Tim,

You lost me somewhere. Why does boxcar distribution
have "considerably less variables" than other car
types?

While it is correct to view a road's boxcar roster as
a contribution to a National Pool geography also paid
a part in what was where. Most roads did not have a
lot of interest in following SCO 90 guidelines so cars
without any logical home route would be used over and
over again. One example is the rather heavy usage of
T&NO and TP box cars in the Chicago Area in the late
50's and early 60's.

Yes, I do realize that there is some kind of map in the
back of ORER's that talks about loading to various
geographic zones but that information was not binding
on any Railroad Employee that was actually doing car
distribution. I followed the instructions issued by my
Employer. So did everyone else.

Russ
1f. Re: #'s/%'s of important box car types
Posted by: "Tim Gilbert" tgilbert@... timgilbert17851
Date: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:53 pm (PDT)

Peter,

The Title of this thread includes the words "BOX CAR!" With the
exception of the grain case, the car types of your examples do not
include boxcars. Boxcar distribution had considerably less variables
than hoppers, gons, stock cars, etc.. Stick to the subject!

If you go to Ian Wilson's web site, he has a whole bunch of US Boxcars
on a spreadsheet - the distribution of ownership among those US Boxcars
is roughly proportional to the percentage the car owner owned of the US
National Fleet.

I know of no way to distinguish the percent of CN boxcars versus the CP
percentage in either Canada or in the US although I believe the
Dominion's Bureau of Statistics does differentiate between the US and
Canadian Foreign Cars on Line although I don't believe there is any
split of how many Canadian foreign boxcars on line and how many US
Boxcars were on a Canadian Line.

Yes, I agree with you that "a representative traffic mix is the result
of good research not taking average numbers from car fleets" providing
that the information is available which frequently it is not. Boxcars,
however, require less "good research" than other car types because of
that type's operating characteristics.

Tim Gilbert

--- In STMFC@..., "Russ Strodtz" <sheridan@...> wrote:

Tim,

You lost me somewhere. Why does boxcar distribution
have "considerably less variables" than other car
types?

While it is correct to view a road's boxcar roster as
a contribution to a National Pool geography also paid
a part in what was where. Most roads did not have a
lot of interest in following SCO 90 guidelines so cars
without any logical home route would be used over and
over again. One example is the rather heavy usage of
T&NO and TP box cars in the Chicago Area in the late
50's and early 60's. <snip>

Russ,

In going through switch lists of the Wabash at Forrest, IL, during
1954 and 1955, I also noticed large numbers of T&NO and T&P cars.
The Wabash handled these empty cars from Chicago to Forrest and
interchanged them to the TP&W, destined for Peoria, Il, in care of
the TPW agent at that location. Some of the cars were captured by
the Wabash at Forrest for loading on the Streator branch.

I did a study of how many foreign road house cars were on all the
switch lists for March 1955 and it totaled 873 cars representing 75
railroads. The top ten were;
ATSF - 99
T&NO - 60
NYC - 48
PRR - 45
CB&Q - 42
IC - 35
SP - 30
UP - 28
MILW - 27
GN - 25

The T&P was 13th with 23 cars. The Wabash interchanged with the
Santa Fe at Streator and that accounts for the high number of ATSF
cars. Many of the ATSF cars were inbound loads for the Smith-
Douglass fertilizer plant at Streator, being loaded toward home, as
they should. The Wabash also interchanged with the CB&Q at Streator.

The complete list of railroads and number of car for each is
somewhere on this site. Don't remember the message number.

Chet French
Dixon, IL