Who Shot the Boxcar?

I dunno who shot the boxcar but I do know that somebody shot a SantaFe F3.

About 30 years ago I was in a train store in Wilkes Barre, PA and, on the counter, was this engine with a hole ripped through it.

The store owner told me that a customer brought it in for an impossible repair. The story went that it was stored in an attic. On the floor below the owner was cleaning a LOADED gun and it went off, shooting through the ceiling and murdered this poor, innocent, F3.

 

The maxi stacks or container cars - mostly trucks direct from the ports or manufacturer

Some new industrial parks have no rail service, everything in and out is by truck.  The line haul portion of a rail car's trip was seldom the problem, the delays were during switching and at interchanges.  Piggyback service changed the distribution pattern of many goods.  Items from the Far East would enter the US via Seattle/Tacoma, San Francisco or Los Angeles.  Loaded into boxcars at the port, switched to a transcontinental carrier and moved more than half way across our country to Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis or New Orleans. The boxcar was moved via switch roads to an eastern carrier for its trip to an eastern destination.  At times, the switch road had the car for a couple of days.  With JIT, those two days are no longer acceptable.  A container may be loaded in the Far East, unloaded from the ocean going vessel directly onto rail car and transported to a large inland container yard such as Hodgkins, Illinois.  Unloaded from the double stack rail car onto a highway chassis.  Trucks deliver the chassis to the consignee, sometimes 350 miles away.  This greatly simplified presentation is only to show the reduction in time.  What would take ten days for 40,000 pounds of widgets to move from the ocean going vessel unloading in Seattle to Ft. Wayne, Indiana is now be done in about three days.  Not world shaking, but certainly significant.  John in Lansing, ILL

Malcom McLean

Don’t know about the boxcar; however,  I shot the Sheriff, but I didn't shoot no deputy.

 

Larry

Labor/transfer costs are another issue. There was a time when most businesses of any size had a rail spur and small ones used a team track (public deliver track on PRR). If there is rail spur, the boxcar was put on the spur and unloaded directly into the factory or business. However, if there is no spur, the business had to send a team and wagon (hence team tracK) or a truck to where the car was spotted and unload it to the truck. Then the truck took it to the business and it was unloaded (handled) again. With direct trucking it is only unloaded once. The cost of the transloading probably negates the extra cost of shipping by truck. My old home town had 2 freight stations I think and a small yard right in the middle of town. There were at least a half dozen business with spurs in that area. It is all gone now. So are some of the businesses. So both time and costs are involved, and time equate to costs. The longer it takes a delivery to get from the mfg to the client business the more product the client needs to have in the pipeline and that is money tied up in inventory.

OUI! I am confused, who is shooting at what!

Was there not a rail critic on the TRAINS staff who was pushing for a containerized future for rail.  At the time I think he was looking at "Flexvan-2".  This was before the first experiments on the SP with double stacks.

As much as I like boxcars, their days, except for some loads, are numbered.

For some high dollar transport, Road and Container Railer need to be looked at.  Build a train Lego block style.  Little gravel and a side loader one is in business.  If one needs to, you can have a loading facility anywhere.  Very flexible.

Dominic Mazoch posted:

Was there not a rail critic on the TRAINS staff who was pushing for a containerized future for rail.  At the time I think he was looking at "Flexvan-2".  This was before the first experiments on the SP with double stacks.

As much as I like boxcars, their days, except for some loafs, are numbered.

That was John Kneiling.  He had a lot if ideas that were very interesting from an engineering point of view but he didn't have a good grasp of economics or cost analysis.  An important problem with such ideas was that you can't just jump into an advanced system.  You have to start from where you are, with both facilities and institutions that are composed of real people.

The other issue with the railroads then was the, "not invented here" illness.  Not even examining something new to see if it works.  That illness is coming back.

Dominic Mazoch posted:

The other issue with the railroads then was the, "not invented here" illness.  Not even examining something new to see if it works.  That illness is coming back.

That is an excuse often used by apologists for bad ideas  I've been in the business - NYC/MILW and others from 1959 to 1982.  More ideas were rejected for lack of practicality than for NIH.  The inventors weren't very good at thinking about cost-effectiveness of changes.

Malcolm Laughlin

John Kneiling was a blunt speaking consultant, who wrote a column in Trains for a number of years.  His thesis was that containerization would do away with all the costs and slow downs associated with loading/unloading boxcars and switching/classification yards/delivery associated with boxcars and traditional railroading. Essentially, railroads would be the "wholesalers" of transportation; truckers, the "retailers"  (RR's: long-haul, trucks: local delivery). This seems to be what has transpired.

I was a Personnel Director of a packaging company in the Chicago-land area in the mid 1970's. We received heavy paper board rolls produced by a board mill in MS, delivered in boxcars. It took something like 3 weeks for the boxcars to make that journey. I was shocked! 

It would appear that kneiling's prescription is what has played out. He said the way freight was an anachronism, which needed to go. 

Kneiling additionally developed a projected national US railroad map, based on the traffic density and profitability of each line. The mileage was about 1/2 of what existed at that time. Believe his map is the railroad system we have today.

So yes, the boxcar is slowly shrinking from use. But, happened to be stopped by a Belt Ry of Chicago train recently, and there were still a fair number of boxcars in the train, including some brand-new GATX cars. So, some shippers are still finding use for the good old boxcar!

I do not mean EVERY suggestion should be applied.  But LISTEN to the suggestion, run some slide rules and spread sheets over it, have a think tank from all departments look over it, THEN make the GO-NO GO choice on the idea.

I just finished reading the article in November issue of "Trains".  Every railroad enthusiast should read it.  I started subscribing to it a few months ago and read every issue cover to cover.  Highly recommended!

Where is the picture on the shot F3?

Craignor posted:

Where is the picture on the shot F3?

Sorry, No cell phones at the time.

mark s posted:

John Kneiling was a blunt speaking consultant, who wrote a column in Trains for a number of years.  His thesis was that containerization would do away with all the costs and slow downs associated with loading/unloading boxcars and switching/classification yards/delivery associated with boxcars and traditional railroading. Essentially, railroads would be the "wholesalers" of transportation; truckers, the "retailers"  (RR's: long-haul, trucks: local delivery). This seems to be what has transpired.

I was a Personnel Director of a packaging company in the Chicago-land area in the mid 1970's. We received heavy paper board rolls produced by a board mill in MS, delivered in boxcars. It took something like 3 weeks for the boxcars to make that journey. I was shocked! 

It would appear that kneiling's prescription is what has played out. He said the way freight was an anachronism, which needed to go. 

Kneiling additionally developed a projected national US railroad map, based on the traffic density and profitability of each line. The mileage was about 1/2 of what existed at that time. Believe his map is the railroad system we have today.

So yes, the boxcar is slowly shrinking from use. But, happened to be stopped by a Belt Ry of Chicago train recently, and there were still a fair number of boxcars in the train, including some brand-new GATX cars. So, some shippers are still finding use for the good old boxcar!

Yup. Many or most of Kneiling's prescriptions have, either with a will or involuntarily, been implemented. Unit trains, container trains (intermodal we now call it), a greatly shrunken railroad map, power pooling so no man-hours wasted switching out locomotives, and even route-pooling (NS freights with UP engines in the consist roll by on the Pan Am Railroad in Western Ma). The switching jobs that delight us [model railroaders] were a bane to him because high labor, low productivity AND clogged up the railroad while money-making trains have to make room for such activities. I have long forgotten the specific figures but freight car speeds used to be measured in miles-per-day IIRC.

I read the article and a lot of it is very true and based on my reading of the article the railroads did it to themselves. I think some of the fall out resulting the railroads loss of the freight normally in a boxcar and finally realizing their loss and why is what is leading to this Precision Scheduled Railroading as n attempt to satisfy the customer base that the railroads can deliver. They have lost a lot of revenue to the trucking industry as a result of things posted out in the article.

RJT posted:

I read the article and a lot of it is very true and based on my reading of the article the railroads did it to themselves. I think some of the fall out resulting the railroads loss of the freight normally in a boxcar and finally realizing their loss and why is what is leading to this Precision Scheduled Railroading as n attempt to satisfy the customer base that the railroads can deliver. They have lost a lot of revenue to the trucking industry as a result of things posted out in the article.

Rick:

Don’t be lulled into believing that psr implementation has anything to do with pleasing customers or bringing business back onto the railroad.  

PSR’s primary purpose is to slash costs, raise rates and accessorial charges on existing business then rake basketful’s of cash to send to the shareholders.  If any customer actually sees improved service from psr it is typically more accidental than intended.  

I spent 40 years as a rail shipper and experienced psr implementation on the six railroads currently employing the process.  CN was the ONLY railroad on which our service actually improved and that is because they allowed us to actively participate in the decision making process when changes to our service frequency were proposed.  The other five simply said “this is what we’re going to do” and that was the end of the discussion.

Curt