I was looking through the Walthers sales flyer this morning and see they have a scale house and scale kit. Two scale house building come with the kit and both look to be pre 1960 and older vintage. I was trying to figure out if scales are still in use in the 1990's + and do they have a scale house and operator or would it be a wireless operation today?

I believe most all weighing done today is done with in motion scales that receive and send info electronically without need for somebody to be present at the scales. I know some railroads equip cars with "barcodes" that the scales use to identify the cars.

Thanks for the insight. I figured that electronics would be the present way of doing things but wanted to be sure.

When railroading was deregulated in the 1980's the requirement to weigh all cars was removed. They have instead gone to an agreed upon weight the railroad will charge per car. They are usually figured out right around the capacity of the car. If you notice on older cars the use to have three sets of weight numbers and now they only have two. There are still scales in use on some properties today and customers are charged a fee for each car that is weighed. In the 1990, they would still be around many large industries and yards there use could be daily or not at all.

Thanks Greg. I was speaking to a friend who works for CN who used to pick up ore cars from a lead mine. He said that the front end loader that loaded the cars had a scale in or attached to the bucket so the operator knew exactly how much ore was in each car. He assumed that the info was sent to both the mine and CN.

It's crazy how far technology has come! I work for a public municipality here, and we load our salt trucks in the winter time with a loader that is equipped with a scale like you mentioned. Loader operator prints a receipt at the end of the shift showing how much salt each truck was loaded with for the shift.