Freight Car Forwarding.

[brakie]

As per request I am going to give a detailed account of a load traversing from point A to point B.


Ok,Let's follow CSX XM 142826 with a load of kitchen cabinets from Old South Cabinet Corp at Spartenburg SC to 86 Lumber Medina,Oh on the Huron River Ry.
After the car is loaded CSX will pick it up and forward the car to the HR at Barberton,Oh.After this car arrives on the HR our customer service representative will call 86 lumber and get delivery information.After the information is received the representative will forward the delivery information to the Barberton yard office..There the car will be added to the Huron Turn's switch list..The local will deliver the car.
Now 86 Lumber calls the customer service representative and reports CSX 142826 is empty..This information is past along to the Barberton yard office and added to the switch list as a empty pickup at 86 Lumber.The local will pick up the car and return it to Barberton where it will be turned over to the CSX on the next CSX transfer run.
Now IF the HR had a load going to a CSX customer then 142826 would have been loaded on the HR before being returned to CSX as per the per diem agreement.
Now understand IF HR held 142826 a Demurrage fee would be paid to CSX.So, in the above scenario we promptly returned the empty car to CSX to avoid having to pay the Demurrage fee.

 

[doctorwayne]

Nice, clear explanation, Larry.:thumb:
Some of you may have seen some of the photos of my layout that have appeared in the Photography Forum. If so, you may also know that I'm modelling the secondary mainline of a fictional subsidiary of another fictional railroad. Both of these railroads are connected, through interchanges, with all of the other railroads in North America. So all of those models of freight cars of real railroads got to my line through an interchange. An interchange is merely a connection between two or more railroads, which are, in turn, connected to other railroads. In the era that I model, the 1930's, there were a lot more railroads than there are today, so when a boxcar from some obscure line in the southern US shows up on my layout, it may have been moved on the tracks of many different railroads along the way. This is good in at least two ways: you get to run cars from railroads that are thousands of miles away, or that have paint schemes that you've never actually seen, so it's a good excuse to get more freight cars. The other good thing is that, when the car reaches your railroad, your company is going to have some reason to move that car (and, theoretically at least, make some money). You can also send your
home road cars somewhere else (that you don't have the room to model), like me sending a load of GERN-Brand Flux to a company in Texas. If you have more than one interchange, how that car goes to Texas will also determine where it goes before it leaves your layout. I have three interchanges with other railroads. One of these is represented by my South staging yard, in Dunnville, which consists of five long tracks, laid out like a switching yard, but with no scenery. Trains originate or terminate here, as the yard is stub ended. My supply of rolling stock is kept under the layout here, so when I need to make up a new train to send out onto the layout, the cars are close at hand. Similarily, trains ending up here from the layout are broken up, by hand, and returned to their boxes. What all this physical handling of trains is meant to depict, though, is that my railroad is receiving or sending a train to an interchange partner, in this case, my unmodelled fictional road, the Elora Gorge & Eastern, which has connections, in turn, with the New York Central's line through southern Ontario. Similarily, I have an interchange with the TH&B in an unmodelled part of Port Maitland, another part of which is modelled. The TH&B interchange is one long siding, placed on a lower level of the area where the Dunville yard is. The TH&B runs to Hamilton, Ontario, where it interchanges with the CPR, CNR, and its own part-owner, the NYC. The third interchange is at Mount Forest (or will be, if I ever get the second level of the layout built). It'll be stacked over top of the Dunnville and TH&B interchanges, so everything is handy to the car supply. The Mount Forest interchange is with the CNR, and is mainly for traffic heading north, or east or west in Canada. So that car of flux, originating at GERN Industries, in the modelled part of Port Maitland, can leave town on the TH&B, then go to Hamilton, where another TH&B train will take it to Buffalo NY, and so on. That makes for only about 10 feet of running on the layout, though, before it's "handed off" to the TH&B. Since a lot of flux is shipped directly to Hamilton already, I might elect to route the car through Dunnville. The EG&E will turn it over to the NYC at Canborough, where it'll head for Detroit, Mich., and thence on to Texas.
So staging, in one form or another, is a useful tool for bringing traffic to your layout, or for sending it to other, unmodelled, areas. Suddenly, even a 4'x8' layout can extend thousands of miles beyond your basement. A staging track can be as simple as a single siding, crammed in at the edge of your layout, or as complicated and large as you wish to make it. In either case, it can have the ability to originate or terminate as much traffic as you wish, sort of like a "super industry". You can even use that single interchange track to represent different interchange partners: pick up a car or two from the Southern Pacific interchange, run a few laps around the oval, then hand them over to the B&O. I hope that you'll give interchange a try on your layout: the possibilities are limited only by your imagination. (I also hope that I haven't muddied Larry's more concise explanation.)

Wayne

 

[brakie]

Heres the car card and waybill for the CSX load to 86 Lumber for those that may be looking into car card/waybill operation:
The car card:

The waybill:

Of course the car card is bigger then the waybill..I wanted the illustrations to be small for our dial up users.
As you can see I goofed some where.

 

[pgandw]

Interestingly enough, interchange was quite limited even on standard gauge railroads until air brakes and knuckle couplers became widespread in the 1890s. Paperwork for the early transcontinental days of the Central Pacific showed loads coming from the East and going to, for example, Virginia City on the V&T would first be hauled through to Sacramento. Then the load would be sent East to Truckee where it was often hand-transferred to a V&T car for transport to Virginia City.

The link-and-pin couplers and other systems were just not standard enough between railroads. The competition and lack of vision discouraged working agreements. And labor to cross-load freight was still cheap enough to get away with the inefficiency.

my thoughts, your choices

 

[2-8-2]

Thanks for the information, guys! :thumb:

My freelance road (set in NW Ohio) could interchange with a few real ones, had it actually existed. I've had some difficulty locating freight cars in the road names I want in N scale. With this new info on how the whole thing works, I can now realistically buy freight cars in just about any road name for use on my layout.

 

[steamhead]

Hi,

I don't often get around to this part of the Forum, but I need to know where I might find a copy/template for a switching list. Any info/leads you may provide will be most appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[2-8-2]

Here's a link to a pretty generic one that should work for just about anything. You need Adobe Reader to view it:

Link

 

[steamhead]

Thanks Brakeman, it's just what I needed...!!!