I miss the CNW, grew up in Rice Lake, WI, five city houses away from the mainline... GP7's usually, and with bay window cabooses. Seeing your CNW rollingstock was awesome. I also got a ride on a WCL (ex-Soo) GP-30, when WCL took over the rails... friendly crew and the loco had great lungs... that was between 1984-1987. John
Loving all these videos. You're filling a huge void by providing amazing detailed information. Would love for you to do a video on your opinion/the stage of railroading generally in the US today.
Well thank you. I am afraid I am a little jaded as far as my opinion of how the industry is going, so it is probably best I stick to my educational videos.
This was some fascinating information. I never realized what it took to ensure that cars got to a customer when the customer needed the cars. Thank you! (Posted 31 August 2024 at 035 CDT.)
What makes it even more challenging is the fact they can only be retrieved one way with no other cars blocking the one you want. It's a giant puzzle lol
I think this is MUCH too complicated for a non-railroader to understand but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate the complexity involved, which I certainly do. Two analogies I can identify with are a 'Rubik's Cube' and a slide puzzle. The Operations Research (OR) course I took working on my computer science degree in 1975 gave some valuable insight, too. I would imagine overland and seagoing shippers, U-Haul, car rental companies, and other such companies would have similar problems to solve. Maybe a game of 'pickup sticks' (remove one stick but don't touch the others) would help. Glad SOMEBODY's doing it! Thanks for the video. Always love watching trains in operation.
Nice video - I got very lucky and worked summer relief for CNW in Waukegan, Ill. way back in the early 1960s. My job was called yard clerk, and I was responsible for all car records. Back in those days each car had a computer card which represented the car and followed it thru the system. This was how I worked my way thru college. I was always interested in model railroading, so it was a natural fit or me.
Certainly one of your best informative pieces especially mentioning all these various levels and all the factors that go into it. In fact your lead presentation with the FGE cars assigned to Schlitz there we're quite a few assigned to Milwaukee. Being in assigned service seems to actually prolong the life of some cars such as Auto Parts cars and that is a fleet that has really shrunk in the last 20 years. Sadly I don't think there's any CNW cars left in that service but UP did cycle numerous Mopac cars through a rebuild and got an age waiver. Right now one of my favorites are the green CNW boxcars built for paper service of which about eight go for loadings on the old Pan Am Guilford system in Maine. Like you indicated good training and your own knowledge retention plus working on it with the customers and you roll with it
Would have loved to worked that job, sounds like a satisfying occupation. Great explanation and a lot of fun. Cool to see the obsolete work orders too.
It was a good job and great people always worked it. I was always impressed with their dedication, as by it's nature you had to expect calls 7 days a week. It was also a great job if you liked Operations but didn't want to actually be in Operations.
Thank you for that glimpse into railroad operations. My grandfather worked for CN&W in the Butler WI yard. He maintained railcars for them in the 1950's and 60's. Maybe some of the older cars in your photos were maintained by him.
Great job! It's been a long time since I've seen slip bills or even hard copy waybills for that matter! And I still remember how to read a "TCS Car Trace" with the future moves above the dotted line! Thanks to MoPac's "godfather of car scheduling" Pete Latessa! Ahhh the good old days! Thanks again!
I was intrigued by your mentions of shippers and their car needs. Unit grain, the Paint Factory, and others. It sure would be nice for a video focused on your flow chart. That was a great piece of work. I stopped the video and looked at it for a while could'nt make most of it out on the screen.
I started with CPR in the mid 70s as a waybill clerk at Intermodal when waybills were still manually type from the shippers bill of lading. Then a copy of the waybill was keypunched, cards sorted in an IBM sorter and then either transmitted to all the various depts and destinations through a card read or manually typed on a Telex machine and transmitted that way. It was a helluva lot of typing. In those days everything that was in a trailer had to be listed as to how many cartons of such and such and include the model #'s of what was in those cartons. Sometimes it would take 2 or 3 waybills just to fit all the descriptions. Then by the late 70s all that disappeared and online billing began. The same in the yards where every car had a card stacked vertically in rack and as tracks were moved you'd have to go to the corressponding rack and move all the cards to their next position. So many different areas involved. Great video brings back a lot of memories.
When I started with C&NW in 1981 they were still using the punch cards. When a train departed they would add the header card with the departure time and "send the deck" to the next downline reporting station. All the cards would get replicated and spit out of the machine at that station. When the train arrived they would add the header card with the arrival time and run it all thru the reader again. And yes, as tracks were switched the cards were "pickled" accordingly. That made it real easy to run a track list of any given track. When a train was put together you went over to the waybill rack and pulled all the waybills out...they were sorted by last two digits in racks numbered 00 to 99. I kinda think it was pretty much the same all over.
Worked on two Class I'd and several shortlines - all in marketing - familiar with this issue. One Class I worked at had built elaborate car demand forecasting models that worked some times but car management always seemed to that classic collision of art and science, plus a bit of voodoo. One immutable law was equipment always piled up on the wrong end of the network, especially intermodal platforms and wells. Looking forward to your video on grain transit rates :)
@@killerbee6310 Hi Killer - I'm sure you and I know several people in common. If you are going to do something on reciprocal switching I hope the audience will absorb it ( minor giggle ). If you did a diversion and reconsignment story you could feature all those lumber loads routed via Oakes ND - CNW to anywhere - but really slowly. Be well.
Please elaborate for me. I have always been a little worried that audio was the "weak link" of the videos and would like to know what can be improved on. Appreciate your comments.
@@killerbee6310 It sounded as if you would talk for a while, then switch to a different mic, etc. multiple times. The sound didn’t sound consistent I guess is the best way to put it. I’ll try to watch again tomorrow perhaps on a different computer to see if it makes a difference.
You are correct. I write out a script and record it. But then i decide to add or change things and cut them in. My “retakes” thus sound a little different even though i am recording them the same way…maybe i am talking a little louder or softer, etc. i am aware of it but short of recording the whole script over again it is unavoidable. But maybe that is what i should do. I appreciate the constructive criticism.
I always loved it when customer service sent out a urgent request to move or spot a car from a certain track. That track was the lost and found track. Nobody knew where the car was but in cyberspace it had to go somewhere?
Great info! CNW/UP veteran here. Hired out 1974 as brakeman and retired in 2013 as engineer in Chicago Terminal Division. I assume you worked downtown at the CNW building on Canal St.
I actually started 8/1/1981 in the basement of the old passenger terminal. The winter of 1981-1982 we moved across the street to 165 N Canal. Then for WC I was a Trainmaster at Schiller Park from '94 to '99 so knew a handful of the Proviso guys that would bring cars over to us at Schiller. Plus we had at least two CNW guys while they were "fired" from CNW.
@@killerbee6310 Ya, I almost hired out on the WC after I got fired on some labor beef back around 1999 but my can insurance was going to pay so I thought I would just ride it out. I was reinstated 2 years later with full back pay. A fellow hogger I worked with on the CNW Bob Nevins worked for the WC after he was canned, for what reason I don't recall. I heard he died a number of years ago under somewhat tragic circumstances but have no verification.
Thanks for these tutorials. Did you ever deal with those privately owned blue 40ft Consolidated Papers boxcars hauling woodchips from Whitewood, SD on the CNW thru the mid 90’s (to the big Wisc Rapids paper mill)??
I did!! In the mid-1980's I was involved. Consol was complaining about the transit time and I had to analyze the car records to see how they were moving. This irritated Operations. I still remember their comment. "Woodchips are the perfect dead freight commodity. Let them accumulate and move them as you have room in the trains". Now they had to move the chips like any other load. "Hot chips".
No mater what the industry…it always comes down to a motivated person with a phone, a computer and a couple cups of coffee making things happen. Perhaps not too surprisingly…the processes you describe sound a lot like aviation maintenance/flight ops. Thank you again!
Every car has two AEI tags usually above the 3rd axle on each side. Wayside scanners would pick them up at most yards and subdivisions so you could see in what general area they were last
Is it possible to have a car just disappear off the grid? You have no idea where it is. Maybe it’s been sitting on a siding in Topeka for the past year. Or maybe it got picked up at an interchange point and taken out west by mistake. It’s been circulating around out there for a year
Yes! At CNW in the mid 1980's the Clinton car shop was going to fix all the bad order RBL's. I had to get all the cripples to Clinton. One car we absolutely could not find - went backwards thru the microfiche car records for its last several moves and could not find it. Finally someone located it behind the Oelwein locomotive shops with stuff stored in it. At WC customer service would fax out "Lost Car - Reward" sheets. And at CN we could not locate a grain companies private covered hopper. I spent a lot of time badgering the field. It was allegedly stored with a million other cars in central Illinois. I had someone go out and look but to no avail. When I left the job it was still missing in action.
@@killerbee6310 There was a D&H car that CP had interchanged to the Central Wisconsin railroad back in the 1980's, destined for the printing plant in Monroe, WI. Central Wisconsin went bankrupt, and the car stayed there through the Wisconsin & Calumet era, CP didn't know what had happened to it, WICT didn't want to turn it back because of the per diem it would owe on it if they let CP know they had it all that time.
Maybe - I don't know if I can stretch it out to a whole video. In the old days they just called Customer Service and ordered so many cars for whereever on such a date. Now they just go on line on the railroad website and basically put in the same information.
So can the railroad hold a customer liable for damages to a car? And is there some type of entity that regularly inspects cars to see that they aren’t inoperable and in need of maintenance?
At WC we were having the receivers of coil steel damaging the car interiors when unloading. We inspected all the cars before spotting them at the mill for loading, so I had pictures taken of the damage this one receiver was inflicting on the cars. I doctored up an invoice and mailed it off to them. THEY PAID!! But this was an exception. No one was under any obligation to pay, and it was especially hard if they were located off-line and not a customer of ours. At WC we inspected every boxcar prior to loading - cleaned it out, fixed any holes and lubed the doors if necessary. These were paper shippers and if there was anything like a piece of metal projecting out of the interior that might catch on a paper roll and damage it, we would be liable for the freight claim. Plus it eliminated the hassle of cars rejected for loading. When CN took over the WC, they eliminated the car inspection and cars started going direct to loading - in order to improve car velocity. But eventually that caught up with them and with no maintenance any more cars started getting rejected for loading.
@@killerbee6310if a car gets rejected, does it then go to a maintenance facility or just reassigned to another customer? I assume if you have to keep rejecting cars, that holds up the customer’s production. Especially with the shortage of cars.
@@killerbee6310 *When CN took over the WC, they eliminated the car inspection and cars started going direct to loading* geez... those LAZY MONEY HUNGRY class1s strike AGAIN... so quick to want to collect the REVENUE but too lazy to want to provide a QUALITY SERVICE... WC was a very conscientious company as it related to customer service
The railroads do and will hold the customer liable. Of course over 50% of all railcars are customer owned so those are by default customer liable and subject to customer inspection for gates/hatches/pipes etc. If the railroad can prove the customer damaged the car (such as derailing it or damaging it with forklifts) they often do charge.
I was working on a CB&Q that's a railroad , a fireman on the locomotive, then one day I saw a little baby crawling along the track a baby mind you. And I grabbed that baby, and I flung it into a nice pile of soft leaves. Me well I didn't make out so good. Fractured my leg. The baby was all right. Today that baby is president of Vons supermarket you think he ever took the trouble to thank me, no sir! Rich folks got short memories.
Did you ever pop up to him and tell him how you saved his life?? If he was a baby, how could he know? Regret so much for the bump your leg got, and the terrific situation you are going through now. 🤞by the way I was saved from falling into the street. When I was a kid commuting buses in 🇦🇷 Argentina used to have to doors up front: right and left parallel to the driver, and just used a chain across to avoid the passegers from going through. I loved sitting on the 1st seat lefthandside looking out the window and the drivers' driving. The bus shoud've had the doors shut, but it was summer. Came to a corner and a car crossed it's path, so the driver jamed on the brakes. I flew from the seat, under the chain, aiming for the tarmac through the open door, BUT the driver swung over and grabed me from the coller of my shirt. I never knew who he was, I'll remember him forever and I Thank Him! I'm 67 now & this happed when I 8 Best wishes cheers = saludos 🤗🇦🇷👍🏼
@ricardojuricic9027 Well I never told him, but my sister met him once and spoke with him about it He just said I will be darned. You are fortunate with your mishap as well.
Do you mean on the car itself or for the shipment in it? For the car itself, I have another "Understanding Railroads" video on Demurrage vs Car Hire. If you mean for the shipment, I'll be ding one on that soon. Not trying to deflect you, but the videos are more in depth then I would be here.
killerbee does cover this in one of his other videos. But in short if railroad A is using a car owned by Car Owner B then Railroad A reports to B the time they received the car and the time they delivered the car and the mileage. They then take the number of hours they had the car (and miles) and calculate what they owe cased on the car's value. So if railroad A had the car for 120 hours and it is a $.50 per hour car they will owe $60 and at month end report all the cars to car owner B. Car owner B has the right to determine if they feel they are shorted and go after Railroad A for more money (known as a car hire claim)
When the 75 car train arrives at destination it is 'classified' or 'switched' into various blocks holding similar cars. This is usually 'flat switching' these days but could be over a hump. So for example if cars 15-22 and 66-72 are going to the same industry (or same industrial area). they are all put together into a specific track in the yard. The crews have a list showing a destination block/code/number associated with each car. The goal is to break up that 75 car train as quickly as you can.
I worked in Car Management for the Milwaukee Road in Chicago, 79-85, distributing flats and multi levels (auto racks). Surely our paths have crossed. Please PM me and exchange names.
I cannot figure how to contact you privately. I was at CNW in Car Management from '81 to '87. We get together with one of your former colleagues, DAS, quite a bit yet.
CNW had one of the neatest lines across northern Nebraska and central Wyoming. It was constructed in the 1880's and called the Cowboy Line. It was abandoned in 1990 but small sections are still in operation by other railroads. UP operates the heavily used section from the Wyoming border to the Power River Basin. From the Wyoming border UP constructed new trackage south to connect to their system in Morrill, Nebraska. At the time UP did not want CNW's right-of-way across northern Nebraska.
Some of them went that way with their Moms and Dads when they were just trucks, some go with their friends who know. Some go with a kindly locomotive who shows them the way. Some learned the way at car school and some go along, do their best and find out where to go by trial & error.
@killerbee6310 This was interesting. It made me think about an article that the Boston and Maine Historical Society published, based on something written in the employee magazine. It was about a boxcar which came back online after something like 5-6 years of roaming North America. I know how things have changed with more specialty cars, as well as mergers. Another point to add is that B&M terminated more traffic than it generated. This generates some questions in my mind. Say that the car was initially loaded outbound from online Lowell, Mass., to San Francisco on SP. I’d assume that the car could be either loaded, or sent back empty towards New England. For the example, the car got a load for Ithica, NY on Lehigh Valley. Wouldn’t LV have to send it empty, presumably via Delaware and Hudson or NYC to the B&M’s NY gateway in Mechanicville, NY? Was there a function where LV could load the car at another customer in Ithica, and send it to Atlanta, for example? The second part of the question has to do with my initial qualifying statement about B&M’s deficit of outbound to inbound traffic. Wouldn’t it be required to load a SP , or any western car, like a Wp car in the initial example, before loading its own car? This provided they were both general plain boxcars of the same car code (XM)? I know some of this has changed with car pools. I knew a guy involved with a short line. He was talking about how he got paid by some large car owner, like GE Railcar to use his reporting marks for 200 50’ boxcars. Why would the leaser want to use a common carrier reporting mark rather than a private X mark? Locally near me there is a short line called Green Mountain, which is part of the Vermont Rai System. The cars seem to go be in a pool to the paper mills in North Country NY, NH, and ME. Another example is the recent use of WRWK mark. It seems to be mostly applied to center beam flats. WRWK was Warwick, a Rhode Island short line taken over by Providence and Worcester, now part of G&W family of short lines.
Over time, most of the railroad boxcar-gondola-flatcar fleet has morphed from being "general equipment" - XM boxcars, GB gondolas, FM flatcars (if the mechanical designations are correctly remembered) to "specialized equipment" - XL-XP-XF boxcars, GBSR gons, etc. The Car Service Rules that dictate how a car considered as general equipment get disposed of when empty are different than for specialized cars. General equipment could be reloaded "promiscuously" (without regard to destination). Car Service Rule 1 stated "Unless covered by a Transportation Division order or directive, foreign cars may be loaded without regard to route of destination". General equipment were covered by Rule 1. So anybody could load anybody's general service car anywhere. So after a car spent a few months getting reloaded and zig-zagging about the country, how did it finally get home if no one wanted to reload it again? Special Car Order 90 for boxcars (SCO-90) and Special Car Order 100 (SCO-100) for gons and flats applied to general equipment. If you were holding a foreign car of indirect connection - that is, you did not directly connect with the car owner - you disposed of the car using the outlets dictated in the SCO's. For instance, say your B&M XM boxcar is empty on the CNW. As CNW does not connect directly with B&M, the CNW would apply their SCO-90 outlet for the car. I am making this up but let's for the sake of argument say it is the early 1960's so maybe the NYC at Chicago was their outlet. At the same time, the NYC has instructions they must accept B&M XM boxcars at Chicago from CNW. The SCO outlets were intended to get foreign general service cars of indirect connections unneeded for loading home via the shortest route. The flows were monitored so nobody would be unduly burdened handling empty cars - the outlets were always being tweaked. No, in your example B&M would not be required to load a foreign car first. Car leasing companies can make more money when their cars carry railroad marks as they then receive the car hire (time and mileage) payments versus a private car just earns loaded mileage (I believe) and now many railroads are not paying private car mileage. Undoubtedly the car leasing companies have done the math to see under which scenario they come out better financially. But as a car leasing company is not a railroad, they either have to buy a railroad to get the use of the marks (as Itel did years ago by acquiring GB&W and FRVR) or they make a deal with an established shortline to put the shortline's reporting marks on the car leasing companies cars. The railroad whose reporting marks are used get a little compensation but most flow to the car leasing company. General purpose cars were not assignable but most cars are now specialized equipment which is assignable. This means they can have a designated home point and the Car Service Rules (technically the Car Service Directives or CSD's) stipulate they cannot be reloaded - they have to go back when empty. So for example there are LRS boxcars assigned on the LRWN for loading by a certain shipper at Perry AR. When empty the cars have to go back to Perry. They may never see the LRS. Clear as mud?
Thanks for the info. It did answer some questions, but also generated a couple of new ones. You dispelled my misconception that a road had to load a foreign car towards home before one of its own, such as my San Francisco loading example, with the BM car on SP. If any car can be used anywhere, such as my BM car zig zagging the country, what would stop B&M from buying as many cars as they could possibly afford, then sitting back and collecting car hire? Is there a mechanism in the rules to prevent a railroad from flooding the car pool? I know that this would, as you explained only work with general service cars. A second part of this same question would be, whose cars get parked in a recession? I remember when all of the short lines bought cars painted in intricate schemes in the 1970s. When the recession hit in the early 1980s, these cars came home. Some of the short lines didn’t even have enough room to store them.
I used to work for Canadian Pacific RR at Toronto Yard (Agincourt, ON), I know where the cars are going. Along the track. I did my time in the R&H (refrigeration and heat) department in the late 60s. Charcoal burners and overhead ice cars.
Just hearing this guy say CNW warmed my heart. Thanks for the informative video.
Yep - we all came from somewhere.
Pretty thick Midwest accent, eh? Yahh.
This is some of the best railroading information on RUclips. Please keep making more videos!
I plan too - all I need is time.
@@killerbee6310 looking forward to it
🇦🇷🤗👍🏼
I miss the CNW, grew up in Rice Lake, WI, five city houses away from the mainline... GP7's usually, and with bay window cabooses. Seeing your CNW rollingstock was awesome. I also got a ride on a WCL (ex-Soo) GP-30, when WCL took over the rails... friendly crew and the loco had great lungs... that was between 1984-1987. John
CNW was a good road to start my career on...just the right size.
Loving all these videos. You're filling a huge void by providing amazing detailed information.
Would love for you to do a video on your opinion/the stage of railroading generally in the US today.
Well thank you. I am afraid I am a little jaded as far as my opinion of how the industry is going, so it is probably best I stick to my educational videos.
I can’t hit “like” enough! This lecture was outstanding.
Well thank you very much - I see all the comments and take them to heart.
Great video. It’s always enlightening to actually learn how a real railroad works from a real railroader. Thank you.
Really glad to know you enjoyed it - thank you too.
This was some fascinating information. I never realized what it took to ensure that cars got to a customer when the customer needed the cars. Thank you! (Posted 31 August 2024 at 035 CDT.)
Yep, still some manual oversight required.
What makes it even more challenging is the fact they can only be retrieved one way with no other cars blocking the one you want. It's a giant puzzle lol
I think this is MUCH too complicated for a non-railroader to understand but that doesn't mean he can't appreciate the complexity involved, which I certainly do. Two analogies I can identify with are a 'Rubik's Cube' and a slide puzzle. The Operations Research (OR) course I took working on my computer science degree in 1975 gave some valuable insight, too. I would imagine overland and seagoing shippers, U-Haul, car rental companies, and other such companies would have similar problems to solve. Maybe a game of 'pickup sticks' (remove one stick but don't touch the others) would help. Glad SOMEBODY's doing it! Thanks for the video. Always love watching trains in operation.
You eventually get into a rhythm as cars make empty in the same locations and cars are generally needed in the same locations
Nice video - I got very lucky and worked summer relief for CNW in Waukegan, Ill. way back in the early 1960s. My job was called yard clerk, and I was responsible for all car records. Back in those days each car had a computer card which represented the car and followed it thru the system. This was how I worked my way thru college. I was always interested in model railroading, so it was a natural fit or me.
I started with CNW in 1981 and they were still using the punch cards then so I saw the tail end of them.
Certainly one of your best informative pieces especially mentioning all these various levels and all the factors that go into it. In fact your lead presentation with the FGE cars assigned to Schlitz there we're quite a few assigned to Milwaukee. Being in assigned service seems to actually prolong the life of some cars such as Auto Parts cars and that is a fleet that has really shrunk in the last 20 years. Sadly I don't think there's any CNW cars left in that service but UP did cycle numerous Mopac cars through a rebuild and got an age waiver. Right now one of my favorites are the green CNW boxcars built for paper service of which about eight go for loadings on the old Pan Am Guilford system in Maine. Like you indicated good training and your own knowledge retention plus working on it with the customers and you roll with it
Thanks as always Paul !!
Great video. No one is doing this on RUclips. Very interesting. Looking forward to more! Thank you
And thank you for the positive comments. Yes, more coming.
Would have loved to worked that job, sounds like a satisfying occupation. Great explanation and a lot of fun. Cool to see the obsolete work orders too.
It was a good job and great people always worked it. I was always impressed with their dedication, as by it's nature you had to expect calls 7 days a week. It was also a great job if you liked Operations but didn't want to actually be in Operations.
Thank you for that glimpse into railroad operations. My grandfather worked for CN&W in the Butler WI yard. He maintained railcars for them in the 1950's and 60's. Maybe some of the older cars in your photos were maintained by him.
Cool - glad you could connect to the video!
The wizard behind the curtain. I love it. Great info. Thank you
Yes, that is how you would feel sometimes. I was once told "work your magic and make some cars drop out of the sky."
@@killerbee6310 And I bet you usually did!
Great information. Keep the videos coming
Certainly will.
Great job! It's been a long time since I've seen slip bills or even hard copy waybills for that matter! And I still remember how to read a "TCS Car Trace" with the future moves above the dotted line! Thanks to MoPac's "godfather of car scheduling" Pete Latessa! Ahhh the good old days! Thanks again!
Indeed. I never fell for another railroad claiming they were the first to be a scheduled railroad. Mop was first.
This was great. Thanks for posting.
My pleasure - and thank you for watching !!
Brian, This was an excellent video regarding the way cars are sent to shippers. Keep up the great work!
Thanks man !!
Very informative as always.
Thanks. I hope to post another one shortly on making the freight rates.
Great video! I really enjoyed learning all this great information. I was sent by Jerry and have subscribed to your channel. Have a good day! 👍
Great video! Thanks for the fascinating insights 😊
You are welcome and thank you for commenting.
I was intrigued by your mentions of shippers and their car needs. Unit grain, the Paint Factory, and others. It sure would be nice for a video focused on your flow chart. That was a great piece of work. I stopped the video and looked at it for a while could'nt make most of it out on the screen.
Thank you for commenting. I am sorry you couldn't read the train service "spider diagram" - it is very readable on my monitor.
Your video answered many questions! I never realized the distribution system was so complex. Th@nks
Actually that is just the condensed overview but it hits most of the high points. Thank you for watching and commenting.
Hey, thanks for this. Great video to watch to end off my birthday
Happy birthday, Dark.
Well Happy Birthday !!
@@killerbee6310 thanks
@@eugenetswong thanks
Great job explaining this process, I've always wondered how this happened.
Yes, it is interesting and kind of obscure.
Thanks for this Brian. Nice to get the inside scoop of your job way back when.
Ya, caught the last few years of local agents, divisional staff and the coming of computerization.
I started with CPR in the mid 70s as a waybill clerk at Intermodal when waybills were still manually type from the shippers bill of lading. Then a copy of the waybill was keypunched, cards sorted in an IBM sorter and then either transmitted to all the various depts and destinations through a card read or manually typed on a Telex machine and transmitted that way. It was a helluva lot of typing. In those days everything that was in a trailer had to be listed as to how many cartons of such and such and include the model #'s of what was in those cartons. Sometimes it would take 2 or 3 waybills just to fit all the descriptions. Then by the late 70s all that disappeared and online billing began. The same in the yards where every car had a card stacked vertically in rack and as tracks were moved you'd have to go to the corressponding rack and move all the cards to their next position. So many different areas involved. Great video brings back a lot of memories.
When I started with C&NW in 1981 they were still using the punch cards. When a train departed they would add the header card with the departure time and "send the deck" to the next downline reporting station. All the cards would get replicated and spit out of the machine at that station. When the train arrived they would add the header card with the arrival time and run it all thru the reader again. And yes, as tracks were switched the cards were "pickled" accordingly. That made it real easy to run a track list of any given track. When a train was put together you went over to the waybill rack and pulled all the waybills out...they were sorted by last two digits in racks numbered 00 to 99. I kinda think it was pretty much the same all over.
Worked on two Class I'd and several shortlines - all in marketing - familiar with this issue. One Class I worked at had built elaborate car demand forecasting models that worked some times but car management always seemed to that classic collision of art and science, plus a bit of voodoo. One immutable law was equipment always piled up on the wrong end of the network, especially intermodal platforms and wells. Looking forward to your video on grain transit rates :)
Hi John. I think I was at a meeting once with you, maybe at Homewood. Actually I thought I might tackle the pros and cons of reciprocal switching-LOL
@@killerbee6310 Hi Killer - I'm sure you and I know several people in common. If you are going to do something on reciprocal switching I hope the audience will absorb it ( minor giggle ). If you did a diversion and reconsignment story you could feature all those lumber loads routed via Oakes ND - CNW to anywhere - but really slowly. Be well.
@@johntitterton4840 When I started at CNW the Oakes gateway was still open. It was at the end of a hellacious branchline.
Interesting. Thanks!
Thanks. It is indeed an interesting but not too well known position.
Very nice information and presented well other than the changing audio quality. Thanks! 😊
Please elaborate for me. I have always been a little worried that audio was the "weak link" of the videos and would like to know what can be improved on. Appreciate your comments.
@@killerbee6310 It sounded as if you would talk for a while, then switch to a different mic, etc. multiple times. The sound didn’t sound consistent I guess is the best way to put it. I’ll try to watch again tomorrow perhaps on a different computer to see if it makes a difference.
You are correct. I write out a script and record it. But then i decide to add or change things and cut them in. My “retakes” thus sound a little different even though i am recording them the same way…maybe i am talking a little louder or softer, etc. i am aware of it but short of recording the whole script over again it is unavoidable. But maybe that is what i should do. I appreciate the constructive criticism.
I always loved it when customer service sent out a urgent request to move or spot a car from a certain track. That track was the lost and found track. Nobody knew where the car was but in cyberspace it had to go somewhere?
Yes - the infamous track number 999. It was a hard concept for newbies to grasp.
@@killerbee6310 I've seen it as the LOST car track
Nice presentation! Looked almost like a wiring diagram at 9:00.
Yep - that is the brain of a car fleet manager.
Sad that weve lost so many railroads.
especially when you worked for some of them....
Great info! CNW/UP veteran here. Hired out 1974 as brakeman and retired in 2013 as engineer in Chicago Terminal Division. I assume you worked downtown at the CNW building on Canal St.
I actually started 8/1/1981 in the basement of the old passenger terminal. The winter of 1981-1982 we moved across the street to 165 N Canal. Then for WC I was a Trainmaster at Schiller Park from '94 to '99 so knew a handful of the Proviso guys that would bring cars over to us at Schiller. Plus we had at least two CNW guys while they were "fired" from CNW.
@@killerbee6310 Ya, I almost hired out on the WC after I got fired on some labor beef back around 1999 but my can insurance was going to pay so I thought I would just ride it out. I was reinstated 2 years later with full back pay. A fellow hogger I worked with on the CNW Bob Nevins worked for the WC after he was canned, for what reason I don't recall. I heard he died a number of years ago under somewhat tragic circumstances but have no verification.
History and information ❤it
Yes, fascinating history (to me at least....)....
Thanks for these tutorials. Did you ever deal with those privately owned blue 40ft Consolidated Papers boxcars hauling woodchips from Whitewood, SD on the CNW thru the mid 90’s (to the big Wisc Rapids paper mill)??
I did!! In the mid-1980's I was involved. Consol was complaining about the transit time and I had to analyze the car records to see how they were moving. This irritated Operations. I still remember their comment. "Woodchips are the perfect dead freight commodity. Let them accumulate and move them as you have room in the trains". Now they had to move the chips like any other load. "Hot chips".
@@killerbee6310 Very interesting. Thanks Brian!!
Hey Brian, good to see you're still around. Are you retired at this point?
Absolutely I am - that is why I can churn out all these videos-LOL
I thought they just followed the one in front
Well yes, that too!....
No mater what the industry…it always comes down to a motivated person with a phone, a computer and a couple cups of coffee making things happen.
Perhaps not too surprisingly…the processes you describe sound a lot like aviation maintenance/flight ops.
Thank you again!
I have never seen a more dedicated bunch of employees then the fleet managers.
@@killerbee6310 Once again thank you for the railroad management videos. It makes my model railroad operations more interesting!
They all get Airtags.
Every car has two AEI tags usually above the 3rd axle on each side. Wayside scanners would pick them up at most yards and subdivisions so you could see in what general area they were last
Is it possible to have a car just disappear off the grid? You have no idea where it is. Maybe it’s been sitting on a siding in Topeka for the past year. Or maybe it got picked up at an interchange point and taken out west by mistake. It’s been circulating around out there for a year
Yes! At CNW in the mid 1980's the Clinton car shop was going to fix all the bad order RBL's. I had to get all the cripples to Clinton. One car we absolutely could not find - went backwards thru the microfiche car records for its last several moves and could not find it. Finally someone located it behind the Oelwein locomotive shops with stuff stored in it. At WC customer service would fax out "Lost Car - Reward" sheets. And at CN we could not locate a grain companies private covered hopper. I spent a lot of time badgering the field. It was allegedly stored with a million other cars in central Illinois. I had someone go out and look but to no avail. When I left the job it was still missing in action.
It used to happen far more frequently that it does today. But it happens.
@@killerbee6310 There was a D&H car that CP had interchanged to the Central Wisconsin railroad back in the 1980's, destined for the printing plant in Monroe, WI. Central Wisconsin went bankrupt, and the car stayed there through the Wisconsin & Calumet era, CP didn't know what had happened to it, WICT didn't want to turn it back because of the per diem it would owe on it if they let CP know they had it all that time.
Hey Mr. Bee, did you know my dad Cal Rust? He worked for the WC at the start-up in N Fondy.
I do indeed remember the name yes but cannot remember what he did - gosh that was 37 years ago!
@@killerbee6310 Trainmaster. I really enjoy the stuff on your channel, thanks for answering.
Would you do a video describing a customer who does not have cars assigned requests an empty car(s)?
Maybe - I don't know if I can stretch it out to a whole video. In the old days they just called Customer Service and ordered so many cars for whereever on such a date. Now they just go on line on the railroad website and basically put in the same information.
yoooo man youre such a G this is very well done and informational. Glad I found your account! thanks for the video
And I'm glad you found it too! Lots more ideas so more to come
So can the railroad hold a customer liable for damages to a car? And is there some type of entity that regularly inspects cars to see that they aren’t inoperable and in need of maintenance?
At WC we were having the receivers of coil steel damaging the car interiors when unloading. We inspected all the cars before spotting them at the mill for loading, so I had pictures taken of the damage this one receiver was inflicting on the cars. I doctored up an invoice and mailed it off to them. THEY PAID!! But this was an exception. No one was under any obligation to pay, and it was especially hard if they were located off-line and not a customer of ours. At WC we inspected every boxcar prior to loading - cleaned it out, fixed any holes and lubed the doors if necessary. These were paper shippers and if there was anything like a piece of metal projecting out of the interior that might catch on a paper roll and damage it, we would be liable for the freight claim. Plus it eliminated the hassle of cars rejected for loading. When CN took over the WC, they eliminated the car inspection and cars started going direct to loading - in order to improve car velocity. But eventually that caught up with them and with no maintenance any more cars started getting rejected for loading.
@@killerbee6310if a car gets rejected, does it then go to a maintenance facility or just reassigned to another customer? I assume if you have to keep rejecting cars, that holds up the customer’s production. Especially with the shortage of cars.
@@killerbee6310
*When CN took over the WC, they eliminated the car inspection and cars started going direct to loading*
geez... those LAZY MONEY HUNGRY class1s strike AGAIN...
so quick to want to collect the REVENUE but too lazy to want to provide a QUALITY SERVICE... WC was a very conscientious company as it related to customer service
The railroads do and will hold the customer liable. Of course over 50% of all railcars are customer owned so those are by default customer liable and subject to customer inspection for gates/hatches/pipes etc. If the railroad can prove the customer damaged the car (such as derailing it or damaging it with forklifts) they often do charge.
@@cdavid8139just curious, are autorack cars customer owned?
I was working on a CB&Q that's a railroad , a fireman on the locomotive, then one day I saw a little baby crawling along the track a baby mind you. And I grabbed that baby, and I flung it into a nice pile of soft leaves. Me well I didn't make out so good. Fractured my leg. The baby was all right. Today that baby is president of Vons supermarket you think he ever took the trouble to thank me, no sir! Rich folks got short memories.
Did you ever pop up to him and tell him how you saved his life??
If he was a baby, how could he know?
Regret so much for the bump your leg got, and the terrific situation you are going through now.
🤞by the way I was saved from falling into the street. When I was a kid commuting buses in 🇦🇷 Argentina used to have to doors up front: right and left parallel to the driver, and just used a chain across to avoid the passegers from going through.
I loved sitting on the 1st seat lefthandside looking out the window and the drivers' driving.
The bus shoud've had the doors shut, but it was summer. Came to a corner and a car crossed it's path, so the driver jamed on the brakes.
I flew from the seat, under the chain, aiming for the tarmac through the open door, BUT the driver swung over and grabed me from the coller of my shirt.
I never knew who he was, I'll remember him forever and I Thank Him!
I'm 67 now & this happed when I 8
Best wishes
cheers = saludos
🤗🇦🇷👍🏼
@ricardojuricic9027 Well I never told him, but my sister met him once and spoke with him about it He just said I will be darned. You are fortunate with your mishap as well.
@@mistervacation23 so sorry, take good care
Well, I’ll be darned, I guess. Hope he reads this. Thinking it hasn’t sunk in what his - all peoples’ - life is worth to others.
@@kenjohnson6075 right
How do railroads that own cars that are used by other systems receive revenue for the usage of that car?
Do you mean on the car itself or for the shipment in it? For the car itself, I have another "Understanding Railroads" video on Demurrage vs Car Hire. If you mean for the shipment, I'll be ding one on that soon. Not trying to deflect you, but the videos are more in depth then I would be here.
killerbee does cover this in one of his other videos. But in short if railroad A is using a car owned by Car Owner B then Railroad A reports to B the time they received the car and the time they delivered the car and the mileage. They then take the number of hours they had the car (and miles) and calculate what they owe cased on the car's value. So if railroad A had the car for 120 hours and it is a $.50 per hour car they will owe $60 and at month end report all the cars to car owner B. Car owner B has the right to determine if they feel they are shorted and go after Railroad A for more money (known as a car hire claim)
Internal Super Car Intelligence.
Laugh Out Loud
You don't explain how the CORRECT 25 box cars get picked out of say a 75 car train when the whole train gets to a destination?
When the 75 car train arrives at destination it is 'classified' or 'switched' into various blocks holding similar cars. This is usually 'flat switching' these days but could be over a hump. So for example if cars 15-22 and 66-72 are going to the same industry (or same industrial area). they are all put together into a specific track in the yard. The crews have a list showing a destination block/code/number associated with each car. The goal is to break up that 75 car train as quickly as you can.
I worked in Car Management for the Milwaukee Road in Chicago, 79-85, distributing flats and multi levels (auto racks). Surely our paths have crossed. Please PM me and exchange names.
I cannot figure how to contact you privately. I was at CNW in Car Management from '81 to '87. We get together with one of your former colleagues, DAS, quite a bit yet.
CNW had one of the neatest lines across northern Nebraska and central Wyoming. It was constructed in the 1880's and called the Cowboy Line. It was abandoned in 1990 but small sections are still in operation by other railroads. UP operates the heavily used section from the Wyoming border to the Power River Basin. From the Wyoming border UP constructed new trackage south to connect to their system in Morrill, Nebraska. At the time UP did not want CNW's right-of-way across northern Nebraska.
Unfortunately I never saw it, despite being with CNW for 6 years. It looked pretty neat back then
Some of them went that way with their Moms and Dads when they were just trucks, some go with their friends who know. Some go with a kindly locomotive who shows them the way. Some learned the way at car school and some go along, do their best and find out where to go by trial & error.
And some get lost never to be seen again
The freight cars have no idea where they are going as they are nothing but a piece of machinery. They have no mind. therefore they do not think.
Very cool of you to set us all straight in this
Good grief! Pretty dang complicated
Ahh...it's not too bad. It is like having several thousand cats....
@killerbee6310 This was interesting. It made me think about an article that the Boston and Maine Historical Society published, based on something written in the employee magazine. It was about a boxcar which came back online after something like 5-6 years of roaming North America.
I know how things have changed with more specialty cars, as well as mergers. Another point to add is that B&M terminated more traffic than it generated. This generates some questions in my mind.
Say that the car was initially loaded outbound from online Lowell, Mass., to San Francisco on SP. I’d assume that the car could be either loaded, or sent back empty towards New England. For the example, the car got a load for Ithica, NY on Lehigh Valley. Wouldn’t LV have to send it empty, presumably via Delaware and Hudson or NYC to the B&M’s NY gateway in Mechanicville, NY? Was there a function where LV could load the car at another customer in Ithica, and send it to Atlanta, for example?
The second part of the question has to do with my initial qualifying statement about B&M’s deficit of outbound to inbound traffic. Wouldn’t it be required to load a SP , or any western car, like a Wp car in the initial example, before loading its own car? This provided they were both general plain boxcars of the same car code (XM)?
I know some of this has changed with car pools. I knew a guy involved with a short line. He was talking about how he got paid by some large car owner, like GE Railcar to use his reporting marks for 200 50’ boxcars. Why would the leaser want to use a common carrier reporting mark rather than a private X mark? Locally near me there is a short line called Green Mountain, which is part of the Vermont Rai System. The cars seem to go be in a pool to the paper mills in North Country NY, NH, and ME. Another example is the recent use of WRWK mark. It seems to be mostly applied to center beam flats. WRWK was Warwick, a Rhode Island short line taken over by Providence and Worcester, now part of G&W family of short lines.
Over time, most of the railroad boxcar-gondola-flatcar fleet has morphed from being "general equipment" - XM boxcars, GB gondolas, FM flatcars (if the mechanical designations are correctly remembered) to "specialized equipment" - XL-XP-XF boxcars, GBSR gons, etc. The Car Service Rules that dictate how a car considered as general equipment get disposed of when empty are different than for specialized cars. General equipment could be reloaded "promiscuously" (without regard to destination). Car Service Rule 1 stated "Unless covered by a Transportation Division order or directive, foreign cars may be loaded without regard to route of destination". General equipment were covered by Rule 1. So anybody could load anybody's general service car anywhere. So after a car spent a few months getting reloaded and zig-zagging about the country, how did it finally get home if no one wanted to reload it again? Special Car Order 90 for boxcars (SCO-90) and Special Car Order 100 (SCO-100) for gons and flats applied to general equipment. If you were holding a foreign car of indirect connection - that is, you did not directly connect with the car owner - you disposed of the car using the outlets dictated in the SCO's. For instance, say your B&M XM boxcar is empty on the CNW. As CNW does not connect directly with B&M, the CNW would apply their SCO-90 outlet for the car. I am making this up but let's for the sake of argument say it is the early 1960's so maybe the NYC at Chicago was their outlet. At the same time, the NYC has instructions they must accept B&M XM boxcars at Chicago from CNW. The SCO outlets were intended to get foreign general service cars of indirect connections unneeded for loading home via the shortest route. The flows were monitored so nobody would be unduly burdened handling empty cars - the outlets were always being tweaked.
No, in your example B&M would not be required to load a foreign car first.
Car leasing companies can make more money when their cars carry railroad marks as they then receive the car hire (time and mileage) payments versus a private car just earns loaded mileage (I believe) and now many railroads are not paying private car mileage. Undoubtedly the car leasing companies have done the math to see under which scenario they come out better financially. But as a car leasing company is not a railroad, they either have to buy a railroad to get the use of the marks (as Itel did years ago by acquiring GB&W and FRVR) or they make a deal with an established shortline to put the shortline's reporting marks on the car leasing companies cars. The railroad whose reporting marks are used get a little compensation but most flow to the car leasing company. General purpose cars were not assignable but most cars are now specialized equipment which is assignable. This means they can have a designated home point and the Car Service Rules (technically the Car Service Directives or CSD's) stipulate they cannot be reloaded - they have to go back when empty. So for example there are LRS boxcars assigned on the LRWN for loading by a certain shipper at Perry AR. When empty the cars have to go back to Perry. They may never see the LRS.
Clear as mud?
Thanks for the info. It did answer some questions, but also generated a couple of new ones. You dispelled my misconception that a road had to load a foreign car towards home before one of its own, such as my San Francisco loading example, with the BM car on SP. If any car can be used anywhere, such as my BM car zig zagging the country, what would stop B&M from buying as many cars as they could possibly afford, then sitting back and collecting car hire? Is there a mechanism in the rules to prevent a railroad from flooding the car pool? I know that this would, as you explained only work with general service cars.
A second part of this same question would be, whose cars get parked in a recession? I remember when all of the short lines bought cars painted in intricate schemes in the 1970s. When the recession hit in the early 1980s, these cars came home. Some of the short lines didn’t even have enough room to store them.
I used to work for Canadian Pacific RR at Toronto Yard (Agincourt, ON), I know where the cars are going. Along the track.
I did my time in the R&H (refrigeration and heat) department in the late 60s. Charcoal burners and overhead ice cars.
And RBL cars