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NWU Transportation Library report
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Dave Nelson <muskoka@...>
I was in Chicago this past week working at Northwestern University where I
copied a bunch of stuff from their Copeland files. As Copeland maps has come up before in conversation I thought I'd recap what I found there. The Copeland files have a max of 4 reports for a given year for a given railroad. Their purpose is to demonstrate to bondholders that the bond they hold (secured by property mortgaged by the railroad) was for a viable business route as nobody wanted to be holding bonds where the road could choose to default and say take it as it's only worth scrap. The reports take the form of a) an overview map, either route or corporate structure, neither of which was of much interest to me; b) a route density ratio report for those routes that have been mortgaged, not of much interest to me; c) an annual interchange report - this was very interesting... some variation in content, either total cars given, received at specific locations to specific roads or same data but no location; and d) tonnage miles maps - these too were interesting... these are oft seen maps where the ton miles are represented as a number of parallel lines to the route w/ each line represent some large number of ton miles per road mile. The map size varied by road as you would expect but it seemed the minimum size I saw was 4 square feet (I was told some of the maps exceed 50 square feet). The documents themselves are old, printed on heavy paper (probably high rag content -- good), many folds (not good) and care must be taken when unfolding and making copies. I used an ordinary copy machine that was loaded with 11x17 paper; most of the maps I copied took a minimum of 5 pages to capture the whole route. If you buy a copy card each page costs 8 cents. There are oversize copiers elsewhere in the library complex which use a roll of very wide paper and can do these maps in just one pass -- $1.50 per map. The fellow who knew how to operate the machine was off this week so I didn't get to use it. Most of the documents were dated in the 1930's, some earlier, more later. Roads covered were those who had mortgaged their routes and the NWU holdings were not complete as only a few roads had many successive years. I noticed the DRGW, ERIE, and WM files were very thick, UP very thin. Harvard and Stanford also have Copeland material and it would not surprise me if all three collections are largely complementary (i.e., few duplicates). The Copeland holdings at NWU are not on open shelves. The library staff was a bit cautious at first but when satisfied I was a serious researcher instead of your typical drooling railfan / paper thief they relaxed and became interested in what I was doing and were quite helpful. The library director told me he wanted to digitize the collection but whether funds would become available was unknown. As for the other material in the library while most of the collection was newer than 1960, I noted an extensive collection of older AAR weekly traffic reports (bound) which are quite useful in determining the seasonality of traffic volume on a road (weekly sum of cars loaded for grain, coal, ore, lumber, merch, misc, and cars received). I also found a number of 1950's ICC 1% waybill reports, most of which I've seen locally so I just skimmed thru them... one that was new to me was car type by commodity class (the rows) by lading weight (the columns). I noticed reefers were used for far more commodity classes than I expected (I knew of printed material, merch, etc) but many dirty loads were cited too (e.g., fertilizer). Another thing I noticed was the use of gondolas and flats for l.c.l. Not too surprising when you think of it but then who thinks anymore when you can simply pose the question to this list? Lastly, I stumbled upon a collection of Canadian data (I can hear Tony groan already), which I copied. For each province: Tonnage and carloads originated; tonnage received from US points for Canada; tonnage received from US points for the US, tonnage terminated, tonnage delivered to the US. Similar data by railroad (including those US roads w/ track in Canada). Similar data for east to west within Canada. I suspect the data can determine net exports to the US by commodity class (one back of the envelope calculation was on autos and auto parts and the number was suprisingly small). IIRC total tonnage to the US in the years I examined was around 19 million (including pass thru routing above Lake Erie). Not a lot. It'll take me many months to work thru the data so the above statement on auto parts may not prove correct on proper examination. So counting airfare, car, etc., I spent about $500 in order to spend ~$25 at a copy machine (at 8 cents a page). Go figure. 8-) Dave Nelson |
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tim gilbert <tgilbert@...>
Dave,
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Many thanks for your NWU Transportation Library Report. I should probably take an extra day while I am in Naperville to go over and visit. From "our" point view, I believe that the most worthwhile of the Copeland files are the Interchange Reports because they deal with loaded cars, and not tons. The tonnage density maps which I have seen include the coordinates which were the net tons carried in each direction between station or junction A to/from station or junction B. Do the maps you copied have these coordinates? Since these coordinates are arranged alphabetically, they have to be sorted into station order after the data is transferred to a spreadsheet - a thankless task for a large railroad with many diverging lines. The changes along the line will represent the net of the tons received or delivered along the line for each direction. By multiplying the distance between stations, net ton miles can be calculated. The aggregation of these net ton miles into a total for each direction can be compared with total loaded car miles in each direction. Still, there is the need to convert these tons into cars, and this should be a very inexact conversion because of the disparity between the densities of cars carrying bulk materials like coal versus Dave Nelson wrote:
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Dave Nelson <muskoka@...>
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-----Original Message----- The tonnage density maps which I have seen include the coordinates whichIn most cases yes but always a map showing the same data graphically. Dave Nelson |
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pullmanboss <tgmadden@...>
Dave Nelson wrote:
So counting airfare, car, etc., I spent about $500 in order tospend ~$25 at a copy machine (at 8 cents a page). Go figure. 8-)The plight of the serious researcher. Trips to the Newberry cost me a minimum of $100 a day just to be there (if I stay in a fleabag hotel), plus whatever it costs to get there. Flying, driving and Amtrak all cost about the same, considering the expense of a night on the road each way if driving, and an extra night in Chicago if arriving late afternoon on Amtrak. It's not the cost, it's the value of the information you can retrieve. And your research becomes more and more efficient with each visit. Tom M. |
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