay Area.
I wouldn't want auto-parts cars that were assigned to Ford via the
normal CNW-UP-SP route showing up in SSW-SP trains that normally
carried General Motors traffic via St. Louis - Los Angeles.

Tony Thompson once mentioned that the Espee renumbered its auto
parts cars every time they were assigned to another manufacturer
or model year. If that's the case, I be hard pressed to know if I
was running the proper number series of cars for a given time period
or not. Granted, nobody else would know either, but that's not the
point. I strive for accuracy, unreasonable as that may be!

Shawn Beckert

Tim O'Connor <timoconnor@...>
Sterling, Massachusetts

Shawn,

You wrote:

Where would one go to find information on the interaction
between railroads and the automobile industry in the 1940's
and 1950's? My interest in this actually goes a decade beyond
this time frame, but I'll keep the question within the limits
of this list's charter.

Being as how the Southern Pacific and Cotton Belt did a huge
amount of business hauling automobiles and auto parts over the
years, I've been attempting of late to discover the basic "in's
and out's" of how all this freight was moved:

* Where the on-line parts manufacturers were located.
* Where the on-line assembly plants were located.
* What freight cars were assigned where - and when - to handle
the traffic from the various plants.
* What documents exist - if any - that show automobile and auto
parts car "pool" assignments.

Where can I go to find publications or documents that have this kind
of detailed information? Does any such document even exist? Would
there
be some kind of government publication that contains this information?

There may be a list of plants in an auto company's 10-K filing to the
SEC; I have no idea of whether they would still be available for the
years you want from the Government or the Company, but the worst answer
you can get from either would be "no." Another place to check for 10-K's
may be the historical collection at a Business School like Stanford.
Whether the LA Public Library has old 10-K's in their stacks is another
place to explore.

In terms of freight cars assigned, the ORER footnotes can yield the type
of Auto Parts loaded - e.g. in the January 1938 ORER, per footnote R,
NYC series #85000-85159 were equipped with racks for loading finished
closed automobile bodies; per footnote S, NYC series #85160-85234 were
equipped with racks for loading Automobile tops. Unfortunately for SP
buffs, that same 1/1938 ORER's footnotes to SP cars do not distinguish
what type of auto part is carried by the relevant series.

On Oct 16, 11:03am, Beckert, Shawn wrote:

Subject: [STMFC] Railroads and the Auto Industry: A Research Question
Fellow Listers,

Where would one go to find information on the interaction
between railroads and the automobile industry in the 1940's
and 1950's?

Shawn,

The Ops-Ind list is one place to find out. There was a thread a
while back indicating that Jim Eager and Nick Molo were trying to

compile a list of automobile and light
truck assembly plants and the railroads that served them circa
1979-80.

The basic list of plants and the models produced at each comes from
Ward's Automotive Yearbook for 1979 and 1980, but that reference of
course makes no mention of which railroad--or railroads--served each
plant.

I don't know if Ward's existed back in the timeframe of your
interest, but it's worth looking into.

John Mitchell is studying the same thing for the 50's, and he
commented

[QUOTE]
"By the way, the Dept of Commerce in Washington puts out an annual report
on
prospects for all industries in the US. (Industrial Horizons??) You may be
able to get a really old one from that Dept's library for your time
period.
I know they have been producing it since at least the mid-eighties, but
may
have done it before that. They also have a chapter on auto parts and I
believe a listing of locations for huge plants necessary to produce major
parts such as stampings, engines, transmissions, etc

In Canada, the Automotive Branch of Industry Canada put out an annual
report
on the Automotive Industry, including stats on Cdn and NA production, who
produces what, where, etc. Also info on the major parts producers and
their
plants. The Departmental Library would have copies back to about 1983."

[END QUOTE]


Per their messages, John's email is (was) mitchel2@... and Jim's is
(was) jeager@... .


Good luck!

-Jeff

--
Jeff Aley jaley@...
DPG Chipsets Product Engineering
Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA
(916) 356-3533

Dave Nelson wrote

A couple data points from the 1950 ICC data.

Texas was ranked #2 (behind NY) in states receiving automobiles shipped by
rail 11.6% of all such shipments. CA, WA, OR were #4, 5, and 6 -- strongly
suggesting that few (or no) auto assembly plants were in those states.

Since OR and WA are relatively small in population, it also
suggests that a lot of export autos were going to Portland or
Seattle. The "New Car Carriers" book that we discussed a while
back has several photos of autos being loaded on ships.


Tim O'Connor <timoconnor@...>
Sterling, Massachusetts

Tony Thompson once mentioned that the Espee renumbered its auto
parts cars every time they were assigned to another manufacturer
or model year.

Shawn, when I get to auto cars in my freight car volumes, I will include
the company stuff I have for the late 1950s about assignments, and you will
see that indeed some cars were renumbered every year. Most, though (e.g.
Chrysler battery cars) stayed in the same pool, albeit with new racks every
few years. But naturally pool sizes changed from year to year, so there was
considerable movement of cars between number groups.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2942 Linden Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 http://www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroads and on Western history

Dunlop is a subsidary of Goodyear Tire. Firstone is
owned (for what good it does them...) by Bridgestone.

Bill Daniels
Tucson, AZ

Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 21:38:19 -0000
From: "englishintroy" <englij@...>
Subject: Re: Railroads and the Auto Industry: A
Research Question

Dunlop (now a subsidiary of
Bridgestone?) still makes tires in Tonawanda.


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
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Larry,

I understand this oh to well as I am involved daily with rail shipping.

Hmmm...

WYO: 150 lbs of car/resident
MT: 133
WA: 129
OR: 125
TX: 68
USA average: 30
NJ: 14

Dave, I lived in Texas, Calif, and NJ during the 1950's. I
do not know of any major auto assembly plant in Texas during
that era. And in New Jersey I think there was one each Ford
and GM plant. But autos have brand names like Ford, Mercury,
Oldsmobile etc etc and so the output of each plant typically
serves a large area of the country. NJ is 500+ rail miles
from Detroit -- so I am mystified why NJ would receive 1/10
of the autos by rail per capita of Oregon. I don't think the
reason was localized production -- there may be something
else going on.

For example, the New York Central may have gotten the lion's
share of auto traffic to the east, and they may have terminated
New Jersey auto loads at New York City locations and delivered
them by truck -- 90% of the NJ population is within a 100 mile
drive of NYC.

Now Texas, that is a head scratcher. Perhaps the automobiles
were shipped by barges or coastal freighter to Houston, Port
Arthur, Corpus Christi or Brownsville. Those ports are a
short distance from at least 1/2 of Texas's population. The
auto book I have has pictures of ocean ships, Great Lakes
ships, and Ohio River barges loaded with automobiles. It even
shows a Great Lakes bulk carrier (grain or ore) with autos on
its deck, stowed on top of the bulk hatches!

Tim O'Connor <timoconnor@...>
Sterling, Massachusetts

Depending on what you are interested in, the per capital approach may skew
the results tremendously. These states have very low population densities.
Consequently, a single automobile delivered to these states adds up to many
more pounds per person than one delivered to, for example, New York. The
per capita approach is not a good measure of freight traffic or rail car
usage.

--
Stuart A. Forsyth
forsyth@...

In all likelihood if NYC were to choose where to terminate loads of
autos bound for NJ, they would have used the West Shore to
weehawken, NJ, not the main line to NY City. Of course it was the
shipper, not the RR, who decided.

Jeff

Dave,

Yes, California did have several auto assembly plants in the 1950s and 1960s. The best known were GM in
Milpitas (in the East Bay Area), served by the SP; Ford in Milpitas, served by the WP and SP on
alternating 6 month cycles; and a plant in Sunnyvale about which I know nothing. AFAIK, only the GM
Milpitas plant still operates. The WPHS Headlight had a feature on the Ford plant a few issues back. I
can get the specific issue number if interested.

Of course, in the early days there were many other auto and truck ventures in California. Fageol built
busses and trucks in Oakland, for example, and Meister built custom bus bodies (as well as trolleys and
self-powered railcars) in Woodland.

Kind regards,


Garth G. Groff

Dave Nelson wrote: