Tony's Clinic yesterday at BAPM
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Hi all - and especially Tony, I attended Tony's clinic on 'Signature Freight Cars' at the Bay Area Prototype Modeler's meet in Richmond, Ca. I have a couple of questions I'd like to toss out to the group. Is this topic correct for this group? - Jim B.
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Rob M.
For those of us too distant to attend, I think it would be a great discussion!
Rob Mondichak
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Bill Daniels <billinsf@...>
Tony also gave the web address for the notes to his presentation. He also brought a display train highlighting the cars he discussed so the audience (and everybody else) could see the real cars instead of just photos. Of course, he also brought an SP consol and caboose to make it a real train.
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Hi,
Tony's clinic is available online from MRH, back issues April 2013 and March 2015. The text of those articles is essentially the same as what Tony presented at BAPM here in the SF Bay Area yesterday. - Jim
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Tony Thompson
Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; e-mail, tony@... Publishers of books on railroad history
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Tony (and all),
Yesterday you said "you can do the same thing for your layout ... I'm going to present what my thinking process was for my SP 1953 layout" (sic - but essentially what you said ... ???). The parts I didn't hear from you yesterday were comments about how those national averages (percentages) of the freight car fleet should be modified due to regional aspects (such as a West Coast theme). Would you expand on that a bit here please? I have heard many, many times and from many different guys that the number of home road cars, on any RR and on any one day, is usually between 40% and 60% of the total cars on the RR that day. Do you like those numbers for our layouts? Additionally - we need to also consider the industries on our layouts. For instance if you don't have any receivers of tank cars (such as an oil dealer or another industry) then the use and/or number of tank cars changes ... compared to when you do have a particular industry. Some quick examples of industries that affect the freight car fleet are lumber mills, mines, power plants, fishing canneries, food canneries, oil and gas dealers, warehouses, cement plants, quarries, manufacturing, steel mills, etc., etc., etc. To my way of thinking you want to first plan for the car types you will need to serve on layout industries - then you start to apply the percentages of home road cars (paying attention to particular car types dictated by these same industries), and finally you need to "fill out your layout roster" with the cars based upon both national percentages -and- regional variations. Do you agree with these concepts? (I think you do - but you didn't talk about it yesterday during your clinic). And, for some car types, you also have to consider the empties in/loads out thing ... mines, mills, cement plants, etc. come quickly to mind. Tony, PLEASE don't read the above as a criticism of your Excellent clinic. These are "additional ideas that came to my mind -because of- your clinic". And my own spin on how they should/can be handled. - Jim B.
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Jim,
I guess you missed my response to Armand's question on ratios June 13 (message #150564), where I address most of those points. A couple of quick pointers.
First, it depends on the car type. For boxcars and flat cars, the regional bias idea is a myth. For gons, it is partly true and for hoppers it is generally true.
Second, the home fleet at 50% is an AVERAGE. Boxcars were probably much less, gone about on the average and hoppers over that number.
In my message, I even give you a sequence of how to figure this all out ;)
Regards Bruce Bruce Smith Auburn, AL
From: STMFC@... on behalf of jimbetz@... [STMFC]
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2017 1:48 PM To: STMFC@... Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: Tony's Clinic yesterday at BAPM Tony (and all), Yesterday you said "you can do the same thing for your layout ... I'm
going to present what my thinking process was for my SP 1953 layout"
(sic - but essentially what you said ... ???).
The parts I didn't hear from you yesterday were comments about
how those national averages (percentages) of the freight car fleet
should be modified due to regional aspects (such as a West
Coast theme). Would you expand on that a bit here please?
I have heard many, many times and from many different guys
that the number of home road cars, on any RR and on any one
day, is usually between 40% and 60% of the total cars on the
RR that day. Do you like those numbers for our layouts?
Additionally - we need to also consider the industries on our
layouts. For instance if you don't have any receivers of
tank cars (such as an oil dealer or another industry) then
the use and/or number of tank cars changes ... compared
to when you do have a particular industry.
Some quick examples of industries that affect the freight
car fleet are lumber mills, mines, power plants, fishing
canneries, food canneries, oil and gas dealers, warehouses,
cement plants, quarries, manufacturing, steel mills, etc., etc.,
etc.
To my way of thinking you want to first plan for the car types
you will need to serve on layout industries - then you start to
apply the percentages of home road cars (paying attention
to particular car types dictated by these same industries),
and finally you need to "fill out your layout roster" with the
cars based upon both national percentages -and- regional
variations.
Do you agree with these concepts? (I think you do - but
you didn't talk about it yesterday during your clinic).
And, for some car types, you also have to consider
the empties in/loads out thing ... mines, mills, cement
plants, etc. come quickly to mind.
Tony,
PLEASE don't read the above as a criticism of your
Excellent clinic. These are "additional ideas that
came to my mind -because of- your clinic". And my
own spin on how they should/can be handled.
- Jim B.
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Tony Thompson
Jim Betz wrote:
Yeah, I have heard lots of numbers thrown about too. But if you look at numbers, for example with SP, you will find home-road numbers not above a third and in some trains down to a fourth of the total. Of course you can choose any percentage that suits you, but most roads of any size with reasonable traffic balance will NOT be anywhere like 60 percent, when you look at actual data. Remember that Gilbert-Nelson relates to bridge-route and through traffic, obviously not for branches or small regional railroads. Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; e-mail, tony@... Publishers of books on railroad history
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Tony,
Thanks for your answers. - Jim B.
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Clark Propst
Jim B wrote: ”I have heard many, many times and from many different guys
that the number of home road cars, on any RR and on any one day, is usually between 40% and 60% of the total cars on the RR that day. Do you like those numbers for our layouts?” I’ve
studied M&StL agents records and train lists from the 40s and 50s. You’re
lucky to find any home road cars. I recently read an employee newsletter from
the late 50s mentioning a turndown in national business where they had a high
percentage of home road cars (over 50%? can’t remember the number). It stated
normal was 6-7%! This was a bridge route. I need to re-read to verify those
numbers, but I was shocked at how low it was.
In the last
train records I transcribed the biggest percentage of box cars was NYC followed
not far back by UTLX tank cars.
As for my
layout – I have to completely revamp my roster from my last layout dealing with
an industrial town to my now rural branchline. As an example - I had to sell off
over a dozen Armour reefers that were for a packing plant on my old layout and
replace them with a small variety of reefers for two canneries on the branch.
Which is good because I hate making more than one of anything ; ))
Clark
Propst Mason City Iowa
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I appreciate Clark’s comment related to the M&StL. I model the M&StL’s mainline in Iowa and am now relieved that I don’t need that many cars lettered for the M&StL. Now the M&StL had sizable cement and coal traffic, and thus hoppers and gons. But during the era of my interest, 1949, most of the coal traffic was central Illinois to Peoria. Very little coal traffic was on the mainline in Iowa. And most of the cement traffic from Mason City went north to Minnesota, again not on the section of track I model. So I don’t need a large number of M&StL hoppers or gons. That is an example of how one needs to know not just their railroad, but the section you plan to model and the type of traffic it carried in your chosen era.
I believe this thread started with mention of the need for 50-60% home road cars. If I recall correctly, that number goes back to some Model Railroader (Kalmback Pub) articles from the 50s, which was more modeler wants and speculation, not accurate prototype study of traffic patterns. When I came into the hobby that %figure was still being cited by many modelers, but not rail historians. Since then it has been since displaced by the Gilbert-Nelson studies of prototype patterns, and data such as Clark cited.
Doug Harding www.iowacentralrr.org
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Doug,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Exactly. Why do we have to keep re-visiting this? Just point people back to the LENGTHY discussions - with tons of data to back it up - from Tim Gilbert, Dave Nelson, and many others. On the SP the -average- of all freight cars was about 30% home road, but that is because so many GONDOLAS and company service cars remained on line and rarely left home rails. For BOX CARS, on most major roads, Gilbert-Nelson demonstrated that the proportions were very close to national proportions during periods of a healthy economy. For GN and NP, both roads were constantly griping about their box cars disappearing for long periods of time, producing frequent car shortages. And people often cite yard photos showing lots of home road cars, until one points out that cars needing repairs were often held in yards, so it was not unusual to see long strings of home road cars in a yard. But consists (conductor books) and waybills are more revealing about actual traffic patterns. Tim O'Connor
I believe this thread started with mention of the need for 50-60% home road cars. If I recall correctly, that number goes back to some Model Railroader (Kalmback Pub) articles from the 50s, which was more modeler wants and speculation, not accurate prototype study of traffic patterns. When I came into the hobby that %figure was still being cited by many modelers, but not rail historians. Since then it has been since displaced by the Gilbert-Nelson studies of prototype patterns, and data such as Clark cited.
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Bill Welch
Just a thought: Would it be possible for someone familiar and has some history in this discussion to take the most relevant posts and files related to this topic and put them into a resource more easily accessible over on the "Steam Era Freight Cars" website? Rob Adams who currently administers the site will be at Collinsville later this week and I would be happy to speak to him about it.
Maybe a two or three person job but this seems to come up from time-to-time. Having the material and the research involved live some place accessible would have great value I think. Bill Welch
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Folks,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Several of you, including Doug have mistakenly included home road cars the Gilbert-Nelson model. That model only applies to FOREIGN cars. Mssr. Gilbert and Nelson indicated this repeatedly.
The urban legend promulgated in the hobby press was the “nearest neighbor” or “interchange partner” approach, also known as the “regional approach” that Jim postulated in his original email. While false for box cars, it does apply pretty well
to hopper traffic.
Home road car percentages vary depending on the road, but the actual numbers for the PRR are right at 50% for most of the steam era…. but again, as I indicated in my post last week, that is an average of all car types. Unfortunately, the numbers
for car types were not broken out in the statistics, but a good estimate is 25% boxcars, 50% gons and 75% hoppers were home road on the PRR. Fortunately for the PRR modeler, these “sub-fleets” were very close in size, each comprising about 1/3 of the total
fleet.
Regards Bruce
Bruce F. Smith Auburn, AL https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/ "Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
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devansprr
Bruce, All,
I have been following the freight car distribution concept for many years on this and other lists, and Bruce's summary is consistent with the majority of prior posts. However, there may be an interesting nuance some may need to consider for their layouts - routing of MTY box cars. The G-N model applies to loaded Box Cars, but the RR's had the option to deliver MTY's to each car's nearest home road interchange if it interchanged with that road (as opposed to routing it to the road it received the car from while loaded). If your modeled road has a significant flow of empties for your era (as did all of the PRR's WWII WB mainline traffic between Philadelphia and points west - the majority of WB box cars were empties), then some interesting distortions are likely, or even essential to model (to keep your yard crews on their toes!) Specific to the PRR at Harrisburg, PA, any MTY B&O box car was routed west down to Martinsburg, WV, and any NYC MTY box car was routed west up towards Newberry Junction near Williamsport, PA. So even though these two roads had, during WWII, the fourth and second largest US boxcar fleets respectively (behind the PRR), WB MTY B&O and NYC box cars on the mainline out of Harrisburg would not be seen. So only loaded B&O and NYCentral box cars would appear on the ML west of Harrisburg, and since loads were less than 1/2 of the WB consists, they would be under-represented. Conversely, the PRR's Cumberland Valley line from Harrisburg towards Martinsburg would have a whole bunch of B&O boxcars in WB consists (on a line with a fraction of the WB mainline traffic.) So delivery of MTY's to their home road interchanges could significantly distort the G-N distribution model, if you are modeling such a location. This data is from a PRR document snagged on e-bay - an 87 page general notice for yard agents on where to route MTY's. Where the PRR routed MTY cars with PRR-home road interchanges appears, in general, to be biased towards the shortest run - so east coast ATSF MTY's on the PRR were routed to Chicago, not East St. Louis (150 miles further away.) But there are some interesting exceptions - a quick scan of the PRR's routing of MTY B&O and NYCentral cars would suggest a bias towards delivering MTY's to locations that were rather remote points on the B&O and NYC systems - almost as if the PRR was making life more difficult for the B&O and NYC. (e.g. for NYCentral MTY's in Philadelphia, the document specifies routing the MTY cars to Newberry Junction, PA, (200 miles distant, in central PA, far from the heart of the NYCentral's mainlines), instead of South Amboy NJ (83 miles away.)) RR wars... Dave Evans ---In STMFC@..., <smithbf@...> wrote :
Folks, Several of you, including Doug have mistakenly included home road cars the Gilbert-Nelson model. That model only applies to FOREIGN cars. Mssr. Gilbert and Nelson indicated this repeatedly. The urban legend promulgated in the hobby press was the “nearest neighbor” or “interchange partner” approach, also known as the “regional approach” that Jim postulated in his original email. While false for box cars, it does apply pretty well
to hopper traffic. Home road car percentages vary depending on the road, but the actual numbers for the PRR are right at 50% for most of the steam era…. but again, as I indicated in my post last week, that is an average of all car types. Unfortunately, the numbers
for car types were not broken out in the statistics, but a good estimate is 25% boxcars, 50% gons and 75% hoppers were home road on the PRR. Fortunately for the PRR modeler, these “sub-fleets” were very close in size, each comprising about 1/3 of the total
fleet. Regards Bruce
Bruce F. Smith Auburn, AL https://www5.vetmed.auburn.edu/~smithbf/ "Some days you are the bug, some days you are the windshield."
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Doug,
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
If you had been able to attend Tony's clinic Saturday you would have understood his focus on the percentages of the national fleet. That isn't a criticism - it's an acknowledgement of how difficult it is to read and get the same 'feeling' out of a clinic as you do if you are there in attendance - and I understand why you weren't there. ;-) The part that is missing when you read Tony's blog -vs- when you are there when he is presenting the same topic are the nuances of expression (the "emphasis"). And, as Tony himself pointed out, the version of his clinic that was published in MRH does not include -all- of the charts he presented at BAPM. Those extra charts showed how he arrived at the final ones for his analysis of the national freight car fleet - what he did to make better sense out of the raw data. An example will explain this better than just words ... one of the things that Tony did was to eliminate hoppers being used in mineral service because they skew the numbers. (Yes, grasshopper, if you are modeling a coal road you can have - actually NEED - a lot of home road coal hoppers.) What Tony said - and has reaffirmed in posts here since - is that if your home road has a smaller percentage of the national freight car fleet ... you can expect that your home road will have a smaller percentage of home road cars "on your layout". And, if I'm understanding Tony correctly, the number of home road to off road cars will be different (some number more than the national average) ... but not as significantly different as you might think by the oft quoted (and usually erroneous) percentages such as 40% to 60% (which I suspect that I shouldn't even be citing those numbers here because it tends to propagate them even though I'm saying you shouldn't use them). There is one aspect that I suspect does contribute to the increases in home road cars - "captive service". There are several car types which didn't roam much at all during the STMFC era (and the further back you push your date the more this is true). For example, any cars used in mineral service, cars used by a specific industry (such as cement hoppers). In addition, there are "rushes" ... both seasonal and some for a particular 'era' ... for example the building boom in California during the 50's tended to keep flat cars (lumber) busy running back and forth between the PNW and California. However, as has been pointed out many times - for box cars especially - you can't go 'wrong' if you simply use the national percentages of the car fleet (for your chosen era). - Jim B. P.S. Tony - I have tried to represent you faithfully - if I have missed on anything PLEASE correct me.
________________________________________________________________________
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Dave Evans wrote > the RR's had the option to deliver MTY's to each car's nearest home road > interchange if it interchanged with that road (as opposed to routing it to > the road it received the car from while loaded). While true, RR's also had the option to deliver MTY's AWAY from the home road, including to other railroads (!) if the intention was to load the car "in the direction of" the home road. In other words, if the D&H or CNJ were crying for empty box cars, the PRR could send ATSF or SP empties east from Harrisburg to New Jersey or New York for loading - but not necessarily back to the ATSF. For example, the load may only be headed west from NJ or NY. In this way, it would be perfectly legal and valid to hijack an ATSF box car and ping-pong it back and forth between PA and NJ, for example - forever. If the car was new and had roller bearings, well ... why not? Of course per diem had to be paid, but it was so low (by Law) back then that it did not cover the cost of ownership of new cars. There are 18 separate car service rules in the 1953 ORER and most of them have subsections - I don't know whether anyone has gone through them with a fine tooth comb to see if they are completely consistent i.e. whether they contain any contradictions of one another. They certainly seem to contain ambiguities. The ORER includes a few Q&A statements since the implications of the rules are often not obvious to the reader. Tim O'Connor
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Tony Thompson
Dave Evans wrote:
I would think most railroads would have had "Equipment Instructions" to serve the purpose Dave describes. I have seen a couple of SP ones, and of course such documents are rare because they were re-issued frequently, and the old one thrown away. I constructed a document of this kind for the SP Coast Division (which I model), in the format and with much of the content I had seen in the prototype documents. This was described in the blog post below. The document itself is on Google Drive (formerly called Google Docs), and the link to it there is contained in the blog post I have linked here: Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; e-mail, tony@... Publishers of books on railroad history
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Aley, Jeff A
Dave and Tony,
Am I correct in assuming that these documents were prepared in accordance with SCO 99 [I think that’s the right number]?
SCO 99 was a Special Car Order that directed the movement of empties back to their owners by the shortest route, INSTEAD of routing them back via the way they came. I’m sure a search of the archives will reveal a learned discussion on this topic, from gurus who know far more about it than I do.
Regards,
-Jeff
From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...]
Sent: Monday, June 19, 2017 10:23 AM To: STMFC@... Subject: Re: [STMFC] Tony's Clinic yesterday at BAPM
Dave Evans wrote:
I would think most railroads would have had "Equipment Instructions" to serve the purpose Dave describes. I have seen a couple of SP ones, and of course such documents are rare because they were re-issued frequently, and the old one thrown away. I constructed a document of this kind for the SP Coast Division (which I model), in the format and with much of the content I had seen in the prototype documents. This was described in the blog post below. The document itself is on Google Drive (formerly called Google Docs), and the link to it there is contained in the blog post I have linked here:
Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; e-mail, tony@... Publishers of books on railroad history
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Aley, Jeff A
Tim O’Connor recommended searching the archives. The implication is that the data in the STMFC archives, but I found this data that pre-dates STMFC (see the 20-year old message below)
I believe the interpretation of the data is this: Taking the first row, of all the cars on the B&A during 1944, 5.21% of them were home-road cars and 94.79% were foreign-road cars.
> From: Dave Nelson > To: Freight Car List Server > Subject: Re: Freight Car Distribution Probabilities > Date: Saturday, April 19, 1997 1:43 AM > > Here are some real numbers (annual averages for 1944) taken from > Railway Age. I beleive April data is missing. The percentage > shown is for cars on home tracks, not percentage of home fleet. > > I'll do some spreadsheet work to see if I can make some > add'l estimates of how many Pensy, NYC, etc. cars would > be online each of these roads *assuming a homogeneous > distribution*. Might be interesting; the first cut > has the NYC showing about 5% of the national _offline_ > fleet of cars for September, 1944. > > > Dave > ----------- > > > Online.XLS > 4/18/97 > Home vs foreign > cars for 1944 > Annual, as percentage. > Home Foreign > New England > B&A 5.21% 94.79% > B&M 16.79% 83.21% > > Great Lakes > D&H 35.56% 64.44% > Erie 24.80% 75.20% > NYC 30.81% 69.19% > NKP 15.79% 84.21% > WAB 31.38% 68.62% > > Central East > B&O 40.44% 59.56% > CNJ 24.31% 75.69% > PRR 49.71% 50.29% > > Pocahontas > C&O 68.52% 31.48% > N&W 78.20% 21.80% > > Southern > ACL 28.42% 71.58% > IC 35.26% 64.74% > LN 65.95% 34.05% > SOU 32.42% 67.58% > > Northwest > C&NW 40.75% 59.25% > CMStP&P 43.46% 56.54% > GN 52.33% 47.67% > NP 45.16% 54.84% > > Central West > ATSF 46.39% 53.61% > CB&Q 35.75% 64.25% > CRI&P 31.31% 68.69% > D&RGW 49.16% 50.84% > SP 30.55% 69.45% > UP 39.75% 60.25% > > Southwest > MP 28.30% 71.70% > T&NO 17.10% 82.90%
Regards,
-Jeff
From: STMFC@... [mailto:STMFC@...]
Sent: Sunday, June 18, 2017 4:27 PM To: STMFC@... Subject: Re: [STMFC] Re: Tony's Clinic yesterday at BAPM
Jim Betz wrote:
If you follow Gilber-Nelson, as I do and as I emphasized in the talk, these NATIONAL relations ARE regional. No adjustments.
Yeah, I have heard lots of numbers thrown about too. But if you look at numbers, for example with SP, you will find home-road numbers not above a third and in some trains down to a fourth of the total. Of course you can choose any percentage that suits you, but most roads of any size with reasonable traffic balance will NOT be anywhere like 60 percent, when you look at actual data. Remember that Gilbert-Nelson relates to bridge-route and through traffic, obviously not for branches or small regional railroads.
Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA 2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com (510) 540-6538; e-mail, tony@... Publishers of books on railroad history
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