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Re: (erielack) Freight Trains Today
Dear Paul The wordPlethora as mt Med dictionary says is(an excessof blood in
the ciculatorysystem or in one organ or area. So my question is what does
this word have to do with Railroading??????Jerry Heckman #3294
- ----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>
To: "EL Mailing List" <erielack_@_lists.railfan.net>; "Jim Gerofsky"
<graytrainpix_@_hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 5:52 AM
Subject: Re: (erielack) Freight Trains Today
> There is a perceived lack of variety today compared with the 60's and
> 70's,
> but it's not as bad as you might think. There is certainly a drastic
> reduction in Class I's, but we still have a plethora of regionals and
> short
> lines, and for locomotives, leasing companies. So we need to clarify:
> variety in what? In the kind we like, ie many colorful competing and
> connecting Northeast RR's, the loss is drastic. In terms of intercity
> passenger equipment, even worse: you can have Amtrak or Amtrak. Freight
> equipment? It's a mixed bag. The least variety was in the steam era:
> mostly
> 40' boxcars and open hoppers. Yawn. Go back to reading after the loco
> passes. By the 60's, we had an explosion in freight car variations:
> Boxcars-all lengths from 40'-86', hy-cubes, all-door, cushioned, insulated
> Flatcars-TOFC/COFC, autorack, bulkhead, center-beam
> Covered Hoppers-lengths from 36'-60', ribbed, cylindrical, inverted
> teardrop
> etc etc, and this variety is still with us.
>
> You need to differentiate also between variety in equipment vs service
> patterns. Looking at intermodal, we had good variety of equipment in the
> first few decades, then by the mid-70's, it had distilled down to the two
> 40' trailers on a long flat configuration. With almost all dry van type
> trailers being free-runners, the trains all looked the same on all
> railroads, except for the limited number heavy with reefers or UPS
> drop-frames. Then Dereg inspired a whole new generation of equipment
> types:
> spine cars for TOFC, COFC or both, well cars in various lengths and body
> styles, roadrailers, trailers of ever-increasing length and containers in
> almost every imaginable color. In terms of service patterns, it's the
> opposite: intermodal has become commoditized with 70% of the business
> being
> import/export: train after train of merchandise from nameless, faceless
> plants in the Far East with no particular service standard. If it's
> already
> spent a week crossing the Pacific, who cares it it gets to Chicago third
> evening, fourth evening etc. Let's hope the new generation of modelers is
> focused on equipment.
>
> Paul B
>
>
> From: JG at graytrainpix <graytrainpix_@_hotmail.com>
> Subject: (erielack) Freight Trains Today
>
> I was watching the PBS Newshour on Thursday night getting a fix on the
> stuff
> going on in Iran, and they ran an interesting report about NIMBY reactions
> to the CN takeover of the EJ&E. Not that NIMBY is anything new or unique
> these days, but the report had some interesting footage of CN and BNSF
> trains around Chicagoland. No real EL relevance, other than the
> tangential
> fact that the former EL/EJE/GT diamond in Griffith, Ind. will be an
> important connection point in CN's plan to keep freights away from
> downtown
> by using the EJE.
>
> However, the train shots in this report made me ponder another reason why
> I
> miss the EL so much (and you probably do too). The action footage
> basically
> showed three kinds of freights: coal/hopper runs, double-stack intermodal
> runs, and mixed freights consisting mainly of large tank cars. That could
> cover perhaps 80% of freight traffic these days. Back in the 60s and 70s,
> it seemed like every freight run was different and distinctive; 90 had its
> big auto parts cars (and stock cars, if you go back to the early 60s), TC2
> /
> BC2 had a lot of 40 foot boxcars (paper from Canada) and maybe some
> autoracks for Jersey City, 74 had reefers, 100 had the boxcar block ahead
> of
> its TOFC, PO98 would be a mix of anything and everything, CS9 and PN98
> might
> have some cement covered hoppers . . . and of course we had three types
> of
> cabeese to watch for at the tail end, versus a blinking FRED today.
>
> You had a lot more variety in freight car consists, with all the fallen
> flags still flying. Even the intermodal runs had a variety of interesting
> trailers from both RR's and trucking companies (of course, the UPS trains
> could be a bit monotonous). Throw in the locals, the coal trains,
> switchers
> puttering around with a few cars in urban settings, work trains, and it
> was
> never boring -- at least when the trains were running. Today, freight
> density is quite high on the remaining main lines, but variety is quite
> low.
>
>
> The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List
> http://EL-List.railfan.net/
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