I am a retired machinist with about 37 years of service in the shops. I have a vague idea of how he interchange rules work. Question; If a industry needs 5 flat cars to ship there product on and calls the IC and they have only 3 flats but there is 1 Southern flat and 1 Frisco flat in the yard both are returning to owners. Can IC use the Southern and Frisco cars to finish out the load order? If so who is billed/charged?

I'll hope that Brakie and the other real railroaders will chime in for more help, but what I understand is that the Southern flat car could be used only if the load was headed back towards the home road. The Southern car couldn't be confiscated and sent even further from its owner. Ditto for the Frisco car.

As for payment, I haven't a clue!

If I understand correctly, the host RR, the IC in your case, would prefer to use home road cars in order to collect the highest revenue, I.E. any shipping charges and per diems while the car is on other RR's rails, plus if the shipment originates and terminates on the IC there is no per diem to pay out. If they needed, they certainly could use any available car that met the needs of the shipper. The downside is that the Southern and Frisco get paid a per diem for each day the car is on IC rails, or any other railroad's rails, and may be due other fees as well, I'm not completely sure. The bottom line is that the home road cars will pay more.

On the flipside, there are certain cars labeled "When empty return to...(insert home road here)" and I believe those cars are to be returned promptly without rerouting, unless the return load takes them back to their home yard.

Gary S Wrote:I'll hope that Brakie and the other real railroaders will chime in for more help, but what I understand is that the Southern flat car could be used only if the load was headed back towards the home road. The Southern car couldn't be confiscated and sent even further from its owner. Ditto for the Frisco car.

As for payment, I haven't a clue!

The Southern and Frisco get paid for every day that car is on another road's rails. If the IC did use those empties to ship the loads, wherever they may be destined, the Frisco and Southern would receive per diems on those loads, from whichever road they are on.

But could the Frisco and Southern cars be routed even further from their homes?

Gary S Wrote:But could the Frisco and Southern cars be routed even further from their homes?

I don't know the "official" answer. In practice, we used what we had on hand. If Joe Smith needed 5 scrap gons, they got the first 5 we could dig out of the yard, whatever their owner or reporting marks. I don't know if this was policy, lazy yardmaster, or lazy crew. I also can tell stories of "confiscating" diesel locomotives from the NS, a cut of 30+ CSX hoppers that were "lost" for several months, and a PRR boxcar "found" on an overgrown CSX yard track that had 3 1955 Buicks in it with less than 100 miles on them that had been lost for 50 years.

In simple terms yes, the IC can use the SOU/SLSF cars - IF:
1) the shipment will move those cars closer to their home rails
2) the shipment destination would be the SOU or SLSF
3) the shipment routing included the SOU or SLSF.

As a simple example, if you were shipping 5 flats of say telephone poles from some point in Illinois on the IC to say Memphis TN, the IC could load and move both cars to Memphis, then interchange them when empty to the SOU/SLSF in Memphis, only having to settle the per diem charges with the SOU/SLSF.

As for who is billed/charged. Each day that your SOU or SLSF car is off its home rails it accrues a per diem (car hire) charge that the IC must settle with the owner road. These per diem charges are based on the type of car and its age. If the SOU or SLSF is the destination or involved in the routing of the shipment, then of course SOU or SLSF would receive a percentage of the freight charges in addition to the per diem charges.

Clear as mud?

Also, as Puddlejumper mentioned - many cars can not be reloaded and must be returned empty to the home road. The Southern had numerous car types that all were stenciled with the statement "SPECIALLY EQUIPPED CAR RETURN PROMPTLY WHEN EMPTY TO SOUTHERN RAILWAY AT ANY JUNCTION POINT". If your SOU or SLSF flats were assigned to some pool service then you couldn't reload them at all.

And Gary, No the SOU/SLSF cars could not be routed further from home unless they were exempt from the basic car service rules for some reason.

FCIN Wrote:And Gary, No the SOU/SLSF cars could not be routed further from home unless they were exempt from the basic car service rules for some reason.

And this answers my question. I assume that it was laziness on the part of the yardmaster or conductor that caused us to use whatever we had on hand for loads of scrap. I am sure that, since these loads were headed south on the RF&P sub, that the MEC gons perhaps should not have been used. LOL. It's been a long time since I worked for the railroad, but I can say that some shady stuff happens once in a while...

I hate to get picky here, but since you guys are talking about it...railroads do not pay per diem (per day). Generally customers pay demurrage by the day. Railroads pay car hire which is by the hour, and is based on the age of the car and enough other stuff to really confuse you. Some cars the rate is as low as 9 cents an hour, maybe even lower but 9 cents was the lowest I saw. Short lines can work with an AAR rule, and I forget what it is called already (only 11 months out of the business ) where they get 120 hours free from care hire, so if the car is back off line they pay no car hire to the owner road, and if they reload a car they can accrue another 120 hours without paying so that might explain to some of you why they can sometimes leave a car sit a day or two.
Cars with private marks don't get the demurrage charge to the customer.
Also when you use a foreign car for an on line movement, you have to pay mileage to the owner railroad too.
Charlie

Puddlejumper Wrote:(...) but I can say that some shady stuff happens once in a while...

You can say that again Having worked as an agent (among other things) for several years on the L&N - it about drove me nuts trying to keep the customers happy, the company happy and comply with all the various accounting type rules.

At least once, I needed a bunch of 50 foot box cars for shipping used whiskey barrels to Florida for further movement to PR. I was sent several foreign road cars that should not have been sent in that direction. The Superintendent said use them anyway so I did. About a month later, I got a call from the accounting department who proceeded to chew on me at great length for using those cars. You can't win!

Can't say for sure what happens if you hijack a foreign road car and send it some place where it shouldn't go, but I suspect that there is some sort of fine involved - IF anyone catches it (in my case they did). It's very possible that those MEC gons were okay for the shipment you mentioned. If this occurred sometime in from the early 1970's on, it's quite feasible that the MEC gons were free runners - hard to say.

Oh yes and when I was doing the yard check - I opened the door on one of those "EMPTY" box cars to see if it was clean and discovered it was full of GE clothes washers. Railroad error or shipper error? I never found out, just notified the main office and sealed the car and sent the car back to Louisville.

Charlie B Wrote:I hate to get picky here, but since you guys are talking about it...railroads do not pay per diem (per day). Generally customers pay demurrage by the day. Railroads pay car hire which is by the hour (...)

In my day on the L&N, 1970's, what is now called car hire was simply called per diem although I think it was still computed by the hour, but thank goodness it wasn't something I had to worry about other than getting cars moved as quickly as possible. You've obviously been involved in all this stuff more recently than I have so appreciate the info.

On the other hand demurrage charges were a pain in the neck and back then the charge was only $7.00 a day whereas now days it looks to be around $60.00 per day! The way my customers squealed if they had to pay that $7 charge, I'd hate to have to deal with them now!

And I completely forgot about the mileage charges. I often have to really reach back into the memory banks to remember a lot of this stuff - I hated working as an agent which ultimately lead me back to the short line scene and back to being conductor and engineer. Money isn't everything!

Wow! I had no idea the railroads paid by the HOUR for foreign road cars. Also didn't know about the mileage fees. It makes one wonder how that PRR car sat on a rip track or basically abandoned yard track, through the ownership of 4 railroads (PRR, PC, CR, CSXT) for 50 years, loaded, and not be found. Also, there was a KCS boxcar sitting on a spur in an industrial park just outside of Washington D.C. for 5 or more years. It was "found" when my model train group decided, after discussing this car at a couple of meetings, that we would give the KCS a call. The car dept was very interested in having this car returned to the KCS, which was still in active service but neither NS, CSX, or Amtrak had any record of it in their systems. Who pays THAT fee? Or is it common enough that equipment gets "lost" that those types of things are waived fairly regularly? It must be fairly common... CSX lost a cut of 30 hoppers back in 2001, though I believe they were found on line, so no per diems would have been involved.

Was the per hour thing always the case? Because there are so many stories of transfer runs being made as close to midnight as possible so the foreign road wouldn't get hit with another day's charge. If I'd only heard it once I'd say it was just that - a story, but I've seen it written in storeis in Classic Trains and other places, and I've heard it from former railroaders.

--Randy

rrinker Wrote:Was the per hour thing always the case?
--Randy

As I mentioned in another post, it was always Per Diem in my railroad days and at this point I can't say for sure if it was or wasn't computed hourly, but it sticks in my mind that it was a "per day" rate rather than hourly. I need to look through some of my railroad junk and see if I can find any info on this to refresh my "aging" memory . This thread kept me up half the night trying to remember a lot of this stuff. For instance, I "forgot" about mileage charges, because I can't for the life of me ever remember there being one - but...

If it's computed hourly these days, it must be a change from "my day" just as demurrage charges have gone from $7 to $60 per day. I'm wondering if this hourly rate came about in part because of the IPD (Incentive Per Diem) craze of the 70's and early 80's? I know that the "big roads" didn't care much for it!

I can find stuff on the internet about current demurrage rates, but can't find out anything about car hire (per diem?) so maybe Charlie or someone currently involved in this aspect of railroad industry can shed some light on this for us.

If anyone is interested, here is a link to Norfolk Southerns Demurrage and Storage Rules/Charges tariff (it's a PDF file): http://www.nscorp.com/nscorphtml/pdf/Cus...6004-C.pdf

Ok,enter the IPD boxcars and railgon.

Now that sheds a whole new light on the matter.Let's say the Huron River Ry( a CDBI short line) has 5 loads of scrap bound for Mansbach Metals in Charleston WV..The HR agent would use Railgons for this job since these are pooled car with "next load any road" routing..Now we have 2 loads of lawn mower blades destined to MTD in Valdosta Ga.Again the HR agent would use Railbox or any IPD short line boxcar due to the "next load any road" routing.
He would route other empties to their home rails as quickly as possible via the nearest interchange..

Even today most short lines would use Railbox boxcars or boxcars from connecting roads under the "short line partnership" that many railroads use to gleam extra loads loaded on a connecting short line.

I can't see NS loading a CSX boxcar since they (NS) has thousands.I have no doubt they would load theirs first,then a Railbox and as a last resort foreign road boxcars.

Of course with many private lease companies in the freight car business-including boxcars-this may change things in the coming years and may even lead to railroads owning less cars.