Railroaders' Nostalgia > Running out of bulkhead flats

Passenger discussion
Date: 09/27/16 21:38
Re: A Salute To A Friend
Author: rob_l

My experience with Lawson Chadwick re-affirmed an important lesson: When the numbers seem strange, get out in the field and find out what is really going on.

Moving to a more appropriate place for the follow on, rob_l reminds me of a B&O colleague who was curious for the need for a big purchase of bulkhead flats for woodpulp service. The purchase was almost a done deal, but it didn't make sense to him. Yes, the shortage was documented, but in checking records, there were not a great number of wrecked cars, nor an excessive number of them off line. He jumped into his ride and hit the road, searching for so long to find the answer. (gack) It didn't take long on the road to figure out why there was a shortage. The customers found that it was cheaper to pay demurrage on the cars and store product on them than to build a structure for the product. The folks who were hoarding cars were the ones complaining about the shortage of cars. B&O couldn't do anything about the demurrage rate, so they made a deal with the customers: once you have captured the entire fleet, there will be no more cars for you. That fixed the problem.

TAW

      Absolutely, pays to get off one's posterior and go see whats really going on a lot of times. Now days, we are right back into that and maybe even more where these newbie types want to make 2 or 3 million real quick and please keep it coming for pecking ona computor.

hmmmm, now how's that old saying go? ..... "garbage in, garbage out".

Using freight cars for storage was a common practice by rail customers before deregulation.  The example I loved most occurred in Phoenix/Glendale every years during the May-June cantaloupe harvest.  Cantaloupes as they come in from the fields in trucks are very hot - they must be quickly cooled down to stop the life cycle.  The melons are sorted and crated, and then loaded in railcars with an aisle down the center of the car.  20,000 pounds of crushed ice was shot into the car over the melons and the refrigeration unit was started.  The loaded car was switched to a "precooler" track along the packing shed. The next morning, the crushed ice was all melted, and the interior temperature of the car was checked.  If the pulp temperature of the melons was not dropping fast enough, another load of top ice was sprayed in and the car might be held for another day.  When the temperature had dropped to the desired level, the car could be shipped.  Often, after keeping the car on the precooler for two days and using the refirgeration unit, the melon grower would unload the car into trucks and send them on their way.
I was the night trainmaster during several of these "melon rushes".  I knew that the shippers were really abusing the privileges of holding cars to pre-cool, especially while we were critically short of refrigerator cars.  I found that railroads had tariffs that provided stiff charges for holding reefer cars, but those charges had never been enforcxed.  When we were short of cars, we would furnish them to shippers based on their orders,,,, say order 7 cars, get three.  Of course, the shippers merely doubled their orders, ordering say 14 and still only getting 3.  On each shippers track would be 10 or more cars precooling, many of which would be unloaded into trucks later.
I instructed the rail clerks to begin using the tariff.  With a switching bill and a car ordered but not used charge, all HELL descended on Glendale!  One shipper called John Reed, President of Santa Fe .  Reed called the railroad superintendent in Phoenix who explained the scene.  Reed called the shipper back and told him the charges were proper and would be levied to prevent car hoarding and storage.  We still loaded al the reefers we could scratch up.

TIOGA PASS 

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

On my railroad, South Dakota Wheat Growers (SDWG) is storing grain in our covered hoppers at their elevators, which works out for my railroad, instead of storing cars, they are used to store grain.

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