I pulled 50% out of the air, but with reason. It should probably be higher. The NYC was a very large railroad in miles of track and cities (customers) served, second only to the Pennsy, IIRC. Therefore, a high percentage of its traffic would have been between customers within its own territory. Also it competed with the Pennsy in much of its area. Remember also that the NYC, Pennsy, et al, were still running LCL (less than carload) service in the '60s, much like local truck companies do today. NYC would use their own cars for LCL service.
You guys are a trove of good information! Another question. Would NYC early bird or pacemaker boxcars be seen outside of particular trains? Would they be seen in more random service?
Pacemaker service ended in 1957 and they commenced repainting the cars brown. If you get one, make it look ten years overdue for a repaint. Early Bird service had pretty much given way to piggyback trailers. An Early Bird boxcar would probably be a good choice for you.
Very cool. Just for clarification, why would you say an Early Bird boxcar would be a good choice for me? Just the way the years work out?
Don't know if this will help but I grew up near a NYC freight junction and as a kid of ten in the 60s use to watch RS2 and RS3s moving freight in the yard. This was the N. Adams Massachusetts junction which was actually in Pittsfield Massachusetts. The freights that zoomed through were FA units right up untill about 1969 or later. Here's a couple pictures from the junction. I think NYC also used a lot of "U Boats" hauling freight about that time frame.---John
Here's a GE "U Boat" on the Boston-Albany line east of the junction in Pittsfield Ma in Natick Ma. I remember seeing these a lot. This was July 1966, a NYC U25B.---John
Jon, it's possible that the B&A RS3 had "NYC" painted under the engine number on the cab. The B&A was wholly-owned or 100% leased by the NYC. Ether way it was totally controlled by the Central. Thus NYC hardware was often seen on the B&A. I rode NYC steam on the NYC Harlem Division to Chatham, NY, where we switched onto the B&A to Pittsfield, MA, and were switched onto the branch to North Adams, MA. BTW, the steam was an ex-B&A J2 Hudson,
Very interesting information. Hytec wrote: "This shows that an originating road will use whatever car is available to send freight to a destination, regardless of how many different roads are transited along the way." How did that work? Say NYC has an empty MoPac in its siding, and wants to ship a load of whatever to some place MoPac doesn't go. How did MoPac get paid for use of their car? How did they get to know where their car was? How did an empty make its way back to a MoPac staging area?
The shipper will route the load, not the railroad. The shipper will observe prevailing routing tariffs, rates and transit times to determine the most favorable routing and enter them on its Bill of Lading which is then given to the railroad where's it's transcribed into a Waybill. However, small shippers will sometimes defer routing to the railroad. A railroad will pay "per diem" ("per day") charges to compensate other railroads and lessors for cars on their line. Car tracing has commonly been done by computer since the 1970's and even earlier on some roads. I'm uncertain how it was performed prior, but I can only imagine the paperwork and legions of workers that must have been involved in the process! So much has changed in the last 40 years, with mergers closing gateways, and contracts and car supply limiting routing options. Cars used to often return to their origins empty, but reloading or repositioning of cars to the origins is sometimes done today.
Some interesting glimpses into "how it was done," Hard Coaler, and thank you for that. So much is taken for granted, that the evolution of how inventory was recorded and managed is lost to history. It is grimly interesting how the Penn Central "lost" entire trains when the mechanisms of inventory broke down. Decades ago, when I was driving for an LTL trucking firm, rewards were posted to recover lost trailers that had vanished off the map, periodically. I never found one! JohnEMD, that is a wonderful photograph. It demonstrates how rail lines organically blend into the scenery, not interrupt it, the way an interstate does. That area reminds me strongly of Northfield, Massachusetts, do you know the locale of that photo?
Just a couple of interesting things- First, there was a story circulating locally some years ago about how the crew at the old GTW car shops in Port Huron, MI opened up a bad order auto rack and found a full load of brand new ten year old Toyota pickups. Regarding the photo, (very nice, BTW) it should be noted that four of the freight cars appear to be from local roads- three from the Pennsylvania and one I am guessing belongs to the Erie. The other two are from roads further away- the Wabash and the Santa Fe. Did NYC normally operate their road switchers long hood forward?
The vast majority of roads did at first. The Santa Fe was one of only a tiny minority of roads that operated road switchers short hood first before 1950. And I think even they ran their first few road switchers long hood forward for a month or two. Meanwhile, the Southern and the N & W were the only major roads still running long hood first in 1980. I think the only way to answer the question, 'Did the X,Y&Z normally operate long hood first?" is, "In what year?"
I was told that the Long Hood Forward operation was because the head-end crews were used to having long steam boilers in front, so it made sense, at least to them, to operate with the long hoods of the RS units forward. Operating departments also believed the long hood provided protection in the case of a collision. Though that argument was illogical because the covered wagons had little front end protection. No clue what the real reason(s) was(were). I have a photo of the last train south from Chatham, NY on the Harlem Division running short hood forward in 1976. But just two years earlier another was running long hood forward. Both were lettered for PC, so it may have been a flip of the coin as to their parent company, NYC or PRR.
