Making mine and customers lives better

One thing I spent a lot of time doing was to understand customer expectations and then explain what was possible. This helped me build my schedules and reduce the number of angry phone calls when a customer gets a car online and it is not spotted 10 minutes later. For a model railroad, unless you are following a prototype to the letter, you can use your imagination to decide who would want cars immediately and who can wait for the natural progression to occur. 

I would then exam interchange schedules to determine when we would get cars and when we could deliver cars. As an example if you are modeling a Class I or the smallest shortline, if you do not have cars to deliver, no point in running the railroad. If the train that brings cars arrives in the yard Sunday or you pickup cars Sunday night, you should have a plan to break those cars down and start them towards your large customer ASAP!

With presumably the largest block of cars out of your way crews can now start working on the rest of the cars. Other cars should be lined up for your outbound trains toward the customer or getting them lined up to switch them in the yard. On a model railroad I recommend that if you choose to have a large customer and cars will arrive from staging to have the preblocked, that way a simple setout can be made and that job can take those cars to the customer. Nobody wants to sit around watching other people switch cars. 

Blocking cars is a make or break when dealing with customers. I have done it both ways, but dragging a train that is the dogs breakfast out of a yard and having to make many many cuts in a train to spot three cars. I always tried to schedule and arrange for trains to be blocked before departing a yard. It was not always done perfect, or at all, but I had goals. 
 

What I am talking about

So based on actual schedules I created here is what a weeks worth of work would look like. (I have changed a few names to protect the innocent)

Daylight Switcher 0700 M-F
Daily: Switch yard build North Job, Great, and East Trains
M, W, F: Interchange with BNSF 

T, Th: Interchange UP, Switch RIP track and Midwest Iron (holds 3 cars)

Chemical Switcher 0900 M-Sa 

Daily: Take cars from yard to Chemical plant. Spot pull customer tracks. (Average was around 60 cars in and out a day) Service AirProdcuts (holds 12 cars, spotted 3-4 and pulled about the same)

North Job 1900 Su-Th 

M, Th: Service Namsal (20 cars in and out) Gavillon (8-14 cars in and out) Mckinnis Iron (3 cars a week) K Ethenol (10 cars a week) JaCam (20 cars a week) 

S, Tu, W: Operate East Hauler towards the city or toward the yard depending on where the Hauler job made it to  customers in route were Abengoa (10 cars in and out) Any Lumber (1 car a month, held one car) Hazy Co-Op (8-12 cars in and out) There were also 5 elevators that were served seasonally, grain car movement is a whole different thing. 
 

If interested I can list more jobs and give more of a picture, but my main point is that not every place gets cars everyday. Those that do get cars regularly are generally on some sort of service schedule. 

Small?

Didn't you mean to define a small customer as one who gets/ships 40 cars or so a month?

Scott Chatfield

Switching schedules

Greg, please feel free to give as much info you want on scheduling trains from your real life experience. That sort of information is gold IMO.

I know that many customers don't work 7 days a week and have issues with cars bunching en route and subsequently see delivery on non optimal days. So for example they don't want a new car spotted on Friday night 1 minute to midnight so they will get charged 1 day late fees beyond the 2 free days when they unload their car on Monday and release it or force their crew to work overtime to avoid the charges. So some customers demand contacts to get switched Sunday-Thursday while others want to get switched 7 days a week.

I'm assuming that in your planning you might even include that even though a car was released it wouldn't be picked up for an extra day or so because running a train to that customer could cause a few to potentially get outlawed?

Or those critical loads that have to end up at an industry at xyz time in order to avoid an entire plant to shut down at tremendous cost, causing an extra to be sent their way.

Scheduled switching

To add to Mr. Baker's comments, typically the large customers are very few, the tiny customers are numerous.  If I had to put numbers on it, less that 5% of customers (not cars) are large and probably 60-75% of customers are tiny.  At least that was how it was back before the 1990's.  After that the railroads put on a concerted effort to abandon unused trackage and pull up switches for tiny customers.  On a 2020 railroad those percentages may no hold just because many of the tiny customers are physically gone.

On the railroad I worked for we didn't schedule the work that way (assuming I am understanding what Mr. Baker is describing), we basically had an area that the switchers worked every day they were scheduled to operate (depending on whether they were 5-6  or 7 day jobs).  They switched every customer that had business in that area every day they ran.  There were places with really low volume branches out of the same area where there might be a local that operated on different branches on different days of the week.  Customers on some branches might only get switched once a week.  There was a concerted effort to interchange every day a job ran.

I was actually part of a project to schedule rock train service in S Texas.  Unit gravel trains would run from A to B on M-W-F and A to C on T-T-S.  Dismal failure.  It worked right up until the first time it rained and the pits became too muddy to mine rock.  Then another road project got delayed a couple days, then a loader broke down, then a customer ordered an additional five trains.  All issues that the railroad had no control over.

What customers "demand" and what customers get are not necessarily the same thing.  Generally you can optimize around one major customer, the rest get switched when they get switched.  If a customer on the north end of the branch and customer on the south end of the branch both want to be switched at 7 am, one of them is outa luck.  The railroad can optimize one and the other one is just stuck.  The switcher can't work two industries in different places at the same time.

As far as a switcher not wanting to have a load spotted on a Friday night, they don't understand how things work.  This assumes its a railroad owned car, not a private car, because private cars (reporting marks end in the letter X) generally don't get charged demurrage.  If you have a load to be spotted there are only four choices:

• Actually place (spot) the load, which starts the demurrage clock
• Don't spot the load, which will trigger "constructive placement" (CP),  which starts the demurrage clock anyway
• Lease track space to store their cars, the car will be placed on the storage track, which starts the demurrage clock and they get charged a switch fee to spot the car later
• Negotiate a contract that gives extra time if the car is spotted on a Friday

Note that only one of them avoid demurrage charges.  Plus if they say that they don't want to be switched on Friday night, so the railroad holds the car, then another car shows up and on Sunday or Monday, when they go to switch the industry, they can only spot one car, that extra car that the railroad has because the customer didn't want the previous one spotted becomes CP'd and goes on demurrage too.  Back in the day, the local agent could just not charge the customer the demurrage or switching charges.  But once the railroads computerized, that became waaaaaay harder to do.  On the MP they said they paid for the development of their computer system in the first year or two just on the increased demurrage and switching charges they were missing before.

The other thing is is the job is working where its going to spot them around midnight, then on Monday, the switcher will spot them around midnight on Monday.  So if they don't get spotted on Friday at 1130pm then they might not get spotted until 1130pm Monday when the local runs again, which means they will have all day Monday with nothing to load/unload.  Just because they want to be switched on Sunday night doesn't mean they get switched on Sunday night.  If they are the only ones who want a switch on Sunday night, the railroad isn't going to spend $1000 to spot a car they are going to get $100 profit on.

The whole "Just in Time" thing is generally only used by major shippers.  No smaller shipper should ever expect JIT service from a railroad.  Shipment times can normally vary two to three days.  Other than major premium shippers (and certain huge bulk customers), there is no penalty for late shipments, there is no guaranteed shipping or transit time.  Its a railroad, not FedEx or UPS.

For example the customer that doesn't want to be switched on Friday night.  If they aren't going to be worked on Friday night, that means they aren't going to pulled Friday night either.  That means an outbound load isn't going to move til Sunday or Monday when they are worked again.  A car shipped on Tuesday will have a minimum of a 4 day transit (for example), while a car shipped on Friday will have a 5 or 6 day transit because the switching schedule is different.  Compound that with schedules of trains operating on only selected days across the whole trip and cars can have wildly different transit times.  Layer in maintenance curfews, weather delays, operational issues and incidents (failures, accidents, etc) and transit times are not going to be consistent. 

A railroad can optimize on one or two services, but not hundreds on the same train (unless they have the exact same requirements) .  For example railroads optimize UPS shipments.  A train might have 20 cars of UPS.  But in doing so, they sub-optimize the opposing 30-100 trains (with 3,000-10,000 cars) the UPS train will meet on its trip across the railroad.  The UPS train goes screaming by, but everybody else sits in the hole and is delayed. 

Answers

Scott: Yes you are correct, Small should be defined as 40 cars a month. Thanks for pointing that out. These were not rules per say, more just guidelines that I used to arrange work. 
 

Yaron: My goal was to always get the cars to the customer as soon as possible, while still focusing on turning a profit. So if I knew I had cars coming in for a customer that was at the end of the line and only served once a week I might actually hold the train or decided to run an extra train if I already had cars that needed to move. I spent a lot of time manhunt our Ontime Performance Report which once a car was on it for 3 days I had to provide a plan as to what we were doing with it. 
 

To answer your question a bit there is a difference between spot time and reported spot time. So a crew is on duty at 2200 hours gathers their cars and spots them to a customer at 2359, they then go about their shift and finish work at 0730 where they start working their lists. The paperwork is sent to the clerk at 0800 and the clerk starts updating the computer. So even if the crew showed it spotted at 2359 the computer usually placed the car when the paperwork was received. This had changed a bit with the use of tablets in the field, but there is some delay. For cars that were hot (high importance or shutdown) or cars showing late on my report, I would instruct the crew to call the clerk as soon as the car was spotted to get the car off our books. 
 

Ontime Performance, Per Diem and Demurrage are some of the more sticky parts of railroading, I would not recommend  modeling them, but it does give you reason to run special trains to customers “to keep the plant from shutting down” or other occasional special moves to add variety. 

Thank Dave!!!

Dave H, Barry Karlberg, and I could probably bore you all to death with the ins and outs of very boring Railroad stuff. I was thinking that having a prototype corner where modelers Ask the ‘Experts’ it might help others add layers to their layout operation!!!

The games we play

Without totally boring everyone with Car Hire, Demurage, Storage, Constructive Placement, or other real business I will make this statement. It is generally in the railroads best interest to get cars from interchange, to the customer as soon as possible. It is in the customers best interest to unload/load a car as quickly as possible. It is in the railroads best interest to pickup cars as soon as they are released from customers. 
 

Quick Overview of Railroad car ownerships 

Railroad owned: These cars carry the reporting marks of the railroad or reporting marks the way own and while on their own property and empty so not cost them anything. When they go to another property the collect revenue from the other railroad or shipper. 
 

Private Marked Cars (X): These cars are owned by a leasing companies or shippers and whoever has them has to pay for them. Until they land back on the customers property or partner property. 
 

There are lots of rules about when the clock starts and stops and who pays what when and if someone couldn’t to provide service how to protect yourself from paying etc etc.  All pretty boring, all not very able to be modeled. 
 

Things you can model: Extra Cars!!! Always a fun challenge to deal with, very very realistic. So customer “A” can hold 3 cars and orders from his shipper 3 cars a week. The first three cars depart the shipper and make it to a major yard, but don’t make meet a connecting train. The 3 cars from the next week catch up to the first 3 cars. Now these 6 cars are moved down the line to the yard for interchange. Only 4 of the cars are switched out and interchanged to the connecting railroad that has customer “A”. So the first problem is you now have 4 cars and can only spot 4 of them. The customer by now has missed a week of cars and is ready for a switch. You gather up 3 cars and take them to spot. Now what do you do with the other car? If the customer has room at their facility you could leave it there off-spot. Puts it off your books and on their books but could cause extra switch work later. You could leave it in your yard and PCON (constructively placed—means “we would love to deliver it to you,  it you can’t fit it...so your hot potato.” If the customer owns the car they could also opt to store the car, this gets it off the railroads books and puts it on their track, there may be a switch charge to get it from storage to spot. In the mean time more cars are rolling in to interchange and the other railroad is offering the to you. So time to get more cars from interchange and figure out what to do with the cars. The customer has now released the 3 cars and now is ready for a fresh 3 cars. So which cars do you spot next? The customer and railroad are most likely going to wan the oldest cars first. Now if the switch crew has their way they will get the first 3 easiest cars, this is where the Trainmaster and Yardmasters are going to get the lists together to inform the crews which cars to grab and spot otherwise you start with new cars being spotted and old cars costing the customer and railroad money. 

I wonder how do the yard

I wonder how do the yard switch crews find the cars they are to put into the train that delivers them to the customer? I would like to think in this era of computers that they would be told that one car is on track, 25 cars in and the other two are on track 8, 51 cars in. But I could also imagine a giant game of where's waldo where somebody or multiple somebodies have to walk/drive up and down yard tracks looking for their cars. So what's the actual way the crew finds the required cars?

Dick

Revenue

I know what Greg was saying but want to just clarify a point on revenue because it could be confusing.

When a railcar not owned or leased by railroad A has been interchanged to railroad A, then railroad A has to pay the owner "car hire" (sometimes called "per diem") for the use of the car.  For railroad owned cars it can be a daily charge, an hourly charge, a mileage charge or a combination of time and mileage charges (all dependent on ownership, car type, and era).  Generally railroad owned cars tend to be more time based (per diem or hourly rate) and private cars tend to be more a mileage charge.

Revenue is typically associated with the freight charges on the waybill and the railroad earns revenue on the movement of a load based on the portion of the trip a shipment is ON the railroad (whether the railroad owns the car or not), the railroad earns car hire when one of its own cars is OFF the railroad.

Freight revenue only applies to the loaded move and car hire applies whether the car is loaded or empty.

Car hire and freight revenue are completely separate things 

Greg was using revenue in the general sense of "income" rather than "freight revenue" and he is correct in that.

Greg's suggestion that you spot the oldest cars first is very typical (there is always the odd duck industry that wants something different).  You can do that on a layout by saying "off spot", storage track or "hold" box cars should be spotted before cars that were in your train.

Lists

Its called lists and classification and it works the same regardless of era, except that its easier and faster with computers.

The railroad tracks the cars that are in each track and the order the cars are in in the track.  When a train pulls into the yard a clerk watches the train by and gets an accurate list of the train, what cars and the order they stand.  The yardmaster makes a switch list and the cars are classified.  The clerks take the switch list and make new tracks lasts from the existing track lists and the switch list.  If everybody does their job, no tracks have to be walked,

Computer programs do the same thing, they can be set up to automatically update the track lists when the switch lists are "accomplished".  The tracks lists have all the cars in the proper order.  The cars should be blocked, that is all the cars in a track should be going to the same nest train or yard or destination.

If you are to the where's Waldo point then the yard is completely hosed and the NEW trainmaster and NEW terminal superintendent will get the yard back in shape.  The old trainmaster and terminal superintendent are either looking for a new job or are working nights in some remote backwater.

Normally the cars for a particular train will be in one track because they will have been classified into that track.  Think of it like each train or destination is a suit of cards.  The switch engine classifies the cards putting all the spades in one track, all the diamonds in another track, all the clubs in a track and all the hearts in a fourth track.  When it comes time to build the Hearts train, and they only want the 3, 5, 8 and King of hearts, the switcher won't scour the whole yard, it will JUST pull the hearts track and switch the cars out.  Normally its simpler than that, because normally the whole hearts track goes on the train, they don't cherry pick a few cars out.

I have been in situations where a computer glitch scrambled some yards.  What you do then is get a switcher and start dragging cars out of tracks and have a clerk make a list as they drag the cut out.  Way, way faster than walking.

Thanks Dave

The fine line between interesting and boring when dealing with railroad information is always a fun dance!!

I try to think of what a model railroader can use out of all the boring OTP reports, Per Diem revenues, lease agreements, all the stuff you deal with in Railroad management that is not the fun part. 
 

So again what can you take from all this and translate into your Model Railroad. 
1) Move cars with a purpose— Railroads do not want to turn wheel unless there is a reason to either get paid or save them from having to pay. 

2) Railroader is not clear or perfect — cars do not always arrive in nice even numbers, in perfect blocks, ready to go. There are a lot of things that can mess up the stream of traffic from ‘A’ to ‘B’. Believe it or not, Railroad cars and even whole trains can become ‘lost’ A simple misplaced piece of paperwork or hitting the wrong button on the computer and royally mess things up. 

3) Creating a backstory for customers — use what you think the customer would want as a way to plan your railroad jobs. Looking at how many spots there are, type of commodities, and what a crew could do in a reasonable amount of time. Allowing a crew to get their work done and tie up early is not always a bad thing. Some days are heavy, some are light, it is the nature of the business.

4) Not ever customer everyday— 95% of railroad customers are not served everyday. Having every customer switched every session is not very realistic. 
 

if you have any other questions I would be more then happy to try to answer them! 

AEI Readers

AEI Readers are very important to the computer knowing where cars are. AEI Readers are spaced every 20-30 miles with a few before each major yard in each direction. You can "track" the status/location of cars based on the AEI reader.

Everything is supposed to have a AEU tag but sometimes they don't work or fall off. Hence the lost cars. And yes it happens more often than you would think. I remember a few cars had $200 rewards attached to the if you found them as they has been missing for months. 

I only remember once or twice dragging a cut of cars past a AEI reader to get a correct train list. More often the crew would drag it out nice and slow and the YM or ultilty man would read car numbers off.

Lost cars are fun...

Two cars with the same number!! We served a Trinity Tank car building facility. One group of cars was pulled and shipped out on a Friday, no issue.  We pulled a string of cars the next week and tried to get paperwork for it, couldn’t get one of the cars online as it already showed in Houston Texas at a customer. Customer service was able to bring the car back online so we could deliver it. Then it just disappeared. Car tracing showed it back in Houston on spot.  CS brought it back online and I tried to print a list for interchange, but again the car had disappeared. Now I get an angry call from CS saying I have the wrong number, I go out and took a picture of the car, I then receive a picture of a tank car on spot in Houston with the same number...called Trinity and sent the car back to them for new AEI tags and markings. 
 

50 lost cars in Storage: The road I worked for was originally a UP line that had stored cars on it. The line was sold to a shortline and it included the storage contract. This shortline then sold to the line I worked for and included the storage contract. These were old intermodal equipment, 5 packs of 60’ flats drawbared together, 89’ flats, singles, pairs, triples, a few early well cars. All pretty much junk. We were getting 50 cents a day per car. The customer wanted some of the 60’ cars to be brought out and returned to them to be broken back into single cars. We started to try to dig them out and had to do ton of work to get them Road worth, wheels, FRA repairs, Air tests. Cars were being delayed and bills were pulling up. The customer decided they wanted all the cars off property as we were taking too long. They sent a list of 40 ish cars. I sent a list back of 90 cars. The 50 cars cleared up %25 of their lost car report. They were all patched back together and interchanged as quick as we could, replaced with $3 a day cars that were much shorter. 

No Bill

The idea of a lost car is a LOT rarer than it used to be.

Back in the pre-computer days yards would have a "no bill" track or a hold track that contained no bills.  A no bill was a car that didn't have a waybill with it.  Either it was pulled from industry before the car's waybill had been prepared, it was pulled in error or it was a car that got separated from its waybill.  In any case the yard didn't have any paperwork on the car so they didn't know what to do with it.

Clerks would have to start tracing the car back to see where it came from or calling the industry from which it was pulled to come up with a waybill.

As railroads computerized the no bill problem decreased to the point where it was a tiny fraction of cars it used to be.  Back in the day, that was something each yard reported on each morning, how many no bills it had, by the 1990's it was only mentioned if it was some glitch causing it (typically  an EDI problem).

Thanks, Greg and Dave for the

Thanks, Greg and Dave for the railroading discussion. I can add a bit more information as to how small short lines operated which might be easier for modelers to simulate?

I started up a few "new" (former class 1 railroad branches) short lines and they always used the barest of essentials to operate. After one or two of these startups I figured out how to set up patterns to create good, customer service with very little to work with.

First I had to decide how the crew at a distant location would know what the connecting railroad would be bringing in the way of cars and for which customer(s)? At one operation I arranged to have an inbound consist from the delivering road faxed to a local customer's office next to his spur where we parked our two units (GP-15s). Our crew would grab the consist call customers via cell phone and line things up to begin switching customers on a 50 mile broken down railroad. Note we really didn't have an office ( there was a leased space a few blocks away but we used it basically for storage) so I used my laptop in our home to communicate with the distant, general office. BTW, because we didn't handle any haz. mat. cars the crew didn't need waybills and I would arrive early each morning, walk the inbound cars making a simple crew list so they knew which cars went to which customer. 

Because many small outfits handle only loads in and mtys out I had arranged with customers and the connecting road to receive interchange on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday nights and for our crew to go north with the loads on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (if necessary) tying up at the end of the line those days, driving back home and then driving back the next day head south pulling all the mtys on the way back. Friday was generally iffy, usually switching the large plastic plant where we parked the engines and on that afternoon the fuel truck showed up to fuel the engines for another week. Sanding the engines was done at another customer's track where we had 100 lb. sacks of sand trucked in monthly and we used the customer's forklift to hoist them up so we could fill the engine sandboxes.

This operation worked well as we had no real trackage to switch with at the "home terminal") and the interchange track was an old siding that held 20 cars which we used to line cars up for delivery. Often when returning to the home base we left the mty, interchange cars for the big road right on the former main line down in a sag with handbrakes tied down and a list of cars stuck in the knuckle. Our crew would then fax their lists into the general office for processing and go home. This wasn't a problem for the delivering railroad since the whole little railroad was in Yard Limits (any train can operate within that track looking out for other trains and running at restricted speed) and they appreciated the simplicity of making interchange. They would pull up, shove the inbounds into the siding then couple onto the mtys on the main track, engineer would change ends they would perform an air test and go back home.  

This very simple operation and paperwork worked well for the first few years as they struggled to make any money (the big carrier only paid us a minimal, switch fee to handle their former customers and it wasn't much!). Lo and behold the process of using frack sand for oil drilling came about and that little piece of broken down railroad sat right on top of some of the finest frack sand deposits! I always hated walking in the grass and weeds while on the line switching, because in the Fall the sandy soil sprouted nasty, cuckel burrs which would stick to your overalls and cause pain with their needles...but it was a "dream come true" for the short line leassors. Suddenly several sand companies built huge unit train facilities to mine and ship the sand with large locomotives and heavy cars running ever so slow and careful on fragile track to handle the new, astounding business. However because the little short line was only leasing and not owning the track they didn't share as much as the big carrier in the new wealth so while new ties and some heavy ballast were installed to shore up the shaky track structure it was a still slow operation. 

Fast forward to today and many of the mines are shut down with huge facilities dormant due to too many companies building them and not enough need for them. The good news is that the short line did use some of the new revenue to build new tracks for other, new customers and a few sand sand trains still run. 

I was only on site for a year at start up of the little line and didn't see the rise and fall of the frack sand era but the simple procedures I put in place worked and could easily be used on a model one. BTW, even during the days of big growth the shortline never built an "engine facility/engine house or a fancy office...they just weren't necessary. Something modelers might keep in mind as they build tiny switching railroads and include an engine house. 

Well, this likely, was too many details but this is one example of how to run a prototype short line railroad.

Barry  

Short Line vs Class 1

Some of the points raised by Barry illustrate the difference between a short line and a class 1.

The branch (prior to the frac sand) was only minimally profitable.  That is a given, the only reason the class 1 railroad spun it off or leased it was it wasn't profitable (or didn't make acceptable profits) for the class 1 to operate.  If it was "profitable", the class 1 would have kept it.

The facilities were minimal.  Modelers tend to build short lines with engine houses and mechanical facilities and lots of infrastructure.  Real short lines, not so much.  This one had literally no facilities.  They didn't even have a fork lift to sand the engines, they borrowed one from a customer.  They didn't even have an office to receive the consist from the class 1, they borrowed a customer's fax machine.

As for information, basically the shortline used the class 1's information systems to support their operation, using the fax from the class 1 to do customer notifications.  The shortlines that are owned by a conglomerate are big enough to have their own IT  systems and dispatch center that handles multiple railroads in the corporate umbrella.  In the 2000's software is available enough that a smaller outfit can operate out of a laptop (rather than a fax machine).

In the post-PTC world the shortline's engine has to be PTC enabled if it wants to operate on a Class 1's PTC equipped main track and the shortline's train or engine has to entered into the class 1's computer system in order to operate on a class1 main track equipped with PTC.  No more calling the dispatcher on the radio and just getting a signal to run the 3 miles from the junction down to the class 1 yard to interchange cars.  Several of the major class 1's (at least the UP and NS, maybe more now) have built web apps to allow the shortlines to enter the Federally required "train sheet information" (symbol, engines, crew, loads empties, tons, route) into a web page form and that feed directly into the dispatch system so the class one can generate bulletins and the PTC system will be able to handle the train.

The big thing about shortlines is the physical plant, they generally barely make enough to handle minimal maintenance.  Larger projects are often funded by government sponsored loans or industrial development grants.  The real weak spot of shortlines are bridges (or tunnels).  If a bridge (or tunnel) fails it can often doom the shortline.  On class 1, if a bridge on a main route is out, there are engineers designing a new bridge within 24 hours and within the first 6 hours after it happens, men and materials are being lined up to respond.   

Class 1's will monitor a line and when the number of defective ties or rails reaches a certain threshold or the slow orders reach a certain delay level they will come in with a large gang and replace thousands of ties or miles of rail at once.  Shortlines, its more of a patch program, replacing things as they break.  Since the railroad is already operating at a minimal class track, slow orders aren't too much of a problem.  A lower class track allows more defective ties in a row.  Unless there is some huge windfall (such as the frac trains) or a government grant or subsidy, many independent shortlines won't make enough money to pay for a major tie or rail project.

The small short line makes money on switching fees, that is the class 1 pays them a flat rate for every car they handle, probably something less than $50-$200 a car range.  The class 1's keep the actual freight revenue for the move.  A larger shortline that has some line haul business may participate in the revenue.  The one described, not so much.

The bottom line for modelers is minimal infrastructure.  Maybe a 10x20 metal building  or a 20 ft container for the office, crew room and store room  Not a full depot.  Maybe just a tie up track where a truck can drive up next to an engine rather than an engine shed and shops.  Minimally maintained track with a small ballast section.  A couple old rotted ties along the right of way here or there where the maintenance gang replaced a single tie just so they wouldn't have 4 rotted ties in a row.  Ties will be a faded grey, not black with creosote.

See, this is what I expect an operation article to be, 

See, this is what I expect an operation article to be,   I might not be able to use everything or maybe just one thing or use it for an idea etc.  

Dave, you described the

Dave, you described the situation well and I believe we both know which property it was/is. Yes, now with PTC in effect, few short lines can justify installing it on their locomotives and the Class 1s have to deliver and pull from them rather than the short line doing this work.

Also, short lines are all the things you said and very rough ride both physically and financially. All short lines usually lose 15-30% of their customers each year often due to no fault of their own and they constantly need to be on the "prowl" for new customers. But even if they do manage to land some new accounts it's also up to the connecting railroad (s) to ensure they will handle the new, often minimal car loads. If the big road does not see enough revenue to cover their additional expense+profit to handle it (available through trains are already at capacity and it wouldn't pay to add another train/additional locomotives/crews/etc.) they will not participate in rates which are competitive and so the new business isn't brought on board. Nothing against the big carriers they are just being smart business folks but it makes it tremendously, difficult for the meager short line to grow and prosper. This why the smart short line conglomerates which own more than one line can and can generate 25-50 cars a day of business are the ones the big carriers like because they generally have access to more assests to survive and grow.

One other thing is that sometimes to encourage a new customer to locate the short line uses a truck/rail transload to see if it works for either party with spending money for a new spur. I have been a part of several of these ideas where we literally, did transloads right on the main track in between other movements which made daily operations sometimes frustrating. Nothing is ever easy on a short line ... you always need more (ties. ballast, weed control, etc.) just to survive.    

I realized very quickly after working for short lines that it was better to help manage them than own them with all the worries and hassles of the business. So, for the modeler enjoy your pretend short line with the fancy office/engine house and pretty locomotives because reality is often quite different.

Barry

Just my observation.

I for one, enjoy reading the Proto forums. I may never use any of the info, since I have a simple shelf layout and just "do my own thing!" But the thread is great reading and I am thankful for DaveH/for one and the many others that have sufficient knowledge to make this interesting. Thanks to all!

Short Line

Nope, don't have a clue.  But its a typical story of a small shortline.

I have friend who was involved with the chamber of commerce at a small city in a rural part of the state.  They had a shortline that was a branch of the big railroad that ran about 20 miles away.

The CoC had visions of making an intermodal terminal in their town and using the branch to feed the traffic to and from the class 1.  An interstate highway was being extended and would pass by their city.

I was visiting them (after I retired, so not speaking officially in any capacity) explained to them that even if they got the cars loaded and go them to the junction, the big railroad route they connected to was on a N-S line and the majority of intermodal runs E-W.  There were no intermodal trains to connect with on that line.  The cars would have to be carried 75 miles north or 150 miles south to reach a line that had intermodal service on it.  Its one of those "you can't get there from here".  It would be quicker and cheaper to drive the intermodal boxes to any one of 4 intermodal terminals in a 300-400 mile radius and put them directly on an intermodal train there.  Ironically the new interstate would make the rubber tire option even quicker and cheaper than the steel wheel concept they had.

Threads

The problem is that much of this (and other threads) are collaborative and reactive.  Until somebody asks a question or starts a discussion, its tough to just generate a "cold" article.  Many of the comments are reactions to other comments.

Can we pull this thread as an article?

Joe, I have a few pix of the

Joe, I have a few pix of the railroad I spoke of their engines, customers and a map I can send you off list?

Barry